Border WarWorld War I George Dilboy (Americanized transliteration of Greek name, Georgios Dilvois: Γεώργιος Διλβόης), (February 5, 1896 – July 18, 1918), Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company H, 103rd Infantry Regiment (United States), 26th Division is thought to be the first Greek-American to receive the Medal of Honor during World War I.

Dilboy was born in the Greek town of Alatsata, in Ottoman Turkey in Asia Minor, near Smyrna.

Dilboy returned to Greece in 1912[2] where he volunteered to fight in the Hellenic Army in Thessaly during the First Balkan War of 1912–13.

Returning to Somerville, he went to school and worked for a few years before volunteering to fight in the U.S. Army in the Mexican Border War in 1916–1917.

But when I learned of the manner in which he died, I was proud that he had given his life with honor the cause of his adopted country, the United States.

Dilboy, accompanying his platoon leader to reconnoiter the ground beyond, was suddenly fired upon by an enemy machine gun from 100 yards.

With undaunted courage he continued to fire into the emplacement from a prone position, killing 2 of the enemy and dispersing the rest of the crew.

After a funeral procession through the streets of his birthplace—said to have been witnessed by 17,000 mourners—his flag-draped casket was placed in the Greek Orthodox Church of the Presentation in Alatsata to lie in state before the high altar.

The coffin was overturned, after which—according to an account by Bishop John Kallos—the bones of the Greek-American war hero were scattered by the marauding attackers.

President Warren G. Harding was outraged and sent the warship USS Litchfield to Turkey in September 1922 to recover the bodily remains.

The renaming was scratched after Somerville's Greek and military veteran communities spoke out in favor of retaining the name Dilboy.

[13][14] The monument inspired Eddie Brady, a Somerville resident, to fictionalize George Dilboy's life in the novel Georgie!