cc >> Good afternoon and welcome
to another edition of History Sandwiched In at the Wisconsin
Historical Museum. Today, we're especially
fortunate to have a talk about one of the great stories
that came out of World War I, "The Lost Battalion," which
has a true Wisconsin connection. There are at least three members
of the battalion who are from our state.
And we are lucky enough today to have Robert J. Laplander
come and bring 1/16, no doubt the best 16th,
of his collection of items from an archaeological dig,
from World War I, from France. And without further delay,
please welcome Robert Laplander to the Wisconsin Historical
Museum. ( applause )
Thanks for coming. How many of you saw
the 2001 movie on A&E? Did you really?
How many thought it was good? Okay, forget all that.
Because that's not what happened.
It's Hollywood's version. It's a very entertaining movie.
I watch it myself on a frequent basis, because that's what we
have. The truth is, like most events,
much worse. The fact is that the Argonne
Defensive, during which the episode of Lost Battalion
happened, was the bloodiest battle America has ever
been involved in. Iwo Jima is number two.
We were in Argonne for 47 days. We fought.
We lost 550 men on average per day.
Over 125,000 casualties in this one battle alone.
And that makes it something that should be remembered,
but to this day is not. During that battle, one of the
greatest events of American participation in the first
World War, the Lost Battalion happened.
The truth of the story is a lot more graphic than has always
been illustrated in the legend. In 1938, Thomas Johnson and
Fletcher Pratt, a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times and a
military historian, got together and wrote a book
called "The Lost Battalion." And up until now it's been
the benchmark against which everybody has measured
what they know about the story. If this is the 1920s and 1930s,
you'd all know the story. It was huge.
It was a massive story. Even before these men walked out
of what became known as the pocket, they were heroes.
As early as October 5, they were having newspaper
articles written about them here in the states.
The event went from October 2 to October 7.
They walked out on the afternoon of October 8.
And at the same time, on October 7, the day that they
were relieved from the pocket, that evening they were relieved,
but that afternoon somebody named Sergeant Alvin York,
who was a Corporal at the time seven kilometers north,
was doing his little deed to win the war.
Everybody remembers Sergeant York, right?
You all saw the movie that came out, "1941"?
That's a great movie, isn't it? Forget it, it never happened.
That's not how it happened. But it's Hollywood's
version of that. And it's through Hollywood
that we know about these things, that we can grasp these things,
and you showed up here to see the truth.
Like I said, the truth is much worse.
On the evening of October 2, 1918, Charles Whittlesey,
a New York lawyer who was born in Florence, Wisconsin,
led about 700 men into the Charlevoix Ravine.
He did not do this in a burst of glory to try to win medals
for himself. He actually did this
under competent and direct military orders.
He was following his orders. Trouble was, a nobody else
followed their orders as well. He was told, you will advance
without regard to flanks or losses.
This sounds like a really harsh military principle, but in truth
it's what they did. Do we have any veterans here?
How many veterans? We've got one...
two. Anybody want to be a veteran
just for today? The truth of the matter
is that military service is not about saving your life.
Military service is not about saving your partner's life.
Military service is about obtaining the objective.
And obtaining the objective at just about any cost.
Charles Whittlesey was exceptionally good at this.
He was a graduate of the Plattsburgh Officers
Training Camps. Now Plattsburgh Officer Training
Camps were the brainchild of General Leonard Wood,
before the war. As early as 1913, Leonard Wood
realized that we lacked militarily.
By the time we got into the war in April of 1917, we had
a standing army of 250,000 regular, National Guard
and Marine Corps troops. 250,000.
The Germans at that time had 2 million men in the field
in France. We stood 17th in the world.
General Leonard Wood had seen something like this coming
and decided a long time ago that what we're going to need is an
Officer Cadre to lead a Draft Army.
Now those of you who know anything about the service
know that regular army troops-- at the end of the war there is
not a lot of regular army troops still standing.
There's a reason for this. Regular army troops are not
there to win the war, regular army troops are there
to hold the line until the national army troops
and draft army can be gotten together to win the war.
Consequently, regular army troops have a high casualty
rate. Now, to get this whole thing
started, we were going to need officers.
So we started 60-day officer training camps.
In 1916, Charles Whittlesey went.
It was the fashionable thing to do.
