Those of us who served and are still around to tell (and retell and retell) our war stories have Veterans Day. But Memorial Day is not for us. This day is reserved in memory of those who gave their lives that the nation might live: for the most part young men and women in the prime of life.
One such was Lieutenant Colonel Charles White Whittlesey, United States Army, veteran of the Great War. A Boston lawyer, he immediately volunteered for military service when the United States declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Whittlesey received the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism above and beyond the call of duty as commander of the famous Lost Battalion (1st Battalion, 308th Infantry plus attachments, 77th Division, American Expeditionary Force). Cut off and surrounded by the Germans while attacking in the Argonne Forest on 2 October 1918, the Lost Battalion held its ground for six days despite heavy casualties, lack of food and insufficient water. Of the 554 men who went in, only 194 remained when the battalion was finally relieved. Those killed in action totaled 197; 150 were missing in action or taken prisoner.
The Great War ended a month later, on 11 November 1918.
Major Whittlesey, as he was at the time, survived the battle and returned home to be hailed as a hero. In addition to the Medal of Honor he was made an Officer of the French Legion of Honor and received the French Croix de Guerre with Palm.
But though he emerged physically unscathed from the Argonne, Charles Whittlesey bore the invisible wounds of war. He was haunted by memories of his battalion's terrible ordeal and on November 27, 1921 he disappeared from the passenger liner that was carrying him from New York to Havana, Cuba, an apparent suicide. Charles White Whittlesey was thirty-seven.