Russell McCullough

Russell McCullough 1954

I never met my paternal grandfather, Russell McCullough. He was the oldest child and only son of John Russell McCullough and Emma Florence Boes.  He was born in Brazil, Clay County, Indiana on Jul 16, 1894, just the right age to be drafted into WWI.

Unfortunately, most of the federal records for the state of Indiana in WWI were burned in the 1973 fires at the NARA building in Missouri.  Most of the limited information that I have collected so far came from his Veteran's Burial Card.  It indicates that he was a part of the 52nd Artillery C. A. C, Battery D.

I am not a military buff, all the acronyms, ranks and organizations of the military are somewhat baffling to me.  I'm not sure that the information written above is in the preferred sequence.  To make matters more difficult there was a lot of  reorganization and renaming of his unit.  But still I wanted to learn more about this man so....

First I looked up C. A. C., and found that it stands for Coast Artillery Corps.  Why would Russell be drafted into this branch of the military?  Since when did Indiana have a coastal port that needed to be defended?  And why would a Coast Artillery Unit go to another country during war time?  Shouldn't they be at home defending their country?

It turns out that when the U.S. decided to enter World War I, there were not as many trained troops as needed to fight, so soldiers were pulled from every available resource.  My understanding is that as the war continued, new recruits were placed into already existing units.

Russell entered service April 3, 1918 and was honorably discharged January 24, 1919.  His rank was Pfc, or private first class.  The 52nd Coast Artillery Corp was a railroad gun unit responsible for building railroad tracks to maneuver large 320 and/or 340 mm caliber guns where they were needed.  Then they fired the guns on designated targets, To get a rough idea of what the guns looked like picture a large cannon on a flatbed railroad car.  Russell was in the military for less then a year.  But that was long enough for him to be sent to France and to be exposed to Mustard Gas according to some of the family reports.

The exposure to Mustard Gas would continue to be bothersome throughout the rest of his life.  Russell died just a little more than a year after this photo was taken on July 19, 1955.