The Soldier in the Cemetery
by Bob Brail


            Every day scores of cars pass the Thomas Howell Cemetery at the corner of Highways D and 94 in St. Charles County.  Many of the drivers have probably wondered about the very unusual marker that dominates the small grave yard: a life-size soldier from a bygone era stands atop a large block of stone, holding his rifle at his side.  This marks the burial of Arch M. Bowman, a young farmer from Hamburg who was mortally wounded in the last few days of World War I.

            Arch Bowman was born on April 23, 1894, to Jasper and Christina Bowman, who farmed forty acres about a mile north of Hamburg, in what is now the Weldon Spring Conservation Area.  Jasper Bowman died when Arch was still a boy, so he quit school to help his mother, brother, and two sisters run the farm.  On April 28, 1918, just a few days past his twenty-fourth birthday, Bowman was inducted into the U. S. Army.    He became Private Arch Bowman, Serial Number 2,192,461 in Company A of the 356th Infantry Regiment, 178th Brigade, 89th Division.  

Arch Bowman

            Private Bowman and the 250 men of Company A trained at Camp Funston (now Fort Riley), Kansas, during the late spring of 1918.  They took the train to New York and sailed from there on the HMS Caronia for Liverpool, England, arriving June 17.  From there, Company A crossed England by train and then crossed the English Channel on June 21.  They then trained two months in northeastern France.  By Armistice Day on November 11, Bowman and Company had fought in one major battle in northeastern France, St. Mihiel, from September 12 to15, and then had been part of the Meuse-Argonne offensive in the same area of France from late September until the end of the war.  For one four-day period in mid-October, Company A was surrounded by the German army and survived on starvation rations and beech nuts before being rescued by their compatriots on October 22. 
           
            As the American forces advanced toward the border of Belgium in early November, Company A was down to eighty-one men, including Arch Bowman.  They, along with the rest of their regiment, spearheaded a four mile advance north from the village of Barricourt to the village of Nouar on November 3.  It was a day of intense combat, as Company A endured German planes, artillery, and machine gun fire.  At one point, a particularly deadly group of German machine guns stymied the advance.  A small group of soldiers from Company A crossed an open field and a stream to attack the guns.  It is possible, although not provable, that Arch Bowman was part of this group.

            The next day Company A fought northeast about five miles through the Dieulet Forest, approaching the heights over the Meuse River.  On November 5, they advanced a few more miles, clearing the Jaulney Forest of Germans, finally reaching the Meuse River at 5 PM.  



            On November 10, Company A crossed the Meuse River and occupied the small village of Pouilly.  It was during this action, that Arch Bowman was mortally wounded.  According to documents in his burial case record, Bowman was “missing in action” during the “action of crossing the Meuse River.”  When questioned after the event, no one in his company remembered seeing him during that action, so it is probable he was wounded early in the fight.  The official informant for this record was Fred Wanger, a Company A sergeant from St. Joseph, Missouri.  The information was gathered by the regimental chaplain, Rev. Darby.  On November 11, Bowman was classified “DWRIA,” Died of Wound Received In Action.  Documents describe his wound as a “large hole in both sides of skull.”  His death must have been instantaneous.

            Company A then advanced to the north, along the Meuse River, toward the town of Sedan.  The last American unit to be officially informed of the Armistice, the 156th Infantry Regiment, including Company A, continued fighting until well into the afternoon of November 11, several hours past the official end of World War I.

            On November 14, Arch Bowman was buried in an “isolated grave” in or near Pouilly, close to where he died on the battlefield.  He was laid to rest in his uniform, wrapped in burlap in a box, and his grave was marked with a simple cross.  Three months later, in February of 1919, his mother, Mrs. Tenia Bowman of Hamburg, wrote to the U. S. Army in France, requesting a picture of her son’s grave.  Her son’s body, however, would be disinterred on March 28 and reburied in the new Sedan American Cemetery in Ardennes in Grave #96, Sec #4, Plot #2.  

            By the fall of 1920, Mrs. Bowman had initiated the process to have her son’s remains returned to Hamburg for burial.  Bowman’s body was again disinterred on January 11, 1921, and sent to Calais, where it was shipped to America on February 27.  About two weeks later, it arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey, and from there was sent by rail to Louisville, Kentucky, on April 6, along with several dozen remains of other soldiers whose families had requested reburial in the United States.  Then it went by an Missouri-Kansas-Texas train to St. Louis, and finally St. Charles. 

