Nat Tare Fights in Two World Wars and the Boxing Ring
by Kathy Warnes
The Social Security Death Record reveals that Nat Tare lied about his age to enlist in the Army in 1917. The record documents that he was born on August 15, 1901, and he died on January 27, 1992, which would have made him sixteen when he joined the Army a day before his birthday on August 14, 1917. His military record names his birth date as August 15, 1903, which would have made him 14, when he joined the Army. When he died on Monday, November 23, 1992, Nate lived at 11425 Jamaica, in Queens, New York, the city where his story begins. Nat was either 90 or 92 when he died, but numbers aside, Nat filled the years of his life with adventure and patriotism.
According to a November 1942 Stars and Stripes story about him, Nat didn’t have any trouble adapting to the life of a soldier because he and a scrappy tough little bantam rooster had attitude in common.
Nat Tare Joins the Fighting 69th Infantry
When Nat joined the Army on August 14, 1917, the day before his birthday, he signed on with the Fighting 69 and then the battalion was reorganized as the 165 Infantry. The Army reconfigured the Fighting 69 as part of the new 42 Rainbow Infantry Division and appointed Father Francis Duffy as Regimental Chaplain. The ranks of the Fighting 69 filled with Irish Americans and New Yorkers from other regiments and in October 1917 the regiment went to France as part of the 42nd Rainbow Division of the American Expeditionary Force.
After Nat and his Fighting 69th regiment arrived in France in November 1917, they spent several weeks training and then just after Christmas they marched through the Vosges Mountains to Luneville in the Lorraine region of eastern France. The 69th went into combat for the first time on February 26, 1918, in the trenches of the Rouge Bouquet Chaussilles and suffered its first casualties including the deaths of 21 soldiers on March 7 when German artillery bombardment caused a dugout to collapse on them. Poet and soldier Joyce Kilmer wrote about this incident in his poem called Rouge Bouqet, which is still read at the funeral of every 69th regiment soldier.
Nat Tare and the 69th Fight the Second Battle of the Marne, Chateau Thierry,Meuse Argonne
The 69th Regiment participated in many raids into German territory, surviving mustard gas attacks and other casualties, and on June 18, 1918, it moved to the Champagne sector near St. Hillaire. On July 14, 1918, the 69th and the Rainbow Division stopped the Germans at the Second Battle of the Marne. On July 18 to July 31, 1918, the Fighting 69th led the crossing of the Ourcq River in the Chateau Thierry Sector and during four days of fighting suffered significant losses. Out of a 3,000 man regiment the Fighting 69th suffered 264 men killed in action, including poet Sgt. Joyce Kilmer. The casualties also included 150 men missing in action and 1,200 wounded in action.
After Chateau Thierry, the 69th fought in the St. Mihiel Sector in September 1918 and the Meuse-Argonne offensive in October and November 1918. After the Armistice on November 11, 1918, the 69th soldiers served in Remagen as occupation troops. The Regiment returned to New York in the spring of 1919. The Fighting 69ths World War I statistics for 164 days of combat included 644 killed in action, and 2,587 wounded with 200 later dying of their wounds. Sixty members of the 69th Regiment earned the Distinguished Service Cross, three won the Medal of Honor including First Battalion and later Regimental Commander William Joseph Donovan. “Wild Bill Donovan” later went on to organize the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and retired as a major general. Father Francis Duffy, “The Fighting Chaplain,” also belonged to the Fighting 69th.
Father Francis Duffy’s statue stands in Duffy Square on Broadway between 46th and 47th Streets.
Nat Tare Rescues Father Francis Duffy and Wins Decorations
Nat Tare and Father Duffy would become closer than a confession in the heat of battle. The 69th Regiment’s wounded in action included Nat Tare whose bravery equaled that of Father Duffy. Soldiers who served with him reported that although unarmed, Father Duffy could always be found in the center of the battle, helping litter bearers recover wounded soldiers, giving the last rites and helping to bury the dead. He encouraged the men and demonstrated such courage and leadership that General Douglas MacArthur, the brigade commander, at once point considered making him commander.
During the Second Battle of the Marne beginning on July 14, 1918, Father Duffy labored unceasingly to rescue wounded soldiers and give Last Rites to the dying. The Stars and Stripes story recorded Nat Tare’s version of he and Father Duffy’s first encounter. Nat said, “I was a little guy so they made me a runner. I guess they figured that it was easy for a little guy to find cover. Well, we’re down in a hollow and a guy says that Father Duffy is out there giving the last rites to his altar boy. I forget the fellow’s name. Anyway, I look out there and I see Father Duffy go down. So I go after him and when I get there he’s out cold. I pick him up and carry him back and when I’m half way I have to change shoulders because he’s pretty heavy.”
