The Peter Cooney buried in France was a sergeant in Company M, 165th Infantry—the wartime number of New York’s celebrated 69th Regiment. His unit belonged to the 42nd “Rainbow” Division, assembled from National Guard units across the country. The regiment’s roster (external address omitted for offline reading) gives his New York address as 37 West 50th Street. The cemetery record (external address omitted for offline reading) gives his death as 14 October 1918 and his grave as Plot E, Row 37, Grave 19.
One identification warning matters. The Cooney-Needham family records include a Peter born at Derrycriff, County Mayo, on 16 October 1890. He cannot ordinarily be this sergeant: Father Francis Duffy wrote that the Company M veteran had been “out with the regiment in ’98,” when the Derrycriff child was seven. The soldier’s story is documented; his connection to the Islandeady household is not.
The 165th entered the Meuse-Argonne offensive against the German Kriemhilde position, part of the Hindenburg Line. On 14 October the Rainbow Division attacked toward a fortified height called the Côte de Châtillon. The American Battle Monuments Commission’s official campaign guide (external address omitted for offline reading) describes thick belts of barbed wire, stubborn resistance and heavy artillery fire stopping attacks on the open slopes.
Father Duffy, the regiment’s chaplain, left the closest account of Company M’s day. In Father Duffy’s Story (external address omitted for offline reading), he says the artillery preparation began at 3:30 a.m. and the infantry jumped off at 8:30. Companies I and M led, with K and L immediately behind. Company M, commanded by Captain Rowley, advanced on the left toward the Côte de Maldah. The leading waves crossed roughly two miles under shell fire while German aircraft machine-gunned the lines. By early afternoon, Duffy wrote, half of the Third Battalion had been killed or wounded. His casualty passage is painfully direct: “Company M lost Sergeant Peter Cooney.”
The fighting continued after Cooney fell. From 14 to 16 October, the division forced its way through the defensive system and took the Côte de Châtillon. That local success was part of the enormous Meuse-Argonne offensive that pressed the German army until the Armistice less than a month later.
Cooney did not return to New York. He lies near Romagne-sous-Montfaucon in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery (external address omitted for offline reading), where 14,246 American war dead are buried—the largest number in any American cemetery in Europe. The scale can blur an individual life. Company M’s record restores the human scale: an experienced New York sergeant went forward in the first wave on 14 October and did not come back.