Abstract
On July 29, 1918, rain fell in Greene County, Pennsylvania … just like it had done every year since 1874, when they started keeping records. "Rain Day" would later grow into a local holiday but at first it was a simple observance, started when a farmer mentioned to his pharmacist that it always rained on his birthday. Halfway around the world, Greene County boys crawling up a muddy hill in France also felt rain while German machine gun fire poured down onto the open slope that the men were trying to climb. In just that one day, a rural Pennsylvania community went from 0 to 18 men lost. No amount of bright blue sky in nearly 100 years could take the rain from this single day.
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