Relief of the Lost Battalion

On the evening of 7 October 1918 soldiers of the American 307th Infantry reached the slope in the Charlevaux ravine in the Argonne where Major Charles Whittlesey’s surrounded force of the 77th Division had been holding out for five days. Hungry, exhausted and thinned out, the men the press had called the “Lost Battalion” had rejected a German call to surrender that same day. On the morning of 8 October those who could walk came down out of the ravine to the rear. According to the most often quoted figure, there were 194 of them.

Five days in the ravine

The trapped men had food for two days at most. They drew water from the stream at the bottom of the ravine, but by day a trip to fetch it could cost a man his life, and at night the Germans swept the bank with machine-gun fire. Trench mortars shelled them every day, and German infantry attacked with grenades from the cliff above the slope and from the flanks. The Germans also tried a ruse, shouting false orders in English. The wounded were dressed with bandages taken from the dead, and there was no way to bury the dead. According to the history of the 77th Division, the force had 520 men fit to fight on 4 October, 375 on the morning of 5 October, and only 275 on 6 October.

On the afternoon of 4 October fire from American artillery, mistaken about their position, fell on the slope. At about 3 p.m. Whittlesey sent off his last pigeon with the message: “We are along the road, at coordinate 276.4. Our artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake, stop it.” The bird, Cher Ami, reached its loft badly wounded and became one of the most famous animals of the war. Whether its message is what stopped the shelling is not certain. Over the following days airmen of the 50th Aero Squadron dropped food and ammunition to the trapped men, which is seen as the first American supply of troops from the air. The packages, however, fell into the dense forest, mostly out of the trapped men’s reach. On 6 October German fire from the ground brought down the aircraft of Lieutenant Harold Goettler and his observer, Lieutenant Erwin Bleckley. Both were killed.

The call to surrender

On the morning of 7 October nine soldiers slipped away without orders to fetch the dropped packages and ran into a German outpost. Five were killed and four taken prisoner. One of them, Private Lowell Hollingshead, was sent back blindfolded by the Germans with a letter written in English. Its author was reportedly Lieutenant Heinrich Prinz, who had lived for some years in Seattle before the war. The letter praised the Americans’ courage, pointed out that the groans of their wounded could be heard in the German lines, and called on them to show a white flag. In reply Whittlesey had the white panels used to mark the position for the airmen taken in. Legend credited him with the answer “Go to hell!”, but in his report he wrote only: “No reply to the demand to surrender seemed necessary.”

The relief

That same day the situation was reversed. The 28th and 82nd Divisions attacked from the east, out of the Aire valley towards Châtel-Chéhéry, into the rear of the German positions in the Argonne, while the 77th Division renewed its frontal attacks. The Germans began to give way. In the evening they attacked the trapped men one last time, now also with flamethrowers, but were driven off. Soon afterwards soldiers of the 307th Infantry came onto the slope with food and ammunition. On the morning of 8 October the divisional commander, General Robert Alexander, came to see the relieved men.

The toll

The losses were very heavy. It is most often stated that out of a strength of about 550 men, 107 were killed, 63 went missing and about 190 were wounded. 194 soldiers walked out on their own feet, although an article of the US Army speaks of 190, and the division’s 1919 history of 252 survivors out of 679. Whittlesey, Captain George McMurtry, wounded on 4 and 6 October, and Captain Nelson Holderman, commander of Company K of the 307th Infantry, wounded several times, received the Medal of Honor. The airmen Goettler and Bleckley were also awarded it posthumously. Whittlesey was promoted to lieutenant colonel and became a national hero. On 26 November 1921 he jumped overboard from a ship bound for Havana and was lost.