A somber memorial in a shrubbery-filled corner of the Van Buren County Courthouse grounds recalls the sacrifices of Merle D. Hay, Thomas Enwright, and James B. Gresham -- the first members of the US Army Expeditionary Forces to be killed in combat during WWI. The momument was originally erected by Sam Chew.
The memorial reads as follows:
"In memory of
Merle D. Hay
Thomas Enwright
James B. Gresham
They were the first members of the Expeditionary Army of the United States in France to die that we might live.
Stricken on the field of glory, November 3, 1917.
Dulse et decorium est pro patria mori.
Originally erected by Sam Chew, November 1917."
From the Militarian website: (
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"The first men killed in action [in WWI -- BMB] were Corporal James Gresham, Pvt. Thomas Enright and Pvt. Merle Hay all of the 1st Division [US Army Expeditionary Forces]. They were killed in a trench raid near Bathelemont, November 2, 1917.
The most memorable event associated with Sector Occupation involves the deaths of the AEF's first men killed in action: James Gresham Merle Hay and Thomas Enright all of Company F, 16th Infantry, 1st Division. In his 1963 classic The Doughboys Laurence Stallings describes what happened:
When night fell on November 2 1917 near Bathelemont, a German Assault Company was brought into their front line and sent to the deepest dugouts to await its hour...Exactly at three o'clock in the morning all hell broke loose. Enemy guns spoke in chorus, tons of metal descended heavily along the Yank's front, communicating trenches were plastered with mortar fire, machine guns sent their whispering streams of nickeled steel over the heads of the Doughboys in the line...The fire was concentrated, isolating in a box barrage F Company...
The box soon closed in on one platoon front. There was nothing now on the face of the earth, which could reach this chosen platoon. The Assault Company, facing it, leaped from their trenches and started across the two hundred meters that separated Americans from Germans. Bangalore torpedoes blasted a path through the wire. The side of the box barrage nearest the Germans now vanished, the other three sides roaring with breaking shells. The platoon first knew of the Germans' presence when grenades burst among them.
... It was over in three dark minutes -- pistols, bayonets, knives. The platoon did not blench. It fought in the dark. There was no mad rush for a communicating trench or a deep dugout. The Assault Company left on a precise schedule, taking their own wounded, together with a Doughboy sergeant and ten men, some of them wounded, too, and all of them stunned; dragging them back through the gaps in the wire as the open side of the box barrage again was closed with forbidding bursts. Another three minutes and all guns ceased....Three men lay dead in the muddy bottom of the trench. Corporal James B. Gresham, Private Thomas F. Enright, and Private Merle D. Hay. They were buried that afternoon near Bathelemont on a little rise of pasturage..."