My grandfather’s war — WWI — and how it haunted him

Sory of one Grandfather,

An Irishman, my grandfather was reticent to fight on the same side as the British Empire. Nonetheless, when President Woodrow Wilson called for volunteers, grandfather Langan joined the “78th Division, 309th Machine Gun Battalion, Company B, American Expeditionary Force in France” — a phrase that was among the first I learned to repeat as a child.

Grandfather’s 1918 U.S. Victory Medal reflects his experience fighting in the Argonne Forest, St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne, a battle historians consider “probably the bloodiest single battle in U.S. history” (117,000 U.S. casualties). As a machine gunner, PFC Langan was never able to total how many men he killed (“Many,” he always replied).

Grandfather was exactly the kind of front-line killer upon whom any army depends to prevail. For me, he recalled apart from machine gunning that he killed 14 men, some in hand-to-hand combat. Not for nothing was he called “Iron Mike.”

My grandfather’s war — WWI — and how it haunted him - Issues & Ideas - MiamiHerald.com