PRIVATE LARNEY'S OWN GRAPHIC ACCOUNT OF THE GERMAN DEMAND TO SURRENDER,
OF WHITTLESEY'S UNDRAMATIC REFUSAL, AND OF THE LOST BATTALION'S RESCUE
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General Pershing decorating members
of the 77th Division, of which the
Lost Battalion was a unit.
By Thomas M. Johnson
A FASCINATING new version ot
the supreme test of fortitude
that the Lost Battalion with
stood triumphantly at the most
agonizing moment of its ordeal in the
Argonne Forest has come to life. It il
luminates the greatest epic of bravery
in the American part in the World War.
New lines of that epic are written in
the diary, just revealed, which Jim
Larney, of Watertown, N. Y., kept all
through the siege. Dawn of that siege’s
fifth morning showed pitilessly the des
perate plight of the Survivors. Ragged,
filthy, they crouched in holes dug in the
slope of Charlevaux Valley, gripping
their rifles, glaring with haggard eyes
toward the besieging Germans.
Chill night had added torture for
near 200 of the wounded, many of
whose bandages came from the hundred
and more dead. The wounded cried out
piteously to their comrades: “For God's
sake, water!” Or “Come and turn me
over, won’t you?” Or, “Boys, I'm going!
Write my mother —please—please!”
The effect of hunger on tortured hu
man endurance caused the German de
mand that the Lost Battalion surrender,
all of which Jim Larney saw. Despite
his stiffened arm, wounded by “friend
ly” artillery, Larney scrawled in his
diary:
“Germans call upon us to surrender.
No attention paid to this demand which
was made by letter and sent witli one
of our men who had been taken pris
oner.”
The man was Lowell W. Hollingshead
of Mount Sterling, O. With nine other
famished soldiers of H Co., 308th In
fantry, 77th Division, he had been tan
talized unbearably by food that seemed
to fall from Heaven, yet, with hellish
perversity, just beyond reach. In big,
tempting packages it had been dropped
by American aviators who hoped to aid
the Lost Battalion, but who did not
know where the surrounded force was.
CTILL hoping to get a package,
the 10 Americans went straight into
the arms of the Germans. Half were
killed, the rest wounded. Whereupon,
Lieut. Heinrich Prinz, once of Spokane,
Wash., persuaded Hollingshead again to
risk death and, giving up the security
of a prisoner-of-war, to take a letter to
Major Whittlesey.
“The suffering of your wounded men
can be heard in the German lines,” it
said, among other things, “and we are
appealing to your human sentiments”
(to surrender).
The incident has been celebrated in
song, story and picture: Whittlesey,
heroically erect, replying to a German
standing before him, “Go to hell!”
But at that historic moment Jim Lar
ney, crouched 10 feet from Whittlesey,
saw what happened when Hollingshead,
leg bandaged, carrying a light cane
bearing a white tag, limped up, escorted
by a non-commissioned officer. Whittle
sey’s reply to the Germans—there was
no German present—was neither “Go
to hell!” nor anj'thing else. He put away
the letter. (It now is at Williams Col-
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Hurled back again, the Ger- I
mans turned against the de
fenders their eruelest weapon I 7* 'W-wWL / tIL J
—liquid fire.
lege, his alma mater near his home,
Pittsfield, Mass.) And what then hap
pened Larney thus describes in his
diary:
“Whittlesey reprimanded Hollings
head for leaving us without orders and
put message inside his blouse without
comment as to letter. Told man who
brought Hollingshead in to put H. with
other wounded. Told Baldwin and I to
take in our panels for fear Germans
would think they were a white flag. We
called to Private Irving Liner (now of
the Bronx, N. Y.) to pull in the panels
of white cloth which were near his
funkhole and he reached out and pulled
them in.”
It took no “Go to hell!” message to
tell the Germans that was Whittlesey’s
answer. The men of the Lost Batalion
told them it was their answer, too —and
in German. Already they had shouted
across to the besiegers taunts that they"
were a “Wind-Bag Bunch!”—which
from the reaction it provoked must have
been the most scurrilous abuse known
to the German army. Now the Ameri
cans added, even invented, new epithets.
“No falling back!” was still their first
and great commandment.
