McNamara's Blog

Jim McNamara Jim McNamara passed away last week at the age of 84. This is the eulogy regarding his baseball career. Every love affair has a beginning, and for the McNamara Family, a love affair with baseball began on July 4 th 1918 just outside the small French town of Cantigny. Europe was into its fourth year of bloodshed and the arrival of the American Army brought hope that the war to end all wars would soon be over. The Americans saw their first action in late May, when they were ordered to take and hold the strategic town of Cantigny. After several weeks of nightmarish casualties brought on by shells filled with shrapnel and mustard gas, the Americans were victorious, and the German Army began a slow, but stubborn retreat back to their homeland. John McNamara, 1918 An exhausted American Army was treated to a special Independence Day party with all of the trappings of home. There was to be a BBQ, followed by a concert, and then the best enterta...

John McNamara & photos from Cantigny Today marks the 95 th anniversary of America’s first major engagement of World War I --- the Battle of Cantigny. Although much smaller in scale than the epic battles of Verdun, Ypres, and the Somme, Cantigny’s importance should not be underestimated. It gave the Americans the confidence, not that they needed it, that they could handle the seasoned and battle-tested German Army. My grandfather, John McNamara, a member of the 1 st Engineers, Company D, was assigned to accompany the 28 th Infantry Division in the initial attack. In a sense, my grandfather was part of the first group of American soldiers to go “over the top” and race across the crater dotted landscape known as No Man’s Land. Their objective was to build several strong-points for the infantry to use as machine gun nests. They were successful in their mission, but it was not without cost. The 1 st Engineers would sustain 30 casualties, including my grandfathe...