Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. – John 15:13
In November of 1918, American forces and their allies, principally Great Britain and France, were inflicting devastating losses on the German army. The war had gone on for over four years, and the German economy could no longer sustain the war effort. Casualties on both sides continued to mount. Mutinies at sea and desertions on land devastated the German armed forces. The Kaiser abdicated the throne on November 9. A new German leadership realized they could not win and began negotiations with the Allies.
Ferdinand Foch, Field Marshal of France and Commander of the Allied Forces, was in no mood for negotiations. Foch had witnessed massive casualties inflicted on French forces since 1914 and wanted nothing short of total victory. Hardened and hateful of the Germans, Foch detested the idea of anything short of Germany’s unconditional surrender. Seeing that an armistice agreement was forthcoming, Foch pressed hard on the battlefield to maximize the Allies’ victories and crush Germany’s ability to wage war ever again. General John J. Pershing, Commander of the United States forces in Europe, concurred with Marshal Foch, arguing that the Allies should go for the knockout blow and continue the fight.
Throughout the night of November 10, 1918, the German negotiators struggled with the stringent, suffocating demands of the Allies. The Germans finally yielded in the early morning hours of November 11, and the warring nations signed the Armistice. Field Marshal Fock notified all Allied forces to cease hostilities before 11 a.m (1100 hrs.) General Pershing authorized his subordinate commanders to continue to fight up until that time. The American military had turned the tide in the war against Germany and was the most powerful army in the world, a fact that only a few years before could hardly have been imagined.
Be Prepared
In the early 1900s, America was growing in power and influence. Many American leaders realized that the United States played an increasingly significant role in world affairs and was ill-prepared militarily to face any sustained conflict. At the forefront of the United States’ efforts was former president Theodore Roosevelt, who advocated for universal military service for all eligible young men and a stronger navy to project American power around the world. Roosevelt expressed his view on national preparedness in The Outlook Magazine in 1910:
| Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe to the nation that does not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it; and woe thrice over to the nation in which the average man loses the fighting edge, loses the power to serve as a soldier if the day of need should arise. |
General Leonard Wood, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, was a kindred spirit of Teddy Roosevelt. The two served in the Spanish-American War and fought together in Cuba with the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry known as “The Rough Riders.” Gen. Wood saw the need to establish training camps to train young men to learn basic infantry skills and military leadership. Encouraged by his friend Teddy Roosevelt, Gen. Wood started two officer training camps in 1913, one in Monterey, California, and one in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The British luxury liner R.M.S. Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat in May 1915, killing 128 Americans. President Wilson continued to maintain American neutrality, but this event was viewed with such horror by the American people that the tide of public opinion turned decisively toward conflict with Germany.
In January 1916, a Mexican revolutionary leader, bandit, and murderer named Poncho Villa kidnapped 18 Americans from a Mexican train and killed them as a reprisal against U.S. support for his political opponent for the presidency of Mexico. In a pre-dawn raid on March 9, Villa led a force of 1,500 guerillas across the border to Columbus, New Mexico, where they raided homes and set fire to the town, killing 19 people. Villa and his force were pushed back across the border and into Mexico by elements of the 13th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The murders dramatically increased awareness of America’s military inadequacy, and President Wilson began to realize that his position of neutrality was untenable.
The Preparedness Movement
At the Plattsburg Barracks in upstate New York and other locations across the country, men received military training for four weeks. The camps were voluntary. Many prominent individuals, many wealthy, trained at the camps alongside businessmen, legal and medical professionals. Many of these men were in their 30’s and even 40’s. Camps were established for college men who trained for 90 days over the summer—thus, the term “90-day wonders” came to describe those commissioned out of the college program. All of the preparedness programs and the Reserve Officer Training Corps at colleges came to be known as the Plattsburg or Preparedness Movement, which would eventually train over 100,000 officers who were ready for service when the call came.
Francis Reed Austin
Francis Reed Austin was born in Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts, a farming community established by the Puritans. Known as “Larry” to his friends, Austin prepared for college at the Pomfret School in Connecticut, a school that carried the motto Certa Viriliter (“Strive Manfully”) on its crest.
Larry attended Harvard (Class of ’20), where he played football. During the spring and summer of 1917, Larry volunteered for training with the Harvard R.O.T.C. At the end of 1917, in anticipation of war with Germany, Larry and three of his Harvard classmates, Albert Angier, Eugene Galligan, and Paul Elliot, volunteered to go to Camp Upton, New York, for additional training.
When the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, Larry’s unit was called up. Because they were still considered officer candidates and in college, Larry and his friends were given a choice to stay with their training unit and deploy as privates with no guarantee of being commissioned as officers or go back to Harvard and wait for their commissions. Larry, Al, Gene, and Paul volunteered to leave school to stay with their unit. The friends, all privates, were shipped off to France.
Larry described the patriotic spirit that engulfed the country during those days:
| Believe me, I am proud to be an American because there never could be a more unselfish cause than the one Uncle Sam has openly supported to the limit. His boys have come over with absolutely one idea—namely, to crush cruelty, barbarism, and make the world a happier, safer, and more peaceful place to live in; and then return home to the loved ones and leave untouched what there they found with “Freedom to Worship God.” |
Millions of men like Larry Austin believed they were waging a righteous war against a vicious enemy and that they were standing on the side of “Right and Justice.” These ideals and this resolve would steel the men in the ferocity of the battles to come.
