Charles W. Whittlesey

Charles White Whittlesey was a Wisconsin-born New York lawyer who went to France with the 77th Division and, in early October 1918 in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, found his mixed command of the 308th Infantry surrounded in the Charlevaux ravine. For five days the pocket the press named the "Lost Battalion" held under artillery, machine-gun fire, misdirected friendly shells, and failed relief. Whittlesey refused a German surrender demand delivered under flag of truce; American forces finally reached the survivors on October 7. The Medal of Honor citation records the stand and the cost in dead and wounded.

He came home famous and uneasy with the celebrity. In November 1921 he disappeared from the steamer Toloa bound for Havana and was later declared dead. This register does not treat that peacetime disappearance as wartime missing-in-action, and it does not invent an Argonne MIA status. The October 1918 action is documented in division records and the MoH file; the 1921 death at sea is a separate civil finding.

The wartime portrait of Lieutenant Colonel Whittlesey used here is public domain on Wikimedia Commons.