| Show THE OGDEN STANDARD EXAMINER— SUNDAY MORNING SEPTEMBER 19 1937 giiiy QUO A brand-nechapter in history comes to light after 19 years— account written under fire of the Private Jim Larney’s most celebrated episode in America’s part in the World War w day-to-d- ay Jim Larney as a private in the American Infantry — Landwehr (probably from the German 2nd Landwehr Division) — and said they were in here only two days We questioned them on size and numbers of their troops Ve brought in one 48 years old crying bitterly and he continued to cry and wipe his eyes with a dirty handkerchief He thought we were going to kill him He protested in German that he was an old man with a family and was forced to fight He says he never wanted to fight He took out his cheap billfold and offered Manson (Robert Manson of Brooklyn Whittlesey’s interpreter for questioning prisoners) all his money if we would not hurt him They assured him they would do him no harm The German’s comrades were doing the 308th Infantry1 Larney’s regiment some harm however and the American advance through the A onne forest was far from easy ‘One man Larney wrote “walked by with his eye bandaged and his fce covered with Another wounded in blood Others in sides and stomach legs ankles knees etc Snipers and machine guns offering stubborn resistance in front of us We do not know as yet in store for us tonight is what By Thomas M Johnson LOWLY but surely the Argonne mists clear and new light is shed upon the Lost Battalion Here is truth hitherto unpublished about the most celebrated single battlefield episode of the American part in the World War I Unexpected thrills surprising revelations at the 19th anniversary of the historic dates when a handful of gallant Americans surrounded in the forest fought off encircling Germans for five undaunted days and nights— Oct 2-- 7 1918 Today no monument marks the woodland scene but a new memorial has just come to light in the poignant words that one of the survivors wrote in a diary he kept through all those hideous yet splendid days and nights setting down faithfully what he felt and smelled and saw there among the gruesome funkhcles f night he slept on the floor of a captured German dugout— “no blankets real cold no rest” he wrote and “someone stole my chunk of bread --X divided my beans with Ficker as promised jut saw nonefpf his bully-beIf Private Jim Larney was not exactly elated that first night of the greatest American battle neither was Gen John J Pershing Larney did sleep that night Pershing didn’t He was too busy trying to disentangle inexperienced American divisions and regiments that had got into snarls and failed to attain all the results hoped- - Yet he ordered another try and with high hearts the 77th set out the morning of Sept 27 to do its part “Went over the top at 2 p m today” wrote Larney in the diary “and we are We finally pushing on while Jerry resists stopped in a pretty tight corner and located for the night Quite a few' wounded going back on the stretchers Some died on the HAT ef in the forest moment a bullet might have put a period on the last page of the black book about six inches long and four wide to which he confided the concentrated emotions of that frightful At any ordeal Yet this slim determined-lookin- g task young American stuck to his and determinedly to this day he has clung to the result — the only existing diary he believes of a Lost Battalion survivor When he wrote that diary Jim Larney a Rochester N Y boy was signalman for Maj Charles W Whittlesey the tall calm New England lawyer who commanded the troops that newspapers christened “The1 Lost Battalion’ although they were not lost but surrounded and beleaguered in the forest ToWater-tow- n day Private Larney is an engineer in N Y He finally consented to publication of his diary just as he was getting ready to head for the American Legion convention in from which 10000 New York Sept 20-2- 3 to revisit die sail overseas veterans were to battlefields in France grimly self-impos- ed has consented to let the public see the treasured diary that he alone of the nearly 600 who entered “the pocket’’ carblouse ried buttoned tight beneath his olive-dra- b close to his pounding heart as he scrambled through underbrush and over fallen logs on his belly so as not to give German snipers a mark and then helped lug after him the coop of carrier pigeons that later were his comrades only hope of salvation “I was a walking arsenal Larney chuckles now “Besides helping with the pigeons I carried in a case the four white cloth panels each about six feet long with which we were to signal airplanes— or try to also a can of ter two cartons of cigarets and — a copy of an adventure magazine 1’ The most thrilling adventure of Larney’s lifetime lay before him Far more gripping than fiction was the true story he was to write in that black-boun- d diary to which he has clung since as excepting his wife and children his greatest treasure It is stained with die Argonne rains with the sweat of struggle with the blood of the two wounds its owner received rA y T last He today” wrote Private Larney are we “and pushing on while Jerry resists” At the right a facsimile reproduction of a page from the diary ‘Went over the top at 2 p m in his diary Pretty tough!” He wrote huddled in a niche in the side of the trench it was cold but he dozed despite the sound of firing They were he wrote “over the top again' this moraing'at daybreak”— knees a bit wobbly but fortified by food