n assessing the reasons for the Allied victory during World War I, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander

GEN John J. Pershing leads the victory parade past the Arc de Triomphe on Bastille Day, July 14, 1919, the last time the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) marched in Paris. First Lieutenant William J. Cunningham carries the general s standard and is followed by MG James C. Harbord, AEF chief of staff. n assessing the reasons for the Allied victory during World War I, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander GEN John J. (Black Jack) Pershing noted that upon the young commanders of platoons, companies By COL Cole C. Kingseed U.S. Army retired and battalions fell the heaviest burden. Deeds of daring, to use Pershing s phrase, were legion during the war, and there were many whose heroic services had been recognized over National Archives November 2010 ARMY 45

A memorial marks the valley in the Argonne Forest in Binarville, France, where the Lost Battalion of the 308th Infantry, 77th Division, led by MAJ Charles W. Whittlesey, held off surrounding Germans for a week until relief arrived. the course of the war. In his memoirs, however, Pershing mentioned only three soldiers whose battlefield exploits he deemed particularly extraordinary and representative of the fighting spirit of the AEF. Best typifying the spirit of the rank and file of the AEF were a Reserve officer, a draftee from the mountains of northern Tennessee and a Regular Army man. Of the more than 2 million soldiers who composed the American Expeditionary Forces over the course of the war, Pershing singled out MAJ Charles W. Whittlesey, who refused to surrender the Lost Battalion of the 77th Division; CPL Alvin C. York of the 82nd Division, who singlehandedly killed 25 enemy soldiers and captured 132 Germans; and LT Samuel Woodfill from the 5th Division, who personally attacked a series of German machine-gun nests near Cunel, France, and killed the crews of each in turn until reduced to the necessity of assaulting the last detachment with a pick, dispatching them all. All three soldiers fought in the Meuse-Argonne offensive that began the last week of September 1918 and continued until the armistice on November 11. Few legends from the Great War have endured as long as the story of the Lost Battalion. In reality, MAJ Charles W. Whittlesey s 1st Battalion of the 308th Infantry, 77th Division, was never lost, nor was the Lost Battalion a single battalion. What became known as the Lost Battalion was actually seven companies from two separate infantry battalions and two machine-gun sections from the 306th Machine Gun Battalion. From October 2, 1918, until the surrounded doughboys were relieved a week later, Whittlesey was the senior commissioned officer of the besieged defenders. CPT George G. McMurtry, an old Rough Rider, commanded Whittlesey s sister battalion from the same regiment. Whittlesey lacked the military presence of a Pershing or a Woodfill. A slender bespectacled New Englander, a man of manners, a practicing lawyer in New York is how doughboy historian Laurence Stallings describes him in his book The Doughboys: The Story of the AEF. Not a professional soldier, Whittlesey had earned his commission COL Cole C. Kingseed, USA Ret., Ph.D., a former professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy, is a writer and consultant. MAJ Lillian Pfluke, USA Ret. through one of the Plattsburgh, N.Y., camps designed in the American preparedness movements in 1916. His previous wartime experiences had been unremarkable. By October 1, 1918, Whittlesey s 1st Battalion positioned itself on the front line within the Argonne Forest, under orders to continue the attack the following morning toward Charlevaux Mill, with McMurtry s 2nd Battalion in direct support. Due to the attrition during the previous week s combat, the fighting strength of the combined battalions was less than 700. To their front was a deep ravine that separated the left flank companies from the main body. At precisely 0630 hours, Whittlesey plunged forward under cover of an intense artillery bombardment. The assault across the corps front failed immediately, but by early afternoon on October 2, the division commander renewed the attack. Whittlesey somehow discovered a gap in the enemy defense and penetrated the German line to a half-mile. McMurtry s 2nd Battalion was hot on his heels. Casualties, however, had reduced their combined strength to approximately 550 men. Awaiting reinforcements, Whittlesey assumed direct command of the survivors and relayed his position to battalion headquarters. Alone in the Argonne since his flanking elements had failed to match his advance, Whittlesey established a defensive posture and waited for the inevitable German counterattack. He did not have to wait long. By midafternoon, the Germans had recovered from their initial surprise and began penetrating Whittlesey s perimeter. Whittlesey dispatched two of his eight carrier pigeons to the division commander, requesting resupply of ammunition and giving his approximate position. MG Robert