Arthur Kief and John Shea, recently returned from overseas service, have received their honorable discharge, and arrived home yesterday. Kief wears a wound stripe. At Chateau Thierry, on July 18, in the battle of the Marne, he was blown up by a high explosive shell, and laid for thirty-six hours unconscious in the shell hole where he fell, supposed to be dead. It was a week later that he regained consciousness in a hospital. He spent seven months in different hospitals, and when be returned to his company in January last, the fighting was over.
Kief was one of the first eleven drafted men from Hancock county, most of whom made quick time from Ellsworth to the front. He left Ellsworth Sept. 4, 1917, spent but a few days at Camp Devens, arrived in England October 17, and in France a week later, and after three months of intensive training, was plunged into the thick of the fighting. He was with Co. B, 103d machine gun battalion, 26th division, and saw six months of heavy fighting in which this famous division participated before he “got his.” He stood beside Rodney Stinson of Stonington, another of the original eleven from Hancock county who was in his company, when Stinson was killed.
Ellsworth American, Ellsworth, ME, May 7, 1919