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Remembering Middleborough's First WWI Servicemen

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  • Remembering Middleborough's First WWI Servicemen

    REMEMBERING MIDDLEBOROUGH'S FIRST WWI SERVICEMEN

    Middleboro Gazette
    http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110526/PUB04/105260367
    May 27 2011
    MA

    Following the outbreak of war in Europe in the summer of 1914, in an
    effort to maintain the strictest neutrality, President Woodrow Wilson
    issued a proclamation August 4, 1914, barring American citizens from
    enlisting in the armed forces of the belligerent nations. The order was
    largely ignored. Men from across the country flocked to join foreign
    armed forces, including men from Middleborough. Demonstrating, indeed,
    that it truly was a world war, Middleborough men (many of foreign birth
    or with foreign-born parents) would early on enlist in the armies of
    Britain, Canada, France and Italy, flouting America's declared policy
    of neutrality and becoming the first local participants in the Great
    War some two and a half years before America's formal declaration of
    war against Germany and her allies.

    Regardless of which uniform they might don, these men shared one thing
    in common - an abiding belief in the honor and rightness of their
    cause. The numerous letters written by Middleborough men in foreign
    service nearly all indicate the common cause which they shared with
    their Middleborough friends and neighbors.

    James E. Jones, John McNeil and Earl F. Dempsey were among those
    Middleborough residents who enlisted with the British. Dempsey's
    story is reflective of that of the others. Enlisting in the British
    Army in July, 1915, he was transported to England aboard a horse ship.

    Originally a cavalryman in the 2d King Edward's Horse, he served in
    the trenches as a bombsman, machine gunner and signal man during the
    1915-16 campaigns after the command was dismounted when the futility
    of employing cavalry on the Western Front was realized. During
    the summer of 1916, the low point of the British experience in
    France, Dempsey served on special duties as a dispatch carrier,
    before rejoining his regiment. He was wounded at the Somme in 1917,
    following which he was trained as a gunner in the tank service. On
    September 28, 1918, he was again wounded, in the back and neck, by
    an exploding shell. The tank in which he was serving caught fire,
    and Dempsey badly burned. Nonetheless, he survived the war.

    Still other Middleborough men joined the Canadian forces. In 1915,
    fifteen-year-old Roger Keedwell left his home on Frank Street to
    enlist with the Canadian Army and served some ten months in the
    Canadian Grenadier Guards before his father was successful in having
    him discharged due to his age. He would later perish as a member of
    the American forces in the Argonne.

    Kenneth Cosseboom, whose father was a native of New Brunswick, also
    served with the Canadian Army. He enlisted in the fall of 1914 and
    shipped to France in March, 1915, with the rank of corporal. He served
    at the front the majority of the time. In 1916, he was awarded a medal
    for bravery in action and received an honorable mention several times.

    In March, 1918, he graduated from officers' training school in France,
    and was made a lieutenant and transferred to the 26th Battalion
    Canadian Infantry. He was engaged in training Canadian recruits up
    until October, 1918. He was wounded in the arm once, and was in the
    hospital for six months recuperating.

    Herbert M. Jones, like Cosseboom, saw action with the Canadian Army
    in France, as a member of a railway engineer company responsible for
    constructing and supplying supply rail lines.

    John A. P. Lacombe similarly saw service in France as a member of the
    Canadian Army and was wounded a number of times. He too recognized
    the common cause shared by Americans and Canadians alike. "I am not
    in the American army, but in the Canadian, but it is all the same
    these days and we are all fighting for the same cause."

    Still other Middleborough men enlisted with the French forces.

    Haroutune Haroutunian, an Armenian native, enlisted with a number of
    other local Armenians including Sarkis K. Afarian, Madirus Gochgarian,
    Dicran Baghdelian and Mihran Piranian, on August 3, 1917, in the French
    Army Legion d'Orient, anxious to serve in the front lines against
    Germany's Turkish ally to avenge the Armenian genocide which had been
    perpetrated by Ottoman Turkey. The Legion, created in November 1916,
    included some 2,000 Armenian Americans. In 1918, Haroutunian wrote his
    brother John, "We are ready to attack the Turkish army by orders from
    Gen. Allenby. We are very happy at the present time because we are
    seeing the surrender of our enemy from our motherland." Haroutunian
    gave voice to the local Armenian community's willingness to sacrifice
    when he wrote Lorenzo Wood on March 16, 1918, that "for humanity and
    justice, we will be ready for all happenings"¦"

    Six Middleborough residents not recognized on the town's honor roll,
    but two of whom would ultimately make the supreme sacrifice were the
    Merluccio brothers who departed Middleborough for their former homes
    in Italy where they enlisted in the Italian Army.

    Despite the fact that Middleborough men would join the forces of
    foreign nations, and might not always consider themselves firstly
    as Americans, they clearly recognized the mutual goals which they
    shared with native born Middleborough soldiers. The color of the
    uniform ultimately was irrelevant. Herbert M. Jones, then serving
    with the Canadians in England, succinctly wrote the President of the
    Middleborough Red Cross Association, emphasizing the common ideals
    shared by all.

    "¦We are all fighting for one common ideal freedom from militarism -
    an ideal that America has stood for and I hope will continue to stand
    for in the years to come"¦. As I go to France, I go as a comrade and
    brother in arms to my American brothers. I have worked with them and
    played with them and eaten with them. I'm glad to know that I am to
    fight in a just cause shoulder to shoulder with your best and bravest.

    Many of us will not come back. I only hope that we shall all die to
    some purpose"¦. Here's to the cause - God bless America and Americans
    and may they be worthy of their ancestors.


    From: Baghdasarian
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