Corporal James H. Mitchell was born in January, 1895 in Tennessee. He quit school at the age of seventeen after the third grade. He enlisted in the U.S. Army after leaving school in December, 1913. Corporal Mitchell was sentenced to death but his sentence was commuted by President Woodrow Wilson to Life at Hard Labor and then again to eighteen years and six months. Corporal Mitchell was granted parole in December, 1924.