Many of the officers of the regiment were wounded.  The escape of many from death, considering the continuous fighting and unusual perils through which they passed, was miraculous.  The only officer who made the supreme sacrifice was Lieutenant George L. Giles of 3833 Calumet Avenue, Chicago.  He was the victim of a direct hit by a shell at Grandlut on November 1 while he was heroically getting his men into shelter.  Lieut.  Giles was very popular with the men and with his brother officers.  He was popular among the members of the race section in which he lived in Chicago, and was regarded as a young man of great promise.

One of the engagements of the first battalion that received more than honorable mention was on the morning of November 6th, when the battalion crossed the Hindenburg line and after extremely hard fighting captured on St. Pierre Mont, three 77 guns and two machine guns.  Captain James H. Smith of 3267 Vernon Avenue, Chicago, commanded the company, and Lieutenant Samuel S. Gordon of 3842 Prairie Avenue, Chicago, the assault forces making the capture.  The battalion continued across the Serre river and when the armistice was signed was at a small place in Belgium.

Several of the officers passed through practically all of the fighting with hardly a scratch, only to be taken ill at the finish and invalided home.  These men would have been greatly disappointed had the war continued after they were put out of action.  Conspicuous among them was Lieutenant Robert A. Ward of 3728 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, of the Trench Mortar platoon; Lieutenant Benjamin A. Browning of 4438 Prairie Avenue, Chicago, and Lieutenant Joseph R. Wheeler, 3013 Prairie Avenue, Chicago.

Major Rufus Stokes led the first battalion on the initial raid at Vauquois.  They fired 300 shells from six trench mortars and scored a notable success.  In that raid Private William Morris of Chicago, the only man in the regiment who was captured by the Germans, was taken.  He was reported missing at the time, but weeks later his picture was found among a group of prisoners portrayed in a German illustrated newspaper found in a captured dugout.

Three men were killed and a large number of others had a miraculous escape while entering Laon a few days prior to November 1st.  A German time mine exploded tearing up a section of railroad track, hurling the heavy rails into the air, where they spun around or flew like so many arrows.

First Lieutenant William J. Warfield, regimental supply officer, a Chicago man, won the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism in action near Ferme de la Riviere, September 28th.

Sergeant Norman Henry of the Machine Gun company, whose home is in Chicago, won the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism in action near Ferme de la Riviere, September 30th.

Other members of the regiment upon whom the D.S.C. was conferred by General Pershing were: