100 years ago in The Record
Wednesday, Dec. 18, 1918
As more wounded Trojans come home with stories of their battlefield exploits, Mayor Cornelius F. Burns has made their bloodiest day of the world war an annual day of commemoration in the Collar City. September 29 “will be recognized as Troy Day in the World War, not only when the day dawns in 1919, but in every succeeding year, so long as memory shall last,” The Record reports. “The day will be an anniversary of sadness and distress. For, on that day in 1918, the blood of Troy’s best – and the word ‘ best’ is used advisedly – was spilled on the fields of France. Many of her noblest sons ‘ went west’ in pursuit of liberty – not liberty for themselves, for that they already had, but rather a liberty for millions of souls shackled and yoked by an iron-handed autocracy.” On September 29, the Troy-based 105 th U.S. Infantry regiment, part of the 27 th Division, stormed St. Quentin on the German Hindenburg Line along with Australian forces. Our reporter credits them with “accomplishing in six days what the British failed to accomplish in repeated efforts covering nearly four years.” Wounded survivors of the battle arrive in New York City today aboard the ocean liner Celtic. Lieutenant Edward L. Ryan tells our inter- viewer, “I tell you the Troy boys fought like traditional Trojans. They gave the old town a great reputation on the continent.”
The 105 th includes soldiers from Watervliet, among them Sergeant Frederick M. “Fritzie” Nold and Mechanic Hugh J. Mullin. “Mullin and I were in the same shell hole,” Nold says, “We were not there long, for the Red Cross service was amazing.”
Nold was wounded in one of his knees, while Mullin’s right shoulder was split by shrapnel. “If you have the space, say a good word for Bill Murphy of Watervliet,” Nold goes on, “He was the bravest man that came to my immediate attention. Too bad he was killed.”
“The twenty-ninth of September has passed, but the twenty-ninth of September will come and recur again and again,” Mayor Burns writes in his proclamation, “and so long as the years shall roll on and the memories of the world war will remain with us, just so long will Troy celebrate the day as sacred to the memory of her fighting men who on that day gave the ‘ last full measure of devotion.’
“Troy, mourning her dead, glories in their achievements. She gave of her best and to those homes bereft of father, husband or brother, all Troy extends a sympathy tempered by price – a pride in which the whole city shares.”