He was said to be a reserved, unassuming youth, pleasant to peers and elders alike, close to his family, a young man who rarely saw reason to journey much beyond his French Hill home, his St. Francis Xavier and St. Aloysius schools, and later his dawn-to-dusk work at Jackson Mills, all in Nashua.

It’s likely that few who knew Amedee J. Deschenes, born Feb. 14, 1895, to a Canadian immigrant family that settled on Morgan Street, imagined their quiet, polite friend being among the first to sign up to fight a war half a world away, much less rise to national prominence for acts of bravery, courage and skill that earned commendations from top American and French military leaders and the posthumous awarding of the Croix de Guerre – France’s highest military honor given for bravery.

This weekend, as the Nashua area joins the nation in remembering loved ones, friends and associates who sacrificed their lives defending America, names such as Army Pvt. Amedee Deschenes will again come to the minds of many Nashuans.

Since 1920, when the once nameless, egg-shaped little park in the middle of Railroad Square was christened Deschenes Oval, the unlikely war hero has been honored during many Memorial Day and Veterans Day observances, giving at least some insight into a spate of gutsy gallantry that 94 years ago sent some 600 enemy soldiers scattering in retreat on a French battlefield.

Deschenes, who had just turned 22, enlisted shortly after Congress granted President Woodrow Wilson’s request to declare war on Germany in April 1917. Assigned to U.S. Infantry Co. 1, 103rd Regiment, Deschenes trained in Massachusetts and deployed overseas in June 1917 with the 26th Yankee Division.

The event that earned the Nashua kid a prominent place in U.S. military history came a year later on a misty, fog-shrouded battlefield in the Toul sector in France, close to the German border.

Deschenes’ “little outpost,” as an old Telegraph account called it, overcame impossible odds that morning. The tiny troupe, just five members strong – Deschenes, two assistant gunners and two observers – was hunkered down during a lull in the Battle of Xivray, when at just about 3 a.m. the force of 600 Germans advanced on what one historic account calls “an important point in the thinly-held (Allied) line.”

Fully unaware that Deschenes’ group lay in wait, the Germans, firing randomly, formed two groups, one advancing down a road directly toward the outpost and the other across fields to the left. Hearts pounding, Deschenes’ crew held their composure and waited.

They watched the Germans cross the first entanglement of barbed wire, then the second. They readied themselves, perhaps uttering a quick prayer. As the enemy began climbing, several at a time, over the third and final barbed wire barrier, it was showtime.

Deschenes opened fire, “mowing the Huns down in swaths,” according to the account reprinted in the Nov. 11, 1920, Telegraph. But the life-or-death ambush had just begun.

Apparently frustrated with his underperforming rifle, Deschenes took an extraordinary gamble, the report continues. He “climbed over the top of his protective breastwark (also spelled “breastwork,” a makeshift safety barrier) and, using an automatic rifle like an ordinary service rifle, continued his deadly and effective work.”

Astonishingly, in classic “Sergeant York” fashion, Deschenes and his backup not only held the enemy at bay, they denied repeated German efforts to rally and forced them to break up and retreat.

Sgt. Alvin York, of course, is the simple, highly religious Tennessee farmer who silenced a 24-man German outpost with his marksmanship, saved his comrades, rose to hero status and inspired the movie in which Gary Cooper played him.

During Deschenes’ engagement, the account states, Deschenes “fired 42 clips of 20 shots each.”

An unidentified Nashua soldier wrote home about the battle, “We all did our best, but Amedee did the best of all,” according to the account.

Tragically, just three months after his heroic performance – and mere weeks before the war’s end – Deschenes was felled by one of war’s cruelest new inventions: the poison gas attack. After a four-day struggle in a nearby hospital, he succumbed Oct. 1, 1918.

As courageous and noteworthy as they were, Deschenes’ battlefield heroics were only part of his lasting legacy. Back home, news of the local kid’s actions – and subsequent tragic death – brought members of Nashua’s previously disparate ethnic groups together.

In his honor, they gradually grasped their common thread, that of being newly arrived Americans, letting fade the pervasive distrust and fear that for decades had prompted the French, Polish, Italian, Greek, Armenian and other ethnic immigrant groups to associate only with their own ranks.

“I was touched by his heroism, but also by the honor the young man brought to his immigrant community,” said urban and economic planner Alan S. Manoian, former Nashua downtown development coordinator, in 1998, when he researched Deschenes.

Other groups also nurtured a newfound respect for the French, overwhelmingly Nashua’s largest ethnic group.

“It was the first recognition of (the French Canadian community’s) presence and stature,” Manoian said. “One of our boys, working class … it was highly significant.”

At the 1920 dedication, two of Deschenes’ regimental comrades – Pvt. Andrew Baldman, who witnessed the battle and recounted it later for military officials, and Sgt. Arthur Bouley – were in attendance, asked to take part in the ceremonies. Flanking the new monument to their friend, the two ceremoniously unveiled the tablet in his honor amid solemn speeches, prayers, and tears of sadness and gratitude.

And again, Telegraph columns lavishly praised the local boy who made good, insisting, though he “sleeps in the soil of France, which he died defending … he is not dead, for his bravery and devotion to native country will live long in tradition, and in the printed word for the inspiration of those who follow him.”

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-6443 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.