Remains of Company D: a Story of the Great War, The

 Author's Summary

Haunted by an ancestor's small tale of near-death on and salvation from a French battlefield, a journalist expands and completes his grandfather's story, following the men of Company D, 28th Infantry Regiment, US First Division through their trials at Cantigny, Soissons, St. Mihiel, the Meuse-Argonne -- and beyond.

MWSA Review

"Having a man walking by your side one second, and lying lifeless the next, is an experience hard to understand or explain." 

So writes Marine Russell Garrison in 1918 to his uncle shortly after he survived a battle along the Paris-Soissons Road in which, a few kilometers away on that hot July day, another Doughboy had walked through the same wheat fields and, like everyone around him, been mown down by The Hun's machine gun fire. John Nelson, as Jon Nilsson, was a recent immigrant from Sweden who landed in Wisconsin. He'd been drafted & joined his unit only a month before.

The next morning, as the battle begins anew, an Algerian stretcher-bearer kicks him, searching for any life among the "brown clumps of young Americans" whose part in The Great War everyone regarded as "little more than a quaint crusade, an anomaly, a conflict that held ... no obvious meaning in America's history."

So ends John Nelson's war as he's carried to the back lines, then to field station after field station until the bullet that had entered his abdomen, ricocheted off his spine and exited by his hip is eventually extracted. He's patched up before being shunted on through hospitals and back to US ones until in April of the next year the army hands him $60 and an honorable discharge. While the scars from his wounds were to heal, the internal and emotional damage was to remain all the days of his long life.

James Carl Nelson's recounting of his grandfather's brief participation in The War To End All Wars and that of the members of his Unit is a gripping and informative glimpse into an America now lost forever, although the values of the men who served: fortitude and modesty, remain. What also lingered for far too long was Uncle Sam's attitude toward its wounded warriors in an "undeclared war": a portend of its treatment of Korean & Vietnam Veterans.

The Remains of Company D of the 28th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division (almost 200 souls) which walked to its doom in the last weeks of that war were few. After John Nelson's death at the vast age of 101, this grandson went in search of the rest of his grandfather's story and of those he fought beside. It started when the author found in a museum their names on an August muster roll, although by August John Nelson was listed as missing.

Cantigny, Soissons and St. Mihiel are the battles American Doughboys fought that turned a stalemate into an armistice, and the author made pilgrimage to these sacred places to bring back to life his grandfather and the men of his unit. He was given permission to read their letters and retell their family stories: the poignant domestic memories as when a boy is playing on his stoop in Chicago and flees inside calling to his mother that "A soldier is coming!" The huge man in uniform, striding toward the lad turned out to be his mother's brother, off to The War. 

There are maps to show the ebb and flow of the battles across the French countryside, family letter excerpts mostly from new immigrants to America's Heartland, notes of primary sources, a bibliography plus lists of archival, interviews, newspaper and Internet resources.

Give The Remains of Company D: A Story of The Great War a place of honor in your library. It's well-written and eminently readable, filled with glimpses of a long-ago when these brave young newly-minted Americans fought and died for a freedom they didn't get to live.

Reviewed by: Dave Brown (2009)