The best and the brightest in the society were going to be
officers. So he went and he served
his 60 days. The Army got a chance to assess
his capabilities, and find out who he was.
And when the war was declared in 1917, Charles Whittlesey
was called back and he was made an officer.
He was given the rank of Captain and was put in charge of the
Headquarters Company of the New 308th Infantry.
The 308th Infantry is part of the 77th Division.
The 77th Division is raised from the Lower East Side
of New York, primarily. There's a lot of street
peddlers, a lot of immigrants. Because remember, this is
that the beginning of the 20th century.
There's a lot of immigrants. And the best thing about the
draft law that was passed in May of 1917, was that
you didn't have to be a citizen to be a soldier.
All you had to do is live here. And a lot of these guys who were
immigrants would come over from Europe, because
they did not want to serve got drafted anyway.
And they served in the 77th Division.
The 77th is a true melting pot. It really shows what America was
at the turn of the century. And all the guys in charge of it
were the best and brightest of New York society.
They send these guys to France in April of 1918.
After receiving the full 16-week military training
program at the time. This is something that's not
going to happen again, for the replacement troops
that will come in. The 77th Division serves
in the -- sector, which is a quiet sector.
The server with the French. They serve with the British.
They're gaining a little experience.
They take a few casualties. They're starting to swagger
a little bit. They really think
they're something else. And then they pull them out
and they send them to the Valley of the Vel River.
And any of the 77th Division troops would tell you
the same thing, before was a pushing match.
And we got into the Vel, that was a real fist fight.
The summer of 1918 was a very hot summer.
The Germans used a lot of gas in the Valley of the Vel River.
There was not a lot of fresh water available.
Everything had to be hand carried up.
This is where the 77th learned about the artillery fire,
and how to dig in, funk holes, the forerunner
of World War II's fox hole. This is where they learned
what shells sounded like. This is also where they learned
you didn't sleep one in a hole. That was suicide.
You didn't sleep two in a hole. You'd wake up to find your
buddy's throat cut. You slept three in a hole.
Two awake and one asleep. You rotated shifts
every two hours. Being the kind of unit that the
77th was as well, you had a lot of immigrants in there,
like I said, Germans were putting on American uniforms
and slipping in to American chow lines
listening to what was going on. Nobody realized that they were
not part of the Division. Everybody had an accent
in that Division. And then they would eat
good American food, and go back to the other side of the lines
and tell what they saw. They were slipping into
the lines everywhere. And the 77th really began
to take a lot of casualties. They really began to learn
what the war was about. And primarily, the Third
Battalion of the 308th took a heavy amount of casualties.
Now, a Division in the First World War was not like
a Division in the Second. It was a lot bigger.
There was 27,000 men in the Division, huge divisions.
There were four Infantry Regiments.
In the case of the 77th, you had the 305th, 306th, 307th,
and 308th infantry regiments. We also had attached
machine gun units. We also had artillery units,
supply units. Huge, huge units.
And each one of those regiments, for instance the 308th
was broken down into three battalions.
Each battalion had four companies.
And the company had 244 men each.
So a battalion could raise about 1200 rifles at full strength.
By the time they got into the Argonne Forest after
the Vel River, they were down. They were down a lot.
Most of the 244 men companies had less than 200 men in them.
So they had to bring in replacements.
Now replacements and the First World War, like replacements
at the end of Second World War, were a little bit different
than the men who had originally gone over.
And in the case of the 77th Division, these replacements
came from the 40th Division, which became Number Three Depot
Division in France. Depot Division
meaning replacement division. Most of the men in the
40th Division were draftees from the summer of 1918,
late spring and early summer of 1918, they'd have come
from the Midwest. Most of these men had received
their draft notices in May of 1918,
and shipped out in June. And by September 26,
they were in combat. Just to show you something.
The first guy we're going to talk about today that has a
Wisconsin connection is a fellow who illustrates quite clearly
exactly what I'm talking about. This is Eugene Michael McGrath.
Eugene Michael McGrath was born in New London, Wisconsin.
And he received his draft notice on May 28, 1918.
He shipped out in early June, for Camp Louis
in Washington state. He spent about a week or two
at Camp Louis in Washington getting his inoculations,
learning who to salute, when to salute, how to salute
and where to salute, and how to wear his uniform
before he was sent to Camp Kearney in California
in July. In mid-July, he was shipped out
from Camp Kearney to Camp Mills in New York,
where he arrived in August. He spends two weeks in
quarantine getting overseas shots.
