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Men Of The Lost Battalion

The Lost Battalion Based on the remarkable true story of the U.S. Army's 77th Division, 308th Battalion in World War I, this gripping historical drama stars Rick Schroder as Major Charles Whittlesey, whose efforts to keep his men alive when they were surrounded by German troops during the Battle of the Argonne Forest earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor.

While the AEF's generals were considering their options in what was to become the Second Meuse-Argonne battle, many doughboys of the 77th Division were stuck in the thick of the Argonne forest. Unaware that it had been called to a halt they were still engaged in fighting the First Meuse-Argonne. This confusion helped to give rise to yet another tale of valiant doughboy heroism, that of the so-called 'Lost Battalion', the myth once more helping to disguise the reality of serious incompetence. In continuing the struggle, the 77th Division had by Tuesday, 1 October captured the so-called Bagatelle Pavilion, a relatively luxurious underground German camp, and were in sight of another, the Palette Pavilion, deep in the densely wooded and ravine-riddled forest. All the 77th Division knew or cared about was that the forest was a serious threat to Pershing's left flank, and its mission was to clear it. The 1st Battalion of the 308th Infantry Regiment, part of the 77th Division, was commanded by Major Charles W. Whittlesey; the 2nd Battalion by Captain George G. McMurtry. Both battalions had already taken heavy punishment and were down to about 50 per cent strength, altogether around 800 men. Whittlesey's unit had already once during the campaign found itself isolated in an advanced pocket and had had to be rescued. On the morning of 1 October the two battalions were ordered to attack across a ravine inside the forest, but were severely mauled by superbly well-positioned German defenders. In the early afternoon of the next day Whittlesey's battalion broke through, followed by the 2nd Battalion, taking thirty prisoners as the Germans retreated to stronger defence works. The 1st Battalion (Companies A, B and C), and the 2nd Battalion (Companies E, G and H) now found themselves trapped on a road running along one side of a steep ravine. They decided to dig in for the night.

Overnight they were reinforced by the ninety-seven survivors of Company K of the 307th Brigade; Whittlesey sent out a runner to attempt to contact the two separated companies, D and F, but the runner never made it. Whittlesey's position was dire.

Whittlesey now knew he was bagged with elements of three infantry battalions and his machine gunners - 650 American soldiers trapped in a slender oval, with fourteen elements of a fresh German division, including riflemen, machine gunners, shock companies, flame throwers and mortar-men, skillfully positioned in a full circle around them at a radius of about two hundred yards. At this point, Whittlesey sent two of his eight carrier pigeons to Alexander, asking for ammunition, rations and support, giving his approximate whereabouts, an obscure road he occupied in a depth of 70 yards on a 350-yard line.

The possibility of surrender never occurred to the trapped doughboys. Major Whittlesey, a bespectacled, academic-looking graduate of Williams College in Massachusetts, began to send out by carrier pigeon a stream of increasingly dire situation reports. Surrounded, his men had to sit tight and await rescue. The stalled Meuse-Argonne offensive was by now gearing up again, with the replacement of the smashed 35th Division by the 1st Division. The remaining elements of the 77th Division meanwhile were ordered to strike left and try to reach Whittlesey's men. By 4 October Whittlesey's situation was becoming desperate, as shown by this message he sent at 10.35 a.m. that day:

Germans are still around us, but in smaller numbers. We have been heavily shelled by mortar this morning. Present effectives A.B.C.E.G & H companies 175; E CO 307th 45; M.G. Detachment 17 - total here about 235.

Officers wounded Lt. Harrington, A; Capt. Strohnel, C; Lt. Buckler, G; Lts. Peabody and Revnes of M.G.; Lt. Wilhelm Co. E miss.

Cover bad if we advance up the hill. Very difficult to move the wounded if we re-change our position. Situation is cutting into our strength rapidly. Men are suffering from hunger and exposure, and the wounded are in very bad condition. Cannot support be sent at once.

(signed) Whittlesey.

Aircraft from the US 50th Aero Squadron tried to drop medical supplies, food and ammunition to the beleaguered unit on the afternoon of 5 October. Whittlesey's men then suffered the indignity of being shelled by French artillery, working from the wrong map references. By 6 October these doughboys were in a sorry state, taking dressings from dead men to use on the wounded, among many of whom gangrene had already set in.

