The following summary is excerpted from:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FIGHTING YANKEE DIVISION A. E. F. ON THE BATTLEFRONT FEBRUARY 5, 1918 - NOVEMBER 11, 1918 BY JOHN NELSON. COPYRIGHT, 1919 BY THE WORCESTER GAZETTE COMPANY

The 26th was the first National Guard division, and, in fact, the first full division to arrive in France. . . . No other American division has seen so long and continuous service on the front.

None has sustained such a total of casualties, and, for that reason, none has had so many names on its rolls. . . nine months of incessant fighting, . . .

Back and forth across northern France the regiments were shunted, always promised rest but never getting it, for no campaign could begin without them. . . .

SHOCK TROOPS – THE SACRIFICE DIVISION.

They delivered the blow that sent the Hun reeling back from the salient, the apex of which was CHATEAU-THIERRY; they fought at ST. MIHIEL, where they were given the most difficult sector, and they fought in the bloodiest of battles, in front of METZ, and on the MEUSE, in the ARGONNE country and at Verdun; . . . near BELLEAU WOODS, the Division was the pivot of the attacking armies.

But the climax of war was reached between Bois d'Ormont and Bois Belleau where· a bombardment of indescribable ferocity raged for two days. The forward lines and gun positions were deluged with high explosives combined with gas. The ravines behind were filled with gas, and kept filled. The woods were literally hidden in the clouds of mud and dirt thrown up by high explosive shells.

There were Hellish frontal charges, in jungles of trees and barb wire entanglements, through hurricanes of shrapnel, into the muzzles of thousands of machine guns. Four days this continued. Each day won a mile. The cost was terrible. In those hideous hours the division lost thousands and thousands of men. Those others of whom neither shell nor bullet, grenade nor gas had taken toll were almost dead with fatigue and lack of sleep and intolerable nerve strain, and hunger and filth.

It was thus that the Yankee Division completed "doing its bit . . . 10,000 men lost in the very last days of the fighting; . . . When it left the United States every man was a volunteer. When hostilities ceased hardly 15 per cent of them remained"