Sergeant Stubby by Ann Bausum

Author:Ann Bausum [Bausum, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4262-1311-3
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Published: 2014-05-13T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

ARMISTICE

“THE BLOODIEST BATTLE IN AMERICAN HISTORY” IS HOW historian Edward G. Lengel characterizes the Meuse-Argonne campaign. It lasted 47 days from its start on September 26 to the armistice on November 11, 1918. According to Lengel, almost half of the casualties suffered by U.S. troops during the First World War were concentrated into these closing seven weeks of battle. More than 95,000 men were wounded during this span, and more than 26,000 died in action or from combat wounds.

Lengel states, “No single battle in American military history, before or since, even approaches the Meuse-Argonne in size and cost, and it was without question the country’s most critical military contribution to the Allied cause in the First World War. And yet, within a few years of its end, nobody seemed to realize that it had taken place.”

The idea that this battle—and, indeed, the war as a whole, really—would be largely forgotten some day was unfathomable in 1918. Army dispatch by Army dispatch, mile by mile, French town by French town, folks back home had followed the war’s movement and could recite its progression from battlefront to battlefront almost with the confidence of a veteran. Meanwhile the soldiers, many of whom may have wanted to forget at least some aspects of the war, would bear its marks, inside if not out, for the rest of their lives.

Sgt. John J. Curtin, the Yankee Division soldier Stubby had aroused to safety during a gas attack in the spring of 1918, was among the survivors at war’s end. By November, his tribute to Stubby could chronicle the dog’s good fortune, too:

North of Verdun were our hardest battles,

And many brave men gave death rattles,

But Stubby came through hell O.K.

And is ready to go back to the U.S.A.

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