On October 2, 1918, six companies from the 308th Infantry Regiment, 77th Division, found themselves trapped behind the German lines near Charlevaux Mill in the Argonne Forest. By the time the “Lost Battalion” was relieved on October 7, only 194 of the 554 surrounded men remained alive and unwounded. Damon Runyon, a former sports reporter and columnist then covering the war for the New York American, filed a story that emphasized the New York City origins of many of the besieged soldiers.
AT THE AMERICAN ARGONNE FRONT, Oct. 12.—Out of the fog of fighting that hangs over the Forest of Argonne came limping to-day Whittlesey’s battered battalion which made the epic defense in the dark glades beyond.
They are men of New York’s own Seventy-seventh Division—most of them from the big town itself.
ONCE BAND OF STRAGGLERS.
A little over a year ago this writer reported the parade of these same men, when they marched in straggling columns down Fifth avenue between walls of cheering people. Nearly all of them wore vintage straw hats that day. Some of them were in crumpled Palm Beach suits.
Some of them were in overalls, having come direct from their jobs to appear in the first parade of drafted men on Manhattan Island.
Some were late of the Hudson Dusters. Some of them once trained with the Gophers. Some of them were from ornate houses on Park and Madison or the upper reaches of the Seventies and Eighties.
More were from the lower East Side. Broad and Harlem, Broadway and the Bronx shuffled down the avenue in that strange procession that day, while the bands bawled “Over There!”
Later the writer saw them tumble off the trains at Yaphank carrying scarred suit cases and big bundles, saw them form into irregular lines and march to their new barracks.
Many of them had been celebrating their departure for camp the night before, and looked it. Hester street quarrelled with Greenwich village—not the Greenwich village of long-haired fame, but the hardier, close-cropped region around the docks.
A couple of fist fights occurred at the landing place between querulous parties from the vicinity of Erie Basin, Brooklyn. Nervous young officers, fresh from Plattsburg, fluttered about trying to get a semblance of order.
Their commands brought small alert replies from the new recruits.
Three were Chinamen from Mott street. Also, there were Japs and Italians, all jabbering in their own language at once.
Hopeless enough as military material they seemed then. But some of the same faces I saw at Yaphank that day were under biscuit-shaped steel helmets in the muddy columns that tramped out of the Argonne Forest to-day.
BIG TOWN’S POLYGLOTS.
The big town’s polyglot population sent heroes of one of the Homeric fights of the war.
For four days and four nights the one-time counter jumpers, brokers’ clerks, gangsters, newsboys, truck drivers, collegians, peddlars and what not held the positions which they had been ordered to take and hold while several times their number of Germans were busily engaged shoveling a variety of hell upon them.
They served as the anchor catch for the whole advance. Totally cut off from their main command, without food and with very little water, the boys from the big town hung on.
They fought under a man who only a short time ago was a New York lawyer. Charles Whittlesey is a tall, lean-flanked fellow, around forty years old. He has a funny little smile.
He smiled this funny little smile when one of his men who had been taken prisoner was sent back to him by the Germans with a neatly typewritten note requesting his surrender.
It would make this story more dramatic to say that Whittlesey sent back some stirring phrase in answer to the Germans. But as a matter of fact he merely smiled his funny little smile after reading the note, and tucked the paper away in his pocket.
BULLET GIVES REPLY.
The Germans got their real reply the next time a Boche poked his head up. It was in the form of a bullet.
They are telling in some quarters that Whittlesey’s reply to the demand for his surrender was “Go to hell!”
Whittlesey says he did not say it, but that it covered his thoughts at the time, anyway.
Not all men in his command are New Yorkers. Some time ago the Seventy-seventh Division had to take on replacements. Many new recruits came from Oregon and other parts of the Northwest. One in the first bunch out of the forest, however, was a little chap who used to sell newspapers around Times Square.
He was covered with mud. His eyes were heavy with battle sleep, but he was grinning broadly.
The commander of the beleaguered force was a captain when he led his men into battle. He has since been recommended for Lieutenant-Colonel. He had six companies with him, three from the first and three from the second battalions of his regiment.
One battalion was commanded by Captain George G. McMurtry, a former New York broker. As hour after hour and day after day went by, there was no sign of a relieving column. The officers in command commenced to believe their case was hopeless.
