The words were “go to hell.” The commander was Charles W. Whittlesey, a lawyer in his early 30s who was sent to France in September 1917.

Image Charles W. Whittlesey, a lawyer who commanded the “lost battalion.’' The Germans sent a message to him saying they would stop the carnage if he would surrender in World War I. It is said that Whittlesey replied “go to hell.” Mr. Lang contends that probably wasn’t what he said. Credit... United States Army

Thirteen months later, the 307th was ordered to break through the German lines as part of a huge and carefully planned American offensive. One account of the operation reported that “this was to be General John J. Pershing’s all-out effort to show the world that his United States First Army could win the war before Christmas.”

Whittlesey was in charge of what Harold Holzer, the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, called a unit of “unruly polyglot New Yorkers of Chinese, Italian, Irish and Jewish extraction, all of whom Whittlesey championed.” “His Dark Land” was performed at the Roosevelt House on Wednesday.

“The night before they mustered out, they drank and brawled on the street,” said Mr. Holzer, who will introduce the “His Dark Land” on Saturday, “and then they cohered.”

And once the war was over, they were remembered — at first.

The memorial grove began with a single oak in 1921, according to the Central Park Conservancy. By the mid-1930s, 26 trees had been planted in the area. Sixteen represented each company in the 307th Regiment, from which the lost battalion was drawn. The other trees were dedicated to soldiers who had belonged to the fraternal organization Knights of Pythias.

The conservancy said the grove was vandalized in 1960, and 11 of the commemorative plaques by the trees disappeared. The Pythians replaced them with a single monument in 1961.