Arthur L Calkins

Corporal, Co I, 107th Infantry, 27th Division.

Died October 10, 1918 of wounds received in action near Hindenburg Line east of Ronssoy, France. Age 23.

Town:  Batavia (also Erie County and New York City; see text)

Burial: Somme American Cemetery, Plot A Row 26 Grave 8, Bony, France

 

Arthur L Calkins was born in North Tonawanda (Erie County), New York, on October 9, 1895, but lived in Batavia (Genesee County) for more than 10 years, after moving there with his parents at the age of 11. The 1910 US Census lists him at age 14 living with his family (father, Charles A; mother, Ellen A, listed as Ella; and sister, Florence J) at 158 Bank Street. Calkins graduated from Batavia High School in 1915 and was a student at New York University’s School of Commerce when he enlisted in the 7th NY Infantry (National Guard) in May, 1917; the 7th later became part of the 27th’s Division’s 107th Infantry regiment. Because he was living in New York City at the time he joined the service, Calkins is listed in the NY Roll of Honor as a New York City soldier.

According to History of the 107th Infantry, Corporal Calkins was wounded September 29, 1918, during the 27th Division’s assault on the Hindenburg Line, and died 11 days later. On the same day in that attack, seven other Genesee County members of the 27th were killed and two others also received wounds from which they later died.

At 5:50 a.m. on September 29, the 107th (and 108th) Infantry attacked over open ground, well behind a massive Allied artillery barrage. Calkins’s 3rd Battalion, jumping off east of Ronssoy from a position near Duncan Post, was to take Guillemont Farm, an enemy stronghold bristling with machine gun nests. Enemy machine gunners between the barrage and the assaulting battalion immediately opened up a heavy fire, joined by a German artillery counterbarrage.

A first-hand account of Company I’s part in the assault, written by Sergeant Floyd S Neely, who was with Calkins at the time, appears in the “Company I” chapter of History of the 107th Infantry. It provides a vivid description of the fighting in which Calkins received his mortal wound. “We were well over the first rise before the counter barrage came down,” wrote Neely. “A few shells struck near enough to cause casualties. I was on the extreme left of the company with Corporal Calkins’ squad. . . . Shells now begin to break around the line. . . . The fire is hotter from the left as we go up the slope into the farm. . . . Suddenly one of my sergeants goes down, then another. The Lewis gun squad [this was Corporal Calkins’s squad] is all gone except Tuthill and Van Peer. . . . A perfect deluge of fire now from the left front. The air is full of sizzling red-hot things—millions of bees are buzzing in our ears. . . . There were only a few left on our end of the line now. . . .”

An initial report in the November 2, 1918 Batavia Times said that Calkins had a “slight wound in the forehead.” Calkins’s listing in New York University’s Clinton Mindil Collection, a compilation of students and faculty who served in World War One, says that he was “wounded in action by bullet” and “Died at Rouen from wounds received in action, October 10, 1918.” All documents in Calkins’s Burial Case file also give October 10 as his date of death, indicating that he died of wounds received in action.

On October 24, 1918, two weeks after Corporal Calkins had died but before official notifications of his death had been released, the Batavia Daily News printed portions of a letter his sister had just received from him. “One thing certain,” Calkins wrote, “we would like to get home and see our friends and loved ones again, but our first desire is to clean up the Jerries, so that we won’t have to do it all over again a few years from now.”

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November 7, 1918 Batavia Daily News p1 c6

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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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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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Arthur L Calkins headstone, Somme American Cemetery, Plot A Row 26 Grave 8, Bony, France

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Arthur L Calkins Sources:

– County Lists 1, 4; also BHR

– May 9, 1917 BD p6 c5

– Oct 24, 1918 BD p7 c6

– Nov 2, 1918 BT p2 c2

– Nov 7, 1918 BD p1 c6*

– Nov 9, 1918 BT p2 c1

The Batavian 1915 [Batavia High School yearbook], p13

– “United States Census, 1910.” Online index and images, HeritageQuest.com. Entries for Charles A Calkins (head) and Arthur L Calkins (son, age 14), citing Census Records, Batavia, Genesee, New York; sheet number 9, line numbers 23 and 26, microfilm series T624, Roll 951, page 103.

– NYSS

Roll of Honor (NY State), p 205

– WWI database, American Battle Monuments Commission website (www.abmc.gov/search/wwi.php)

History of the 107th Infantry U.S.A, pp 75, 374-79, 500

27th Division, Summary of Operations in the World War, pp 13-26

The Story of the 27th Division, Vol. 1, pp 300-17

The Story of the 27th Division Vol. 2, p 1068, p 1102

– Email correspondence April 29, 2013 with Claire Wolford, Graduate Assistant, New York University Archives, New York, NY re: Arthur L. Calkins listing in “Clinton Mindil Collection on NYU Alumni in World War I (MC 68).” (See website “Guide to the Clinton Mindil Collection”; http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/archives/mindil/)

– 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.