Charles Wilbur Foote, of Wilton, Maine.
Killed in Action 19 APRIL 1918. Age 26.
Private First Class, Company K, 103rd Infantry, 26th “Yankee” Division, AEF.
Buried in St Mihiel American Cemetery (Plot C, Row 24, Grave 31) Thiaucourt, France.
Survived by mother Sarah Abbie Foote, sister Lena M (Foote) Brightman, and brother Arthur Otis Foote. ——— “Inches,” they called him, playing on his surname. Company K was amiable like that. How could they not be? They were boys.
Well before the draft, Charles had enlisted with other Franklin County boys into the Second Maine Regiment of the National Guard – a reservist unit. In 1916 he deployed to Mexico. He was a good soldier. He trained hard with the other boys.
In 1917, as part of overseas mobilization, the US Army drafted national guard units to active combat. Company K of Maine’s 2nd became Company K of the Army’s 103rd Infantry Regiment.
In Franklin County, Company K mustered out of Farmington, drawing all its leadership from Farmington, Wilton, Industry, and Strong. Units were local, because lifelong neighbors and friends could summon more spirit and resilience defending each other than they could for strangers. But of these 250 Company K neighbors and friends, four would not return.
The first American division to arrive in France was the 26th, nicknamed the Yankee Division for being 28,000 New-Englanders.
Among its numbers was the 103rd Infantry. Within that, Farmington’s Company K.
Within that, PFC Charles Foote. Veteran.
His 103rd Infantry Regiment went into the front lines in February of 1918 and would stay for 210 hellish days, where North of Toul, La Reine and Boucq, farm towns had become war zones, churned ugly and lifeless.
Mud and bullets, trenches and gas, barbed wire and rain and bodies and concussive hellfire soon left only men – not boys – in Company K. The prolonged ordeal for the 103rd would last seven months.
Fighting man Charles “Inches” Foote survived for two. He fell in a raid on the Toul sector.
His was the first death recorded from Company K. Not the last.

Charles W. Foote was born in August 1891 in Wilton, Franklin County, Maine. He was the son of Charles H. Foote and Sarah A. Hart Foot. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I as a Private in the 103rd Infantry Regiment, 26th Infantry "Yankee" Division. He died on April 19, 1918 and is now buried in St. Mihiel American Cemetery, Thiaucourt, France.