Robert Laplander

Laplander’s book is an extremely detailed, exhaustively researched, near hour-by-hour recitation of 5 days of hell 680 men faced in an isolated ravine on the Western Front during World War I. The authors account begins with the efforts of the AEF’s slogging through the Argonne Forest. During one of the frontal attacks a group of men from the 154th Infantry Brigade, 77th ‘Metropolitan’ Division was ordered to press an attack against the German lines and not worry about anything happening on their flanks. They successfully broke through the German lines but the units on either side could not keep up. The end result was on October 2, 1918 they found themselves fighting for their lives on the wrong side of a hill in the Charlevaux Ravine completely surrounded by Germans.

The word of the situation was quickly relayed to headquarters and efforts were immediately launched to break through the German lines and relieve them. Their situation was also part of the reports being sent to other sections of the A.E.F. command network. One of these sections was the A.E.F. press office. The press office for 1st Corps was in charge of sifting through newsworthy events from the front, such as the Charlevaux Ravine fight, and sending daily bulletins to the local press headquarters where civilian reporters read them and decided what was worth reporting back to their newspapers in the U.S.

One story about the unit in the October 4th bulletin from the 1st Corps press office caught the eye of a war correspondent by the name of Damon Runyon. He sent an initial report to his editor and traveled to the 1st Corp press office to find out more. When he returned he found his editor had cabled back a single message, “Send more on Lost Battalion.” He did and, courtesy of the newspapers, the plight of those 680 men became the overnight concern of every newspaper reader in the U.S.

On the evening of October 7, 1918, 5 days after the 154th entered the ravine, AEF forces were able to link up with them. Of the 680, slightly more than 190 men, including the wounded, were all that remained. When they emerged, they were still men of the 154th Infantry Brigade, 77th ‘Metropolitan’ Division but to the world then and to history they were known and will always be remembered as “The Lost Battalion.”

The book’s text is a documentation of war at its worst. Every aspect of terror, heroism, blood, gore, extreme pain, sacrifice, mistakes, dumb luck, mental and physical fatigue and super human effort can be found between the covers. The read is exhausting and after absorbing 683 pages of text a reader is left wondering how it was possible anyone survived. Laplander’s book has been called the definitive account of the unit and this reviewer would have to agree. I would recommend Finding the Lost Battalion to anyone interested in history of any kind.

Book length – 721 pages, text length 683 pages, Includes Appendix of list of individuals known to have been in the Charlevaux Ravine, bibliography, an index, 22 pages of photographs, and numerous maps.

See Common Knowledge for some short quotes from the text.

One small criticism - the maps have the kind of detail one would expect from a real map and, as printed, they are difficult to follow. What they need is simplification and some annotation with respect to things like labeling hills and other geographic features with their names as recorded in the text. They could also use a compass to indicate direction,… (más)