By the time he gets over to France.
By August 25, he is in France. Now remember, he shipped out
in early June. Now he's in France
and it's August 25. He's been in the military
69 days. Of those 69, days he has spent
19 days in training. The rest of it is traveling time
and quarantine time. 19 days.
He has a brand new rifle on his arm.
He has never fired. He has never seen a gas mask.
He doesn't know what a hand grenade is.
What they're telling these guys is don't worry about your basic
training, you don't need it. What you need is advanced
infantry training in France. Then you'll be okay for combat.
By the time they got to France, however, the need for
replacements in the combat divisions was so great, that the
military had decided they've already had the basic training,
they don't need advanced combat training,
send them to the front. The men were arriving at the
front without full equipment, with absolutely no training.
Not all the men, but some of them.
Eugene Michael McGrath was one of them.
He arrived September 23, just outside the Argonne Forest
and is attached to Company C of the 308th infantry.
Company C is really, really down.
They received 75 replacements to bring them up to 240 men.
They only have two officers instead of the full complement
of five. And they go into combat
on September 26, 1918. Now, when they went into combat
in the Argonne Forest, they didn't really know what to
expect, because the guns had been firing for almost 24 hours.
And in fact, more artillery was fired into the Argonne Forest
in the first 24 hours of battle than was fired
by the entire Union Army during the entire Civil War.
That's a lot of firepower. And it really did
some devastation. What we really didn't know
was what it was doing to the Germans.
The Germans, in fact, had pulled back.
They suspected what was going on and they pulled back.
Now, the Argonne Forest-- how many of you have been
to Nicolet National Forest? Just about everybody.
I think it's pretty thick in some spots.
That's nothing. The Argonne Forest is terrible.
For centuries, armies had fought around the Argonne Forest.
It's the largest woodland expanse between the
Mediterranean and the North Sea. And it is primeval.
In the way that it is constructed by nature.
You could take two steps on solid ground, and the next step
without realizing, would sink up to your knees in slop.
In some places, you can't see more than two or three meters
in any direction. The Germans had been in this
forest for four years. And they had built a veritable
city inside this forest. There were trench lines,
upon trench lines, upon trench lines
protected by barbed wire. There was, in some places,
eight and ten feet thick and over a man's head.
You couldn't see through it, in some places the weeds
had grown through it. They would stretch barbwire nets
between two trees. And as you tried to push through
it, you'd get caught in the wire and there be a machine gun
on the other side. Hundreds of machine guns were
scattered through this forest. It was a quiet section
of the line. It was a rest area.
It's where they sent their troops to rest,
and so did the French. Nobody was going to fight
in this mess, because everybody rested there.
The Germans really were there for the long haul.
And they set up beer gardens, and bowling alleys,
and chalets, and nice apartment complexes.
They had hot and cold running water,
electricity. a modern telephone system.
Roads went everywhere. Narrow gauge railroads
connected everything. They had two full-size
concrete swimming pools. They're still there.
All that stuff is still out in the forest.
And they were there for the long haul.
But these were military replacements that were divided
into three major lines. And to attack through
those lines, you had to get through the sub-positions
in the front. The first sub-position extended
for about three kilometers. And it was where
the classic devastation of the First World War was.
This is where everything was all torn up by shellfire.
Beyond that, the farther you got into the forest,
the less devastation there was. And as you pushed forward
into this, the Germans had all their machine guns
and all their artillery trained on those areas.
The 308th bursts forward into this in a tremendous fog.
Gets out into the forest and separates.
Units disintegrate. Cohesion between units
disintegrates. It takes three days
for them to tie up loose ends. Luckily, the Germans
are pulling back to a main line. They realize they can't stop
the onslaught. This is a really good
German defense tactic, called elastic defense.
It gets pulled back and then reorganized,
and then head forward again. So they're pulling back.
Whittlesey and his men are driving forward
on the far left of the line. They get to the top of a hill.
They get separated on the right from the Second Battalion.
Whittlesey is in charge of the First Battalion.
He's driving forward. Off to his left
is the 368th Infantry, attached to the French.
