A fantastic portrait of my grandfather Frank Gustaf Severin Erickson at eighteen years old. The photograph was taken by his brother Helmer Erickson at his "Erickson Studio" in Wilton, North Dakota in 1911.

The thought of this photograph's existence some 107 years later is truly remarkable. My father Ernest Anders Erickson's archives held countless important family photography. This image hits you square in the eyes and is a gorgeous representation of the early part of the 20th century. But Frank is alive in living color from that day so long ago to this day. He stares at you with confidence.

Soon after this photograph was taken he would travel out west and live for years off and on in California, Montana, Arizona and Oregon. He went west as a young man to find adventure and he found it often.

The red tie is perfect, it sets the whole photo off and against the in-fashion at the time stiff collar, it creates a stellar mood. Frank's smirking coolness with his blue eyes shining are like beacons along a dark trail in the west. The velvet green background, that pool hall-pool table green is striking as it playfully shrouds Frank's hat, tilted back on his head assertively. The color image creates an iconic contemporary portrait of a true Scandinavian Western Great Plains man. He feels real and is in the here and now.

This was six years before he would serve in the war in France, way before he would see and experience things that would change him forever.

Frank came back from serving in France with the 308th Infantry in mid 1919 a different person, having lived through the horrors of war and having lost his best friend, his brother Ernest Julius who was killed by a sniper in the Argonne Forest on October 10, 1918.

Losing his brother changed his life and his future and being a surviving member of the 'Lost Battalion,' followed him home to North Dakota. I truly believe if Ernest Julius had survived the war, he and Frank would have headed again out west to live and Frank very likely would never have married my grandmother Clara back in Painted Woods, North Dakota. The consequences of that act would have been vast to many of us in the family.

Three other photographs of Frank are below, two from 1917 when he was a Deputy on the Oregon Railroad. The last photograph is from late 1918 in France with his Company H of the 308th Infantry.

Frank was a very fortunate surviving member of what later would be referred to as the 'Lost Battalion.' What entailed in the Argonne Forest was a serious and brutal battle that began when the Division was surrounded by the Germans. Only after what seemed being up against hopeless odds, some were able to escape through the pocket not far from the Apremont-Binarville Road in the Argonne.

In the last photograph of Frank and Company H, they are shown here relaxing weeks after the dire circumstances of the being members of the Lost Battalion. Men that had seen far too much. By the Spring of 1919 he would be heading home to Dakota.