Many young men from Aurora County fought in the front-line trenches on the Western Front of World War I, helping to win important battles in the Argonne Forest of France. Casualties of the war included not only those killed and wounded on the battlefield, but also the men who died from disease in camps or on transport ships. The fighting in the Great War ended with an armistice signed in 1918 at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Few of us today know much about these local men who fought the war to end all wars.
A 1919 newspaper supplement, discovered in the archives of the Dakota Discovery Museum in Mitchell, chronicles the World War I story of several local counties. When The Sunday Republican, a Mitchell newspaper, printed “The Great War Memorial,” many hometown boys were still serving overseas and some details were unconfirmed.
The first page of the Aurora County section lists the names of 242 men who were drafted, and another 74 who enlisted. However, on another page, a headline indicates the count was 311 men. According to this publication, many of the Aurora County soldiers served in the 77th Division, part of which became known as the “Lost Battalion.” Others were in the medical corps or the 89th Division, known as Wood’s Division.
These soldiers trained with bayonets, fought trench warfare, and were subject to German gas attacks. In fall of 1918, the 89th Division fought and won the Saint-Mihiel offensive under General Pershing. Part of a force of four hundred thousand men, they were fighting north of the Argonne Forest near the Meuse River when the armistice was signed. The 89th division then marched into Germany.
Ralph John, Plankinton, wrote home about his experience in the “Lost Battalion,” as one of 554 soldiers of the 77th Division surrounded for five days by the Germans in the Argonne Forest near Verdun, “Well, I was one of them. They held us there for five days before they got us out. The German officer wrote a letter to our major and wanted us to give up but we wouldn’t do it. We stayed there five days without anything to eat. We sure were hungry.” Mark Boyd, also from Plankinton, was wounded attempting to rescue the “Lost Battalion.”
Disease was more fatal to county men than enemy guns. As reported in the newspaper supplement, twenty-five men from Aurora County were killed or wounded in the twenty months between the time the United States entered the war and the armistice. Seven died from disease, five from contracting influenza, called the Spanish flu, in American camps. Six lost their lives on the battlefields. Another twelve were wounded in action. Two of the wounded were gassed; one contracted trench fever (caused by lice); and three suffered the loss of a limb. James O’Connell, who immigrated to the county in 1916 from Ireland, lost his right leg fighting for the United States in France.
Many of these young men were the sons of pioneer families who arrived in the 1880s and 1890s. Born on the prairie, they were healthy and strong, making them vulnerable to the Spanish flu that attacked fit young men at an astonishing rate. In the United States, it is estimated, 43,000 soldiers died from this disease, nearly as many as the 53,402 killed by enemy fire.
Camp Funston, Kansas, where most of the Aurora County recruits were sent to train, was also where the outbreak of the Spanish Influenza claimed some of its first United States victims in the summer of 1918. According to the supplement, the five local men who died of influenza in camp were Lewis T. Thompson (age 25), Brainard Swenson (26), Louis Bogenhagen (27), Harry Hansen (25), and Arthur Merkamp (28). The first draftee from Aurora County, John M. Sullivan was also the first to lose his life. After contracting measles and then meningitis, Sullivan (26) died at Camp Funston on September 22, 1917. Andrew Johansen (25) died of pneumonia in France.
Three pioneer families mourned sons killed in action; Nick Goeres (age 22), White Lake; Aggie C. Meier (25), White Lake; and Leo Dittrich (30), Stickney. John Altman (31), a former resident of Crystal Lake Township, was listed as a casualty from Aurora County although he enlisted in Montana. Two of the men killed in France had moved to the county to work as farm laborers shortly before enlisting; Earl Proud (25), from Minneapolis, and Leonard Vis (27), a young immigrant from Holland. Irishman James O’Connell, reported as wounded in the supplement, later died of his wounds.
Just as Civil War veterans organized Grand Army of the Republic posts after the war, World War I veterans organized American Legion posts: Plankinton American Legion Nick Goeres Post No. 5; Stickney American Legion Dittrick Post No. 26; White Lake American Legion Goeres Post No. 96.
This year, as November 11 approaches, consider the sacrifices of these young men and those families who lost sons to disease or the battlefield. Read a little about the fighting in the Argonne Forest near Verdun. Learn more about the “Lost Battalion.” Find the Meuse River, Saint-Mihiel, and Chateau-Thierry on a map. Think of the young immigrants from Holland and Ireland, new to this country, dying for the United States on the fields of France.
On Veterans Day, remember the war fought faraway in France almost one hundred years ago. Remember the sacrifices, not just of the men, but of their families and loved ones right here at home.
It Happened Right Here: The Great War, by Ruth Page Jones. Published in the South Dakota Mail, Plankinton, South Dakota, November 7, 2013.
RPJ Histories - Ruth Page Jones 