The 'Lost Battalion' had nearly been overrun. Medical supplies had been used up; 50 per cent of the original troops were wounded or killed; food and water were almost exhausted. McMurtry was hit by shrapnel in the knee. Grenades continually rained down from the steep slopes above them. An attempt at an air-dropped supply by DH-4s came to grief, the aircraft being shot down while the supplies landed outside the doughboys' defensive perimeter. Lieutenants Harold Goettler and Erwin Blackley, pilot and observer, were shot down in the afternoon of 5 October on their second run over the battalion; their deaths gained them posthumous Medals of Honor. On Sunday, 6 October a lieutenant and two privates from the 'Lost Battalion' managed to steal through the German lines, bringing with them valuable information concerning its precise location. Next day nine starving doughboys from McMurtry's H Company slipped away to try to retrieve some of the air-dropped rations; five were killed and the other four taken prisoner in an ambush. One of their German captors was an English-speaking officer, Lieutenant Fritz Printz, who had worked in the United States as a representative for a German company. On his initiative one of the doughboy prisoners, Private Lowell R. Hollingshead, was - under considerable protest by Hollingshead, who felt it was a dishonourable thing - nominated to return to the battalion with a request for surrender. The note came into Whittlesey's hands late that afternoon. It read:

To the Commanding Officer - Infantry, 77th American Division.

Sir: The bearer of this present, Private -, has been taken prisoner by us. He refused to give the German Intelligence Officer any answer to his questions, and is quite an honourable fellow, doing honour to his Fatherland in the strictest sense of the world.

He has been charged against his will, believing that he is doing wrong to his country to carry forward this present letter to the officer in charge of the battalion of the 77th Division, with the purpose to recommend this commander to surrender with his forces, as it would be quite useless to resist anymore, in view of present conditions.

The suffering of your wounded men can be heard over here in the German lines, and we are appealing to your humane sentiments to stop. A white flag shown by one of your men will tell us that you agree with these conditions. Please treat Private - as an honourable man. He is quite a soldier. We envy you.

The German Commanding Officer.

But it was late in the war, and far too late in this particular life-and-death struggle for chivalrous gestures. The reaction of the trapped doughboys was a round of yelled abuse, to which the Germans responded by sending in a flamethrower crew, which was soon picked off by the battalion's only machine-gun still in working order. When it seemed as though all their efforts would finally be for nothing, late that same day Lieutenant-Colonel Eugene H. Houghton (who like many Americans had in 1915 joined the Canadian army and later transferred to the AEF) led an attack by the 307th Infantry and finally broke through to the 'Lost Battalion'. They found just 195 men unwounded. After five days of isolation and more or less continual attack many of those were too weak from hunger and thirst to walk.

Despite losing touch with the rest of his division, Whittlesey and his fellow survivors were converted into overnight heroes. Whittlesey was immediately promoted to lieutenant-colonel, McMurtry to major, and both were awarded the Medal of Honor. Once started, the legend quickly spread - helped on its way by a junior reporter attached to the AEF in France, Damon Runyon - that Whittlesey's response to the surrender offer was 'Go to hell!', though his actual reply was rather more mundane. Whittlesey survived the war, but perhaps something ate into his heart and mind. After the war he disappeared one night from a ship sailing to Havana; it was assumed he committed suicide.

Cher Ami

Somewhere in the endless collections of the Smithsonian Institution are the stuffed remains of Cher Ami, and in the case with them is a Croix de Guerre. The bird won the decoration in spite of himself, so to speak, for he was most reluctant to take off on his homing mission back to headquarters. Yet it is not an overstatement to say that Cher Ami saved the Lost Battalion. And when he finally wheeled out of the besieged pocket with Whittlesey’s last, desperate message, Cher Ami (French for Dear Friend) — who was about to become the most famous pigeon in history — was taking part in a military tradition that went back forty years.

The army bought its first homing pigeons in 1878, and packed them out to the 5th Infantry Regiment, which was on duty in the Dakota Territory. But the 5th never learned how effective pigeons could be, for large numbers of hawks in the area put a speedy end to the experiment. A decade later, however, the army established a loft at Key West, and when Pershing led his punitive expedition into Mexico in 1916 there were pigeons in the van.

Shortly after America entered the First World War, the birds were made an official part of the Signal Corps, and the AEF went overseas with a pigeon communication unit of four officers, 324 men, and more than seven thousand birds. The birds took 27 per cent casualties in their ranks, but they got through with four hundred messages during the offensive. Cher Ami was with them. He delivered twelve messages while he was on the Verdun front, but his most important flight was his last.

After he left, carrying Whittlesey’s plea to lift the American barrage that was destroying his command, Cher Ami was struck by a bullet that carried away one leg and shattered his breastbone. But he flapped on, and collapsed half an hour later on the roof of the loft at Rampont, twenty-five miles away. The vital message was still hanging from a torn leg tendon.

The division veterinarian dressed Cher Ami’s wounds and reportedly whittled a wooden leg for him. The bird recuperated quickly, and was in good shape when the French gave him the Croix de Guerre with palm (Citation à l’ordre de l’Armée). General Pershing saw Cher Ami off when the bird sailed home in triumph on the transport Ohioan in the company of other heroic pigeons. But Cher Ami did not have long to enjoy the fruits of peace and the rewards of glory. He died at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, on June 13, 1919.

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