“I didn’t realize I was hit in the thigh until I got to the dressing station. I was kinda excited, so I guess that’s the reason I didn’t feel the bullets. Father Duffy asked Colonel Donovan to give me the Croix de Guerre while I was in the hospital. Wild Bill gave it to me and never said a word, but he almost shook my hand off.”
Nat Tare’s decorations included the Distinguished Service Cross and the Order of the Purple Heart for gallantry in action at Chateau Thierry, St. Mihiel, Argonne, and Verdun. He wore three wound stripes on his sleeve for machine gun bullets in the left leg, and shrapnel in his head, hip, and hand. He still carried a bullet in his skull and doctor estimated that the bullet would take another year to work its way out of his skull. Nat treasured a letter of recommendation from General Douglas MacArthur, commander of his outfit.
The Stars and Stripes story recorded other examples of Nat’s strength and resourcefulness. At one point the Army declared Nat officially dead and he remained so until one day when he walked up to his old outfit. The guard stared at him, threw his rifle, and yelled like the howl of a banshee. Nat later explained that he had spent several weeks badly wounded in a hospital without any dog tags or other identification.
Another time Nat rejoined the 69th with an open machine gun bullet wound in his leg. He explained that he had been in the hospital and picked up a copy of The Stars and Stripes featuring a story that reported the impending departure of his regiment. Quickly looking around to make sure that no one observed him, Nat “borrowed” the orderly’s clothes, walked out, and rejoined his regiment. Nat had to acquire a new uniform though, because the orderly measured over six feet tall compared to Nat’s five foot two inches in height.
Nat Tare Continued His Boxing Career and Enlisted in World War II
The Army discharged Nat Tare on May 27, 1918, and for the next decade he successfully pursued his boxing career. He had been bantam weight champion of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, and after World War I ended, he took up professional boxing using the name “Young Terry.” For fifteen years he successfully bought the best opponents that boxing had to offer, never once suffering at knock out. Then he retired and bought a night club in Lakewood, New Jersey, and one in Miami, Florida.
In June of 1942, at age 39 Nat gave his nightclubs to the government for cafeterias, forfeited a 75 dollar a month pension, kissed his wife goodbye, and enlisted. He was assigned as a sergeant to a chemical warfare unit attached to the Air Corps and was also a qualified tail gunner. The Air Corps offered him the rank of master sergeant if he would teach boxing or take charge of the officer’s mess. If Nat taught boxing or oversaw the officer’s mess he could not participate in actual fighting so he pestered his commanding officers until they released him to come over seas. In November 1942, he was stationed in the British Isles where he carried around about a dozen medals and decorations that he had won in the First World War. “But I only wear five of them. Otherwise I’d look like a Christmas tree,” he said.
Counting himself a friend of both Roosevelts, Nat Tare welcomed Eleanor Roosevelt when she came to England in 1942, asking her if she wanted to go for a ride in his jeep. “She got a big kick out of it,” he reported. Nat fought many boxing benefits for some of Mrs. Roosevelt’s pet charities. His friendship with her husband went back to when Franklin Roosevelt ran for governor of New York in 1928 and continued beyond 1939 when President Roosevelt declared him “the baby of World War I.”
Nat also asked his friend Edward G. Robinson if he wanted to go for a jeep ride. When Edward G. Robinson got into Nat’s jeep, Nat drove to his barracks instead of the Savoy where his friend Edward was staying. Edward spent the night in Nat’s barracks talking to the boys and having a good time.
Nat said that since he reenlisted in the Army, he felt 25 years younger. The Stars and Stripes story said that Nat had come in several minutes ahead of the man who pulled in second in a tough, commando race. Waiting to be shipped to the front bothered Nat., He told the Stars and Stripes reporter: “I don’t like this waiting around. I want to go over there and see some action.”
References
Browne, George Waldo. American Army in the World War. A Divisional Record of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe.
Father Duffy’s Story
The Shamrock Battalion of the Rainbow Division
Stars and Stripes, November 23, 1942. “The Baby of the First World War”
Bishop, Jim, 1907-1987. Fighting Father Duffy. New York: Vision Books, 1956.
Demeter, Richard. The fighting 69th : a history. Pasadena, CA: Cranford Press, 2002.
Harris, Stephen L. Duffy’s War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I. Potomac Books, 2009.
Mahon, John. New York's Fighting Sixty-ninth : a regimental history of service in the Civil War's Irish Brigade and the Great War's Rainbow Division. Jefferson, N.C. McFarland, 2004.
McCormack, Jack. "'The fighting 69th'." : Irish American troops in World War I." Military Images. V :5 March - April 1984. 22-28.
Menoher, Charles T. "The Rainbow." : Story of the famous 42d Division told by its war commander." New York Times. 27 April 1919.
