The Lost Battalion: An Epic True Story of American Courage in World War I

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Biographics. I’m your host, Kyle Smallwood, and today we’re talking about the Lost Battalion. As with all the videos here at Biographics, this one is based on a script submitted to us by one of our writers, Ben Adelman, whose name I’ve been mispronouncing this entire time, for which I can only apologize.

On the subject of pronunciations, since there are some German and French pronunciations in here, I have looked up pronunciations from native speakers, historians, and scholars. Hopefully, there will be few to no mistakes. If I do make one, let me know in the comments, as I know you will. This is a video about something related to the war, which I know from experience as a writer and researcher is the number one subject people online like to argue about in the comments.

So, let’s get right to it. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, great effort was expended by the government to get the public firmly behind the war effort. One of the best ways to get people into the proper martial spirit is through the creation of war heroes, of which America had more than its fair share, despite only participating in the war for a relatively short period of time, all things considered.

Arguably, one of the stories that captivated American audiences back home the most was that of the so-called Lost Battalion. It really isn’t hard to see why: a few hundred American soldiers trapped behind enemy lines for five days without food supplies, surrounded and constantly attacked by the enemy, bravely withstanding repeated assaults on their position until they were finally rescued by their comrades. It’s the kind of story that gets everybody’s attention, which is why it’s so bizarre that today, few Americans have even heard of the Lost Battalion, much less the details of what those men needed to do simply to survive.

Then again, if we told you something you already knew, this likely wouldn’t be a very interesting video, would it? I know for a fact that a good majority of the people watching this already know pretty much everything about the Lost Battalion. They’re watching this video to see if we make any mistakes they can correct in the comments, or if, like myself, they’re just fans of the band Sabaton and think, “Hey, that’s a cool song!”

For those who don’t know, Sabaton is a heavy metal band that sings almost exclusively about World War II. They have their own channel where the lead singer discusses various events from the war to ensure historical accuracy. They have a song about the Lost Battalion, which is much shorter than this video.

On October 2, 1918, the American Expeditionary Force, commanded by General John “Blackjack” Pershing, began the seventh day of its Meuse-Argonne Offensive in northeastern France. This offensive, the largest operation involving U.S. troops in history up to that time, was part of a general plan by all Allied Forces on the Western Front to gain as much territory as possible before winter set in, setting them up for one final offensive in the spring of 1919 that would finally finish the so-called Great War.

To field an army of 2 million men, the United States had embarked on a massive recruitment drive when they entered the war in 1917. Most of the soldiers of the AEF, nicknamed “doughboys,” were civilians who had either volunteered or been drafted into uniform. One of these men was 35-year-old Major Charles Whitty, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 308th Infantry Regiment. Whitty, a Harvard-educated lawyer who left a thriving New York law practice behind when his country called, didn’t look much like a soldier at first glance—frail and bookish, wearing large spectacles and walking with a strange loping gait that earned him the nickname “Galloping Charlie.” However, he more than earned his stripes since arriving in France with the 77th Division in April 1918, impressing those above and below him with his intelligence and calm demeanor, even under heavy enemy fire.

In the early morning of October 2nd, Major Whitty was given orders for the day’s attack. The 308th’s job was to continue their advance within the Argonne Forest, a heavily wooded and hilly area the Germans had fortified since occupying it earlier in the war. Whitty and his men had been fighting in the Argonne since September 26th, experiencing firsthand all the horrors of trench warfare that had evolved since the war began in 1914—machine guns, barbed wire, and the dreaded artillery barrages, which inflicted 80% of the casualties on both sides.

It’s worth noting that many of these shells contained an infantryman’s worst nightmare: poison gas, to which virtually all American soldiers on the Western Front had been exposed at this point. In addition to the Germans, the Americans had to deal with unseasonably cold temperatures and persistent rain that soaked their uniforms. They had been ordered to leave their overcoats behind when the offensive began to make their packs lighter. Casualties were mounting, and morale was understandably low.

When Charles Whitty and his men went over the top and began their attack that morning, things were about to get much worse. The advance in the Argonne had been slower than the Army had planned, with no allowance made for the rough terrain or the toughness of the German positions. Instead, the delay was blamed on incompetence or overly cautious officers who didn’t want to attack the fortified German positions. The call went out from General Pershing’s desk: the pace needed to be picked up or heads would begin to roll.

One of the officers feeling the heat was Major General Alexander, the 77th Division’s commander. The line needed to move forward, and he continually harangued his officers to press the attack. In an effort to motivate them, Alexander misled his subordinates, telling them they were holding up the advance of the units to the left and right of them. In reality, the attack had stalled out all along the line in the Argonne, but Alexander made his brigade and regimental commanders believe that their neighboring units were further ahead than they actually were, which would be a key factor in what happened next.