Alexander, commanding the 77th Division, ordered a rescue attack on October 3, but the relief effort failed due to heavy fog and determined German resistance that reduced the assaulting Americans by 50 percent. Whittlesey was now hopelessly surrounded with little expectation of relief. By the end of the day, he had lost 222 men, 82 of them killed. October 5 proved the worst day of the battle. Friendly artillery descended on Whittlesey s troops and wiped out one platoon. Now subject to enemy artillery and mortar fire, Whittlesey released two more carrier pigeons in an attempt to halt the fratricide. McMurtry was badly wounded, and the Lost Battalion was under repeated infantry and hand grenade assault. To make matters worse, aerial resupply was totally ineffective. The next day produced no relief as the Lost Battalion again held their position by the skin of their teeth. On October 7, nine soldiers from McMurtry s battalion 46 ARMY November 2010

attempted to escape the encirclement, only to be killed or captured by the enemy. Later that afternoon, one of the prisoners, PVT Lowell R. Hollingshead, under protest delivered a surrender demand from the German commander to Whittlesey. The letter read in part, 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. Whittlesey treated the surrender demand with utter contempt and sent no reply. Hearing nothing from the Americans except cries of profanity, the Germans attacked the Lost Battalion with increased intensity. Down to their last rounds of ammunition and dying from thirst, Whittlesey s Lost Battalion repelled the final German assault. That same afternoon, an American battalion from the 307th Infantry Regiment finally reached Whittlesey s beleaguered troops and provided rations, medical supplies and ammunition. Whittlesey waited until the afternoon of October 8 to withdraw his troops. By that time, the Lost Battalion had captured the imagination of the American high command. GEN Alexander himself visited Whittlesey in the Argonne and congratulated him on his spirited defense. Only 194 of the original 554 doughboys who started the attack on October 2 stood unwounded. The Army promoted Whittlesey to lieutenant colonel following the relief of the Lost Battalion and pulled him from the front line. On December 5, Whittlesey was honorably discharged from active service. The next day he was awarded the Medal of Honor. A civilian once again, Whittlesey returned to his law profession where he served as an associate for a prestigious law firm from 1919 1920; but he never adjusted to civilian life always haunted by the deaths that he had witnessed in the Argonne Forest. About the time that the Lost Battalion was finally rescued, acting CPL Alvin York of Pall Mall, Tenn., experienced his personal rendezvous with destiny. York was the unlikeliest of heroes. Drafted in November 1917, this Tennessee mountaineer proved a natural hunter whose marksmanship was already legendary. Upon receipt of his draft notice, York immediately submitted his paperwork as a conscientious objector, but the District Board rejected his request. Twenty-nine years old when the United States entered the war, York was assigned to 1st Platoon, Company G, 328th Infantry Regiment, 82nd Infantry (All-American) Division. Commanding York s company was CPT E.C.B. Danforth, an officer whom York came to admire. MAJ Charles W. Whittlesey Not that far from where the Lost Battalion was rescued, York s company moved forward to the vicinity of the village of Chatel-Chéhéry, France, near the edge of the Argonne along the Aire River. On October 8, Company G moved forward without artillery support. Instantly the company encountered stiff enemy resistance, and the attack stalled. At that point, Danforth decided to send a small detachment of men from the 1st Platoon around the left flank of the company line. CPL Bernard Early commanded the platoon-size detachment, with York commanding one of three infantry squads. Within minutes, Early s force ran into heavy machinegun fire and was reduced to 17 men. Moving through the dense undergrowth, the doughboys came across two German stretcher bearers who fled as soon as they saw the American platoon. Early followed and soon stumbled upon an encampment of 25 German soldiers, whom they promptly captured. As Early rounded up the prisoners, a German officer hollered a command, and two concealed machine guns started firing on the Americans. Early fell with five bullets in his body. Six doughboys died instantly, and another two were wounded in addition to Early, leaving York and seven others unharmed. Now the senior noncommissioned officer, York seized command. Leaving the remnants of his command, he crawled to a position where he could draw a bead on the enemy machine-gun nests. In order to sight me or swing their machine guns at me, he later explained, the Germans had to show their heads above the trenches. Every time a gunner appeared, York picked him off, emptying three clips of ammunition in the process. Just then, a German officer with six men with fixed bayonets charged York from 25 yards away. York promptly killed each with