“Time will not diminish the glory of their deeds.”
General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, spoke those words about America’s doughboys of the Great War. They ring as true today as they did a century ago. Yet while time has not diminished their glory, it has, tragically, diminished the memory of who they were — these American soldiers of the “Great War” — and what they sacrificed.
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I have written 16 books, 15 of them on the U.S. military. Three focus on World War II — Destiny, Old Breed General, and Last Fighter Pilot, which became a national bestseller on the Publishers Weekly list. Shortly after that success, I pitched a biography of Charles Denver Barger, one of the great American heroes of World War I. Every publisher who reviewed the proposal loved the story. They passed anyway. “WWII books still sell,” they told me. “WW1 books don’t.”
That is not just a publishing decision. It is a national shame. As our national attention has focused elsewhere, time has diminished the memory of their deeds.
This Memorial Day, one WWI division that sacrificed extraordinarily was the famed “Old Hickory” Division — the 30th Infantry Division of World War I — comprised of Tar Heels from North Carolina, Sandlappers from South Carolina, and Tennesseans from the Volunteer State, along with volunteers and draftees from across the country.
Nicknamed for President Andrew Jackson, whose roots ran deep in all three states, the division formed in 1917 at Camp Sevier, South Carolina. North Carolina’s 2nd and 3rd Infantry became the 119th and 120th Infantry Regiments — the heart of the Tar Heel Brigade. South Carolina’s 118th Infantry represented the Sandlappers. Tennessee’s 117th Infantry brought the Volunteers. These were our boys — farmers, mill workers, teachers, and clerks who left the fields and factories of the Carolinas and Tennessee when America called.
Then came the moment that would define them forever. On September 29, 1918, as part of the British Fourth Army’s assault in the Somme Offensive, the Old Hickory Division attacked the vaunted Hindenburg Line near Bellicourt and Nauroy. This line marked the strongest German defensive network on the Western Front — rows of thick barbed wire hundreds of yards deep in places, concrete machine-gun nests, deep trenches, and the St. Quentin Canal tunnel system. At 5:50 a.m., under a British barrage and supported by tanks, the 119th and 120th Infantry went “over the top.” Dense fog and smoke reduced visibility to yards. Officers lost control of their units. The attack became a test of individual courage as Tar Heels fought through the wire and trenches in close combat.
By 7:30 a.m., the North Carolinians had smashed through the main line. The 120th Infantry captured Bellicourt after brutal fighting. By midday, they had taken Nauroy. The Old Hickory Division was credited as one of the first American units to breach the supposedly impregnable Hindenburg Line. Their breakthrough helped crack the German Army’s back in the final weeks of the war. Captured German officers threw up their hands in despair: “It is over; there is nothing between you and the Rhine.”
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The cost in human life was staggering. The Hindenburg Line casualties on 29 September 1918 hit North Carolina especially hard (241 Tar Heels killed in a single day — the state’s bloodiest day of the entire war).
Among the Tar Heels who fell that September 29 were men like Private Harvey T. Chadwick and Private Harry Langdon Pigott, both of Shallotte in Brunswick County, who never came home. Private Jerry Harris of Roanoke Rapids in Halifax County was also killed; his body was never recovered and remains listed on the Tablets of the Missing at the Somme American Cemetery in France. In all, more than 8,400 men of the Old Hickory Division became casualties in just 56 days of combat — roughly 1,641 killed and over 7,000 wounded. Some of those Tar Heels and Sandlappers still lie in French soil, in American Battle Monuments Commission cemeteries, never returned to the sacred ground of the Carolinas.
The 30th Division earned 12 Medals of Honor — the highest total of any American division in the war and suffered among the highest casualty rates. Private Robert Lester Blackwell of Person County, North Carolina, serving in Company K, 119th Infantry, was one of those Tar Heels who gave his life and received the MoH for it. On October 11, 1918, near St. Souplet, France, Blackwell’s unit was cut off and under heavy fire. Blackwell volunteered to carry a critical message through a storm of artillery and machine-gun fire. He charged through a rainstorm of machine gun fire and was killed in the attempt. But Blackwell’s gallantry helped save his comrades.
Blackwell died at age 23, never to return home. They buried him at the Somme American Cemetery and Memorial in Bony, France. His family donated his Medal to the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.
To men like Blackwell, Chadwick, Pigot, Harris, and others, we owe them more than a passing thought once a year. They broke the Hindenburg line, helping break the German Army’s resistance, leading to the war’s end within sixty days. They paid heavily, with their lives and blood. We owe them remembrance — real, sustained remembrance — the kind we give so readily to the heroes of World War II. Their glory has not faded. But our collective memory of it has. It’s time for a grateful nation to relight the torch and remember them, once again.
“Time will not diminish the glory of their deeds.”
Don Brown is a former Navy Judge Advocate who served at the Pentagon. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the international law program at the Naval War College, he is a nationally bestselling author and commentator on national security, military justice, and foreign policy. He previously served as a special assistant United States attorney and was a candidate for the United States Senate from North Carolina.
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