On the fourth day a soldier told McMurtry that Captain Whittlesey was talking to some officers of another regiment of the division over in the woods.
McMurtry doubted the story, but investigated. He found Whittlesey conversing with officers of a relieving force which had just got up. Whittlesey was eating a sandwich as he talked.
ON TWO DAYS’ RATIONS.
McMurtry walked over to him. His first and only words were:
“For God’s sake give me a bite of that!”
The men greeted the members of the relieving column with requests for food and water. They had gone into the fight with the usual two days’ rations. For two days they had absolutely no food.
There was a little spring near where they took up their position, but the Germans sniped them whenever they tried to go for water. First they went only at night. Finally they got so desperate from thirst they took chances in broad daylight. The officers posted a guard near the spring to keep the men from exposing themselves.
Whittlesey had been ordered to advance to a certain position. He advanced there. The Germans slipped in behind him through an old trench. Presently Whittlesey realized he was cut off and surrounded. A torrent of shell and machine gun fire and grenades came over.
MEN TOLD TO DIG IN.
The Americans were on sloping ground. Whittlesey ordered his men to dig in. They quickly burrowed into the ground like moles. They had machine guns and returned the German fire with these and with their rifles. Fortunately, they had plenty of ammunition.
They could constantly hear the Germans in the wood. The Germans talking and shouting to each other as they tried to advance on the devoted little band. Sometimes they got as near as thirty yards. The Americans let them come on as far as they would, then opening fire on them. At night Whittlesey kept out patrols who maintained contact with the enemy.
Just as soon as they were certain they were completely cut off, the officers made it plain to all men that they were expected to hold the position at all hazards.
The announcement was received with grim nods.
Time and time again the best men in the command were picked and sent out as runners, in the hope they might get through the German lines.
Of nine men thus sent out, four were killed, four wounded, and the ninth was captured. It was this man who was sent back by the Germans with the note demanding surrender. He was taken before the German commander and closely interrogated, but declined to give any information whatsoever. The German commander mentioned this fact in the note to Whittlesey. Then the American was blindfolded and given the message.
The Argonne forest in which the Seventy-seventh Division is fighting is a maze of trees. They are not big trees, but stand close together like stalks in a wheat field. Woven through them in the undergrowth are vines.
It is impossible for a man to walk through the woods straight for any distance in any direction. It is impossible even to see through them to any great depth.
It is said the French lost 60,000 men trying to take these woods since the outbreak of the war. The Germans must have lost many more in holding them.
TRAPPED IN FOREST.
It was in a particularly deep section of this modern wilderness that the little command of New Yorkers was trapped. Before the war Central Park probably was the largest forest ever seen by most of these men.
About forty men were killed as they lay there. The fellows buried their dead as best they could, usually under fire. Rarely did the Germans cease pounding them with shell. Minenwarfers (from mine throwers) came through the trees in bunches.
The wounded men were given the best attention possible. In his note demanding surrender the German commander appealed to Whittlesey on the ground of humanity, saying the Germans could hear the cries of the American wounded.
The soldiers say that as a matter of fact our men were peculiarly stoical and made little outcry, while, on the other hand, they could hear Germans squalling in the woods after every volley.
In a couple of days Whittlesey’s men had exhausted every vestige of food. Cold rain came on and drenched them day and night. Only a few of them had their overcoats. It gets bitter in the Argonne wood at night, whatever the season of the year.
They could get little sleep on account of the terrific din of the gun fire. They say they never saw any sign of food. Other supplies were dropped into the woods by American airplanes. Neither did they ever find the box of carrier pigeons flung into the trees from aloft.
The rain soon made bog walls out of their little trenches. They couldn’t get warm and began to suffer intensely from the exposure and lack of food. Some of them were very weak when they reached the rear at last.
But the men came out of that hellish wood singing the praises of their officers, especially of Whittlesey.
“You are certainly a great anchor man for the division,” said the general commanding that front to the New Yorker. “You held on where you were caught!”
Whittlesey merely smiled his funny little smile.
The battalions were sent back for rest. As soon as they have got warmed up and washed up they will be back in the line. They are less excited about their amazing exploit than any one else in the army, that speculated on nothing else for days but their probable fate.
New York American, October 13, 1918