129th Field Artillery Regiment

The 129th Field Artillery was a Missouri Guard regiment whose transformation from a state artillery unit into a deployed formation in France is closely connected in the narrative to Harry S. Truman’s rise as an officer. He helped organize a battery, was elected a lieutenant, and eventually commanded Battery D. Under his leadership, the battery became known not just for its field performance but for the care and speed with which it prepared to move to the front.

Formation and Training

Truman rejoined the National Guard and began organizing Battery F, expecting to become a sergeant. Instead, the men elected him a first lieutenant, a position that officers in the Guard were still chosen for by their fellow soldiers. His election marked a personal first: he had never before been elected to anything. The new battery’s formation placed him inside an organization whose demands and responsibilities would soon expand beyond the familiar setting of Kansas City.

Drilling began in May in the streets of Kansas City, Missouri, across from Union Station and inside Convention Hall. The 2nd Missouri Field Artillery then became the 129th Field Artillery, part of the 60th Brigade attached to the 35th Infantry Division. As the organization prepared for federal service, Truman underwent his first regular Army physical. The examination recorded that he was five feet eight inches tall and weighed 151 pounds; it also documented severe uncorrected vision in his left eye, although he passed the eye examination. These details underscore the transition from a locally organized Guard unit to a formation subject to regular Army requirements.

The regiment’s movement to France unfolded alongside the arrival of the first units of the American Expeditionary Forces. On July 4, 1917, Truman appeared at Bess Wallace’s house in uniform as American infantry paraded through Paris. The following year, in the first week of July, the 129th moved from Angers to Camp Coëtquidan, formerly Napoleon’s artillery base, for final training before entering action. That move placed the regiment in the last stage of preparation for the front.

Battery D and Truman’s Command

At Camp Coëtquidan, Truman learned, to his surprise, that he was to command a battery. Colonel Karl D. Klemm summoned him and directed him to begin at once. The assignment fulfilled Truman’s highest ambition, but he was frightened by the responsibility: his command comprised four guns and 194 men. On July 11, 1918, he walked onto the parade field to meet Battery D of the 2nd Battalion, a unit nicknamed Dizzy D and made up largely of Irish Catholics from Kansas City.

The men did not see an obvious match between their battery and their new commander. Truman was a comparatively short, serious-looking officer who wore glasses; some thought he looked more like a store clerk or professor than a battery commander. His status as a third-degree Mason in a Catholic battery added to the uncertainty about how the men would receive him. They had seen several officers fail to handle the unit and were wary of another newcomer. The contrast between their initial doubts and what followed gives the battery’s later record particular force: Truman had to establish his authority within a group that did not initially expect him to succeed.

Preparation for the Front

In the time available, Truman turned what had generally been considered the regiment’s worst battery into one of its best. The clearest demonstration came on August 17, the day the 129th Field Artillery began moving from a nearby rail yard toward the front, one battery at a time. Rail transport was essential to the movement of troops and equipment, and loading an artillery battery was a substantial logistical task. Each train included about seventeen flatcars, thirty small French boxcars marked for men and horses, and a passenger coach for officers.

The batteries had to load their personnel and equipment, including guns, caissons, field kitchens, horses, harness, feed, records, and other supplies, quickly and with little wasted movement. Each battery got underway in about an hour. Battery D completed the job in 48 minutes, a record. The timing was more than a neat measure of efficiency: it showed the unit’s ability to coordinate its people and equipment at the moment when the regiment’s deployment depended on getting everything aboard.

Wartime Record and Losses

The regiment’s war was defined by the Meuse-Argonne offensive, which cost it 129 battlefield casualties. Battery D had three men wounded, one of whom later died. They had been serving on a special detail with an ammunition train at the time and were not under Truman’s command. A Battery D private later attributed the unit’s experience partly to luck and partly to good leadership, contrasting it with batteries that had not had the same kind of leadership.

The regiment’s service ended with the Armistice. Truman described the relief of receiving the order to cease firing after months in which shells had repeatedly fallen nearby. The account of the 129th thus closes on two connected facts: the regiment paid a substantial price in casualties, while Battery D’s three wounded men were lost from its ranks on a detail outside its commander’s control. The 48-minute loading record and the comparatively limited losses of the battery remain distinct measures of its performance, not evidence that its service was free of danger or cost.