Five Days In October : The Lost Battalion of World War I
Robert H. Ferrell

During American participation in World War I, many events caught the public's attention, but none so much as the plight of the Lost Battalion. Comprising some six hundred men of the Seventy-seventh Division, the so-called battalion was entrapped on the side of a ravine in the Argonne Forest by German forces from October 2 to 7, 1918.

The men's courage under siege in the midst of artillery fire (coming both day and night), with nothing to eat after the morning of the first day save grass and roots, and with water dangerous to obtain, has gone down in American history as comparable in heroism to the defense of the Alamo and the stand at the Little Big Horn of the troops of General George A. Custer.

The trapped men belonged to companies from two battalions of the Seventy-seventh, and their placement was reported by runners which Pvt. Frank Erickson was one, at the outset of the action and by five carrier pigeons released by their commander, Major Charles W. Whittlesey, during the five days his men were there.

The causes of the entrapment were several, including command failures and tactical errors. The men had been sent ahead of the main division line without attention to flanks, and because of that failure, they were surrounded. Thus began a siege that took the lives of four hundred men, leading to the psychiatric collapse of the infantry colonel and, many believe, to the suicide of Major Whittlesey three years later.

Frank is mentioned in many of the Lost Battalion books that have been written over the last many years.