While still a boy, his family survived the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, but his mother died two years later of a gastric ulcer.

Being now an only child of a single working class father, he was sent to live with his German immigrant grandmother, Christina Seifert, in a Victorian house that still stands at the corner of 25th and Diamond Streets in San Francisco.

Shortly after graduating, on June 5, 1910, The San Francisco Chronicle published an essay by him about the value of having a fun summer vacation as part of growing up healthy and well-rounded.

[1][3] In December 1916, Roberts was sworn into the U.S. Army at Fort McDowell on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.

[2] Upon return from his tour of duty in the Philippines, Roberts and his regiment reported to Camp Fremont, near Palo Alto, California.

[2] The trip across the Atlantic Ocean aboard the Aeolus took two weeks, punctuated by seasickness from the rough seas and rumors of U-boat sightings.

Arriving in France, Roberts' regiment was under the leadership of the commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), General John J. Pershing.

General Pershing had assigned Lieutenant-Colonel George S. Patton to recruit soldiers from other Army branches into his new Tank Corps.

One of the most revolutionary and influential tank designs in history, the popular FT17 weighed just over seven tons, and with 39 horsepower it had a top speed of 7 miles per hour.

The gunner learned to communicate his desired direction of travel inside the incredibly noisy and unlit tank interior by a series of toe taps to the back, shoulders and head of the driver.

Then on September 12, the American Expeditionary Forces, including Roberts' battalion, joined a major offensive known as the Battle of Saint-Mihiel.

Roberts entered combat with these late instructions from his commander, Patton, fresh in his memory: No tank is to be surrendered or abandoned to the enemy.

Despite the deep mud and water-filled trenches that bogged down so many tanks, Roberts followed Patton's order resolutely and acquitted himself well in the four-day-long battle.

So much so, in fact, he was promoted to corporal and allowed to be assigned back as driver for his good friend, Sergeant Morgan.

[2] Their tank, one of the now just 89 still operational after the first phase of the offensive, was soon transferred from the Saint-Mihiel area to a new jumping-off point north and northwest of the town of Verdun.

It had an elaborate defensive system of four fortified lines incorporating a dense network of barbed wire entanglements, trenches, machine gun positions, and concrete bunkers.

Avoiding the shattered tree trunks, swampy low areas, and the tangles of barbed wire, they advanced.

They opened the hatch and the soldier yelled that the tank on the left was struck, and he wanted protection from a German machine gun, pointing towards the trench woods.

Morgan also wrote a letter to Roberts' father, which stated in part, In a moment we were turned over and water was rushing into the tank.

While he depicted the wrong type of tank in his drawing and deviated somewhat from the description of the event as recounted by Morgan, he portrayed Roberts' final moments.

The poster was placed in numerous newspapers across the country, greatly raising the public's awareness of his heroism and sacrifice, as well as helping to oversubscribe the $4.5 billion of bonds offered for sale.

[4] Harold W. Roberts' name is engraved on the three-sided boulder, known as the Gold Star Mothers Rock, in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

The 18-ton boulder, located in "Heroes Grove" was reportedly quarried from the Twin Peaks area of San Francisco.

It has a large portrait of Roberts on the wall, many period furnishings, and a motion-activated monitor that shows an audio-visual presentation of his life and times.

Harold W. Roberts, who served with Company A, 224th Tank Corps in World War I, does not know it, but his Congressional Medal of Honor has been found.

The highest emblem presented by the Government for extraordinary service was found in a used car purchased Monday by a Blytheville dealer, and an effort is being made through the War Department to locate its owner.

[2] This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Army Center of Military History.