A REMEMBRANCE

One of the great satisfactions of working on this book was learning more about how the First World War affected the lives of ordinary soldiers and their families—including my own family history.

My paternal grandfather, Michele (Michael) Loconte, was a twenty-year-old Italian émigré living and working in the United States when war broke out in August 1914. He was drafted into the US military in 1917 as America prepared to enter the war. After training with the 91st Division—known as the “Wild West Division”—he was deployed with the US Expeditionary Force to the Western Front in the summer of 1918. My grandfather served as a private with the 91st Division, C Company, the 316th Ammunition Train for the remainder of the war.

Beginning on September 20, 1918, Loconte’s division participated in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the final and decisive campaign of the war—and the deadliest for the United States. More than 26,000 US soldiers were killed in the battle, including 1,702 from the 91st Division. The divisional record describes their advance during the last week of September:

During our march forward we had passed column after column of troops of other divisions and interminable truck trains had rumbled all night through every billeting town that we occupied. And now, hidden in the Foret de Hesse, we began to be surrounded by an ever-thickening concentration of artillery, long-range rifles, stumpy howitzers, battery after battery of smaller guns. They came in night after night, and by daybreak each new increment had melted out of sight in the woods and high roadside hedges, or had disappeared under camouflage in the open. It seemed as if all the guns in France were gathered together in the crowded forest.1

Their orders were unambiguous: they were to devote themselves unreservedly to the task of defeating the Germany army. “Divisions will advance independently of each other,” the divisional record states, “pushing the attack with utmost vigor and regardless of cost.”²

Although my grandfather rarely spoke about his wartime experience, he must have seen his share of human suffering. Nevertheless, his division performed admirably: the 91st captured more artillery, machine guns, and prisoners, and advanced farther under fire than other divisions with more combat experience. Their successes at the Argonne Forest formed a vital part of the “Grand Offensive” by the Allies along the Western Front, regarded as the battle that crushed German hopes for victory and produced the Armistice on November 11, 1918.

For service in the American Expeditionary Force, and love for his adopted country, my grandfather was made a proud citizen of the United States, naturalized on September 15, 1919. He eventually moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he raised his family and helped to launch Conte Farms, an egg-and-dairy delivery business.