Recent scholarship has highlighted the liminal spaces occupied by the Syrian mahjar in the United States in the late-19th/early 20th century, whether in terms of their racial identities or their status as Ottoman subjects living in an Entente-allied nation during the First World War. This paper further explores these themes through the story of Gabriel Elias Ward, a Lebanese man who came to the United States in 1897 and served the United States military both as a soldier and Spanish interpreter in the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), as well as in the Canadian military in World War 1. Using his war memoirs published in New York under the title al-Jundī al-sūrī fī thalāth ḥurūb (The Syrian Soldier in Three Wars), as well as his military records and contemporaneous American newspapers in both English and Arabic featuring articles about Ward, this paper traces the contours of Ward’s life from his upbringing in Tripoli, Lebanon, his education, his Syrian expatriate networks around the world, his experiences serving in several wars, and the financial hardships he faced in old age in New York City. The paper looks at the intense patriotism Ward expressed towards the United States in his war memoirs and newspaper interviews, and argues that it must be understood through the lens of previous historiography on segments of the Syrian mahjar who pushed for a United States Mandate in Syria following the end of the First World War. Additionally, there is a noticeable shift in how Ward presents himself and his identity to his non-Arab American audiences as time progresses. As a young veteran of the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19th century, Ward often identified himself as Brazilian in official documentation as well as in interviews with English-speaking American newspapers. Only later as a middle-aged decorated veteran of multiple wars did Ward choose to identify himself as Syrian. This section of the paper argues that Ward’s shift in his self-identification must be understood within the context of the changing racial categorization of Syrians as white in early 20th century America.