New York Times, Travel section, sunday, november 10,2013, Page TR12:
PERSONAL JOURNEYS
In France, Honoring the Fallen in the War to End All Wars
Thierry Secretan for The New York Times
Verdun battlefield, among the sites where ceremonies for the World War I centenary will be held next year.
By NANCY R. NEWHOUSE
Published: November 8, 2013
I stood on the edge of quiet fields stretching away to woods, near the small French town of Fère-en-Tardenois in the Marne Valley. Before me loomed a monumental and poignant figure: an American soldier in World War I carrying a dead comrade from the battlefield. There is not much else here: a simple inscribed plinth and a bench, a sense of past loss, and silence.
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Thierry Secretan for The New York Times
Clockwise from top, a sculpture by James Butler at the site of Croix Rouge Farm, given by an American in honor of his father, who was wounded there; German Cemetery near Belleau; and Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at Belleau.
Thierry Secretan for The New York Times
From top, American Aisne-Marne Monument; “Liberty Weeping” by Frederick McMonnies at the Musée de la Grande Guerre in Meaux; the Musée de la Grande Guerre.
A French friend had told me about this memorial to the Battle of Croix Rouge Farm, and in April when I was in Paris, I came to see it myself. My larger goal was to visit at least a small part of the land fought over in both the First and Second Battles of the Marne. In advance of the approaching centenary of World War I (1914-1918), I wanted to sense something of the experience of American soldiers, who were key participants in the last year of the war. The story of this single battle and of the memorial’s creation was my first window into the fierce drama of “the war to end all wars,” and the American role, which I knew little about.
On July 26, 1918, the 167th (Alabama) Infantry Regiment, along with the 168th (Iowa), attacked strongly held German positions in the Battle of Croix Rouge Farm. In fierce fighting, the Americans took heavy losses advancing across open fields (unlike the trench warfare typical of much of World War I) toward the well-fortified farmhouse complex and the German machine gun nests in the nearby woods.
In the final push, Maj. John W. Carroll, the First Battalion’s commander, shouted: “Save your fire, men! We’ll give ’em hell with the bayonet.” One soldier recalled “it was the only hand-to-hand fighting I saw during the war,” and Gen. Douglas MacArthur later spoke admiringly of the Alabamians and Iowans, citing their gallantry.
They did prevail, in this small but intense action near Château-Thierry, only 45 miles east of Paris, and the Germans retreated. It was part of the Second Battle of the Marne, a major theater for American troops as they poured into France, 250,000 a month, in the last year of the war.
Today, the son of one of those Alabama infantrymen has created a striking memorial on the site. It pays tribute to the 167th (Alabama) Infantry Regiment and the United States 42nd Infantry (Rainbow) Division of which it was part (“Rainbow” because the division was formed of units from 26 states and the District of Columbia). Dedicated the day after Armistice Day, 2011, it was the longtime dream of Nimrod T. Frazer, now in his 80s, of Montgomery, Ala., whose father, Sgt. William Johnson Frazer, was awarded a Purple Heart after the battle, and it came into being in ample time for the anniversary of the Great War.
The centenary is of huge significance in Europe, and a rich tapestry of events is planned to honor it. From the battlefields of the Marne and the Somme in France and Ypres in Belgium to Gallipoli, Sarajevo and the British Commonwealth countries, ceremonies will be held, most beginning next August, the month the war began. And many museums, such as the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., will hold events connected to Armistice Day (Veterans Day in the United States) this Nov. 11. Exhibitions will proliferate, and the Imperial War Museum in London will open new World War I galleries next summer.
In France, part of an ambitious pan-European program is underway right now: La Grande Collecte-Europeana 1914-1918. Through Nov. 16, at 70 collection points around the country, individuals can bring in their family or personal documents from the war. Archivists and specialists are available free, and some material will be digitized for public online access on Europeana1914-1918.eu.
World War I battlefield tours in France are already popular, many run by British companies to the Somme, where so many British troops fought, and tours will proliferate during the centenary. While solemn ceremonies will be held at key sites like Verdun, where French losses in 1916 exceeded 200,000 men, groups of World War I buffs worldwide are also planning events. For instance, in Dayton, Ohio, the League of WW1 Aviation Historians, in conjunction with the National Museum of the United States Air Force, will stage flyovers of vintage fighter planes next September.
Anyone connected through a family member or simply with an interest in this war, which destroyed much of a generation of men in Europe and drastically reconfigured its culture and moral outlook, will feel the pull of these four extraordinary years.
I began my April visit at Château-Thierry, and the one-hour train trip from Paris was a startling reminder of how close the Germans got to Paris in 1914 and in 1918.
Château-Thierry is a pleasant if unremarkable town, and the amiable local taxi driver whom I’d hired ahead knew the best ways to get me to places on my wish list. We started at the small American Methodist Church in town, dedicated in 1924, which has a memorial tablet to American Protestants killed in 1917-18 and a stained-glass window showing the Marquis de Lafayette greeting Gen. John J. Pershing. That sounded irresistible, but despite the “Open” sign, it was closed; the only bit of bad luck I encountered.
On the road out of town is a simple memorial to the United States Third Infantry Division in both wars; farther on, a high hill is crowned with the impressive American Aisne-Marne Monument. The vast stone double-colonnaded building is surrounded by lawns and plantings; inscriptions in French and English testify to the friendship and valor of French and American forces: “Time will not dim the glory of their deeds.” From the long terrace there is a grand view over the Marne Valley.