Whitty’s troops attacked in accordance with their orders, being repulsed in the morning but finding more success in the afternoon, advancing to their objective: a steep hillside in the trees called the Shalo Ravine. They dug in for the night, expecting to continue the attack the very next morning. What Whitty didn’t know, however, was that he was the only unit that had actually managed to achieve their objective that day. No one else had advanced as far as he had. Far from being behind his neighboring units, he was now far out ahead of them. Due to the nature of his orders, Whitty had ignored his flanks, assuming there were more men up front to regroup with. But there weren’t, allowing the defending Germans to slip in behind him during the night. By the next morning, Whitty was surrounded by the enemy, totally cut off from the rest of the American Army.

Communication during World War I was a continuous problem throughout the conflict. Portable wireless radio communications didn’t really work because they hadn’t been invented yet, and field telephone lines were particularly vulnerable to being cut off by enemy artillery. This meant that the most common form of communication in the front lines and command posts was simply giving a guy a letter and telling him to run very fast. This was slow at the best of times, and the fighting in the Argonne was hardly the best of times. It took a while for both Whitty and his superiors to fully realize that he was totally cut off. Once it became clear that no messages were getting through in either direction, Whitty had only two options: he could stay where he was and wait for his comrades to catch up, or he could conduct a fighting retreat to break through the enemy cordon and return to friendly lines.

Had he known what was about to happen, he may have chosen to retreat, but he likely believed the situation would only last a day or two at most, since the Americans had been slowly but steadily advancing for the entire week. Most importantly, all American units were under strict orders not to give up ground under any circumstances, a decision made by senior army officers who believed that any other course of action would cause men to turn back. These were mistakes that other countries fighting on the Western Front had learned from over the past four years of fighting, showcasing both the American commanders’ inexperience with trench warfare and the disdain with which they viewed their citizen-soldier army.

In any case, Whitty sent word to all the men under his command that they were to dig in, sit tight, and defend their position at all costs. The first German attack on their position, which became known as “the pocket,” came later that very afternoon.

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Back to Major Whitty. He had one way to communicate with his superiors: his unit had been equipped with a cage full of homing pigeons that could send written messages back to headquarters. However, this was hardly foolproof. The birds could get confused, fly in the wrong direction, or be spotted and shot by the Germans. Additionally, messages could only be sent one way, and once sent, there was no way to know if they had been received.

An example of the mistakes this could lead to was a message sent by Whitty’s artillery liaison officer, which included the wrong coordinates for their position. The consequences of this single mistake were disastrous. On the afternoon of October 4th, the second day of the siege, an American artillery barrage meant to help Whitty’s men instead landed right on top of their position. It’s hard to imagine how horrifying that experience would have been for the trapped men, unable to escape the line of fire due to the surrounding Germans.

In desperation, Whitty called for his last remaining pigeon and wrote a message that read, “Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For Heaven’s sake, stop it!” The message was tied to the leg of a male bird named “Sherry,” French for “dear friend.” After some encouragement, the pigeon took off and headed back for American lines. Despite being seriously wounded, Sherry managed to get the message through.

Around this time, newspaper correspondents covering the war began seeking more information on Major Whitty’s trapped men, sniffing out what they believed to be a dramatic story. The trapped men became known as the Lost Battalion, which, as cool as that sounds, is a misnomer; at no point was Whitty’s command lost. Everyone knew exactly where they were; they just couldn’t get to them.

General Pershing began to realize that something needed to be done to rectify the situation. If Whitty’s position was overrun, it would not only be a military disaster but a public relations one as well. Orders came down that the Lost Battalion needed to be saved, no matter the cost. This was easier said than done, of course. The Germans were stiffening their resistance in the Argonne, moving reinforcements into the area and successfully repelling all attempts to relieve the trapped Americans.

By this point, the supply situation in the pocket was dire. Most of the men under Whitty’s command had received very little food since the offensive began on September 26th. The supply of rations had been a continual problem throughout the campaign, and what little food had been carried with them was gone after just two days. The only fresh water source was a stream at the bottom of the hill, but anyone who attempted to reach it risked being shot by a German sniper. Most soldiers, if they drank at all, did so from muddy shell holes.

