51�Թ�

Roraima state fire and rescue officials said in a statement that the boys had drowned, without mentioning the dredging machine.

“So perhaps being ‘killed by Smoot’s dredging machine’ could have been viewed as underlining, by his family, that Bryant suffered a Stateside but quite patriotic death, equivalent to the fates to be risked by his friends who were being drafted?”

About five years ago, after seeing the memorable inscription on Lyles’s gravestone in a Fairfax County cemetery — “Killed on Smoot’s Dredging Machine” — Jason Lefkowitz, a software developer who used to live in Alexandria, became fascinated with the young man’s story.

What was his dredging machine?

The marker is engraved with the scantest details of Lyles’s life: “Born May 8, 1898. Killed on Smoot’s Dredging Machine Sept. 1, 1917.”