VICENTE MUÑA FLORES
Imagine a young Chamorro man serving in the US Army during World War One in Europe.
But that's exactly what Vicente Muña Flores did, and it serves as a reminder that it was not totally impossible for Chamorros in the old days to leave our small islands and get a taste of the big world out there.
In fact, Flores did not join the US Army on Guam but rather in Sacramento, California; which shows that he was already in the big world away from Guam before he joined the Army.
He was in Sacramento working on a steamboat as a deck hand. His draft registration says he had previously been a mess attendant in the US Navy so maybe that's how he ended up in California. He had been born on Guam in 1891 so he was already 26 years old when he registered for the draft.
FOUGHT IN FRANCE
Flores fought in France in 1918. He was there at the Champagne-Marne campaign which was the Germans' last offensive. When the German push was repelled, the tide of the war went in the favor of the Allies. World War I was over in a few months.
Flores was honorably discharged but didn't return to Guam till 1922. Then he married Ana Blas Untalan and raised a family. He was described by both the 1930 and 1940 censuses as being a farmer. The young man who left the island to see the big world, going so far as to fight in Europe in World War One, came back to be like almost every other man on Guam; a tiller of the soil settled on his land.
But he, like few others, could sit with all those fellow Chamorros who had never left Guam and regale them with stories about France, California, the war and the high seas.
VICENTE AND WIFE ANA
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