The 368th has not been able to keep up on that flank.
Neither has the Second Battalion in Whittlesey's right flank,
been able to keep up. This is in direct violation
of the orders to attack regardless of flanks.
And ground once taken must not given up.
Two sound military principles. If you attack without regard
to your flank, and the guy next to you attacks
without regard to his flanks, and the guy next to him
does the same thing, all the units
are moving forward, correct? And your flanks
are naturally covered. Well, that's not what really
happens in combat, quite frequently.
The Second Battalion couldn't keep up.
Instead of maintaining their position under heavy fire,
they fall back, breaking orders and giving up ground.
Whittlesey finds himself on the evening of September 28, 1918,
on the north side of this hill alone.
It's raining and it's dark. And he doesn't want to risk
sending his men out on either flank to make connection,
so he keeps them in. And he says tomorrow the flanks
will likely catch up, we'll be okay.
This is a bad military decision. It's a bad military decision for
one reason and one reason alone. Whittlesey is not
a combat commander. Remember, he was in charge of
the 308th Headquarters Company. It's not a combat unit.
He was a paper pusher. But when they got on the Vel,
when they're in the Valley of the Vel, the First Battalion
commander was hit and wounded and goes down.
He comes back. He's hit and killed.
His replacement comes up, is hit and killed.
Now they're looking for somebody to fill the shoes.
Whittlesey was next in line. He didn't have combat experience
but he was next in line. And he had done so well at
Plattsburgh that they decide, you know what, he can do it.
Give him the majority and put him in there.
They make him a Major. His first combat assignment
is to drive into the Argonne Forest.
The worst battle we're going to face.
He manages his affairs remarkably well up to this time.
And it's at that time that they pull up at this hillside.
And Charles Whittlesey, from Florence, Wisconsin,
brings his men up and says we're going to hold out tonight,
tomorrow the flanks with catch up.
But the flanks don't catch up. And for the next day and half,
Whittlesey and his men are surrounded on all four sides
by the German troops, who they don't realize are pulling back.
It's a rearguard action. If the Germans had realized
what a little prize they had out on that hillside,
they could have annihilated Whittlesey and the 450
approximate men he had with him. But they don't.
And by the evening of September 30, they had pulled
out from around Whittlesey. Whittlesey's flanks catch up
with him. For the first time, since
the beginning of the battle they have a solid line.
And on October 1, they begin to drive farther up
the north/south ravine, deeper into the Argonne Forest.
The Second Battalion is following up behind him
with a new battalion commander George McMurtry.
George McMurtry was one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.
And he was also a Plattsburgh graduate.
And I have a lot of sympathy for George McMurtry,
because George McMurtry was 42 years old.
They had been in this battle for almost a week now,
and it was a bad battle. Nobody was sleeping.
Nobody was eating. There was no shelter.
It rained almost every day. I'm 42, and I wouldn't
want to do that. It's pretty bad.
So I have a lot of sympathy for George McMurtry.
Whittlesey is driving forward up this ravine.
Now, his orders are to take a road, take a position along
a road that is farther up the ravine, that he is going up
the north/south ravine, cross an east/west ravine
called the Charlevoix Ravine, with the Charlevoix Brook
down at the bottom, and go halfway up the hill to a road.
If you look close in this picture you'll see,
and afterwards you can come up and take a look,
there's a white line. This white line is the roadside.
The wall behind the road. The road is cut as a shelf
into the side of the hill. And that's the limestone
that's exposed when they cut the road in there.
Whittlesey is to take up his position along the road
on the Charlevoix. Extend his left flank all the
way over to the Charlevoix Mill, which at that point will be
about 800 meters to his left. Extend his right flank over
to the 307th, make liaison, form a solid line.
Farther over his left, is Hill 205.
Hill 205 is a bad, bad hill with a lot of Germans on it.
The French are supposed to attack on one side,
Whittlesey is supposed attack on the other side.
They'll meet at the Charlevoix Mill on the other side of the
hill, and pinch the hill off, nobody has to deal with it.
Well, it doesn't quite work out that way.
On the afternoon of October 2, Whittlesey leaves two companies
behind, under orders, to draw fire from Hill 205
while he takes the rest of First and Second Battalion
over the top of the hill on his right known as Hill 198.
They manage to make it across the Charlevoix Ravine
and take up their position. But Whittlesey is learning.