The Social Security Death Record reveals that Nat Tare lied about his age to enlist in the Army in 1917. The record documents that he was born on August 15, 1901, and he died on January 27, 1992, which would have made him sixteen when he joined the Army a day before his birthday on August 14, 1917. His military record names his birth date as August 15, 1903, which would have made him 14, when he joined the Army. When he died on Monday, November 23, 1992, Nate lived at 11425 Jamaica, in Queens, New York, the city where his story begins. Nat was either 90 or 92 when he died, but numbers aside, Nat filled the years of his life with adventure and patriotism.
According to a November 1942 Stars and Stripes story about him, Nat didn’t have any trouble adapting to the life of a soldier because he and a scrappy tough little bantam rooster had attitude in common.
Nat Tare Joins the Fighting 69th Infantry
When Nat joined the Army on August 14, 1917, the day before his birthday, he signed on with the Fighting 69 and then the battalion was reorganized as the 165 Infantry. The Army reconfigured the Fighting 69 as part of the new 42 Rainbow Infantry Division and appointed Father Francis Duffy as Regimental Chaplain. The ranks of the Fighting 69 filled with Irish Americans and New Yorkers from other regiments and in October 1917 the regiment went to France as part of the 42nd Rainbow Division of the American Expeditionary Force.
After Nat and his Fighting 69th regiment arrived in France in November 1917, they spent several weeks training and then just after Christmas they marched through the Vosges Mountains to Luneville in the Lorraine region of eastern France. The 69th went into combat for the first time on February 26, 1918, in the trenches of the Rouge Bouquet Chaussilles and suffered its first casualties including the deaths of 21 soldiers on March 7 when German artillery bombardment caused a dugout to collapse on them. Poet and soldier Joyce Kilmer wrote about this incident in his poem called Rouge Bouqet, which is still read at the funeral of every 69th regiment soldier.
Nat Tare and the 69th Fight the Second Battle of the Marne, Chateau Thierry,Meuse Argonne
The 69th Regiment participated in many raids into German territory, surviving mustard gas attacks and other casualties, and on June 18, 1918, it moved to the Champagne sector near St. Hillaire. On July 14, 1918, the 69th and the Rainbow Division stopped the Germans at the Second Battle of the Marne. On July 18 to July 31, 1918, the Fighting 69th led the crossing of the Ourcq River in the Chateau Thierry Sector and during four days of fighting suffered significant losses. Out of a 3,000 man regiment the Fighting 69th suffered 264 men killed in action, including poet Sgt. Joyce Kilmer. The casualties also included 150 men missing in action and 1,200 wounded in action.
After Chateau Thierry, the 69th fought in the St. Mihiel Sector in September 1918 and the Meuse-Argonne offensive in October and November 1918. After the Armistice on November 11, 1918, the 69th soldiers served in Remagen as occupation troops. The Regiment returned to New York in the spring of 1919. The Fighting 69ths World War I statistics for 164 days of combat included 644 killed in action, and 2,587 wounded with 200 later dying of their wounds. Sixty members of the 69th Regiment earned the Distinguished Service Cross, three won the Medal of Honor including First Battalion and later Regimental Commander William Joseph Donovan. “Wild Bill Donovan” later went on to organize the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and retired as a major general. Father Francis Duffy, “The Fighting Chaplain,” also belonged to the Fighting 69th.
Father Francis Duffy’s statue stands in Duffy Square on Broadway between 46th and 47th Streets.
Nat Tare Rescues Father Francis Duffy and Wins Decorations
Nat Tare and Father Duffy would become closer than a confession in the heat of battle. The 69th Regiment’s wounded in action included Nat Tare whose bravery equaled that of Father Duffy. Soldiers who served with him reported that although unarmed, Father Duffy could always be found in the center of the battle, helping litter bearers recover wounded soldiers, giving the last rites and helping to bury the dead. He encouraged the men and demonstrated such courage and leadership that General Douglas MacArthur, the brigade commander, at once point considered making him commander.
During the Second Battle of the Marne beginning on July 14, 1918, Father Duffy labored unceasingly to rescue wounded soldiers and give Last Rites to the dying. The Stars and Stripes story recorded Nat Tare’s version of he and Father Duffy’s first encounter. Nat said, “I was a little guy so they made me a runner. I guess they figured that it was easy for a little guy to find cover. Well, we’re down in a hollow and a guy says that Father Duffy is out there giving the last rites to his altar boy. I forget the fellow’s name. Anyway, I look out there and I see Father Duffy go down. So I go after him and when I get there he’s out cold. I pick him up and carry him back and when I’m half way I have to change shoulders because he’s pretty heavy.”
