BACCARAT
June 15th, 1918
My principal occupation these days is visiting the hospitals, of which there are three in Baccarat. The Spanish Influenza has hit the Division and a large number of the men are sick. The fever itself is not a terrible scourge, but when pneumonia follows it, it is of a particularly virulent type. Our deaths, however, have been few: John F. Donahoe of Company F, Richard J. Hartigan of Company I, Fred Griswold of Machine Gun Company and Patrick A. Hearn of Company D, whose death had a particular pathos by reason of the sorrow of his twin brother who is in the same Company. All in all, we have been a singularly healthy regiment, whatever be the reason—some doctors think it is because we are a city regiment. We have been almost absolutely free from the “Children’s Diseases” such as mumps, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc., which have played havoc with the efficiency strength of almost every other regiment in the Division. Occasionally replacements introduce some of those diseases, but they have never made any headway. Since we left home our full total of deaths in a Regiment of thirty-six hundred men has been, outside of battle cases, just fourteen. John L. Branigan, of Company B, died in an English hospital. In the Langres area we lost Charles C. Irons, Company G; Edward O’Brien, Company M, and James Reed, Company E, by illness, and Sydney Cowley, Company G, by accidental shooting. Accidents were also the causes of the deaths of Corporal Winthrop Rodewald, Company H, Donald Monroe, Company F, and Daniel J. Scanlon of Company G, who also left a brother in the Company to mourn his loss. Louis King and Joseph P. Morris of Company I and George W. Scallon of Company A died of meningitis.
In this sector we have had just three battle losses. When Company G was in line, a direct hit of a German shell killed two of our old-timers, Patrick Farrell and Timothy Donnellan, and wounded Peter Bohan. Recently at Chasseurs, Corporal Arthur Baker, a resolute soldier, was killed while leading a daylight patrol in No Man’s Land. Sergeant Denis Downing of Company G was killed by one of our own sentries who mistook him for a German.