Whittlesey's learning. He knows that if they stand
on the roadside just hang out and wait till the next day
we're going to get annihilated by machine gun and artillery
fire, because he also knows he's about three-quarters of
a mile behind the enemy lines. He also realizes the French
have not kept up on his left. He sends his message back
nevertheless, by that evening, that the 308th
has reach its objective. And instead of standing on the
road, they dig into the hillside beneath the road.
At the bottom of the ravine is another wagon road.
Next to the wagon road is a brook.
Charlevoix Brook. We've got water.
We've got a good position dug into a hillside
protected from artillery fire. We can hang out,
wait through tonight, flanks with catch up tomorrow,
everything will be okay. Whittlesey makes his second
big mistake in the Argonne. He does not send a connecting
line back to the rear on his left, to connect up
with the two companies he left behind Hill 205.
Legend always has it that the French didn't hold up their side
so that the Germans snaked in behind Whittlesey from the left,
through that hole the French left.
That's not true. The two companies he had left
behind on Hill 205, to draw fire from Hill 205, are Companies D
and F, and they are connected with the French.
The hole exists between them and Whittlesey.
And the hole is left there by Charles Whittlesey,
because he doesn't realize how bad off he is.
And he won't realize this until the next day.
During the night, however, the Third Battalion of the 307th
tries to come up on his right and make a connecting line back.
But only one company makes it, and that's Company K
of the 307th. And it's commanded
by Nelson Holderman. Nelson Miles Holderman
is from California. He's a National Guard soldier
and he loves to fight. He brings his company in,
97 men, they fall in under Whittlesey's right flank.
By 10:00 a.m. on October 3, Whittlesey realizes,
we're trapped. The runner line back is cut.
They did not have the kind of communications
in the First World War, they didn't have those
kind of communications that we have today.
There was no two-way voice radio.
That didn't exist. That wouldn't exist until 1921.
There was telephone. But to bring a telephone forward
you had to have a wire. And the wire would be cut
by artillery fire right away, and it required these big
heavy batteries, which you had to bring forward.
Whittlesey did not have a field phone with him.
So they kept contact through a runner line.
Write a message, hand it to a guy.
The guy would run to position about a hundred meters behind,
hand to another guy, and another guy, and another guy,
all the way back. And to get a message back,
the order was reversed. It took a lot of time, but it
also had the advantage that an observant man
was doing this. There was another thing left
to them, and that was pigeons. Carrier pigeons.
Write the message, give it to the pigeon, send him up.
And it's a good idea. And it usually worked.
However for some whatever bird-like reasons,
the birds sometimes didn't do what they're supposed to, and
just went about their business. In that case, you were pretty
much left to your own designs. Whittlesey didn't altogether
trust the birds, so he was really heavy into putting
double and triple strength runner lines behind him.
In this instance however, the Germans had snaked in
off of his left flank and around his right flank,
and connected up on the hill behind him, Hill 198,
broken the runner line, killed or captured a couple of
the runners, and that was it. By noon, Whittlesey is issuing
an order out to the men in the ravine, about 687 men.
We don't really know how many men were in there.
Not even Whittlesey knew how many men he had.
The battle had been tremendous in the week and half
they had behind them. There had been massive
dispersion, massive casualties. Even the casualty lists
in Washington D.C., to this day, don't really tell
how many men were in the ravine. They really don't know.
The gentleman sitting over here is a Charles Whittlesey expert.
And he's got some information that I really want
after the lecture here, talking about a guy from Green Bay
that was supposed to have been in the Lost Battalion,
which I was unaware of. So this is fortuitous for me.
As far as I know, there was only the three men.
And the third one we're going to get to in a moment here.
So Whittlesey is trapped in this ravine with about 687 men.
And he's issuing orders out that afternoon,
our position is here. We're going to hold here.
Those are the orders. Here.
And if there's one thing you can say about Whittlesey,
he is dedicated to following his orders.
He knows they punched a hole in the German line.
Now if they just stay there, if they hold on,
the flanks have no choice but to come up to them again,
just as it has happened two days before.
If they stay there, they hold on.
They'll have it made. That afternoon the Germans
hit them on all four sides with trench mortars,
hand grenades and machine guns. And 308th begins to fight back.