As the number of wounded men grew, the meager medical supplies were quickly exhausted, leaving nothing to treat them with. There was nothing anyone could do to prevent their wounds from becoming infected, leaving many to die a slow and agonizing death as help didn’t arrive. In an attempt to assist the trapped men, American airplanes flew sorties over the Argonne, attempting to locate the Lost Battalion and drop containers full of supplies. Unfortunately, the pilots had trouble finding the right spot, and most of the packages were inadvertently dropped to the confused but grateful German soldiers instead.

By October 6th, things looked grim in the pocket. Despite repeated attempts and heavy casualties, no one could break through to the Lost Battalion, which languished in the ravine, surrounded by the enemy for four whole days. Even if Whitty wanted to fight his way out, his men were simply too weak and exhausted from four days of constant engagement. They had no food, no water, and half of them were dead or dying.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the doughboys began to run out of ammunition, forcing Whitty to send his men out into no man’s land to scavenge ammo and magazines from the dead and dying. It’s worth noting that the Germans weren’t having an easy time either; they were losing men they couldn’t afford to replace while trying to overcome the stubborn resistance of a few trapped Americans. They decided to escalate their efforts by calling in their elite stormtroopers to break the impasse.

The German attack on the pocket on the afternoon of the 6th was the most vicious one yet. The Americans were sprayed with machine gun fire and pelted with hand grenades. The Americans engaged the Germans in vicious hand-to-hand combat, with the fight turning into an all-out brawl. The Germans were repelled, falling back to the pocket under rifle fire and curses.

When it was all over, the Lost Battalion was still holding its position, but it was a dubious prize at best. The men no longer had the strength to bury the dead, so they laid where they fell. There seemed to be little doubt that if they didn’t get help soon, the entire ravine would be covered in corpses.

On October 7th, the Lost Battalion was at its breaking point. Many men barely had the strength to lift their rifles, let alone engage in combat. They were all starving, dirty, and in terrible condition. At that point, something curious happened: an American who had been captured by the Germans was sent back into the pocket carrying a white flag and a letter addressed to Major Whitty. He urged him to surrender, stating it would be useless to resist anymore given their present conditions. However, surrender was the farthest thing from Whitty’s mind.

When it became clear the Americans weren’t going to surrender, they were attacked again, including by more flamethrowers. By this point, all heavy weaponry was out of action, and they had only a few bullets left for their rifles. Once again, the doughboys rose up out of their foxholes and resisted valiantly. By 6 p.m., the attack was over, and the Germans retreated.

As darkness fell, American units finally arrived at the Lost Battalion’s position. The siege was over, and though they didn’t realize it at the time, the men were already being lauded as heroes back home in America. The first impression that the arriving soldiers had of the Lost Battalion was that they smelled terrible, as the bodies of those killed in the fighting had begun to decompose.

It is believed that Major Whitty took a total of 687 men into his position in the ravine on October 2nd. When he left on October 8th, only 194 were able to walk out with him; the rest were either too badly wounded, dead, or missing. Fortunately for the survivors, the hell they experienced in the Argonne was the end of the war. Just over a month later, on November 11th, the Germans agreed to an armistice, having fought themselves to exhaustion.

All across the United States, people were talking about the heroism of the Lost Battalion. Stories began to be written about the episode while it was still ongoing, and long before the men of the 308th returned home, they were hailed as heroes. Reporters wrote exciting accounts of the story, carefully avoiding the more graphic parts while embellishing details to make the men seem even more heroic than they already were.

The center of this hero worship was Charles Whitty, who was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on the spot upon being relieved. Whitty and two of his subordinate officers received the Medal of Honor, America’s highest decoration for gallantry. Thirty of his men received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest bravery medal.

Whitty returned home from the war a wounded man, having sustained no physical injuries during the Lost Battalion episode. However, he found returning to his old life nearly impossible as the demands of celebrity intruded. He was almost certainly suffering from severe PTSD, known at the time as shell shock, which was poorly understood. Many men suffering from it were labeled cowards for not wanting to fight.

In November of 1921, just over three years after his heroic stand in the Argonne Forest, Charles Whitty booked passage from New York to Havana aboard a ship. On the first night out at sea, he committed suicide by jumping overboard. His friends were saddened but not surprised, considering him one of the Lost Battalion’s last casualties.

As the years have passed, the Lost Battalion and World War I as a whole have been largely forgotten, overshadowed by more recent conflicts, particularly World War II. Speaking as a content creator and writer, people love World War II. Unfortunately, with the exception of a TV movie released in 2001 and the aforementioned song by Sabaton, the event has mostly faded into history. This is bizarre, considering the inherent drama of it all. It does a great disservice to the men who fought in that conflict, who gave up their quiet civilian lives to endure hell in a foreign land because their government