Dartmouth College - Aegis Yearbook (Hanover, NH)

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Joseph Welch Emery, Jr. f Joe,'l Born January 12, 1.896-Died July 18, 1918. OE came out of Quincy, Illinois, and entered Dartmouth after having prepared at the high school in his home town. It is extremely easy to recall his gaunt frame and fighting face as he tore down the football field when covering a punt. Most of us remember him as a fighter of the first water whether it was on the football team or whether he was found in the thick of some Class scrap. For two years he was vice president of our Class which served as only an inadequate compliment to his natural inspirationlas a leader. True to type, Joe was one of the very first to leave the campus and volunteer for service after war had been declared. He en- listed-at Plattsburg on the 15th of May, and was commissioned as Second Lieutenant on the 15th of August. Again the lighting instinct which had won admiration carried him to the Regular Army where he was certain to see immediate and active service. On the 6th of September, 1917, he sailed for France with the 9th Infantry after having joined that regiment at Syracuse, New York. After landing at St. Nazaire he was sent to school at Sommercourt and later to Gondrecourt for special training in signal work. Then on the 19th of March, 1918, the 9th Infantry left for the Front, and Joe was with it. He saw plenty of action up to the middle of July when the 1st and 2nd Divisions were ordered to join the 1oth Army under the command of General Mangin in the region of Bois de Retz. Early in the morning of July 18th the artillery started to lay its barrage before the 9th Infantry near the town of Vierzy in the Soissons Offensive. At 4: 40 a.m. the 2nd Division went over the top with Joe Emery in command of Company C of the 9th-a post to which he had just been assigned. .A machine gun bullet killed him instantly in the middle of the attack, and a French artillery officer buried him where he lay. After the Armistice, however, he was re-buried in the American Cemetery at Vierzy.

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JOE

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20 THE CLASS OF NINETEEN SEVENTEEN Here are two very characteristic sidelights on Joe. The first are some excerpts from a letter written by him shortly after the attack at Vaux on July 3, 1918, which, as a matter of fact, was only two weeks before he was killed. ' For the first time I went over in a real attack, and 10023 of me is still here to tell about it .... VVaiting for the zero hour was something like ' ' ll h ' waiting for the Princeton game to start, except we kept busy a t e time. . . . I n't think of much more to say about the affair. The success was ca complete and every detail went right. VVe ruined two of their battalions d the counter attack which is supposed to come within a couple of hours an , after the attack, didn't come until morning. . . . I'll say that this Ameri- can Army, and especially the Old Second Division, is some outfit. ' That is .I oe talking just as sure as you are a foot high. Then an officer of Joe's own regiment wrote a long letter from a hospital bed where he was recovering from a serious wound received in the same attack. Joe was m al. There was no finer officer in the regiment. I was de- Y P voted to him. He was efficient, brave and strong. He was tireless in action, and he was my bunkie on many of the cold nights. . . . Joe Emery was my friend and associate. Might I only have done something to have pre- vented his loss. And here is the official story- F' L' t nt Jose h W. Emery, Jr., QDeceasedj, 9th Infantry. 1I'St 1611 C113 P 7 8 J l 1 18. While For extraordinary heroism near I ierzy, France, 1 u y, 9 attached to the regimental P.C. in the rear, Lieutenant Emery voluntarily joined the assaulting battalion as a platoon leader in a company which was short of ofhcers. When desperate hostile resistance was encountered at the outset of the attack and all other officers were casualties, he took com mand of the company and courageously led his 'men in overcoming enemy Wh'l shin an enemy position at the head of his machine gun nests. 1 e ru g men, this gallant officer was killed. Thus was the Distinguished Service Cross awarded posthu mously to Joe Emery-a sportsman, a Dartmouth man, and a hero.