371st Infantry Regiment, American Expeditionary Force
Wounded in the 1918 Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He survived the war, returned home to Sumter County, and was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart nearly a century later.
Claremont
Sumter County, South Carolina
A soldier from a farm county in South Carolina, and the name his family still uses for him.
May 15, 1895
Perry Loyd was born on May 15, 1895, in Claremont, South Carolina. That is the date and place recorded on his World War I draft registration card when he registered at the Spring Hill precinct in Lee County on June 5, 1917.
Sgt. Perry Loyd grew up in Claremont, Sumter County, South Carolina, before he served with the 371st Infantry Regiment, 93rd Division, American Expeditionary Force.
Sgt. Loyd is known in his family as "Rawhide."
His military headstone gives April 4, 1895; his 1917 draft registration card, which he gave in person, gives May 15, 1895. This site uses the draft card.
Sources: Military headstone, High Hills AME Church Cemetery, Dalzell, S.C., photograph on Find a Grave memorial 193977217 (opens in a new tab, leaves the Sergeant Rawhide site); World War I Selective Service System draft registration card, Local Board for the County of Lee, S.C., June 5, 1917 (National Archives, M1509); copy supplied by the family (Perry W. James IV), 2026 (opens in a new tab, leaves the Sergeant Rawhide site).
1917 to 1918
Camp Jackson to France
Sgt. Loyd served with the 371st Infantry Regiment, raised at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, on August 31, 1917. The regiment reached France in April 1918 and fought there under French command. Which company he served in, and where he stood on any given day, is not recorded: his service file was destroyed in 1973.
Detail: the uniform
The same file, enlarged in the browser. Nothing has been enhanced or colorized. Whatever the uniform might show is not read here: no record survives to check it against.
September 29, 1918
Meuse-Argonne Offensive
The record gives the date and the offensive, and nothing more specific: not his company, not where in the line he stood.
Sgt. Loyd was wounded in action on September 29, 1918, during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
1918
Wounded in action
He is often confused with another soldier of the 371st. The man killed leading the assault on Hill 188 on September 28, 1918, was Cpl. Freddie Stowers. Sgt. Loyd was wounded the next day, and he came home.
The record
He was wounded on September 29, 1918, and survived.
Sgt. Loyd returned to Sumter County, farmed, married Rebecca Howard, and died in 1946. The soldier killed leading the assault on Hill 188 on September 28 was Cpl. Freddie Stowers, of the same regiment.
After the war
Sumter County, South Carolina
Sgt. Loyd survived his wound and the war. He returned to Sumter County as a sharecropper, married Rebecca Howard, and raised a family of 15 children, 10 of whom lived to adulthood. He died on December 31, 1946, at 51, and is buried at High Hills AME Church Cemetery in Dalzell, South Carolina.
His chain of command recommended him for the Wound Chevron, but records were lost and two federal applications were denied before Sen. Tim Scott's office intervened.
Drawn to scale: 100 years, every year the same length.
Sgt. Loyd's chain of command recommended him for the Wound Chevron, the decoration that preceded the Purple Heart. He never received it in his lifetime.
The case for his Purple Heart took decades to establish, in part because his service records were destroyed in the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, and his family's own effects were separately lost in a house fire. Two federal applications were denied before Sen. Tim Scott's office intervened and the claim was approved.
October 13, 2018
Fort Jackson, South Carolina
One hundred years later
100years
from Sgt. Perry Loyd's wound in France to his Purple Heart
Source: U.S. Army (army.mil) and Military.com
On October 13, 2018, Sgt. Loyd was posthumously presented the Purple Heart at the Noncommissioned Officers Club at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, by Brig. Gen. Milford H. Beagle Jr., then the commander of Fort Jackson. His grandson and namesake, Perry W. James IV, accepted the medal on the family's behalf.
Dalzell
High Hills AME Church Cemetery
The Military Order of the Purple Heart presented Sgt. Loyd's Purple Heart to his surviving family at his grave in Dalzell, South Carolina, WIS-TV reported on November 11, 2025. He is one of 65 Black soldiers buried at High Hills AME Church Cemetery.
Then and now
Sgt. Perry “Rawhide” Loyd
Identified by his family. The photograph is undated.
Perry W. James IV
Grandson and namesake. He accepted the Purple Heart at Fort Jackson on October 13, 2018.
© King Street Studios, courtesy of the Daniel Island Historical Society
Carry the story forward
A one-page history card you can print, hand to a church group, a veterans’ post or a classroom, or send as a link. Two sourced facts, the man, the regiment, and the hundred years.
SGT. RAWHIDE, the published novel by Perry James, tells this story in full.
Story progress: 1 of 5, The Man
Continue the story
You know the man. Now follow his regiment to France, under French command, to Hill 188.