Alexander Rives Skinker

Captain, U.S. Army

Medal of Honor Recipient

World War I

Captain Alexander Rives Skinker (13 October 1883 - 26 September 1918) was a U.S. Army officer who was posthumously awarded the U.S. military's highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor, for his heroic actions during World War I.

Alexander Rives Skinker was born on 13 October 1883 in St. Louis, MO. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 1905 before becoming a commissioned officer in the Army. He was awarded the Medal while leading an attack on German pill boxes in the Hindenburg Line in which he was subsequently killed.

Medal of Honor

Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Army, 138th Infantry, 35th Division.

Place and date: At Cheppy, France, 26 September 1918.

Citation: Unwilling to sacrifice his men when his company was held up by terrific machinegun fire from iron pill boxes in the Hindenburg Line, Capt. Skinker personally led an automatic rifleman and a carrier in an attack on the machineguns. The carrier was killed instantly, but Capt. Skinker seized the ammunition and continued through an opening in the barbed wire, feeding the automatic rifle until he, too, was killed.

Death and Burial

Captain Alexander Rives Skinker was killed in action on 26 September 1918. He is buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, MO, in Block 78/79, Lot 2342.