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The result was the 165 th was cut off and subjected to machine gun and artillery fire on three sides. Only Donovan’s 165 th managed to reach its objective, the units on the left and right having been pushed back.
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The position was believed to be “lightly held” when in fact they were being faced by three German Divisions, including one of elite Prussian Guards. In France, at the river Ourcq, nicknamed by the Irish of the 165 th “the O’Rourke,” the 42 nd Division was ordered to cross the river and secure a ridge and farm on the other side. Donovan applied the same tough discipline to his men’s training as he had experienced himself as an athlete on the playing field of Columbia, training his men would come to appreciate on the battlefields of France. Francis Duffy, who himself would win fame and honor with the regiment. He was a popular choice with the mostly Irish American regiment, particularly their Chaplin, Fr. 69 th which had won glory in the American Civil War as part of the “Irish Brigade”. When the United States entered World War I, Donovan was called back to service and assigned as a Major to the 165 th regiment, the number given to the rechristened N.Y. With several friends, Donovan formed a National Guard company of cavalry that served when the Army was mobilized to hunt for Pancho Villa. Yet, Donovan was not a man to rest on his success his strong sense of duty and patriotism called him to seek an opportunity to serve his country. Francis Duffy, the most decorated chaplain in the history of the U.S. It was here he earned the nickname “ Wild Bill Donovan.” He returned to Buffalo, started a law practice, and married the daughter of the wealthiest man in Buffalo.
#Bill donovan professional
Donovan was a star quarterback of the Columbia football team in an age where amateur athletes were treated like today’s professional superstars. Young William Donovan continued the trend, attending Columbia University, where he would earn a law degree. While Donovan’s grandfather had worked shoveling grain in the holds of ships, his father had risen to the influential position of yardmaster for the local railroad. Yet, as typical of Irish immigrants, each generation was climbing the American dream’s long ladder.
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The grandson of immigrants from Skibbereen, Co Cork, he had literally been born on the wrong side of the tracks in Buffalo, New York. William “ Wild Bill” Donovan.Įven before the war, William Joseph Donovan was a hero of Horatio Alger proportions. While the regimental number had changed, the unit and the New York Irish would once again prove worthy of that title, and no one was more responsible for the regiments unequaled record in WW I than Col. It was the same New York 69 th that fifty years earlier, as a unit of the Irish Brigade, had been given the nickname of “the fighting 69th” as a tribute of respect by an enemy commander, Robert E. No unit in the Rainbow Division fought on more fronts, nor suffered more casualties, than the regiment that represented the green in that rainbow: the 165 th, the federal number assigned to the 69 th New York. No division had sacrificed more than the 42nd Division, nicknamed the “Rainbow Division,” as it had been formed from National Guard Units whose origins stretched across the country.
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America had been latecomers to the conflict but at a tremendous cost had tipped the scales in what had been a murderous stalemate.