a carefully aimed shot, starting with the rear soldier and working his way forward. Having disposed of the enemy to his immediate front, York led the prisoners to the rear. En route to the American lines, he encountered several additional machine-gun positions and directed that his senior prisoner order them to surrender, too. With a single exception, the Germans descended the hill and surrendered to York. One of the enemy soldiers tested York and tossed a grenade at his captors. York immediately shot him through the heart. The remainder of the prisoners got the message and marched off to captivity. By this time, York had captured more than 100 enemy soldiers, and he was afraid that his detachment would be fired on by his own artillery. How many enemy dead he had left on the ridge was anyone s guess. Fortunately, a relief squad sent to aid CPL Early met York as he neared November 2010 ARMY 47

SGT Alvin York receives the Medal of Honor. He was later awarded the French Croix de Guerre with palm. American lines. Reporting to the battalion adjutant, York relinquished more than 130 prisoners. He left at least 25 enemy dead on the battlefield. When GEN George B. Duncan, newly assigned commander of the All-American Division, later asked York how many he thought he had hit, York replied, General, I would hate to think I missed any of them shots; they were all at pretty close range 50 to 60 yards. Not surprisingly, Pershing judged York the outstanding civilian soldier of the AEF. Allied Supreme Commander Gen. Ferdinand Foch concurred and awarded York the Croix de Guerre with palm, adding, What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all the armies of Europe. As for Alvin York, he stated in 1926 that he had rather it be said that he gave his life toward aiding his fellow man than to be remembered as a warrior who had capitalized on his fame as a fighter. As remarkable as were York s achievements in the Argonne, in Pershing s estimation they were second to those of acting CPT Samuel Woodfill, an ex-sergeant from the Old Army. To Pershing, Woodfill was the outstanding figure in the AEF, America s doughboy of doughboys. Born in Indiana in 1883, Woodfill joined the Army at the time of the Philippine Insurrection at the onset of the 20th century. A natural marksman, he served a combat tour during the Philippine Insurrection and then reenlisted for the first of four hitches with the 3rd Infantry Regiment in Alaska, where he became the only American soldier to outshoot the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. From the Arctic, Woodfill was transferred to the Mexican border in 1916 during the crisis following Pancho Villa s raid on Columbus, N.M. Wearing six hashmarks on his sleeve by the time Congress declared war on Germany in April 1917, SGT Woodfill accepted an appointment as a Reserve lieutenant, one of many battle-hardened noncommissioned officers to join the commissioned ranks. It was a smooth transition. As Woodfill later stated to reporter Lowell Thomas, the NCO Corps had been as good as captains for years because during the frequent absences of their company commanders they had run the outfit. Now with Company M, 60th Regiment, 5th (Red Diamond) Division, Woodfill barely survived the St. Mihiel offensive in September 1918 and then moved his company to a railroad line east of Cunel in the Argonne Forest. Woodfill s battalion was scheduled to attack on October 14, 1918, but a day earlier, Woodfill s commander directed him to conduct a combat reconnaissance to identify the enemy s main line of resistance within the Bois de la Pultiere, several hundred yards to their front. No sooner had they crossed the line of departure when Woodfill s company encountered several machine-gun nests that inflicted horrific casualties on Woodfill s lead platoons. The enemy fire seemed to be coming from three directions. One gun was to Woodfill s right in an abandoned stable, another was to his front, and the third was from the church tower in a little village, about 250 yards to Woodfill s left. Unable to maneuver his command, Woodfill directed his company to remain in position as he crawled forward to ascertain the location of the first machine gun. Working his way around the flank of the machine-gun nest, Woodfill fired four carefully aimed shots, killing four members of the machine-gun crew as each attempted to sight the gun. The remaining German soldier attempted to escape, but another shot from Woodfill s Springfield brought him down as well. Woodfill then moved forward to examine the position. As he approached the gun, a German officer sprang toward Woodfill. Woodfill and the officer fought hand-to-hand until Woodfill subdued his opponent and killed him with his pistol. As Woodfill s company resumed their advance, a second machine gun opened fire on them. With his company dispersed throughout the woods, control was virtually impossible. Woodfill described the ensuing action as every man for himself. The enemy gun was in a shallow dugout, with the head and shoulders of the gunner in plain sight. With a five-cartridge clip, Woodfill dispatched him and several other enemy soldiers with carefully aimed shots. Continuing his advance, a third machine gun opened fire on the assaulting Americans. Crawling on his stomach to get closer to the enemy, Woodfill located the enemy position in the woods on the edge of a trench that ran back into the enemy lines. Though his eyes were burning with mustard gas, he picked off five men with a single clip of ammunition. Running forward to inspect the machine-gun nest, Woodfill discovered another German soldier whom Signal Corps U.S. Army 48 ARMY November 2010