The Germans replied—with hand
grenades. From the ridge above, the
bombs whirled through the trees, some
times in clusters*of two or three, to ex
plode shatteringly among the weakened
men who grimly held on.
Hurled back again, the Germans
turned against the defenders the crud
est weapon in the arsenal of warfare—
liquid fire. To frighten, then to burn to
a crisp, is the aim of the flame that
spurts from a hose attached to a tank
] 4Newly Discovered Diary
of the LOST BATTALION
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carried on a soldier’s back. But the Lost
Battalion refused to be impressed.
Larney wrote in his diary:
“Machine gun non-com reports to
Major Whittlesey liquid fire came out
of clump of bushes and he turned ma
chine gun in there and heard no more
of it. Major tells him he had done right
thing and if it shows up again do the
same.”
Darkness was closing down that even
ing of Oct. 7. It foreboded another cold
night for the Americans, tortured by
hunger and the pain of wounds, out on
that shambles of a hillside that was be
coming a pitted catacomb under the
pitiless stars —3000 miles from home.
Home? What man of the 252 yet living
of nearly 600, ever expected in that
black hour that he would see home
again?
Yet, but a short time afterward, with
a heart full of thankfulness, Jim Larney
sighed happily, relaxed on a stretcher,
drew forth his faithful black-bound
diary and, easing his wounded arm,
w’rote these words:
“307th effects liaison on right at dark,
and brings up rations. What a relief! In
the nick of time!”
So ended in success five days of
anxious, straining effort to get through
to the Lost Battalion.
'T'HERE was no cheering or wild dem
x onstration. The men were too weak
for that—but not to weak to crawl to
their helpless wounded and whisper
that it was all over and soon there
would be food, surgeons, ambulances.
One of those gray-faced, white-lipped
men, biting his lips to keep back pain
and weakness, is surely best able to de
scribe that scene. Here is what Larr*y
wrote in his diary:
“Tues., Oct. 8. Relief complete. Went
out in ambulances at 5 or 6 P. M. After
2 long auto trips was operated on at
Red Cross Base Hospital. (This line
was written in later.) We obtained some
food and ate ravenously. Major Whittle
sey has seen that food was distributed.”
The diary entries of that day of days
in the life of Jim Larney, and each of
the 252 who came out of “the Pocket,”
were written sometimes in pencil, some
times in ink, in a hospital bed, or on a
hospital train. Here is an entry headed
“Later”:
“Capt. L. Breekenridge (Lucien S.
Breckenridge of New York) saw me
swinging from tree to tree as my legs
were weak as I tried to get to ambu
lance up hill. He got behind me and
took twist in my belt and said, ‘Keep
your legs going, Bud, and I will push
you up there,’ and he did. At Division
Field Hospital in empty church some
where I got soup and cigarets. Vomited
the soup. Couldn’t hold it.
“General Alexander’s words when he
go to us:
“ ‘Well, you men have sat heavy on
my chest for a week. I guess we lost
more men trying to get you out than
you had— ’ ”
(Then the writing fades, but to this
day Larney can remember the rest:
The above portion of Larney’s diary
refutes the “Go to hell” version of
Major Whittlesey’s refusal to sur
render, with the notation that the
commanding officer of the Lost
Battalion put the German note in
his blouse “without comment.”
“ ‘ —in here. But never mind that!
Where’s Major Whittlesey?’ ”
(Whittlesey and McMurtry later were
promoted and received the Congression
al Medal of Honor. And then, shortly
after the war, came Whittlesey’s tragic
end. He leaped into the sea from a
steamship, leaving one of the most
glorious traditions of the World War be
hind him.)
Larney’s next diary entry was
Wednesday, Oct. 9:
“Moved by train to evacuation base
hospital at Chaumont, Base 10. While
we lay on stretchers on railroad plat
form ' close beside hospital, Jerry’s
planes raiding near town. We can hear
anti-aircraft and occasional heavy
crash. Wonder if we are going to get
ours way back here?”
That would have been an ironical
anti-climax. But no—
“ Relieved to be loaded on American
hospital train and leave town. Swell
accommodations after Argonne mud!”
Larney felt even better when they
put in his hands an English newspaper.
In it he read that he and all the others
of the Lost Battalion were heroes. He
says:
“That was the first I knew of it!”
The End