WWI US Army 12th Engineer Railway Battalion Campaign Battle with Roster!! Book

Description

The War Department quickly responded to the Anglo-French request, and in May 1917 it directed that nine railway engineer regiments be organized in major cities from Boston to San Francisco. COL Curtis R. Townsend, a Regular Army engineer officer stationed in St. Louis, was tasked to organize and command one of these regiments, which began as the 2d Reserve Engineers before being redesignated the 12th Engineers (Light Railway).
The regiment comprised 1,000 officers and men in a headquarters and two battalions, each with three companies (lettered from A to F). The officers were mainly civilian engineers from the Officers’ Reserve Corps, and the men were recruited from the railroads entering St. Louis from the south and southwest. They were distributed among the six companies based upon their skills, so that each unit had roughly the same capabilities.
The 12th established its headquarters at Montigny Farm, near the Somme River in northern France. The engineers were amazed at the tremendous devastation produced by three years of war, and some had trouble sleeping because of the sounds of battle coming from the front lines, less than five miles away. Until February 1918, the regiment operated and maintained light railways of the British military railway system in the area behind the Third Army’s front. Its work began at standard-gauge railheads, where munitions and supplies were transferred to light railways, with a gauge of about two feet.
The 12th began supporting the British Fifth Army in March. When the Germans began their long-awaited Somme offensive on 21 March, the British Army retreated, and the 12th was barely able to save its personnel and equipment. Company D’s PVT Joseph B. Fraher earned the British Military Medal for continuing to maintain communications after a shell blew him off a telephone pole.
After supporting the British for just over eleven months, the 12th transferred back to American control on 25 July 1918. One veteran later recalled the contrast of joining “a new army where the lack of experience was everywhere apparent. For a while the cry was ‘I want to go back to work for King George V, but I want American rations.’”
Includes a complete roster the men and officers, who died and killed, and promoted to officer during the war. One of the very few units who arrived very early in France.
This is a reprint of the original in an 8 ½ x 11 staple bound format with 344 Pages.