he promptly dispatched with his Colt automatic. For once Woodfill let his guard down, thinking he had wiped out the entire machine-gun nest. Before he could respond to a noise from the side, a German soldier rushed Woodfill from behind around a turn in the trench, rifle in hand. Woodfill pulled the trigger, but his Colt jammed. Grabbing a long-handled pickax stuck into the side of the trench, Woodfill crashed the pick down on the enemy s head. He then wheeled just in time to miss a bullet in the back from one of the wounded Germans. With another blow of the pick, Woodfill finished him off as well. Within the span of a few hours, Woodfill had captured three machine guns and killed more than 11 Germans. 50 ARMY November 2010 Now well within the enemy lines and under intense fire, Woodfill requested reinforcements from his battalion commander, who instructed him to return to their former position. When he reported to the command post, Woodfill s battalion commander asked him what he had been doing to the Germans. I got a few, Woodfill responded. Yeah, I know you did, the commander responded. In his memoirs, Woodfill described his action as a frontiersman stalks machine guns. The armistice found Woodfill recuperating in a hospital, suffering from pneumonia resulting from repeated gassings during the Argonne offensive. Within weeks Woodfill received orders to Chaumont, France, Pershing s headquarters, where he received his Medal of Honor from Pershing himself. Among the 16 other recipients was CPT McMurtry from the Lost Battalion. Fate would finally bring Whittlesey, York and Woodfill together three years later when Congress authorized the burial of an unidentified American soldier from World War I in the plaza of the new Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. A War Department committee reviewed 3,000 wartime citations and narrowed the search for pallbearers to 100 soldiers for Army Chief of Staff Pershing to review. Without hesitation, the Iron Commander selected York, Whittlesey and Woodfill. President Warren G. Harding presided over the interment ceremony on November 11, 1921. Also in attendance were former presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson. The interment was the first and only time that Whittlesey, York and Woodfill stood together. Two weeks after the ceremony, Whittlesey booked passage on the S.S. Toloa, a steamship bound for Havana, Cuba. Prior to coming aboard, he had put his affairs in order and paid the next month s rent in advance. On November 24, Whittlesey walked to the rail and jumped overboard. When Woodfill heard of Whittlesey s death, he guessed that those four days in the Argonne Forest must have put too heavy a strain on the former commander of the Lost Battalion. York returned to Tennessee following the war and worked a farm given to him by the state of Tennessee in recognition of his wartime heroics. He later established an agricultural institute in the Valley of the Three Forks of the Wolf and enjoyed a brief resurgence of fame when Hollywood beckoned in 1941 to tell the story of his life, with Gary Cooper portraying the softspoken York. The subsequent years proved difficult for York. As LIFE magazine described York in a special issue in 1997, This exemplar of the American fighting man died in 1964, all but forgotten by the nation he had served so well. Following the war, Woodfill reverted to his NCO status to preserve his tenure of service, since as a Reserve officer, he would have lost his military benefits. That reduction in CPT Samuel Woodfill rank seemed appropriate, stated historian Stallings, because Woodfill served as the eternal sergeant of Black Jack s esteem. Woodfill died alone on his farm in 1951 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, not far from the Iron Commander himself. It has been four score and 12 years since the guns fell silent along the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. Why write of Whittlesey, York and Woodfill now? The Great War, more than the Spanish-American War, ushered the United States onto the world stage, and that awesome projection of military power was borne on the backs of the American doughboys who fought in France in 1918. GEN Douglas MacArthur, himself one of the most highly decorated commanders from that conflict, said it best in his final address to the U.S. Corps of Cadets: His [the American soldier s] name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. Representing the 2 million soldiers of the AEF, Charles Whittlesey, Alvin York and Samuel Woodfill most certainly would agree.