Army Cpl. Jake Allex earned the Medal of Honor for extraordinary courage while leading his men forward under heavy fire during the Battle of Amiens in World War I.
Allex was born Angelko Allex Mandushich July 13, 1887, in Streska, near Prizren, in the Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, present-day Kosovo. He was of ethnic Serbian descent, born to Sava A. Mandushich and Savka Sosevich.
Allex immigrated to the United States, sailing from Bremen, Germany, about June 1912, according to his 1919 form requesting naturalization and a passport, and changed his name to Jake Allex.
He enlisted in the Illinois Army National Guard on April 27, 1917, just weeks after the United States entered World War I, April 6, 1917.
On the day Allex earned the Medal of Honor, Aug. 9, 1918, he was assigned to Company H, 131st Infantry Regiment, 33rd Infantry Division, at Chipilly Ridge, France, about 75 miles north of Paris.
His citation reads that at a critical point in the fighting, when the platoon commander and all the noncommissioned officers of his platoon become casualties, he took command and led the men forward until the advance was stopped by enemy machine-gun fire.
Allex then advanced alone for about 30 yards in the face of intense enemy fire and attacked the machine-gun nest. He killed five enemy soldiers with his bayonet, and when it broke, he used the butt of his rifle to smash the enemy. During the fighting, he captured 15 prisoners.
The action at Chipilly Ridge occurred during the Battle of Amiens, which took place Aug. 8-11, 1918. Allex and the rest of the 33rd Infantry Division would later fight in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the Second Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Saint-Mihiel.
The Medal of Honor was presented to Allex on April 22, 1919, in Ettelbruck, Luxembourg, by Army Gen. John J. Pershing, who commanded the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I.
Allex was honorably discharged from the Army on June 4, 1919, as a sergeant. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen Sept. 16, 1919.
After returning from the war, he worked for a time at the Morris & Co. meat-packing plant in Chicago, where the employees referred to him as Sgt. Jake. The 1930 U.S. census lists Allex as a construction foreman in Cook County, Illinois, and it also lists the value of his home at $1,800.
In 1931, Allex, who was a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, was invited by the Illinois governor to attend an address by President Herbert Hoover at the Lincoln Tomb in Springfield, Illinois, which he accepted.
Allex retired from the Chicago municipal water department in 1954. In December 1958, the Disabled American Veterans of Illinois presented him with a color television. Most people had black-and-white televisions at that time.
He died Aug. 28, 1959, and was buried at the Serbian Orthodox Cemetery and Monastery of Saint Sava in Libertyville, Illinois.