In 1917-1918, my father, Peyton Joshua Coffee (1900-1987) , was in the 8th U.S. Cavalry Quartermaster Department (stable boy) and took care of horses. He was stationed at Fort Bliss Texas following Gen. Pershing's Punitive Expedition into Mexico. My father claimed he was a "pileit" in the U.S. Cavalry. My father was in the same regiment that young 2nd Lt.George S.Patton which was 2nd Lt. Patton's first duty assignment after graduating from West Point.

My father caught the dreaded 1918 Spanish Flu in November 1918 and was sent by train back to Fort Sam Houston Army Hospital. He said the hospital staff were removing four to six dead soldiers from his hospital ward per day who had died of the flu. He survived the flu epidemic only because the doctors released him and told him to go home and die. The army gave him a medical discharge in January 1919. After being released, he went to Orange Texas, recovered, and got a job in the ship yard in the fall of 1919. He soon was hired as a deck hand on a coastal steamer and went along the coast to Virginia where the ship becan taking on water and eventually sank. My father and the rest of the crew was rescued by the "U.S.S. Brilliant".

He returned to Brownwood Texas by the winter of 1920 and married my mother, Virginia Estelle Gilmer.