Just six and a half miles northwest of Château-Thierry, we arrived at the site of the Battle of Belleau Wood, legendary among United States Marines. Here Allied troops had engaged the Germans who were pushing toward Paris, and on June 6, 1918, the Marines launched an attack, capturing the entire area by June 26. They lost more men on June 6 than in the entire previous history of the corps.
Following the loop walk on the 200-acre site, after admiring the iconic figure of Iron Mike, a Marine in action, I came across German cannons, Marine plaques outlining the battle and, scattered in the woods, craters and foxholes. Below Belleau Wood, down the imposing, broad tree-lined allée of the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial, the full somber note of war struck me when its 2,289 graves came into view. Perfectly maintained, the cemetery breathes peace and honor bestowed. In its handsome chapel with a carillon tower, the interior walls are thick with the engraved names of over 1,000 American missing in action whose bodies were not recovered.
Not far away, but light-years away in mood, is the German Cemetery near the village of Belleau. The contrast is extraordinary. The well-maintained space is small, and it took me a moment to realize that four soldiers are buried under every stone marker, two names on each side of the German cross. Graves are close together, and in a modest ossuary over 4,000 more are buried in a mass grave. No heroic words here, just a deep melancholy.
Another national monument in heroic mode, Les Fantômes, conveys grandeur and humanity in its eight towering figures profiled against the sky — among them a machine-gunner and a grenadier. Charles de Gaulle came here to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the victory of the Second Marne. It is a quiet site set above grassy fields, on the way to the charming town of Fère-en-Tardenois.
I also visited a few small, almost intimate sites near the town: the memorial fountain to Quentin Roosevelt (Teddy Roosevelt’s son), the memorial to Second Lt. Oliver Ames II and the 42nd Rainbow Division at Meurcy Farm, and the Seringes American Memorial Church, all within a short distance of one another. Both the church and the Meurcy memorials are on private farms that allow access. Given the peaceful rural landscapes, the various memorial markers (one inscribed on a granite boulder) seem surprising, almost out of place. My taxi driver, Mr. Penchedez, told me how the farms and villages here went back and forth between the Germans and Allied troops, sometimes changing occupiers in a single day.
We headed back toward Château-Thierry to the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial where 6,012 soldiers are buried, including seven sets of brothers. The second-largest American World War I cemetery in Europe (the largest, the Meuse-Argonne, is farther east near Verdun), its overwhelming geometry of white headstones is framed by verdant trees, flowers and lawn. Joyce Kilmer, killed in the Battle of the Ourcq, is buried here.
A good place to learn about the war is the Musée de la Grande Guerre, which opened on Armistice Day 2011, in Meaux, 25 miles and a short train ride northeast of Paris. Sleek and low-slung, the 75,000-square foot building was constructed essentially for the vast collection of Jean-Pierre Verney, a passionate lifelong collector of anything related to the war. It is set below a towering stone figure, “Liberty Weeping,” given by Americans in 1932 to “the heroic sons of France.”
The museum is less about the history of battles and more about objects and the personal life of the soldier. I was touched by a section on soldiers’ belongings — not just guns and gas masks, but canteens, cigarette cartons, soap and shell casings carved in the trenches, some in the shape of alluring women. And throughout, uniforms of both sides are handsomely displayed on mannequins.
Recruitment posters — German, French, British and American (one aimed specifically at British bachelors!) — postcards and photos cohabit with toys and memorabilia. The large, airy central space displays a 1917 tank and a mobile field loft for carrier pigeons. A claustrophobia-inducing recreation of a French trench and a German one face each other across a miniaturized no man’s land (although nothing can recreate the unrelenting deep mud that was a horror for troops on both sides).
The museum can be easily combined with a visit to the area around Château-Thierry. Those with more time can continue on to St. Mihiel, where in September 1918, a half-million troops in the American First Army, with French support, carried out a victorious offensive against the Germans. Fighting went on to the Cote de Châtillon, then the armistice was not far away.
And going back in time to 1916 and Verdun, which is nearby, will give visitors a broad overview of the war along this front.
From the urbane, bustling streets of Paris to the now quiet but epic landscape that unfolds in the Marne, there is a story waiting — and an occasion during the centenary to remember the young American soldiers who fought for and with France and the Allies in the final year of the war.
If You Go
The tour I describe could be done in a day and a half, or two days if you include the Musée de la Grande Guerre. You’ll pay about 150 euros, $200 at $1.33 to the euro, a day for a taxi.
A helpful book is “Major & Mrs. Holt’s Battlefield Guide to Western Front-South” (Pen & Sword Military, 2011 edition), which offers precise directions and descriptions and exhaustively detailed itineraries.
The website for the American Battle Monuments Commission, abmc.gov (see Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial), has an excellent interactive World War I timeline.
A detailed account of the Croix Rouge Farm Battle, maps and a site guide to the region can be found at croixrougefarm.org/visiting . For information on the Musée de la Grande Guerre, Pays de Meaux, visit museedelagrandeguerre.eu .
For information on the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial,theworldwar.org .
Among the websites devoted to the centenary are centenaire.org , with information on projects, and centenarynews.com , for news and articles. Europeana1914-1918.eu includes personal stories and documents being gathered for a European online library.
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