Hollis Bean

Submitted by: Eric Bean great grandson

Hollis Bean born around 1888, Hollis Bean served in World War 1 with the the United States Army . The enlistment was in 1918 and the service was completed in 1917

 

Burlington Free Press and Times: Friday, January 24, 1919

Vermonters in Thick of Fighting

Men from Green Mountain State in 58th and 59th Regiments of Infantry Which Bore Brunt of Many Battles for Four Months

While columns of publicity have been given some of the regiments from the big cities and the Marines for their fighting in France, some of the Vermont contingents weren’t one bit behind them. Among the regiments which had a share in the hard work is the 59th Infantry, made up to a good extent of Vermonters who volunteered before the draft went into effect about a year ago. This regiment was cut up so that it has been filled and refilled out of other outfits until hardly an officer of the original regiment remains.

Earl Sheehan is back on a month’s furlough with one eye destroyed, and Hollis Bean went dot to Camp Devens yesterday with a big shrapnel wound in his shoulder. These are only two from this vicninti8y who were shot and are back. A lot of the men who went away last February will never come back. There are probably few regiments in the United States service which suffered more than the 59th.

It is impossible at this time to get anywhere near a complete list of the men who went down with the regiment in the practically unceasing fighting between July 19 and the time the armistice was signed on November 11. The regiment went in at Chateau Thierry and was on the line almost every minute until all the fighting ceased. Sometimes the regiment was so far ahead that food could not be brought for 48 hours at a time and the men slept practically every night with their clothes on all summer and into November because they were under constant orders to be ready to move at a minute’s notice.

…The regiment took its preliminary training at Camp Greene and was sent overseas in May. From then on they were near the front but not in the actual fighting until they entered the battle at Chateau Thierry on July 19. After that there was nothing but fighting.

Hollis Bean, whose leave expired yesterday, was wounded in the Argonne Forest when a piece of shrapnel struck him on the shoulder, almost tearing off a part of his head. Lawrence Langlois, also from Burlington, was beside him and helped to bind up the wound. Langlois has escaped being wounded, so far as is known. At the time he was shot, Bean states that the regiment had been in battle without rest for two weeks. He was shot early in October. How much longer the regiment stayed in the thick of the fray he does not know. About the same time he was wounded, Frank Donnelly, also from Burlington, was shot. Long before this the original officers of Company H, their company, had been cleaned out., the causalities including not only the commissioned officers but practically all of the non-commissioned as well.

The 58th Infantry, which contained about the same percentage of Vermonters, also was a heavy fighting regiment and suffered severely. It will be many weeks before anything like a complete list of casualties can be obtained for the men who were in the fighting know as little about the others as the people back home, and sometimes not as much.

Bean probably will regain the complete use of his arm. Sheehan was shot in the face so that it destroyed the sight in one eye. He has a month’s furlough in the city.