BEREA OFFICER’S KIN TO RECEIVE HIS DECORATION
Board Makes Posthumous Award of Congressional Medal for Gallantry.
Word was received yesterday from Lieut. Col. C. C.
Chambers of the 115th infantry, temporarily on duty with the general staff,
U. S. A,. In Washington, that the decorations board had approved the
recommendations to award posthuously the congressional medal of honor
to an Ohioan killed in the World War. The award is said to be the first to
come to Ohio.
The medal is to be awarded in the name of Lieut. Albert E.
Baesel the Argonne hero for whom the Albert E. Baesel American Legion
post in his home town of Berea is named. He was an officer of Company B, 115th
Infantry, and was kiilled Sept. 27, 1918, on the ridge north of Iviory,
France thirty minutes after the First Battalion under Col. L. S. Conelly of
Cleveland and the Second battalion had taken Mountfaucon and were advancing
on Cierges.
‘‘During the attack, Lieut. Baesel was on the right
flank and exposed to heavy machine gun fire," Col. Conelly said. "The best
corporal of his platoon, Sterling S. Ryan, fell mortally wounded. Lieut. Baesel
pleaded with his cap-
tain, Robert L. Tavenner, to be permitted to rescue the
corporal. So persistent was he that the permission was granted and the
lieutenant weathered a withering fire and reached the corporal’s side.
On the return trip, however, both were riddled with bullets."
"When I saw the dead hero, he was lying on his
back with both his arms around the corporal, whose body lay across that
of his friend."
The lieutenant’s widow and a brother, John J. Baesel, who
is captain of the howitzer company of the 145th Infantry, live in Berea.