Memorial Day: Remembering a Buxton ‘Yank’
By Robert Lowell - May 25, 2017
BUXTON — A soldier a century ago survived gas attacks, mortar shelling, hunger and thirst in the horror of World War I battlefields. In advance of Memorial Day, the soldier’s son, Alan Richards of Gorham, recounted some of the memories, though he said his father spoke seldom and little about the war.
He regularly visits the grave of his father, Earl U.B. Richards, in the South Buxton Cemetery. The elder Richards served with the 26th Division – the heralded Yankee Division, a New England outfit – in France. The division fought months in offensives.
“They got chopped all to pieces,” said Lee Humiston, curator of the Maine Military Museum and Learning Center in South Portland.
Alan Richards said his father suffered from gas released by the enemy, inflicting a lifelong infirmity. He survived the attack but his lungs were permanently impaired. “They got burned,” his son said.