Bert Sidney Crossland was born in 1891 in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, one of four children of Fuller and Millie Crossland. The family moved to Torrance where the father worked at the Union Tool Company. Crossland married Margaret Hodil in 1916 in Santa Ana, California and they lived in Los Angeles. He worked as a waiter before enlisting in the U.S. Army in June 1917. He served as a cook with Company B, 316th Train Headquarters and Military Police, 91st Infantry Division and was sent overseas.
Bert Crossland arrived in Europe on July 14, 1918. On November 1, 1918, Crossland was killed in action in Waregem, Belgium. The Company’s Morning Report for this day (a daily document that summarized unit activities and listed those killed or wounded in action) states that after Company B arrived in Waregem at 6:00PM: “Three aerial bombs dropped by enemy plane on Company billets. Cook Bert S. Crossland killed.” Three other soldiers were wounded and evacuated to a hospital.
William H. Tolson, who coincidentally was serving in the Army near Crossland also as a cook and was later the Mayor of Torrance, recounted years afterwards that on a rainy evening near Waregem, a German plane flew over their area dropping bombs. One bomb landed about 200 feet from Tolson. A few minutes later he heard that another bomb had struck a military police “cook house” killing the cook that he later learned was Crossland.
The United States had entered World War I in 1917. While most of the American Expeditionary Forces were fighting in France, four Army divisions fought in Belgium alongside British forces in the “Flanders Fields” battlefield. Many soldiers were killed and injured in this region, including Bert S. Crossland. The Armistice that ended World War I was signed on November 11, 1918, just 10 days after he died.
Crossland was awarded Belgium’s Croix de Guerre posthumously, a military decoration established for bravery or other military virtue on the battlefield. He is buried at the Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial in Belgium, one of the 368 American soldiers resting there who lost their lives liberating Belgium. Sadly, his widow Margaret passed away shortly thereafter on May 16, 1919 after an illness. The first American Legion Post in Torrance was formed in 1920 and was named the Bert S. Crossland Post 170 in his honor.
According to a Torrance Herald newspaper article dated November 4, 1937, even though the young city was struggling in 1914 and 1915 when its only factory had almost closed and financial panic gripped the nation, Torrance still did its part for the war effort. At least 41 Torrance men served in the First World War, and one, Bert Sidney Crossland, made the ultimate sacrifice.
