Five Days in October: The Lost Battalion of World War I (review)

They were never lost and they were never a battalion. Between 2 October and 7 October 1918, trapped in a pocket on the left bank of the Meuse River, they held out against everything the Germans could throw at them. Much of the mythology of the "Lost Battalion" was made up by newsmen anxious for a headline. It was good copy then and it is good copy now. However, distinguished historian Robert H. Ferrell successfully penetrates the romantic mist to reconsider the events of those five tumultuous days. Tapping under-utilized materials from the National Archives and the World War I collection at the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he challenges the conventional wisdom, expands the perspective, and places the ordeal of Major Charles W. Whittlesey and his men within the context of the maturation of the American army in France during the Great War.

There were no Louisiana maneuvers for General John J. Pershing and his soldiers. They got their training in combined arms from the Germans at the Meuse-Argonne and it was a bloody experience. The leaders of the American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.) were pushers. During the battle Pershing pushed Major General Robert Alexander, commander of the 77th Division, who pushed Brigadier General Evan Johnson, commander of the 154th Infantry Brigade, who pushed Whittlesey and his men. On 2 October the American 28th Division on the left failed to advance. The French on the right also failed and scapegoated the African American 92d Division. The officers and men of the "Lost Battalion," who were ahead of their comrades, were caught in a vise. For almost a week they repulsed over two German attacks a day. Whittlesey refused to withdraw and leave his casualties behind and by 6 October food was gone and ammunition was almost exhausted.

Alexander and the 77th Division did not save Whittlesey. Major General Hunter Liggett, who then commanded the Ist Corps, did that on the morning of 7 October by turning a brigade of the 82d Division east and threatening the Germans with encirclement. When elements of the 77th Division moved forward, the Germans were already withdrawing and out of roughly 500 Americans who had been caught in the treacherous brush and barbed wire filled ravines, 146 walked out.

In the wake of the relief, the blame game began. Reputations had to be protected; scores had to be settled; medals had to be awarded. Liggett, as was his habit, remained silent. Whittlesey later committed suicide. However, the story never lost its momentum. The officers and men of the 307th and 308th Regiments of the 154th Brigade of the 77th "Liberty" Division of the A.E.F., the "Lost Battalion," like "The Battling Bastards of Bastogne," became part of the American military Pantheon.