And they fight back hard. They take a lot of casualties.
By the morning of the fourth, the first day that it didn't
rain since September 18, the sun comes out.
Everybody thinks things are going to be good, the flanks
are going to catch up. The Germans slapped them around
again that morning. They hit them pretty hard.
By noon, Whittlesey has taken almost 48% casualties.
Almost half of his force is killed or wounded.
They're out of ammunition, almost out of ammunition.
They're totally out of medical supplies.
They're out food. The only water supply,
the Charlevoix Brook, they can't get to it.
The Germans had machine guns and snipers trained
on the entire thing. Everybody that tries to go
down there is killed. They're running out.
And they're running out of time and patience.
But that afternoon, happens probably the worst thing.
At about 2:30 that afternoon, they start to hear artillery
coming over. It starts to burst on the
hillside behind them, Hill 198. It creeps across the bottom
of the brook, and settles directly on their own position.
It's American artillery. There is one artillery man.
One artillery officer in the pocket with him.
His name is J.P. Teekmaller. He's a Lieutenant in the 305th,
Company Battery D of the 305th Field Artillery.
He has sent back a message two days earlier
with wrong coordinates. Whether through inexperience
or exhaustion, we're not really sure, Teekmaller transposed two
numbers in the map coordinates that he sent back.
Those map coordinates place the line of artillery fire
about 200 meters behind Whittlesey's position.
Right on the main American line, at that time.
Those men call back and say hey, lift your fire.
You're not dropping it on the Germans,
you're dropping it on us. The 305th lengthens their fire,
believing that they're firing an artillery barrage around
Whittlesey for protection, the far line of that circle
of protection actually falls now on Whittlesey's position.
For half an hour, they take fire from their own troops.
They're losing men. There's no place they can go.
They're surrounded. And the Germans gleefully
throw in as many trench mortar shells as they can, as much
ammunition they're throwing in there as they can.
And they're losing men. Whittlesey grabs his pigeoneer,
Omar Richards and writes a message.
We are along the road parallel 276.4.
Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us.
For heaven's sake stop it, Whittlesey.
And he sends it up and the pigeon takes off.
And he flies up in the air, and lands in a tree.
Well, he's not stupid. I'm safe
and I ain't going anywhere. And he looks down and sticks
his tongue out. Whittlesey says, can't you
do something, to Richardson. Richardson, swearing, jumps out,
under fire, artillery shells bursting around him
and climbs the tree, shaking the tree.
And finally the bird takes off. The little pigeon takes off,
is hit and falls to the ground. And a hundred faces
fall with it. But what they don't see
is that the bird gets back up and continues on,
22 minutes after he's let loose, the bird lands
at mobile pigeon loft No. 9. They read the message.
He's lost a leg. And that little tube
is just hanging there, just barely hanging there.
He's been shot in the breast and he's missing an eye,
but he lives. He lives into June 1919.
He goes on a bond tour. He's retired
to the old pigeon's home. Yes, it's a real place.
And today, he's stuffed and on display
in Washington D.C. However, the artillery,
when they read this message says uh-oh,
we better lift our fire. They're already
lifting their fire. Somebody else
had already alerted them. This is an artillery spotter
that was coming back, who had spotted the smoke columns, and
was going to report back to his battery, yep, you're on target,
this is where you want to be, when the operations officer
of the 308th, Bradley Delhaney, actually talks to him and says,
where's your line of fire, and he shows on the map
and they both run to the phone. Because that's
where Whittlesey is. For two and a half hours,
they get plastered by their own artillery.
Finally, the artillery fire lifts, but they've already lost
30 dead, approximately 30 dead, and 80 more wounded
to their own fire. Now Whittlesey's casualty totals
by the afternoon of the fourth are approaching 70%.
On the fifth, they're out of everything.
They have three medics left. They don't have strength enough
to bury the bodies anymore. The hillside is beginning
to look like a slaughterhouse. There are pieces
of German corpses, pieces of American corpses
and it smells terribly. Down at the bottom of the hill
in a long, low trench, they're laying out the wounded.
They're taking the bandages off the dead
to use on the current wounded. Whittlesey, however, walks
across that hillside bolt upright
during the entire event, convinced that they're going
to get out and trying to convince his men.
They're holding on, because he's holding on.
