18 Jan. 1876-14 Dec. 1940
by Matthew M. Peek, State Archives of North Carolina, 2015
James William Alston served in the U.S. Army during both the Spanish-American War and World War I. He was one of the first officers to be trained at the newly created African American officer's training school created at Fort Dodge, Iowa in the spring of 1917 and served as a First Lieutenant in the Army's 372nd Infantry, an all-black regiment, during World War I.
James Alston re-enlisted in the U.S. Army on June 15, 1917, after the United States entered World War I. Now forty years old, Alston was sent to the first all-African American officers’ training school at Fort Dodge, near Des Moines, Iowa. On October 15, 1917, Alston was commissioned as a First Lieutenant in the 372nd Infantry, 93rd Division, U.S. Army. Alston served overseas from March 30, 1918, through January 19, 1919. Upon arriving in France, Alston was sent to one of the British Army’s training schools—the Fourth Army Infantry School—where he attended a five-week officer’s training course. He would serve under French command in the Meuse-Argonne sector, and later the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, in France. In an October 6, 1918, letter, Alston mentions that he was lying in a hospital bed either in France or Belgium, with “a machine gun bullet through my right shoulder.” Evidently, Alston was also severely wounded on October 24, 1918. He returned to the United States in January 1919, and was discharged in February 1919 without any disability being listed.
Alston returned home to his wife and their daughter, and began work as a messenger and clerk in the Revenue Building for the North Carolina Department of Buildings and Grounds. James W. Alston died on December 14, 1940, in Wake County, North Carolina, and was buried in the Raleigh National Cemetery (United States National Cemetery located in the eastern part of Raleigh, North Carolina).