The Lost Battalion by Pvt. Lee "Buck" McCollum History and Rhymes of the Lost Battalion

My grandfather Frank G.S. Erickson (308th - Company H) gave this book to me when I was a teenager. The whole experince my grandfather went through in France in October of 1918 took years to really sink in.

At first glance this edition is a book of rhyming poetry, yet it holds some significant essays by various members of the 308th Infantry. This edition was published in 1937 by Pvt. Lee "Buck" McCollum from the 308th Infantry - Company A.

Frank acquired the book at one of the Lost Battalion reunion which is a nicely bound publication with a fabric cover and newsprint feel of the paper stock. It has quite a few illustrations and is referred to on the title page as the "History and Rhymes of the Lost Battalion."

The book starts with a Tribute Page written on November 11th, 1920 by Lt. Colonel Charles W. Whittlesey, commander of the Lost Battalion.

As a runner, Frank braved many a day of machine gun and sniper fire, artillery shelling and mustard gassings. A quote stated by the author of the book, Pvt. McCollum, while aboard ship on the way home to New York in 1919 is well worth reading. His thoughts went back to the beginning when the men first traveled in 1918 by ship to France and the impressions of possibly a collective thought on their return voyage almost a year later.

"Laughingly we had first boarded these boats, youth bound for France, youth looking for adventure, soldiers on parade. Now less than a year later we were returning home no longer laughing, light-hearted boys in our teens and early twenties, but men old beyond our years. Each of us was bringing home an uninvited guest, a guest that would live with us through the rest of our days, who would sit with us at our tables and would wake us from our earned night's rest, to force us to walk step by step with him, over and over again, across the battlefields of France."