The Tower at the Edge of the Wood

Night after night through heavy shellfire, Alpheus Appenheimer, a private with the 6th Machine Gun Battalion, 4th Brigade of Marines, hauled ammunition to front-line positions of his company with a 4-line mule-team and wagon during the fiercest fighting at Belleau Wood. ~~~ For years after the war, Alpheus hoped to return to Belleau Wood with his wife, America, to show her where he had served during those desperate days and nights in June, 1918, when a single brigade of Marines stood against the German drive on Paris. But the realities of raising a family on a small Illinois farm during the agricultural depression of the 1920s made a trip to France all but impossible, and it was not until seventy-five years after the war that the first member of Alpheus's family was able to make the pilgrimage to Belleau Wood for him.