“I didn’t realize I was hit in the thigh until I got to the dressing station. I was kinda excited, so I guess that’s the reason I didn’t feel the bullets. Father Duffy asked Colonel Donovan to give me the Croix de Guerre while I was in the hospital. Wild Bill gave it to me and never said a word, but he almost shook my hand off.”
Nat Tare’s decorations included the Distinguished Service Cross and the Order of the Purple Heart for gallantry in action at Chateau Thierry, St. Mihiel, Argonne, and Verdun. He wore three wound stripes on his sleeve for machine gun bullets in the left leg, and shrapnel in his head, hip, and hand. He still carried a bullet in his skull and doctor estimated that the bullet would take another year to work its way out of his skull. Nat treasured a letter of recommendation from General Douglas MacArthur, commander of his outfit.
The Stars and Stripes story recorded other examples of Nat’s strength and resourcefulness. At one point the Army declared Nat officially dead and he remained so until one day when he walked up to his old outfit. The guard stared at him, threw his rifle, and yelled like the howl of a banshee. Nat later explained that he had spent several weeks badly wounded in a hospital without any dog tags or other identification.
Another time Nat rejoined the 69th with an open machine gun bullet wound in his leg. He explained that he had been in the hospital and picked up a copy of The Stars and Stripes featuring a story that reported the impending departure of his regiment. Quickly looking around to make sure that no one observed him, Nat “borrowed” the orderly’s clothes, walked out, and rejoined his regiment. Nat had to acquire a new uniform though, because the orderly measured over six feet tall compared to Nat’s five foot two inches in height.
Nat Tare Continued His Boxing Career and Enlisted in World War II
The Army discharged Nat Tare on May 27, 1918, and for the next decade he successfully pursued his boxing career. He had been bantam weight champion of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, and after World War I ended, he took up professional boxing using the name “Young Terry.” For fifteen years he successfully bought the best opponents that boxing had to offer, never once suffering at knock out. Then he retired and bought a night club in Lakewood, New Jersey, and one in Miami, Florida.
In June of 1942, at age 39 Nat gave his nightclubs to the government for cafeterias, forfeited a 75 dollar a month pension, kissed his wife goodbye, and enlisted. He was assigned as a sergeant to a chemical warfare unit attached to the Air Corps and was also a qualified tail gunner. The Air Corps offered him the rank of master sergeant if he would teach boxing or take charge of the officer’s mess. If Nat taught boxing or oversaw the officer’s mess he could not participate in actual fighting so he pestered his commanding officers until they released him to come over seas. In November 1942, he was stationed in the British Isles where he carried around about a dozen medals and decorations that he had won in the First World War. “But I only wear five of them. Otherwise I’d look like a Christmas tree,” he said.
Counting himself a friend of both Roosevelts, Nat Tare welcomed Eleanor Roosevelt when she came to England in 1942, asking her if she wanted to go for a ride in his jeep. “She got a big kick out of it,” he reported. Nat fought many boxing benefits for some of Mrs. Roosevelt’s pet charities. His friendship with her husband went back to when Franklin Roosevelt ran for governor of New York in 1928 and continued beyond 1939 when President Roosevelt declared him “the baby of World War I.”
Nat also asked his friend Edward G. Robinson if he wanted to go for a jeep ride. When Edward G. Robinson got into Nat’s jeep, Nat drove to his barracks instead of the Savoy where his friend Edward was staying. Edward spent the night in Nat’s barracks talking to the boys and having a good time.
Nat said that since he reenlisted in the Army, he felt 25 years younger. The Stars and Stripes story said that Nat had come in several minutes ahead of the man who pulled in second in a tough, commando race. Waiting to be shipped to the front bothered Nat., He told the Stars and Stripes reporter: “I don’t like this waiting around. I want to go over there and see some action.”
References
Browne, George Waldo. American Army in the World War. A Divisional Record of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe.
Father Duffy’s Story
The Shamrock Battalion of the Rainbow Division
Stars and Stripes, November 23, 1942. “The Baby of the First World War”
Bishop, Jim, 1907-1987. Fighting Father Duffy. New York: Vision Books, 1956.
Demeter, Richard. The fighting 69th : a history. Pasadena, CA: Cranford Press, 2002.
Harris, Stephen L. Duffy’s War: Fr. Francis Duffy, Wild Bill Donovan, and the Irish Fighting 69th in World War I. Potomac Books, 2009.
Mahon, John. New York's Fighting Sixty-ninth : a regimental history of service in the Civil War's Irish Brigade and the Great War's Rainbow Division. Jefferson, N.C. McFarland, 2004.
McCormack, Jack. "'The fighting 69th'." : Irish American troops in World War I." Military Images. V :5 March - April 1984. 22-28.
Menoher, Charles T. "The Rainbow." : Story of the famous 42d Division told by its war commander." New York Times. 27 April 1919.