October 5 is also the first day that Whittlesey does not shave,
there's not enough water. On the sixth, a strange thing
happens, an airplane flies over and drops a package.
It lands in the German hands, but that airplane thinks
that they see a signal panel laying on the ground.
In the First World War, to tell the airplanes what you wanted,
you laid out white panels of various designs and shapes
in different designs to tell them what you wanted.
And they've got a small battalion panel laid out under
a tree, and one of those guys thinks that he sees that.
But the plane is so shot up when they get back, that they
have to borrow another plane. They're going to go out and
look for this, but they realize we really don't know what we're
looking for with these guys. However, if we don't know where
they are, we can pinpoint where they're not.
If we fly back and forth over the ravine,
let the German shoot at us, we can mark the hot spots
on the map. Then we know where they're not.
Ergo, where they're not is where they are.
The pilot is a guy named Harold Gaylor.
He's from Chicago. In the back seat is a fellow
named Irwin Bleckly. And he's from Wichita.
They take off that afternoon. They make about four passes.
Gaylor takes a machine gun bullet to the head.
Bleckly is killed in the ensuing crash, but they had managed
to mark down enough information on there to let the 50th
Squadron know exactly where to drop the packages.
However, what does a forest look like?
It looks like a forest. What do you suppose a forest
looks like from the air? Pretty much looks like a forest.
And if you're a guy in that forest, what do you look like?
You look like the forest. Especially, if you can be seen
from an airplane, you can be seen from the high ground.
Who's on the high ground? The Germans.
These guys don't want to be seen.
So they have dug deep into the hillside.
Therefore, all the packages of the first attempted aerial
re-supply in history fall into German hands.
Nothing reaches Whittlesey's men.
By the evening of the sixth, something else happens.
The Germans are on the midst of a major pullback.
This is the only spot on the line that has held out.
And the unit that's surrounding Whittlesey is the 254th Infantry
Regiment of the German Army. The only black spot on their
record is that Whittlesey pierced their line with his
little band of men, and they haven't been able
to wipe him out. Their commander has requested
storm trooper units to come in. And that afternoon they receive
some storm troopers, a few, with flame throwers.
And they send flame throwers in against the pocket
for the first time. They come in
off of the far right flank. And during the attack,
as the troops, German troops are pouring down the hillside
over the road and down into the pocket,
this man from Viola, Wisconsin, private Arthur Raymond Looker,
takes a German rifle butt to the head.
He wakes up two days later, two days later in a hospital.
Arthur Ray Looker, from Viola, is one of the survivors
of the Lost battalion. And he's remembered,
if you go to Viola, to the wonderful veterans walk,
Arthur Ray Looker's name is on there.
Ray Looker had a long history with the 308th Infantry.
He actually came in early. He was a replacement on
September 14, when they were still in the Vel.
And he was in both pockets. He survived through the small
pocket with Whittlesey. And he survived that drive
all the way up that ravine in the Argonne.
And he survived all the way to October 6,
when he takes a shot to the head with a German rifle butt.
Ray Looker, after the war, will give several talks
about the Lost Battalion all around Wisconsin, before
he moves down to Missouri on a farmstead.
And from that point on, he refuses talk about the war.
If you go down to, I believe it's Lebanon, Missouri,
I'm pretty sure that's what it is, in one of the VFW halls
down there, Ray Looker's uniform is on display, including
the boots he wore in the pocket. The morning of the sixth,
about 9:00 a.m. or 10:00 a.m., nine men from the left flank
slip out. They saw one of those packages
fall in the brush over there. They don't think the Germans
got it, so they're going to go get it.
They slip out to pick up this package.
And they're ambushed. Five are killed,
four are captured. One, Private Lowell Hollingsted
from Mt. Sterling, Ohio, is charged by the intelligence
officer of the 254th Regiment to take a message
back to Whittlesey suggesting that he surrender.
This is their last ditch attempt.
The 254th has orders to pull out that evening.
If they don't wipe these guys out now, if they don't
get rid of them now, they have a black mark in their record.
The only black mark that they got.
So their intelligence officer, Lieutenant Fritz Prinze,
who lived in Washington state for 12 years, suggests okay,
if we give them the opportunity to surrender, they've already
put up a good stand, okay, nobody can say they didn't try.
If we give them the opportunity to surrender, maybe they will.