and cigarets A few hundred yards struggling dodging flopping through the forest then the dread chatter of machine guns so well entrenched they could Then in not be knocked out until afternoon a wooded ravine they ran into a nest of the death dealers But they rooted them out with bomb and bayonet and settled down for the It rained and rained and “digging was nigh Our so bad we spent a miserable night notebook” he noted with anguish-“soakcigarets ruined and we out in the open in clay mud a night of utter wretchedness misery J Crouching low to escape more wounds huddled in his funkhole he kept the diary As signalman he had pencils and fountain pens but the writing tottered painfully as did the writer when finally blessed relief came Only 194 of the 600 who had gone in walked out of “the pocket’ Of the 252 living 58 had to be carried Here is the diary as Private Jim Larney wrote it beginning Sept 25 1918 Thai was the night before the opening of the greatest battle in American history the Meuse-Argonwhich eventually involved two million men— more than half of them Americans Through that morning’s mist and the smoke ofa thunderous barrage those men advanced northward front which stretched from on the whole 25-mi- le the Meuse River at historic Verdun to the dark Argonne Forest most sinister natural fortress on the western front ne attack in the forest was made by of the metropolitan 77th Division drafted from the sidewalks of New York and reinforced by recruits from west and midwest especially California Colorado Arizona Utah and New Mexico I have heard recently from Lost Battalion THE survivors in those states in Minnesota in Ohio in Illinois in Florida indeed they are everywhere This story of their heroism and of their humanity is not cheaply dramatized for the “popular taste It is a real man's story of real men in that supreme experience Here is 30-mi- le 6-in- iClMprliht ' OlOllllQlllllllllllllllllllllllllilllllllilllllllllllllllllllllllilllllllllllllllii"- what Larney wrote on the eve of die ordeal by fire: ‘Wed Sept 25— Fair Cool Went to mass and communion at 7 a m Reading and writing letters this a m Made up battle packs this afternoon for attack tonight or in a m Iron rations toilet articles and battalion panels Evans delivered a new panel code to me today drive This He says we are to make a drive to end the war Beaucoup (many) guns howitzers in in forest here Thirteen line Lt Whiting (A Company) in lecture says we will pull off the biggest drive in history against the Germans in front of us Wrote to Farlow Driscoll and turned my bunch of outgoing mail over to Sergeant Flannery “Baldwin (Sergt Maj Walter Baldwin now of 1859 Victor street Bronx New York City) Monson (Jack Monson received D S C now dead) Flannery Femes and Herscho-wit- z (Jack Herschowitz later got D S C 234 Broome street New York City) and myself sitting aound my candle talking it over 'considering our chances hoping for the best and all " agreeing quite frankly that we are in the hands of God wherever we are come what may Fellows do not hesitate to express their religious ' feelings in such times Waiting to go over the top ’with the best of luck’ for fathers mothers and other near and dear ones sake Please God I come through as well as for my own I have made my peace with God hold no grudge hereby putting diem all aside if I had any and offer up whatever happens in sacrifice and - 1MT tor ch reparation for my past offenses The light ist going outl The Lord be with us all Amen!’ Not exactly the “wine women song’’ wherewith some books plays and movies represent American doughboys habitually going forward into battle! And forward they went for at 2 o’clock next afternoon Sept 26 Larney sat down in a deep German trench he had just helped capture got out the diary and wrote: “These trenches have apparently been occupied for a long time and this seems to be a front that has been a stalemate We are to change all that!” ed MAN’S LAND had not daunted PriNOvate Lamey though he WTote that it “was the desolate scene so familiar to newspaper readers Blasted tree trunks and mounds and A long hard craters of churned torn earth down hill dale and through acres and push up square $iiles of barbed wire tom and mangled ground trees and bushes and through a big swamp covered with creeping clinging vines and underbrush We are chasing ‘Jerry (nickname for Germans picked up by the 77th while training with British Tommies) fast We ran into a machine gun and sniper nest and had to ” halt Here the diary was soaked by but die writing becomes legible again at an interrain-wat- er esting episode: “ lying flat along a path with rifles for a chance at Fritz One prisoner watching came in Then three more They are old men etc I j And next morning they awoke “stiff and full of rheumatic pains and generally miserable and to cap the climax we discover that Jerry’ has cut us off and we are surrounded They have broken our line of communication Flitting into the forest paths they knew so well had come men of the German 76th As Washington Hessians Reserve Division had caught their ancestors unaware at Trenton now they threatened to catch the Americans A Whittlesey’s battalion was sore beset beset Jim Larney as feeling of impending evil black-boun- d book he wrote in his Next Week: How Private Larney s diary refutes a tie about Major ay IrnvVMk UtmilnM iiltllllllllllllllOHIlllllllllllllllllk j -- tfiii!!!iiiiiiii!ii!iuniiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinfniiintia |
