Read details of Battle of Seicheprey

Back in 1990, a graduate student at Central Connecticut State University, Francis Coan, wrote a thesis that told the story of the Bristol men who headed off to the trenches in France as part of the legendary Yankee Division.
Now a history professor at Tunxis Community College, Coan generously agreed to let me post here the section of his thesis that told the story of the battle of Seicheprey in April 1918, where eight Bristol soldiers died and many others were injured.
Thanks to some sort of glitch with my fax machine, it comes in two PDFs, which you can read online or print off (FYI: the cover page repeats at the beginning of part 2, but it is, in fact, the second half of the Seicheprey section of the paper).

Here's Part 1 of the story of the battle of Seicheprey and

Here's Part 2 of the story of the battle of Seicheprey

There's a ceremony at 11 a.m. Saturday at the World War I memorial on Memorial Boulevard to honor the Bristol troops who lost their lives in that bloody battle. Try to go if you can. There's also a display at the Bristol Historical Society afterward that's well worth seeing.
By the way, if there's an interest, I'll try to post the rest of the thesis another time.
Thank you to Fran for his willingness to share the paper with everyone and to Jack Denehy at the Bristol Military Museum for letting me borrow his copy.
I should also mention that Lori DeFillippi deserves much of the credit for pulling together the ceremony to honor the 90th anniversary of that terrible battle. She's got a passion for history and for honoring the men and women who devoted so much for their country.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Cold words from McCain ancestor

On the evening of May 2, 1918, a distant uncle of today's Republican presidential candidate John McCain sent a telegram from the nation's capital to Bristol builder Michael O'Sullivan.
The telegram, from Major Gen. Henry Pickney McCain, the adjutant general of the Army, didn't say a whole lot and yet it said entirely too much.
"Deeply regret to inform you that Private William O'Sullivan, infantry, is officially reported as killed in action April twentieth," it said. The military didn't even pay the few cents to put the sender's full name. It just said "McCain, adjutant."
For the 26-year-old soldier's family, the cold, impersonal news came as a shock, though by then they knew that O'Sullivan's unit in the Yankee Division had been in the thick of a terrible battle at the village of Seicheprey in France.
The following day, The Bristol Press reported that O'Sullivan was "killed in action" along with other city soldiers from Company D of the 1st Connecticut National Guard Regiment.
The funeral mass was held at St. Matthew's Church for the deceased soldier and the city slowly came to learn the somber news that eight Bristol military men had perished at Seicheprey, one of the first battles between Americans and the Germans along the bloody trench lines that separated the competing armies in northern France.
Men in O'Sullivan's unit assumed he was dead, said Bob Kelly, whose grandmother was O'Sullivan's sister, because they found the lower half a body wearing his hip waders on the battlefield.
What nobody in O'Sullivan's family knew is that he wasn't really dead. He was, instead, sitting in a prisoner of war camp in Germany, destined to return home and live another 18 years in Bristol.
He had loaned his unique clothing to someone else that morning, Kelly said, but nobody knew that until he returned to tell the story.
In June, O'Sullivan sent a postcard home with "a few lines to let you know that I am allright" through the Red Cross. He asked his family to send him a lockable box, rice, beans, cheese and crackers.
But it took time for the postcard to find its way across the war-torn continent and the Atlantic Ocean to reach its destination.
One of O'Sullivan's cousins, Bill Haller of Unionville, who was also fighting in France, sent a letter to the family in Bristol in August telling them that "Bill is not dead" and was actually taken prisoner.
He said in the letter that the chaplain who buried the American dead at Seicheprey knew "every man killed in that battle" and was certain O'Sullivan was not among the corpses he helped put in the ground after the fighting ceased.
That letter, too, took a long time to reach Bristol.
It wasn't until October, just a month before the war ended and six months after Seicheprey, that the family received Haller's letter stating that O'Sullivan was alive, the first indication that their mourning had been unnecessary..
In short order, they also got O'Sullivan's postcards and a formal note from the French government informing them that O'Sullivan was listed among the prisoners held by the Germans.
One can only imagine the jubilation in the O'Sullivan home at the news.
There is a ceremony at 11 a.m. Saturday at the World War I memorial on Memorial Boulevard to honor the eight city soldiers who died at Seicheprey, the most deadly battle for Bristol's military in any war.
Following the ceremony, the Bristol Military Museum, now housed with the Bristol Historical Society on Summer Street, will be open. It has uniforms, weapons, pictures, letters and much more that showcase the sacrifices made by the men who fought at Seicheprey.
Thanks to the generosity of Kelly, a retired teacher, the telegram, postcards, letters and pictures about O'Sullivan will also be on display.

Check back later Friday for a complete account of the battle of Seicheprey from a Tunxis Community College history professor's thesis.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com