Charles Abramson
World War I Veteran Who Lived in Dorchester
Written by Camille Arbogast
Charles Abramson was born on February 6 or 16, 1895, in Vilna, Lithuania. In 1907, he immigrated to the United States, sailing from London on the Cunard Line’s RMS Saxonia. He arrived in Boston on April 12, 1907.
In June 1917, Charles was living at 12 Massachusetts Avenue in Lexington, Massachusetts. He was a teamster working for F.N. Reed in Arlington, Massachusetts. This was possibly the F.N. Reed who was one half of Samuel M. Reed & Co., plasterers and stucco workers, who in the early years of the 20th century regularly advertised in the Cambridge Chronicle that they offered “kalsomining, whitening, and tinting without moving carpets or pictures.” On his First World War draft registration, Charles was described as short and stout, with brown eyes and black hair.
Charles was one of “the first quota of 17 registrants of the second draft call from State Division 31, which is made up of Lexington, Belmont, and Watertown,” though by the time he was drafted he had moved to 71 Coleman Street in Dorchester, the home of his mother, Ida. He was not the only draftee who had moved since registering. The Boston Globe reported that six of the 17 men called for service had relocated outside of Division 31.
On March 28, 1918, Charles was inducted into the Army and sent to Camp Devens, in Ayer, Massachusetts. There he trained in the 8th Company, 2 Battalion, 151st Depot Brigade. He was assigned to Battery D of the 306th Field Artillery on April 18, about a week before the regiment left for overseas service. On the afternoon of April 22, 1918, in Hoboken, New Jersey, Charles boarded the USS Leviathan, “amid a flurry of hot coffee and crullers from the Red Cross.” The ship sailed at 6 a.m. on April 24.
On May 2, the 306th Field Artillery arrived in Brest, France. They trained at Camp de Souge near Bordeaux. D Battery fired the regiment’s first shot on the artillery range on June 12. A month later the regiment left for Baccarat, in a defensive sector in Lorraine, taking their positions there on July 18. From this point, through the end of the war, the 306th Field Artillery was “kept in the lines or on the march continually from mid-July to the cessation of hostilities, with the exception of a few days in reserve during October.” They remained in Baccarat a fortnight, then moved on to Vesle in Champagne, where, “day after day our batteries returned the German fire two to one.”In early September, they participated in the Oise-Aisne Offensive, crossing the Vesle river and firing “without rest” on “enemy infantry,” attempting to drive back the retreating German army.They made their way to the Argonne in mid-September and were in position on September 24. All of the 306th Field Artillery guns were part of the “the barrage which opened the Argonne Drive” the next day at 2:55 a.m. The 306th Field Artillery was “a part of the only Artillery Brigade that saw the start and finish of the Meuse-Argonne operations.”
Four days after the Armistice, Charles was transferred to Battery D, 17th Field Artillery. On July 25, 1919, he sailed from Brest on the USS Rijndam, arriving in Brooklyn, New York, on August 4. Charles, who was discharged on August 20, 1919, at Camp Devens, was a private for the entirety of his service.
The day before his discharge, Charles was naturalized as an American citizen. He had filed a declaration of his intent to become a citizen on March 18, 1918, shortly before entering the Army. On his citizenship petition filed in August 1919, his occupation was given as soldier/cattle dealer. He stated that he was unmarried. The petition was witnessed by two officers from Camp Devens.
At this time, very little is known about Charles after his discharge from the Army. The short biography of Charles included in the history of the 306th Field Artillery states that his civilian occupation was farmer. While home addresses were included in the biographies of many of the men, none is given for Charles. According to his Veterans Administration Master Index entry, in the 1920s or 1930s he lived at 4 Shepard Street in Dorchester. The date of his death is currently unknown.
Sources
World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration; Ancestry.com
Advertisement, Cambridge Tribune, 19 March 1904: 11; Cambridge Public Library’s Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection, cambridge.dlconsulting.com
“Seventeen Men go to Ayer from Division 31,” Boston Globe, 29 March 1918: 14; Newspapers.com
Military, Compiled Service Records. World War I. Carded Records. Records of the Military Division of the Adjutant General’s Office, Massachusetts National Guard.
Duell, Holland Sackett, ed. The History of the 306th Field Artillery. NY: The Knickerbocker Press, 1920; HathiTrust.org
Lists of Outgoing & Incoming Passengers, 1917-1938. Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774-1985, The National Archives at College Park, Maryland; Ancestry.com
Massachusetts, United States Naturalization Records, 1871-1991, Boston: National Archives and Records Administration; FamilySearch.org.
Naturalization Declaration, National Archives at Boston; Waltham, Massachusetts; Ancestry.com
“United States, Veterans Administration Master Index, 1917-1940,” Military Service, NARA microfilm publication 76193916 (St. Louis: National Archives and Records Administration, 1985); FamilySearch.org