Sidney D. Light's WWI Diary, Postcards & Letters, 329th Battery Book Accounts

      The quaint, little old chimes on Pont-a-Mousson hall were tinkling eleven. Our business manager was calling our attention to the fact that only eleven sticks of wood were left for the leaky French stove. For the eleventh time that morning we were interrupted in our work by the bearer of eleventh hour "copy" for the Book. It was First Sergeant Price of Battery B, who, by the way, was promoted to his exalted post on the 11th of October.

        "Boys," quoth he, "I’ve hit upon a story!"

        "Out with it!" in chorus.

        "Well, I’m darned," said Price, "if our lucky number isn’t eleven!"

        We grinned superstitiously. "But seriously," he continued, "listen to this." And he went on to recount a chain of events which convinced us–superstition or no–that this must be the Eleventh Hour Regiment.

        We were in training just two days short of eleven months in the States. We entrained for Camp Mills, July 16th, 1918, at 11 a.m. On July 30th, at 11 a.m. we left Mills for Hoboken. At 11 a.m. the next morning we took our last (for a while) look at the Statue of Liberty. It took us just eleven days to cross the Atlantic and at 11 a.m. on the morning of August 11th we marched off the boat at Liverpool. Some even claim that there were eleven transports in the convoy.

        At any rate we landed in France at 11 a.m., August 14th; stayed at Messac just eleven days, left our next camp– Coetquidan–at 11 a.m. again, and arrived at the front in the eleventh hour of the fray– on the crest of the wave that crushed the Hun– and were there at the finish that came on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

        Any doubts as to our lucky number?

        And lest we forget–received our service stripes on the 11th day of February, and on the same day at the old, infallible 11 a.m. left the Pont-a-Mousson siding for home. Just twenty two months after our country entered the war.

        Oh, yes, and the old Leviathan snuggled in alongside of the dock at Hoboken at just 11 o’clock the morning of April 2nd, 1919.