Commissioned Officers
In July of 1918, after training in the ranks of the enlisted soldiers for over six months in France, Larry, Al, Gene, and Paul received their commissions as second lieutenants. His promotion meant that Larry had to leave the soldiers he had been with for so many months. Larry had grown fond of the men in his unit and they of him. He hated to leave but clearly understood that he must go where he could “do the most good and be of the greatest service.” Larry described his commissioning in a letter home:
| Today, United States has seen fit to offer me a Commission in the National Army of United States, and by the light of a candle in the Major’s room, I swore to defend and support the Constitution to the best of my ability. I feel how young I am to accept the responsibility of men’s lives at a time like this, but I feel strong and even stronger when I think of my father and the wonderful bringing up he has given me; and the love of my mother and the influence of my friends. I shall pray to God that He show me the best way to exercise my authority and come home a better man and worthy of the trust all you at home have placed in me. |
Lt. Austin, still quite ragged from his fieldwork as an enlisted man, departed for officer training in Paris. Fortunately, he had time to enjoy many of the friends he met there. One was Hanna Fiske, a relief worker from the United States, with whom the young lieutenant could chat and forget, at least for a while, that he was away from home and preparing to go forward to lead men in battle. Amid the friendship, Lt. Austin and Hanna knew that they might never see each other again.
No Greater Love
During fierce fighting in early September along the Vesle River near Fismes, in the Champagne-Ardenne region of north-eastern France, Lt. Galligan and Lt. Angier, Larry’s friends from Harvard, were killed while leading their platoons against heavy odds. Colonel Whittlesey, who was Lt. Galligan’s commander, and recipient of the Medal of Honor, wrote of Galligan, “I knew him intimately and admired him immensely.” Lt. Angier, who was forced to withdraw from an attack on Revillon because the units on his flanks had failed to reach their objectives, was hit by enemy fire as he defended the withdrawal. Lt. Angier’s last words to the medic were, “Lay me down and look after the other men.” Lt. Angier was Lt. Austin’s best friend.
The Argonne Forest
Upon returning to his unit after officer training in Paris, Lt. Austin wrote:
| It is great to be all covered with mud again, after luxurious Paris with clean sheets and a bath, and you even feel more at home with the stew and beans than with the wonderful Paris fare. We made a march last night, and as I marched at the rear of my men in my platoon, I realized they were really and truly my men, for the present at least, and it was my decisions and plans that held their lives safe. |
On September 25, 1918, the 109th Infantry moved forward for the attack on the Argonne Forest as part of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, which was the final Allied offensive of the war. The battle would last until the Armistice at 1100 hours on November 11 and would cost the Americans 26,277 killed and 95,786 wounded.
Lt. Austin and his unit were constantly engaged in battle for two weeks. For several of those days, Lt. Austin’s men were the advance guard of the regiment, responsible for locating the enemy lines and making the first contact. After repulsing a counterattack during the fighting at Apremont on October 1, many of the wounded Germans lay in agony, exposed and unaided on the field of battle. Stretcher-bearers with the mark of the Red Cross were generally not harassed by the opposing force when evacuating their casualties. Despite this, the German soldiers would not venture out to help their own wounded and dying. On his own initiative, Lt. Austin and a volunteer stretcher-bearer ventured out onto the battlefield on several occasions to evacuate the German wounded to the American lines. Though initially fired upon by the Germans, Lt. Austin continued to evacuate German casualties. Lt. Paul Elliot described Larry’s gallantry:
| If the Boche [French term for the Germans] were such fools to fire on him when he was taking care of their own wounded, surely they did not deserve to be rescued. Yet, Larry went out again and again—all night long he worked, continually under fire and at the constant risk of his life. Each time he brought in a suffering, helpless man, who, because of the undaunted courage and great tenderness of one of their enemy was given a chance for medical treatment and for life. Rescuing our own wounded under heavy fire is a deed for which many have been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, but carrying to safety at the constant peril of life wounded enemies who have been abandoned by their own kin is an act of Christianity that has rarely been surpassed. And Larry did this act not once in the first burst of enthusiasm with comrades to cheer him on, but time after time, alone in the night with only his own bigness of heart to support him. |
11 November 1918
Though well aware of the armistice, the 109th continued to attack late in the morning on the 11th. Lt. Larry Austin and his men were in the very first wave of the American assault.
Thiaucourt, France
At the western edge of Thiaucourt, France, is the beautifully manicured, 40-acre St. Mihiel American Cemetery, where 4,153 Americans have been laid to rest. Among the fallen is First Lieutenant Francis Reed Austin, U.S. Army. Even knowing that the morning would end in a ceasefire, Lt. Austin went forward, doing his duty; leading his men; fighting to the end.
On Memorial Day, we remember those who died on the field of honor—those brave souls who gave the last full measure of devotion.
Our duty on Memorial Day is to remember them. It’s so easy to forget.
Harper sends
