World War I Service Questionnaires, 1916-1918

Series 85298

Sample Document

Excerpt from letter to Ephraim Ralph, Rockland, Idaho,from Capt. Thomas E. McClintock, 347th Machine Gun Battalion American Expeditionary Forces, January 17, 1919.

Your son was killed on the evening of September 29th in the point of a small wood where our guns were set up during doing delivering an overhead fire, while the enemy Infantry advanced and took the town of Gesnes and the wooded hills behind it. at the time he was killed we were undergoing an exceptionally heavy barrage attack against our guns which were doing considerable damage to the German Infantry and the Battery of 77's. I was lying possibly fifteen feet from your son at the time he was hit by a fragment of high explosive. He did not regain consciousness and died with an hour minute or two from the time he was hit. He was not mutilated to any extent. He was still breathing when I got to him, and was buried near the spot on which he was killed.