Via the West Point Museum
On the morning of 23 October 1917, the first American shell of World War One in Europe, was fired toward German lines by a First Division artillery unit.
On Oct. 22, 1917, Soldiers of C Battery, 6th Field Artillery, used the cover of the day’s dense fog to carve out a firing position on a hill 1.3 kilometers outside the town of Bathlemont without being detected by the Imperial Germans. By nightfall the position was ready, but no order came to emplace a gun there.
Capt. Idus R. McLendon, C Battery commander, made the decision to move the 75 mm M1897 gun, but with the regiment’s horses and tools in the rear, the 3,400-pound gun would have to be moved by hand.
The Soldiers under McLendon struggled for three quarters of a mile in complete darkness; with mud and muck up to their knees they pulled the gun uphill, all while wearing gas masks to protect from lingering German mustard gas.McLendon convinced his French superiors to fire upon the Germans at first light. It would be the first time in more than a century that American and French Soldiers were to fight a common enemy, and the first time Americans had come to fight on a European battlefield.
When the command was given to fire, Sgt. Alex Arch of South Bend, a 23-year-old immigrant born in Austria-Hungary, pulled the lanyard on the 75mm gun, sending its shell — the first of over 10,000 fired in the conflict — into German lines. The time was 6 hours, 5 minutes and 10 seconds into the morning of Oct. 23, 1917.
Visit the West Point Museum to see the Gun on exhibit in our Large Weapons Gallery!
Barely two days prior, under the cover of darkness, the first battalions of the U.S. 16th, 18th, 26th, and 28th Infantry Regiments were led into the very “lived-in” trenches (complete with rats and remains) by their French allies of the battle-weary 18e Division d’Infanterie (18e DI), becoming the first American combat unit to take positions on the front lines of the Great War.
Captain Alban Butler, who would become the “divisional cartoonist”, portrayed the moment. As the cartoon illustrates, these Soldiers felt the eyes of the world upon them (both allied and enemy) as the mettle of the Americans had yet to be tested in European combat.
Via the Society of the First Infantry Division