4 Newly Disco ye red Diarv
of the LOST BATTALION
—miimhi 1 1111 imi — ws?w%gF r zrmir W —m ' w / & I
■HPpp ’ fir® J
Wim : wmwiMw f m fHpi j
MV. F Ml- T v/ m mKmwi yn 1
Es 1 a.
BM * r JKjh
1 ml I* 1
Mb, f.y £ : : .t >•. v
Omer Richards tells today how he was sent by Major Whittlesey to get one of Theodore Tollefson's pigeons. Crawl
ing through a barrage of shellfire, Richards found Tollefson dead, his pigeons gone from a shattered coop.
By Thomas M. Johnson
OF the many hard blows that
struck the heroic Lost Battalion,
the cruelest came on Oct. 4,
1918, little more than 24 hours
after the American troops discovered
they were surrounded and outnumbered
by Germans in the Argonne Forest.
They had adopted'Major Whittlesey’s
and Captain McMurtry’s slogan: “No
falling back!” Now, suddenly as tragic
drama, the way back was' blocked, and
by a hand that dealt them a stab in the
back. From the rear, friendly artillery
fired into them with fierce intensity,
killing and wounding 30 Americans.
Hitherto untold features of this agon
izing. maddening occurrence appear in
the diary that Private Jim Larney of
Watertown, N. Y., a Lost Battalion sur
vivor, kept through the siege. It re
cords the experiences of Larney and
others who endured the 125-hour gantlet
of fire, hunger and thirst in “the Pocket”
in Charlevaux Valley. There the Lost
Battalion had thrust itself by obeying
Maj. Gen. Robert Alexander’s orders.
Those orders were to hold on in “the
Pocket.”
Relief could come only from the rear
—but all that did come from there was
death, in the flame and smoke of burst
ing shells from “friendly” cannon. They
brought two wounds to Jim Larney, but
the slight, sensitive, religious youth who
was Whittlesey’s signalman described
the experience modestly.
“Fri., Oct. 4,” he wrote. “Continued
misery. Barrage upon us in P. M. Sgt
Major Gaedeke missing. I received
high explosive wound in right arm and
machine gun left leg. Tollefson, pigeon
man with Richards, bounded already
ha- disappeared, too. Cavanaugh
(William M. Cavanaugh of Rochester.
Minn ), 2nd Platoon Hq. Co., 308 (308th
Infantry), with C Co., wounded Tree
fell on him also. Great many casual
ties. Major W. (Whittlesey) ’ bleeding
from cut on nose. Perhaps not from
shelling. 1 asked him if he were hurt
He did not reply.
“Major Whittlesey sent following
nru>.age by last remaining pigeon, dur
ing barrage:
‘C. O. (Commanding Officer) Ist Bn.
308 Inf.
‘To C. O. 308 Inf.
‘We are along tire road, parallel 276.4.
Our own artillery is dropping a barrage
-directly on us,
‘For Heaven’s Sake! Stop it.
‘Whittlesey,
‘Major 308th.’
“Jos. Friel and Geo. Botelle went out
with message. Friel killed.
“Later Note—Gaedeke nor Tolleson
(Tollefson) never found.”
(Benjamin F. Gaedeke of New York,
cited for extraordinary heroism and in
spiration; Theodore Tollefson, of Hay
field, Minn., and Joseph Friel, New York
City, were killed. George Botelle, Lake
side, Conn., was wounded. Also wound
ed, although he could still write down
what he saw of historic events, was
Larney.)
landed in ‘the Pocket’ with two
™ coops, four pigeons in each,”
Omer Richards, the quiet little French-
American, who was Whittlesey’s pigeon
man, says today. “Tollefson and I took
one each, so a single shell burst
couldn’t kill all the pigeons. When the
C Wm
St
/, .*** •
> i
Ept, pv E jjj
i /ss• IMS
n|» '■ r s////K H
Omer Richards as he looks today.
barrage hit us, I had two birds left. They
weren’t fastened to their perches, but
free in the cubicles. I fumbled to open
the basket—the strain and excitement
were awful, with those shells bursting
all about—and all of a sudden, one of
the birds came popping out. I lunged
to stop him. but he dodged, and I swear
he flew up and away—and never a
message on him! Only one pigeon left!
