Private, Co C, 325th Infantry, 82nd Division.
Killed in action near Cornay, France, October 10, 1918. Age 27.
Town: Pembroke
Burial: Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, Plot E Row 33 Grave 5, Romagne, France
Walter Francis Owens was born in Ridgeway (Orleans County), New York, on December 7, 1890. The November 11, 1918 Batavia Daily News announcing his death gives Owens’s birth year as 1892, but the date of birth on his draft registration card and on 1917’s “Militia Enrollment List,” as well as the ages given in most censuses, confirm 1890 as the correct year.
Walter was the eldest of five children (sisters Mary J and Elva M, or Margaret; brothers John J and Edward J) of farmer John W Owens and wife Ellen Owens. The Owens family moved to East Pembroke (Genesee County) when Walter was about five years old. The 1900 US, 1905 NY and 1910 US censuses all show the family living in Pembroke, as does 1917’s Farm Journal Illustrated Directory of Genesee County. Walter apparently worked on his father’s farm until he was inducted. When he registered for the draft on June 5, 1917, he listed his occupation as farming and his employer as John Owens of Pembroke. Likewise, he gave “farmer” as his occupation and Pembroke as his residence on 1917’s Genesee County “Militia Enrollment List.”
Owens was among 107 men in Genesee County’s second draft contingent who were inducted into the Army in Batavia on September 25, 1917, and left the next day for Camp Dix, New Jersey, home of the newly formed 78th Division. Like most other members of Genesee County’s first two contingents, Owens was initially assigned to Battery D of the 307th Field Artillery. Two months later, he was transferred to the 82nd Division at Camp Gordon, Georgia, and assigned to Company C of that division’s 325th Infantry. The regiment left for overseas on April 25, 1918, and after a brief stay at rest camps in England, arrived in France in mid-May.
On September 24, following two months of training and a week-long offensive at St. Mihiel in mid-August in which it took more than 800 casualties, the 82nd Division was ordered to move to reserve positions west of Verdun to prepare for the Allies’ massive Meuse-Argonne offensive.
The offensive was launched at 5:30 a.m. on September 26, 1918, when the American First Army attacked north and west with nine divisions in line from the Meuse River on the east to the heavily wooded Argonne Forest on the west. Between them and their objective to the north—a vital German rail supply line extending east and west from Sedan—lay a series of forested ridges and ravines broken by open ground and high hills from which the enemy could observe advancing troops and direct machine-gun and artillery fire on them. On October 6, the 82nd Division was ordered into the fray.
The next day, the 82nd Division’s 327th and 328th Infantry attacked west into the Argonne Forest and north towards Cornay and a railway and high ground west of the village. For the next two days the troops battled for those objectives, eventually taking the village and high ground but later being driven back close to their original assault lines by an enemy counterattack.
On October 9, Owens’s 325th Infantry was ordered to relieve the battered 327th Infantry. The following day, when Private Owens was killed, the 325th Infantry renewed the attack at 7 a.m. from the eastern edge of the Argonne Forest, just southwest of Cornay. Company B and Owens’s Company C led the 1st Battalion’s assault wave north toward objectives west of Cornay and beyond. Owens was killed about two hours into the attack.
In a letter to Owens’s parents, regimental officer John Tyler wrote of Private Owens: “He had braved the terrible fighting of the Argonne and it was while taking the last two miles that he met death. He was hit by a highly explosive shell on October 10th, at 9 a.m. and received a burial on the field of battle, 1,100 yards due west of Coinay [sic], France.” A searcher’s report in Private Owens’s Burial Case File reads simply, “Killed on morning of October 10 about 1 kilometer North West of Cornay.”
The announcement of Private Owens’s death appeared in the Batavia Daily News on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918.
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November 11, 1918 Batavia Daily News p7 c1
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March 17, 1919 Batavia Daily News p5 c3
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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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Source: Burial Case Files, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Record Group 92, National Archives — St Louis, Missouri
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Walter F Owens headstone, Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, Plot E Row 33 Grave 5, Romagne, France
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Walter F Owens Sources:
– County Lists 1, 2, 3
– Sep 25, 1917 BD p1 c6-7, p2 c4
– Aug 30, 1918 BD p12 c1-2
– Nov 11, 1918 BD p7 c1*
– Nov 18, 1918 BD p7 c4
– Mar 17, 1919 BD p5 c3
– May 6, 1919 BD p7 c3
– Oct 10, 1922 BD p3 c3
– “United States Census, 1900.” Online index and images, HeritageQuest.com. Entries for John W Owens (head) and Walter F Owens (son, age 9), citing Census Records, Pembroke, Genesee, New York; sheet number 3, line numbers 46 and 48, microfilm series T623, Roll 1038, page 330.
– “New York State Census, 1905.” Online index and images, FamilySearch.org. Entry for Walter Owens, age 14, citing Census Records, Pembroke, E.D. 01, Genesee, New York; page number 15, line 10.
– “United States Census, 1910.” Online index and images, HeritageQuest.com. Entries for John W Owens (head) and Francis W Owens (son, age 19), citing Census Records, Pembroke, Genesee, New York; sheet number 2B, line numbers 58 and 60, microfilm series T624, Roll 951, page 290.
– Farm Journal Illustrated Directory of Genesee County (1917), p 246
– “Militia Enrollment List” (Genesee County, 1917), p O1
– NYSS
– Roll of Honor (NY State), p 65
– WWI database, American Battle Monuments Commission website (www.abmc.gov/search/wwi.php)
– World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 (Ancestry.com)
– 82d Division, Summary of Operations in the World War, pp 4-30
– Official History of 82nd Division American Expeditionary Forces, pp 38-50, 73-82
– 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.