THE LAST CASUALTY
Years before James M. Cain would become one of America’s most famous writers—the author of such sensational and controversial novels as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce—he pounded the pavement as a reporter for the Baltimore American and the Baltimore Sun. His fledging career as a journalist was interrupted, however, when the United States entered World War I. Drafted into the army, Cain was soon shipped to France as a private in the headquarters troop of the 79th Infantry Division, a unit raised at Camp Meade in his home state of Maryland in 1917.
In 1918, in the opening days of the General John J. Pershing’s Meuse-Argonne Offensive—a massive Lorraine Cross,