I just had to make him good! So.
though my nerves jumped and my head
buzzed with the noise and shock of
shell bursts, when Major Whittlesey
handed me the message I attached it
to the pigeon’s neck, and released it
“What a relief! Now the message
w’ould get back to our artillery and stop
this- terrible shelling! So I thought—
but what do you suppose that pigeon
did? Instead of flying away, like the
first one that had no message, it stuck
with us! It flew into a tree, and roost
ed there! Whittlesey was wild!
“ ‘Can’t you shoo it away?" he shout
ed above the noise.
“Well. I did—but then the bird just
flew around in circles over our heads'
It must have been shell-shocked We
were scared stiff it would be shot down,
for the Germans were shooting at it.
They knew what it was for, all right'
We fbund out afterward that they or
one of our own shells must have hit it:
it lost a leg, and was decorated. That
was the famous Cher Ami —dear friend.
A dear friend to us that day, all right
—and lucky, too. For it was our vorv
last pigeon.
“Whittlesey sent me afterward for one
of Tollefson's birds,” Omer Richards
continues. “Guess he wanted to send
a second message. Through the bar
rage I crawled to Tollefson’s funkhole
There lay Tollefson, dead. There was
his pigeon coop—torn apart bv a shell
—one of those friendlv shells. There
were no pigeons left!”
Larney remembers that day. too:
“The shells were hammering down
around me and when I saw Bob Man
con crouching at the top of the slope
on the edge of the road, I joined him
We saw a man lying face down in the
ditch across the road We dashed over
and threw ourselves down, one behind
the other. I was behind the man. Bob
behind me. We thought we were okav
This part of Larney’s diary carries
the message that saved the Lost Bat
talion from tl e fire of its own artil
lery. Whittlesey’s message ends with
the urgent plea: “For Heaven’s Sake!
Stop It.”
But no—we’d escaped the ‘friendly’
shells, but there was an enterprising
German machine gunner up that road,
and how he did sow them in there!
To this day I can’t see how we escaped!
Low-growing leaves and twigs right be
si ’e my head were being snicked off
Either Bob or I hollered: ‘We’ve got to
get out of here! Let’s go!’
“Bob dashed back across the road
and into the trees down the slope . . .
and in crossing, lost a finger of one
hand Boh went out in the ambulance
with me when we were relieved.”
\ X ET. amazingly, the smoke-cloud of
that ban age was silver-lined. For
the pigeon that at last started forth
from it, also reached its objective.
Cher Ami delivered the message to
headquarters. By that time the barrage
had stopped, but the message prob
ably prevented another similar ghastly
shelling.
The night of Oct. 4. the dull report
of the American automatic rifles came
from the ridge to the south. Help was
on its way! Hopefully, scouts were
sent out to guide the relieving troops
The scouts never came hack The cheer
ing “thump-thump-thump!" died away.
The Germans had thrown back the
would-be rescuers, as thereafter they
threw them back time after time. With
heroic persistence, the rest of the 308th
and 307th tried to pierce the iron-gray
ring. More Americans died in the ef
fort to rescue the Lost Battalion, than
died in the Battalion itself.
Oct. 6 dragged wearily; machine gun
and sniper fire, another heavy grenade
attack; and more blasting from minen
werfer. One bomb struck beside Jim
Larney’s funkhole, half covered him
W'ith dirt, filled his eyes and ears.
Onre he had to move his position,
and he wrote, “I had great difficulty in
scrambling out, on account of being stiff
and lame from the wounds. Lieutenant
Peabody killed, probably by a sniper
Tumbled down into our funkhole and
out again, and down into one below us.”
That gruesome event ended suffering
for laeut. Marshall G. Peabody, of New
York City, a member of the 306th Ma
chine Gun Battalion. Wounded two days
earlier, he had been in constant pain.
Larney says he “sat up there above us
with his greatcoat draped over his
shoulders. We could hear him moaning
in Ihe night. Rome stray shot or sniper's
bullet must have got him. for the first
thing wo knew he fell right in on top
of us and out again, and came to rest
in a sort of shellhole below us. Must
have been alive as he fell, and dead
shortly after he stopped ”
He lay unburied, like all who died
that day. Hunger and exhaustion made
the survivors too weak to bury their
dead So, dead and living lay together.
Yet they rlung to their slogan: “No
falling back!”
I -
NEXT WEEK: The German de
mand to surrender, avd Wh»f/tecep’s
refusal. . . , Rescue comes at last.