Чарльз Уайтс Уиттлси: Трагедия героя «Потерянного батальона»

United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Charles White Whittlesey (January 20, 1884 – November 26, 1921) was a United States Army Medal of Honor recipient who led the Lost Battalion in the Meuse–Argonne offensive during World War I. He committed suicide by drowning when he jumped from a ship en route to Havana on November 26, 1921, at age 37.

Charles White Whittlesey was born in Florence, Wisconsin, where his father worked as a logger, and he attended school in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He moved with his family in 1894 to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he graduated from Pittsfield High School in the class of 1901. He enrolled at Williams College, where he was a member of St. Anthony Hall, graduating in 1905. He was voted the "third brightest man" in his class, and because of his aristocratic manner was nicknamed "Count." He earned a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1908. Soon after graduating, he formed a law partnership with his Williams classmate J. Bayard Pruyn in New York City. Influenced by his friend and roommate at Williams, Max Eastman, Whittlesey spent several years as a member of the American Socialist Party before resigning his membership in disgust over what he viewed as the movement's increasing extremism.

Whittlesey received a battlefield promotion to lieutenant colonel and returned to the United States as a war hero, receiving on December 6, 1918, one of the first three Medals of Honor awarded for valor in the war. (One of the other two went to his second in command, George G. McMurtry.) The story of the Lost Battalion was one of the most talked about events of World War I. In 1919, the events were made into a film in which Whittlesey was featured. He tried to return to his career, working as a lawyer at the Wall Street firm of White & Case, but found himself in constant demand for speeches, parades, and honorary degrees. The pressure wore on him; he said to a friend: "Not a day goes by but I hear from some of my old outfit, usually about some sorrow or misfortune. I cannot bear it much more."

In November 1921, Whittlesey acted as a pallbearer at the burial of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, along with fellow Medal of Honor recipients Samuel Woodfill and Alvin York. A few days later he booked passage from New York to Havana aboard the , a United Fruit Company ship. On November 26, 1921, his first night out of New York, he dined with the captain and left the smoking room at 11:15 p. m. stating he was retiring for the evening and it was noted by the captain that he was in good spirits. Whittlesey was never seen again and committed suicide by jumping overboard; his body was never recovered. Before leaving New York, he prepared a will leaving his property to his mother. He also left a series of letters in his cabin addressed to relatives and friends. The letters were addressed to his parents, his brothers Elisha and Melzar, his uncle Granville Whittlesey, and to his friends George McMurtry, J. Bayard Pruyn, Robert Forsyth Little and Herman Livingston Jr. Whittlesey's suicide was front page news although those close to him were not surprised. In his eulogy at Whittlesey's funeral, Colonel Averill, the 308th's commander, said Whittlesey's death "was in reality a battle casualty and that he met his end as much in the line of duty as if he had fallen by a German bullet."

Whittlesey's cenotaph is in a cemetery in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It notes that his body was never recovered. In 1948, the Charles White Whittlesey Room was dedicated at New York City's Williams Club.

In 2001, U. S. television channel A&E made a television movie called The Lost Battalion based on accounts of the battle. In that portrayal Whittlesey was played by Rick Schroder. In 2020, the novel Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey by Kathleen Rooney was released. In 2021 the songs Sabaton eg. The lost batalion.