The lost battalion was a United States Army infantry in world war one, and it was lead by Major Charles White Whitlesley. The battalion was sent to the Argonne region near the town of Binarvill, they were fighting in the style of trench warfare with machine gun fire coming against them in bursts of four hundred to six hundred rounds per minute, along with mortar artillery units that fired giant shells at them from long distances from the German side making charges across the no mans land to be nearly impossible to cross effectively and gain the opponents trench. But still they slowly moved up against these harsh fighting conditions, sleeping in the trenches that they conquered as they moved along.
After two days the team had went from a two hundred and five man battalion to just down to one hundred and forty four. They had pressed far forward and were moving into deeper and denser forest with German snipers hidden around. They set up camp in these forests and finally, after two days, they received their rations of food and water, but the Germans noticed that they were distracted eating and decided to launch cannon fire against them while they had their defenses down.
The battalion soon found out that their flank, that was supposed to be covered by the French, was left open and then taken by the Germans, meaning that the 308th infantry was surrounded by the German forces. And since they were surrounded their runner wire, which was their main source of communication, was cut by the Germans. The Battalion was trapped and tried their only source of communication left, carrier pigeons.
One of the messages that Major Whittlesley sent said
"Our line of communication with the rear still cut at 12:30 p.m. by machine guns. We are going to clean out one of these guns now. From a wounded German officer prisoner, we learned that there is a German Company of 70 men operating in our rear, to close up the gap we made yesterday. We can of course clean up this country to the rear, by working our companies over the ground we charged. But we understand our mission is to advance, and to maintain our strength here. It is very slow trying to clean up this rear area from here by small details when this trickling back of machine guns can be used by the enemy. Can a line of communication not be kept open from the rear? We have been unable to send back detail for rations and ammunition, both of which we need very badly."
Later they were being bombarded by artillery and they noticed it was their own, so major willetsley sent out his last carrier pigeon with a message reading
"We are along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven's sake, stop it."
As the bird flew away with the message a German machine gun hit it, but it amazingly made it back to headquarters with the message.
Finaly on day 6 the battalion was found and reinforcements arrived to help get them out, soon after they were out Major Whittlesley was awarded the Medal of Honor.
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