Albert W Bell - The County and the Kaiser

Private, Co D, 110th Infantry, 28th Division.

Killed in action near Varennes, France, September 26, 1918. Age 24.

Town: Darien (Also Erie County; see text)

Burial: Evergreen Hill Cemetery, Corfu, Genesee County, New York

Albert W Bell was born on February 7, 1894 in Lodi (Seneca County), New York. He was the eldest son of George G Bell and Mary nee Covert Bell. The 1900 US Census shows Albert at age 6 living with his parents and two younger brothers, Frank and Clarence, in Lodi. Sometime between then and about 1904, the Bells relocated to Wyoming County, and a while later to Genesee County. A July 18, 1921 Batavia Daily News article datelined Corfu reported that the Bells “had lived at Wyoming, East Bethany and West Batavia before coming here about six years ago.” Articles in the Batavia Daily News published in 1907 and 1908 include Albert Bell among students at Bergen High School. The 1910 US Census shows the family in Bethany with five more sons (Floyd, Harry, John, Edward, and Pierson) and Alzina Covert, Albert’s maternal grandmother. At the time of the 1915 NY Census, when Albert was 21 years old, the Bells were living on Fargo Road in Darien and had an additional child, two-year-old Alice May.

When Albert Bell registered for the draft on June 5, 1917 at age 23, he was living in Buffalo (Erie County) and working as a railroad conductor. He also gave a Buffalo address when he enlisted in the regular army a few weeks later, on July 25, 1917. This explains why he is listed as an Erie County soldier in the NY Roll of Honor.

According to his NYSS, Private Bell was initially assigned to the 49th Infantry, which was based at Camp Syracuse, a recruit training center established in July 1917 on the New York State Fairgrounds. The August 28, 1917 Batavia Daily News reported that Bell’s parents had been called to the camp “owing to the illness of their son, Albert.” The article continued, “He will no doubt be discharged owing to a physical disability which has developed since he began training.” Apparently Bell had surgery, however, and soon recovered. The next month, he and the rest of the 49th Infantry were moved to Camp Merritt, in Tenafly, New Jersey, for further training. Ten months later, in late July 1918, the 49th sailed to France, where it was attached to the 83rd Division, designated as a “depot” or replacements division.

On September 12, 1918, Private Albert W Bell was transferred to Company D of the 28th Division’s embattled 110th Infantry, which according to 28th Division Summary of Operations had taken over 2,000 casualties, including nearly 500 killed, since its arrival in France in May.

Private Bell was killed just two weeks after his transfer, on September 26, the opening day of the Allies’ massive Meuse-Argonne Offensive. At 5:30 a.m. after a three-hour artillery barrage on enemy positions, the 110th’s 1st Battalion, including Bell’s Company D, led the attack on the division’s right, advancing along the west bank of the Aire River behind a rolling barrage, toward the towns of Boureuilles and Varennes. “The ground over which the men advanced was most difficult,” reads The History of the 110th Infantry. “The Germans had held this position for four years and had fortified it as well as their military genius could make it. Great strips of ground for two and three hundred meters in width would be interlaced with wire entanglements, which it was necessary for the American soldiers to cut or cross. Trench after trench carefully manned by machine guns was encountered. . . The roads and fields were dotted with shell holes . . . The morning was foggy and at times the men could scarcely see fifty feet in front of them.” Despite the conditions and ferocious resistance, the regiment took both towns and reached its objective by midafternoon.

Although his NYSS and all other official documents say that he was killed in action, Private Bell was officially listed as missing in action until well after the war. A June 7, 1919 Batavia Daily News article reported that “the fate of Albert W. Bell, son of Mr. and Mrs. George Bell of Fargo, remains unsolved although the American Red Cross has replied to a query from the parents that the young man is dead.” Likewise, his casualty listing in The History of the 110th Infantry, published in 1920, reads “Missing Sept. 26, ’18.” This is puzzling, because a document in Bell’s Burial Case File clearly dated June 6, 1919, shows that on May 5 of that year he was disinterred from a military cemetery near Apremont and reinterred the same day at the Argonne American Cemetery in Romagne, France.

Perhaps significantly, another document in Albert’s Burial Case File says that he was killed on October 4, 1918, eight days after the date given by other sources. On October 4 the 110th Infantry launched an attack near Apremont across the Aire River against heavy resistance, so it is possible that Private Bell was indeed killed then. But because all other official sources give September 26, 1918 as the day he was killed, that is the date used here.

In July, 1921, Private Albert W Bell’s remains were returned to the United States under military escort and interred at Evergreen Hill Cemetery in Corfu.

(Note: For unknown reasons Albert W Bell was not included in any of the four previously published countywide honor rolls on which this project, completed in 2015, was based. His name was later found, however, on an honor roll plaque for the Genesee County Memorial Hospital, originally dedicated in 1951. That list contains some errors and omissions, but research confirmed Albert Bell’s rightful place on the Genesee County Honor Roll and was added to this project in April, 2017.)

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—— [CLICK ON DOCUMENTS TO OPEN FULL VIEW IN SEPARATE TAB] ——

June 7, 1919 Batavia Daily News p7 c3-4

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July 18, 1921 Batavia Daily News p7 c3

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July 25, 1921 Batavia Daily News p7 c2

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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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