Word: 129th
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Like Colonel Harry Vaughan, the President's military aide, Ed McKim's friendship with Harry Truman began in uniform. They first became acquainted as members of Missouri's State Guard, and both were in France with the 129th Field Artillery, 35th Division, when Harry Truman became commander of Battery D. (At that time Ed McKim did not like his battery commander-thought him schoolteacherish and sissified; soon he would have "gone through hell...
World War I pulled him off the farm again. He went to France a lieutenant, became captain of the 129th Field Artillery's rough-&-tumble Battery D. He was shy, reserved, wore big shell-rimmed glasses: to his pugnacious Irish privates he looked like something of a milquetoast. At the start he was perhaps the most unpopular captain in France. But he led his men doggedly through St. Mihiel and the Argonne, spiked a panic when German artillery once drew a bead on his battery, lost only one soldier killed and one wounded, was promoted to major...