Private First Class, Co A, 108th Infantry, 27th Division.
Killed in action near Hindenburg Line east of Ronssoy, France, September 29, 1918. Age 22.
Town: Batavia (also Orleans County and Erie County; see text)
Burial: Somme American Cemetery, Plot D Row 2 Grave 13, Bony, France
It’s uncertain whether Albert Beary ever actually lived in Genesee County, but for all practical purposes his home, or at least that of his young family while he was away as a soldier, was Batavia. His wife and the couple’s infant daughter lived in Batavia while Beary was in the service. Government-issued newspaper casualty reports of the time (see November 13, 1918 Utica Herald Dispatch) list Beary as from Batavia, as does Soldiers of the Great War. The NY Roll of Honor includes him under Erie County.
Albert Beary was born on January 2, 1896, in Albion (Orleans County), New York. He was the son of Catherine (often referred to as Kate) Beary. Albert Beary’s marriage registration record gives his father’s name as Joseph. Most sources list a brother, Frank, and a sister, Rose, while a document in Albert’s Burial Case File also lists a second brother, Joseph.
In 1916, when Albert Beary enlisted in Company A of the New York National Guard’s 74th Regiment in Buffalo, he gave his occupation as “iron-worker” and his residence as “B’way and Kennedy, Forks, NY,” which is a community in Cheektowaga (Erie County), New York, near Buffalo. Beary enlisted on June 27, 1916, at the height of an enlistment campaign to raise enough troops to send to the Mexican border to fight Pancho Villa’s raiders, and just three days after Buffalo’s massive “Preparedness Parade,” in which thousands lined downtown streets while guardsmen, home defense units and civic organizations marched in patriotic support of military readiness.
On July 5, 1916, eight days after he enlisted, the 74th left for Texas and served on the border until its return in late February, 1917. War on Germany was declared six weeks later, and in mid-July, all National Guard units were called into federal service. At the end of September, the 74th Regiment was sent to Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina, where it became part of the 27th Division’s 108th Infantry. On November 3, 1917, apparently while on leave, Albert Beary married Miss Louise Ward, daughter of John and Jane (sometimes listed as Jennie) Ward of 4 Hewitt Place in Batavia. “After a brief trip,” reads the wedding announcement in the November 3, 1917 Batavia Daily News, “the groom will return to Camp Wadsworth . . . and the bride will reside at the home of her parents for the present.”
On May 10, 1918, Beary’s Company A, along with the rest of the 108th Infantry’s 1st Battalion, left the United States for France from Newport News, Virginia, aboard HMS Kurtz. Albert Beary’s daughter, Alberta, was born later that summer; she was reported to be four months old in the November, 1918 newspaper reports of Albert’s death.
Private First Class Beary was one of at least 192 men of the 108th Infantry who died on September 29, 1918, in fierce combat that helped break the strongest point of the infamous Hindenburg Line, a complex of defenses including 30-foot-deep concrete bunkers, the St. Quentin canal and tunnel, miles of hidden passageways, and fortified trench systems fronted by fields of heavy twisted barbed wire.
Assigned the task of mopping up concealed machine-gun nests and enemy troops, and fighting 50 to 100 yards behind the lead assault wave through thick smoke and fog, the 108th’s 1st Battalion, including Company A, faced devastating machine-gun and rifle fire from all directions and a deadly enemy artillery counterbarrage of gas and high-explosive shells.
A searcher’s report in Albert Beary’s Burial Case File quotes an eyewitness account of his death from Private Carlton A Westfield, also of the 108th’s Company A. The report reads: “While advancing he was wounded by machine-gun bullets and shrapnels [sic] on different occasions. He was on his way back to a dressing station when hit in the stomach by a sniper. He died instantly. Hindenburg Line Sept. 29/1918.”
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† Possibly not a former or contemporaneous Genesee County resident, but with close family ties and/or evidence suggesting but not confirming residency. Listed on at least two previous countywide honor rolls.
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November 1, 1918 Batavia Daily News p6 c5
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November 2, 1918 Batavia Times p1 c5
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Source: New York Service Summary from Abstracts of World War I Military Service, 1917-1919, NY State Archives, Albany, New York
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Source: Burial Case Files, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Record Group 92, National Archives — St Louis, Missouri
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Source: Burial Case Files, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Record Group 92, National Archives — St Louis, Missouri
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Source: Burial Case Files, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Record Group 92, National Archives — St Louis, Missouri
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Albert Beary headstone, Somme American Cemetery, Plot D Row 2 Grave 13, Bony, France
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Albert Beary Sources:
– County Lists 1, 4
– Nov 3, 1917 BD p6 c4
– Nov 10, 1917 BT p2 c1
– Nov 1, 1918 BD p6 c5*
– Nov 2, 1918 BT p1 c5
– Nov 13, 1918 Utica Herald Dispatch p14 c4
– Nov 27, 1918 BD p2 c3
– New York, County Marriages, 1908 – 1935,” online index and images, FamilySearch.org; record entry No. 4110, (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XVPY-2QV), Joseph Beary in entry for Albert Beary and Louise Ward, 1917.
– History of Buffalo and Erie County 1914-1919, pp 37-40
– New York, 74th Infantry National Guard Enlistment Cards, 1889-1917 (Ancestry.com)
– NYSS
– Roll of Honor (NY State), p 38
– WWI database, American Battle Monuments Commission website (www.abmc.gov/search/wwi.php)
– Soldiers of the Great War, Vol. 2, p 326
– 27th Division, Summary of Operations in the World War, pp 13-26
– The Story of the 27th Division Vol. 1, pp 39, 146, 300-313, 328a
– The Story of the 27th Division, Vol. 2, pp 573, 1066, 1102
– BCF
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Click for Key to Source Abbreviations. See the Bibliography for complete title, author, and publisher information, with links to online access when available.