The barber carrying a message on the front lines was caught in a hail of bullets and killed while nearing his platoon leader during a World War I battle on July 28, 1918.
Later, a diary was found in the shirt of Martin August Treptow. The diary had an extraordinary passage written by 24-year-old Treptow, who is buried in City Cemetery in Bloomer.
Treptow called it “My Pledge.”
He wrote: “America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure. I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.”
President Ronald Reagan was so touched by Treptow pledge that Reagan included it in his first inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1981.
Francis Yohnk wrote about Treptow and his diary in a Nov. 12, 2012 article for the Herald:
“After Treptow’s body was shipped back to Bloomer, the soldier’s pledge received widespread publicity and copies of it were used by the Armed Forces in patriotic posters all over the country. Treptow’s nephew, Lyle Gehring of Roseville, Calif., remembers seeing the words 25 years later in a framed poster at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri ... Another poster of the pledge is part of a collection in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.”
As for the diary itself, Yohnk said it was shipped to Bloomer and to Treptow’s parents, Anna and Albert Treptow.
Bloomer’s American Legion Post received its charter in 1926. It is known as the Martin A. Treptow Post No. 295.
