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Alpheus Appenheimer sails for France on this date, 1917
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BJ Omanson
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Dec 14, 2001 17:08 PST
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On this date, in 1917, Alpheus Appenheimer, aged 24, as a member of
the 1st Machine Gun Battalion, USMC (later redesignated 6th MG Bttn),
which had left Quantico six days earlier, sailed from New York
harbor on the USS DeKalb and joined a convoy to France.
Only after the war was it discovered that the DeKalb's single screw
shaft had been cut 3/4s through by German sabateurs, and filled with
grease. Though the DeKalb would make a number of round trips between
America and France as a troop carrier during the war, the shaft would
never break.
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