            Escorted by an Army private, Bowman’s body arrived at 10 AM on Sunday, April 10.  It was met by members of St. Charles American Legion Post 312, which was responsible for the funeral arrangements.  Then Bowman’s body was escorted by train to the Hamburg train station, now in the Weldon Spring Conservation Area.  At 1 PM the body arrived at the home Mrs. Christina Bowman.  From there an honor guard consisting of one hundred members of American Legion posts from St. Charles, Augusta, Wentzville, and St. Peters, along with the St. Charles Military Band, accompanied Bowman’s body for a one-mile march down the Marthasville Road (Highway 94) to the church in Hamburg.    At 2 PM, Rev. Edward C. Brink officiated at Bowman’s funeral.  The body was then escorted back up the Marthasville Road, past the Bowman house, to the Thomas Howell Cemetery, where Arch Bowman was laid to rest according to military regulations.  The large gravestone topped with the life-sized statue of the World War I soldier, which is still so noticeable today, marked Arch Bowman’s burial.  The monument was designed and carved by Frank Waye of the Waye Marble Works in St. Charles.

Arch Bowman's Grave Marker

            According to articles in both the St. Charles Banner-News and the St. Charles Cosmos-Monitor, Bowman was wounded November 12, the day after Armistice Day.  It is unclear where this misinformation originated.  The greater mistake, however, was the death date on his tombstone: November 17, 1918.  In fact, many of the later documents in his burial case record use this incorrect date of death.  This mistake apparently was a simple clerical error.  The earlier documents in the burial case record that describe his death and burial clearly state he was wounded on November 10, declared dead on November 11, and buried on November 14.  The earliest record of his death is dated November 17, and this is probably where the error occurred.  A clerk simply misread the date, recorded the wrong date on a document, and every clerk that followed also used the wrong date.

            The incorrect date of his wounding may have been the seed that grew into the local legend that Arch Bowman was the last American to be killed in World War I.  While it is true that over 300 Americans were killed in combat on Armistice Day and many more were seriously wounded, it is clear from the Company A history that its soldiers were not involved in fighting later than November 11.  It is also a fact that mortally wounded American soldiers survived into December, long after Bowman had died.  Although the legend makes a good story, it is untrue. 

            Private Arch M. Bowman died an American hero, one of 53,000 American combat deaths in World War I.  His very unusual and highly visible gravestone, at the corner of Highways 94 and D, serves as a visual reminder to us all that the freedom we enjoy has been bought with the lives of others.

OTHER BOONE-DUDEN AREA SOLDIERS WHO DIED IN WORLD WAR I:
            Killed in action:            Harry Haferkamp          Augusta
                                                Arnold Niederjohann     New Melle
                                                Louis Siedentop           Weldon Spring
                                                William Galloway         Hopewell
            Died from disease:     Fritz Haverkamp           Augusta
                                                Wm. Schuettenberg      Augusta
                                                Arthur Fischer              Augusta
                                                Ross L. Fulkerson        Defiance
                                                Arthur Gutermuth         Weldon Spring
                                                Ben Luetkemeyer         Augusta
                                                Isadore Weber             Cottleville
                                                Otto Wessler               Femme Osage

Sources: Small Glories (Dr. Dan Brown); Burial Case Record File 63912, NARA, St. Louis, MO; Company “A,” 356th Infantry, 1917-1940 (http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm/ref/collection/wwiuh /id/4693); Daily St. Charles Cosmos-Monitor (access.newspaperarchive.com); Yanks: the Epic Story of the American Army in World War I (John Eisenhower); Federal Censuses; War Graves for World War I Dead on the Western Front (http://www.greatwar.co.uk/article/ww1-war-graves); Historical Articles of St. Charles, Missouri (Edna McElhiney Olson); History of Company “A”, 356th Infantry, 89th Div., National Army (http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/ 89thdivision/1bat89-coa.htm);  The Doughboys: America and the First World War (Gary Mead); Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour (Joseph Persico); St. Charles County in the World War, 1917-1920 (St. Charles Genealogical Society); Soldiers’ Records: War of 1812 – World War I (http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/soldiers/); Wikipedia.