Robert S Spencer - The County and the Kaiser

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

Killed in action at Belleau Wood, France, June 10, 1918. Age 22.

Town: Batavia

Burial: Grand View Cemetery, Highland section, Batavia, Genesee County, New York

Robert Sherman Spencer was born on June 1, 1896, in Batavia (Genesee County), New York, and lived there all his life before enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1917. He was the youngest of two children of Herman A Spencer and wife Julia C nee Johnson Spencer. Robert’s brother, Edward, was eight years older. The 1905 NY State Census shows the family living at 33 Columbia Avenue in Batavia. By the 1910 US Census, they had moved to 133 Ross Street, the address given for the Spencers in most subsequent sources. According to the July 12, 1918 Batavia Daily News, Robert attended Batavia High School and worked for the grocery firm of Lowe & Susat at 132 Ross Street, which would’ve been across the street from the family’s residence. The same article says Spencer also worked for hardware man John Holley Bradish, and that his father was employed as a tinsmith by William G Maney, who in 1917’s Farm Journal Illustrated Directory of Genesee County is listed as a plumber. Robert Spencer’s occupation in the 1915 NY State Census is given as apprentice plumber.

On April 21, 1917, just 10 days before his twenty-first birthday and only 15 days after the United States declared war on Germany, Robert Spencer traveled to a recruiting station in Buffalo and applied for enlistment in the Marine Corps. At the time, according to his enlistment papers in his OMPF, he was working as a carpenter. Spencer was sent to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for training, where on April 30, 1917, he was officially enlisted. This is the same official enlistment date given for another fallen Genesee County marine, Hiram G Luhman. Though apparently the two men didn’t know one another at the time and signed up in Buffalo four days apart, their OMPF files give precisely the same date of oath in Philadelphia, the same date of assignment to the same unit (23rd Company, 5th Marines ) and the same overseas departure and arrival dates.

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. Spencer’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. The 23rd Company was detached from the 5th Marines and became part of the 4th Marine Brigade’s Sixth Machine Gun Battalion.

Private Spencer was one of four Genesee County marines, including fellow 23rd Company member Hiram G Luhman, who died in the month-long fighting at Belleau Wood in June, 1918.

The marines had been in constant combat since June 1, when the 2nd Division had helped stop the German advance on Paris and then, starting on June 6, launched a series of assaults against strong enemy positions in and around the dense, brush-entangled, boulder-strewn woods. The 6th Machine Gun Battalion 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.

Private Spencer was killed on June 10, the fifth day of the assaults, when the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines attacked northward toward the center of the Bois des Belleau between the towns of Lucy le Bocage and Bouresche. Guns from the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, including Spencer’s 23rd Company, were providing concentrated fire, despite heavy shelling all day from enemy artillery and minenwerfers (heavy trench mortars). In a letter to Private Spencer’s brother and sister-in-law published in the July 12, 1918 Batavia Daily News, 23rd Company’s Lieutenant H.D. Campbell, for whom Spencer served as an orderly, wrote of the soldier’s death: “It was during the big drive which the marines stopped and after our second attack we were held up by machine gun fire and dug in. The Germans were shelling us heavily and sent over a ‘Minewerfer,’ [sic] a large shell which you can not hear coming, which dropped in his trench killing himself and three others instantly . . . Bobby was laid to rest in the northeast corner of Bois de Belleau, near the town of Bouresches.”

The casualty reports in Private Spencer’s OMPF read, “Killed in action against the enemy on June 10th, 1918, at 6:45 P.M. by a shell fragment in the Belleau Woods, near the town of Lucy de Sabotage. Buried on June 10th, 1918, in the Belleau Woods, near the town of Lucy de Sabotage.” (Note that the actual town name was Lucy de Bocage, as stated in other documents in Spencer’s files.)

An article appearing in the March 2, 1918 Batavia Daily News, three months before the Belleau Wood fighting, reported a letter from Glenn Loomis, also a Batavia marine, in which he mentioned meeting three other Batavia marines in France, including Robert Spencer. Sadly, the two would come together again on September 1, 1921, when hundreds filed by their flag-draped caskets, recently arrived from France under military escort, during a memorial service at Batavia City Hall followed by a double funeral that afternoon.

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July 12, 1918 Batavia Daily News p1 c7

(article continued, p2 c2)

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September 1, 1921 Batavia Daily News p1 c7

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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