05/26/2026
Missed it?
Here is the presentation by Colleen Hayne, our Memorial Day guest speaker at the Concord Cemetery.
Thank you for the honor of speaking to you today. And thank you to the Concord Cemetery Association for keeping these hallowed grounds so beautifully taken care of, making it such a lovely place to gather on Memorial Day. To Langemo Post 295, who for nearly 107 years have been advocates for veterans and their families, we give you our immense gratitude. You make this solemn and meaningful occasion possible each year and we are thankful for you.
When I was a young girl on the farm, one of my favorite things to do was to walk down our dirt field road to visit our neighbors, the Langemos. Carl and Art Langemo lived with their sister, Emma, o the home place. It was fun to talk to them, take a little good-hearted teasing, and enjoy a cookie or two. They were a bit like extended grandparent to me. Little did I know then that someone important was missing from their family. No one ever mentioned their brother, Nick, to me and it took until I was grown up to realize that the Langemo Post was named after him because of his supreme sacrifice in World W I.
Nick Langemo, a 23-year-old young man, went off to service on September 18, 1917, with the first group of Dodge County boys to serve in WWI, a bit more than 5 months after America had declared war on Germany. Nick’s first challenge was a about with pneumonia at camp in the U.S. He recovered and was sent to France and was “baptized” into warfare in the fierce battle at Chateau Thierry in mid-summer 1918 where half of his company was killed. General Hanson Ely, under the command of John J. Pershing in France. Spoke about the price of victory there:
“Men must be trained that when they have been in battle for days and nights, when perhaps they have been badly handled by the enemy and have had heavy casualties, yet when the signal comes to go, they will go again to the limit of their endurance …. It is the last five percent of the possible exertion that often wins the battle …. Not the first attack nor the second or the third, but it was that last straggling fourth attack …. Battles are won by remnants, remnants of units, remnants of material, remnants of morale, remnants of effort.”
At the battle of Chateau Thierry, the Americans, including Nick Langemo, showed the resolve and courage they had. If that could have been the last battle Nick fought in, history may have been rewritten for him. Instead, on October 7, 1918, Nick was part of the great Argonne battle, a 47-day offensive and the most costly battle in U.S. military history, taking 26,000 lives and 120,000 other casualties. The battle was fought in thick forest with deep ravines, high cliffs, and streams. This account comes from the diary of Sgt. Alvin Youk, the 82nd Division.
“The nearest I came to getting killed in France was in an apple orchard in the Argonne. It was several days after the fight with the machine guns. We had a very heavy barrage from the Germans suddenly drop down on us and we were ordered to dig in and to lose not time about it. Some of us were digging in under an apple tree. The shells were busting pretty close. But we didn’t take much notice of them. Just kept right on digging.
It’s funny: after you have been at the front a right smart while you can almost tell where the shells are going to bust and what size they are. And this morning they were close, but not close enough to scare us. And then they got closer. And we dug faster.
I have dug on farms and in gardens and in road work and on the railroad, but it takes big shells dropping close to make you really dig. And I’m telling you the dirt was flying. And then, bang!- one of the big shells struck the ground right in front of us and we all went up in the air. But we all came down again. Nobody was hurt. Bit it sure was close.”
Private Clifton Field’s account of the fighting in the Argonne, just shortly after Nick was killed, brings the brutality of war home to us. “On October 15th, 1918, we were charging machine guns and men were being cut down like grass all around me. Then I was hit and fell and couldn’t get up. I laid there on the battlefield for three days and was assumed dead. Some man came by and said: Fields, what the heck are you doing laying there? The man picked me up put me on his shoulder and carried me three miles to the aid station.
Gangrene had already set-up, and they amputated my leg just below the knee. I was passing in and out of consciousness during the whole time and never recognized the man that carried me to safety. How he recognized me I’ll never know because I was unshaven and was a mess. I’ve always regretted never knowing the man that save my life.”
It took 4 months for Nick’s family to receive official notification of Nick’s death on the firing line at Argonne. We can only begin to imagine the family’s grief and the pictures they painted in their mind o Nick’s death in the Great War, so far away. Nick is buried in Plot G, Row 35, Grave 14 at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, France. There are 14,200 graves there, 5000 more graves than even at the Normandy American Cemetery. How it must have hurt Nick’s family to realize that Armistice Day was declared just a little more than a month after Nick’s death on the firing lines. And how they must have yearned to be able to visit his grave.
We know no one wants to become a Gold Star Family. Nick’s father passed just two years later. His obituary said he had shown symptoms of heart trouble ever since his son’s death in France. We’ve heard that broken heart syndrome is real and Nick’s dad may have been a victim of it. Eight years later, in 1926, Nick’s mother presented Langemo Post with an enlarged picture of him. The West Concord Enterprise said then, “The picture will be hung upon the wall of the Post room and will ever be a reminder of the first soldier in the locality who gave his life upon the field of battle, during the World War.”
From World War I on, more than 30 million Americans have given their live as the price for our freedom, to keep the flame of freedom burning, and the flag still waving over the land of the free.
How do we show our gratitude? We have to be willing to give of ourselves. We can participate in events like today. We can use our voices to advocate for better benefits for veterans. We can volunteer for and donate to veterans’ organizations. We can reach out to military families in time of deployment, like now in the Middle East. We can fly the American flag. We can take our children and grandchildren to visit the West Concord Historical Society’s Veterans Room and learn more about our local young men and women’s service throughout the years.
When another West Concord young man, George Babcock, died in the service of his country at Saipan I World Ware II, awarded with 2 purple hearts and on bronze star, President Roosevelt sent these words to George’s family: “He stands in the unbroken line of patriots who have dared to die that freedom might live and grow, and increase its blessings. Freedom lives, and through it, he lives – in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.” As President Reagan said in a Memorial Day speech, “Freedom isn’t free.”
Thank you for being here today to honor all the fallen heroes like Nick and George who paid the ultimate price for us and our county.
