Essay On The Lost Battalion

The Unbeatable Souls

The Lost Battalion is based totally on a real story of an American battalion that was sent out to battle during the World War I. Major Charles Whittlesey, a New York lawyer, who ends up in the trenches of France having under his command mostly young, unexperienced men. When Whittlesey and his battalion of five hundred men are ordered to advance into the Argonne Forest they find themselves surrounded by Germans troops when the other battalions instantly withdrew, leaving Whittlesey’s battalion on his own. Confined behind enemy lines, Whittlesey’s battalion turned into the only force in the German army’s plans to move forward. Trapped and with no other way to rescue, Whittlesey is given an opportunity to surrender, but chose to continue fighting and keep his men together. The following day, the battalion loses

It may seem horrible to see when the soldiers were reduced to remove bandages from the dead for the wounded, but they repeatedly reused bandages because they had quickly run out of the fresh bandages as historian Robert Ferrell presented it in his book Five Days in October (30). It also true how both show off how carrier pigeons were used to transfer messages from the frontlines back to HQ when out of range from telegraph wire. Major Whittlesey did release his last homing bird named Cher Ami to tell HQ to stop the shelling. Despite the fact the pigeon was hit by multiple German bullets, it was able to reach the HQ and deliver the Whittlesey’s message. Likewise the movie, the book describe the time when the battalion was mistaken shelled by American batteries. In his book, Lost Battalions, Richard Slotkin, writes,” Artillery bombardment was the most terrible aspect of combat on the Western Front,...........but to be bombarded by your own artillery was the most demoralizing thing that could