Oscar Hykes was born in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania on March 13, 1894.  He had entered the Conway Hall at nearby Dickinson College in 1914 and later studied the Philosophical course at Dickinson as a member of the class of 1918.  While at the College he was a member of Belles Lettres Literary Society and Phi Delta Theta fraternity.  He also studied transportation at the Wharton School and began work with the Pennsylvania Railroad just before he enlisted in the U.S. Army in the spring of 1918. 

He trained at Camp Lee, Virginia until May 1918 when he was assigned to the 37th Division's 146th Infantry Regiment and joined the fourth platoon of Company H in that unit.  The 37th left Hoboken, New Jersey on June 15, 1918 and arrived in France a week later.   Private Hykes went into action first in the Vosges Mountains in August 1918 and then the 37th joined the Meuse-Argonne battles on September 20, 1918.  On  September 28, Company H was advancing up a dirt road when an shell struck a small group of the fourth platoon in the rear of the column.  They had stopped to refill their canteens at a roadside spring.  Oscar Maclay Hykes was seriously wounded and died September 30, 1918 in a field hospital.  His body was returned to Shippensburg after the war and buried in Spring Hill Cemetery.  The Shippensburg American Legion Post 223, organized in 1919, was named for the fallen infantryman.