That afternoon, about 4:00, Hollingsted who had been shot in
the knee, comes limping back into the position
waving a white flag with a message for the Major.
And they take the message to the Major.
The Major reads it. And according to legend,
Major Whittlesey is supposed to have turned to the German lines,
and being surrounded, one wonders exactly
what direction that would be, shook his fist
and yelled, "Go to hell!" Well, it didn't happen.
What he did tell everybody was, you better get ready, because
we're going to get hit bad now. And everybody got back to their
positions and fixed bayonets, and loaded up what little
ammunition was left. And about 6:00 that evening,
the German slammed into them with everything they had.
Flame throwers, trench mortars, hand grenades, machine guns,
sniper fire, direct frontal assaults on all sides.
And Whittlesey's men fought like cornered badgers.
Now they were all the same. Didn't matter if you were
a New York guy original to the unit.
It didn't matter if you were a replacement.
You'd all seen the same thing for the last five days.
They were all hungry. They were all tired.
They were all down to the end. This was it.
They were not going to take this hillside.
Not today. Not ever.
When that surrender letter had come, it incensed the men.
And the air was blue over that Charlevoix Ravine
with the curses-- You want us,
well then you come and get us. You think you got the guts,
come on down here. The Germans attacked, and hit
them with everything they had. And Whittlesey's men
got up out of their holes and gave chase.
Pushed those Germans back over the road, pushed them
back across the ravine. Killed everybody that came
after them with a flame thrower. And at the end,
about quarter to seven, they collapsed where they sat.
The could hear the Germans moving around in the forest
around them. Nobody had any ammo left.
There was 12 seconds worth of ammo left for the two
remaining machine guns out of nine
that they had brought in. That was it.
Outpost men had brought their bayonets, and were sharpening
them on rocks, with tears streaming down their face,
because they knew that if the Germans came
and hit them again it was over. They were going to walk
right over that pocket. They had fought for five
hard days to drive them off, and now they were going to die
for nothing. But the Germans
weren't going to attack. The Germans were pulling out.
They couldn't do it. The 254th gave up.
And they pulled back farther behind and at about 7:00 p.m.
that night, the first soldiers of Company B 307th
broke through on the right to relieve the Lost Battalion.
They said they could smell them a quarter of a mile away.
The next day, the full, hard truth hit.
Of his 687 approximate men that went in,
194 were able to walk out. They took causalities
of nearly 72%. Whittlesey and his men
walked into legend. Charles Whittlesey
became the first man in the First World War
to earn the Medal of Honor for this event.
His second-in-command, George McMurtry,
won the Medal of honor. The man in charge
of the right flank, Capt. Nelson Holderman
of Company K 307th, Medal of Honor.
Two men behind, Archie Peck and Benjamin Coffman,
fighting to get them out, Medal of Honor each.
Harold Gaylor, Irwin Bleckly, who died from the 50th
Aerial Squadron to find them, Medal of Honor.
Seven Medals of Honor handed out for one event.
More than any other event until the raids in 1943.
And they walked into legend. Whittlesey came home a hero.
But he couldn't deal with it. He'd been gassed on the Vel.
Was most likely suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,
and gas related tuberculosis. His brother Elijah
had driven a truck for the French in 1916 and 1917.
He had been gassed. He was watching Elijah
die of gas-related tuberculosis, and knew that he was too.
In 1921, just after Thanksgiving that year,
Whittlesey boarded a steamer on his way to Cuba,
ostensibly for a vacation. The first night of the voyage
he sat drinking with another passenger in the saloon.
About 11:30, he excused himself, got up, walked out the door
and leapt over the side of the ship.
His body was never found. Today, they're legend.
And they're represented by the items that we have up here.
One small piece of the collection that my wife and I
have spent 11 years putting together.
We have two books written on it now, and two more to follow.
And in October of this year between October 2
and October 8, I will be in the pocket,
90 years on from when they were.
And we will be dedicating a new storyboard in France
that tells what happened on that site,
paid for by the families of the men that were there.
For those of you who are interested,
we do have the books out for sale in the lobby.
You can come on up here and take a look
at all these nice artifacts. I'll be more than happy
to answer all the questions that you have.
The most of all, thank you for coming to the History
Sandwiched In series. Thank you for listening.
God bless. ( applause )