My cousin Michael Boutrous visited the Sunset Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Bismarck, North Dakota on October 8th, 2018. A significant date for our family and our mutual grandfather Frank G. S. Erickson. Michael photographed Frank's plague and added images from his cowboy and AEF days, along with a Viking ship signifying his Swedish roots.

Frank joined the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in the Summer of 1917 and trained at Camp Lewis near Tacoma, Washington and completed his training at Camp Upton in Long Island, New York. He and his Company H awaited at Camp Mills, also in New York until August 8th, 1918 when they shipped out to Liverpool, England from Brooklyn Harbor aboard the troop ship, "Nestor."

By September Frank was serving with the 308th in France. Before he knew it he was thrown into combat when the Meuse Argonne Offensive commenced in late September. Eventually as history and myth circled around and around, Frank would become a surviving member of what is referred to as 'The Lost Battalion.'

From the original 554 men that entered into the Argonne on October 2nd under the command of Major Whittlesey, 197 were killed. 150 were wounded and or taken prisoner by the Germans. 194 men walked out of 'The Pocket' after a grueling week of hell on October 8th, 1918.

As a runner, Frank braved many a day of machine gun and sniper fire, artillery shelling and mustard gassings. A telling quote stated by a fellow soldier, Pvt. Lee 'Buck' McCollum from aboard the ship that was taking him home in 1919 to New York. It offers his feelings and very likely the thoughts of most of the survivors of the Lost Battalion.

"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."

Frank's older brother, Pfc. Ernest Julius Erickson served with the 361st Infantry and was also in involved in the Meuse Argonne Offensive. The link provided below will tell his story.