page_title: 69th Infantry Regiment (New York)
section_title: Rouge Bouquet
hierarchical_section_title: 69th Infantry Regiment (New York) / World War I / Rouge Bouquet
caption_attribution_description: English: Colonel "Wild Bill" O'Donovan, left, and Father Francis Duffy, chaplain of the 69th New York, returning from France after World War 1.
context_page_description: The 69th Infantry Regiment is an infantry regiment of the United States Army. It is from New York City, part of the New York Army National Guard. It is known as the "Fighting Sixty-Ninth", a name said to have been given by Robert E. Lee during the Civil War. An Irish heritage unit, as the citation from poet Joyce Kilmer illustrates, this unit is also nicknamed the "Fighting Irish", immortalized in Joyce Kilmer's poem When the 69th Comes Home. Between 1917 and 1992 it was also designated as the 165th Infantry Regiment. It is headquartered at the 69th Regiment Armory in Manhattan.
  The regiment currently consists of a single light infantry battalion and is part of the 27th Infantry Brigade of the 42nd Infantry Division. Its history dates back to 1849, when it was created as the 9th Regiment New York State Militia, and A Company, 1/69 can trace roots back to the American Revolution as one of several National Guard units with colonial roots. The regiment has seen combat in five wars: the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War.
context_section_description: Arriving in France in November 1917, the regiment first engaged in training near Valcouleurs and Grand. It then undertook a legendary muddy 80 mile march just after Christmas through the Vosges mountains to Longeau and Luneville. It had its first combat experience on 26 February 1918 in the nearby trenches of the Rouge Bouquet Chaussilles Sector in the Foret de Parroy near the village of Baccarat. While there, it suffered its first combat casualties, including the deaths of 21 men from the 2nd Battalion on 7 March when a dugout collapsed under bombardment. This event was memorialized in Sergeant Joyce Kilmer's poem "Rouge Bouquet".
caption: Colonel Donovan & Father Duffy upon return from France in 1919.
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