Hiram G Luhman - The County and the Kaiser

Private, 23rd Co, 6th Machine Gun Battalion, 4th U.S. Marine Brigade, 2nd Division.

Died June 19, 1918 of wounds received in action at Belleau Wood, France. Age 18.

Town: Oakfield (also Allentown, Pennsylvania; see text)

Burial: Greenwood Cemetery, Allentown, Pennsylvania

Hiram George Luhman was born on April 24, 1900, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Both the 1900 and 1910 federal censuses show him living in Allentown with his parents (Arthur and Metamora) and his sister (Harriet). The family moved to Oakfield (Genesee County), New York, in approximately 1913—“five years ago,” said the July 13, 1918 Batavia Daily News article reporting Private Luhman’s death. The same article states that the family lived on the second floor of the former Cary Seminary building in Oakfield; 1917’s Farm Journal Illustrated Directory of Genesee County also gives that location for the Luhmans. Hiram was well-known and popular in the community. Numerous articles in the Batavia Daily News between 1915 and 1917 mention him participating in various church and school activities—baseball player, school orchestra conductor, wireless demonstrator, club officer, and more. He also worked at Oakfield’s U.S. Gypsum mill in the summer of 1916 and in the electrical department at the company’s plant in Gypsum, Ohio in early 1917.

Luhman enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on April 25, 1917, the day after his 17th birthday and less than three weeks after the nation’s declaration of war on Germany. “When he left Oakfield, the same day he enlisted, the Oakfield High School students escorted him to the train,” reported the July 13, 1918 Batavia Daily News. “School was dismissed for an hour and the students formed in line and, carrying flags, marched to the West Shore station.”

Within two months Private Luhman had completed his training at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and had been assigned to 23rd Company, 5th Marines. In June, 1917, the 5th Marines, along with regular army troops of the 1st Division, constituted the first convoy of American Expeditionary Forces to leave the United States for the war in France. Luhman’s 2nd Battalion sailed from New York aboard USS Henderson on June 14, 1917, and dropped anchor at St. Nazaire, France, two weeks later, on June 27. By July 3, the entire regiment had disembarked and was camped on French soil. Later that year, the 5th Marines were joined by the 6th Marines, and together became the 4th Marine Brigade, one of two infantry brigades composing the Army’s 2nd Division. Luhman’s 23rd Company was detached from the 5th Regiment and became part of the marine brigade’s 6th Machine Gun Battalion.

Private Luhman was one of four Genesee County marines who died in the month-long fighting at Belleau Wood, northwest of Chateau-Thierry, in June, 1918. Two of those marines—Luhman and Robert Spencer—were members of 23rd Company, 6th Machine Gun Battalion.

On June 18, when Private Luhman received the mortal wounds from which he died the following day, the 4th Marine Brigade had been engaged in near-constant combat at Belleau Wood for over two weeks. For five days, beginning on June 1 when the marines entered the line, they had blocked the German army’s offensive towards Paris. Then they had gone on the attack, both taking and inflicting heavy casualties as they repeatedly assaulted entrenched German positions in and around the dense, brush-entangled, boulder-strewn woods. Positioned at the center of the brigade’s front, on the line north of Lucy le Bocage, Luhman’s 23rd Company was in the thick of it, supporting key attacks on the woods by the 5th and 6th Marine regiments. Day and night, the entire front was subject to heavy enemy shelling, sniper and machine-gun fire, gas attacks, and counterattacks.

By June 15, when the 3rd Division’s 7th Infantry was ordered to move immediately to temporarily relieve exhausted marines at Belleau Wood, the 4th Marine Brigade had taken more than 2,400 casualties, including at least 567 killed. Over the next three nights the 7th Infantry replaced the 5th and 6th Marine regiments in their positions at the front. The 6th Machine Gun Battalion, however, was kept on the line to support the 7th Infantry’s movements.

Luhman’s 23rd Company was finally relieved on June 20—the day after Private Luhman died of wounds sustained on the night of June 18. The marines returned to the front on June 23 and in a final assault two days later cleared the woods of German troops.

In a letter to Private Luhman’s parents published in the September 23, 1918 Batavia Daily News, 23rd Company’s Lieutenant H.D. Campbell wrote, “Your son passed through the battle of Bois Belleau and only a few days before we were relieved he was killed in a heavy artillery barrage. A chum of his named Slider was killed at the same time and his corporal was very severely wounded and is in the hospital now. There is not a single thing of your son’s that I can send you. I regret it very much, for I know you would prize the smallest thing.”

An account in a searcher’s report in Private Luhman’s Burial Case File, citing the 23rd Company Clerk as informant and signed by Edward F. O’Day (listed as a sergeant on the company roster in History of the Sixth Machine Gun Battalion), reads: “Pvt. Hiram G. Luhman, 108581, was killed in action while serving against the enemy, in the Bois de Belleau, near the town of Lucy le Bocage, Chateau Thierry Sector. He was wounded in the back and head by fragment of shell at 11 P.M. June 18th, sent to Hospital, died of wounds June 19th 1918. Date and place of burial unknown. No last words recorded.”

A statement in Private Luhman’s Service-Record Book in his OMPF reads simply, “Wounded in back and head by rifle grenade while in action against the enemy in the Chateau-Thierry sector on 18 June ‘18.”

In 1919, Oakfield’s World War veterans formed an American Legion post, naming it the Hiram G. Luhman Post in Private Luhman’s honor. Today’s Oakfield-Alabama American Legion Post 626 still bears his name.

Private Luhman’s remains were returned to the United States under military escort in July, 1921, and were interred on July 25 at Greenwood Cemetery in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

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

July 13, 1918 Batavia Daily News p1 c5-6, p2 c4

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September 23, 1918 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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Identity Tag in Hiram G Luhman Burial Case File, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Record Group 92, National Archives – St. Louis, Missouri