An Unforgettable Site

There are others of course—five more in France alone and another in Flanders Field in neighboring Belgium.

But the World War I American military cemetery just outside Chateau-Thierry a bit southwest of Reims, the city where France’s kings traditionally were crowned, is something special.

There lie the immaculately tended graves of 2,289 doughboys (plus 251 unknowns) who fought and died on the city’s outskirts in the battle of Belleau Wood, the first combat action undertaken by strictly American forces in the waning months of what for years was known “The War to End All Wars.”.

Another 1060 are commemorated in special plaques for the names of the missing.

Numerous other American military cemeteries in France and elsewhere in Europe containing the graves of the fallen soldiers of World War I and World War II are bigger. The one near Chateau-Thierry, however, is always near the top of the visitor list for those which honor the nearly 31,000 Americans who died in the first of those conflicts.

Some 40,000 individuals make the voyage there each year. The numbers are particularly heavy around Armistice Day on November 11. The date has special meaning in the Chateau-Thierry region because so many paid with their lives there as World War I was ending for what they believed, erroneously, would be a lasting peace.

Many who come to what is officially known as the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery because it is near the Marne river in the department of the Aisne are French citizens who want to pay their respects to those who defended them in a still much-remembered war in which a million and a half of their soldiers and citizens perished.

Most, however, are American military and their families stationed in Britain or nearby Germany. They are drawn to the site because it is part of their military history or it is where relatives from preceding generations fought died and were buried.

The area has particular significance for serving U.S. marines or marine veterans. They dominate the visitor list because it was the 4th Marine Brigade of the U.S. 2nd Division that essentially halted and turned back an intensive German effort in Belleau Wood  to break through the Allied line and move on to capture Paris. 

Although American troops started to arrive on European soil in April, 1917, they always had fought previously in conjunction with French or other Allied forces. In Belleau Wood, the Americans, even though technically still acting under the orders of senior French military authorities, battled the Germans on their own and beat them back.. 

Officially the main battle lasted from only from July 17 to 26, 1918 even though sporadic fighting had begun earlier and went on until early August when the Germans finally abandoned their attacks and withdrew.

In retrospect, however, that withdrawal marked what turned out to be the last major German offensive of the war and one of the major turning points in favor of the Allied armies that opposed them.

Only four months later, the November 11 armistice that ended the war and still triggers annual memorial ceremonies on that date in almost every French village was signed in Compiègne, France, just a short distance north of Chateau Thierry.

The American Battle Monuments Commission, which oversees some 24 military cemeteries and 22 separate monuments and markers on foreign soil as well as three memorials in the United States, diligently tends to the grounds, buildings and rows of white marble gravestones on the edge of Belleau Wood and it does it well.

The entrance path to the cemetery is lined with roses leading to stone administration building where a caretaker constantly is on duty from 9: a.m. to 5: p.m. year round except Christmas and New Year to help visitors and lead them to specific grave sights they might be seeking.

At the end of the entry lane, on an expansive grassy knoll, stands a graceful white stone chapel with carefully tended, grass-surrounded graves in slightly arched rows of white marble headstones curving off on both sides. Each sector is dominated by a large American flag fluttering atop a giant flagpole. 

In fact, the entire area is laden with memorabilia of the fighting there and in the surrounding Marne river valley area. .

Just across from the cemetery entrance is a well-kept small local village church. During the battle of Belleau Wood, American forces used its belfry as an observation tower and, in the course of the fighting, it was damaged by German artillery fire. After the war, however, the veterans association of the 2nd U.S. Division undertook to rebuild the church and maintain it. They continue that task to this day for what is now known as the 2nd Division Memorial Church of Belleau. 

Only a few hundred yards from the church and the American cemetery there also is a German one  with its own memorial wall for unidentified battle victims and strict rows of sober grey stone crosses for the graves of 8,625 German soldiers who also died in the battle of Belleau Wood or its surroundings.

Strikingly, in light of Germany’s anti-semitic policies before and during World War II, a number of those graves are marked not with a cross but with a Star of David, a respectful tribute paid at the time of the first World War to the German soldiers of Jewish faith buried there.

In addition, on a hill two miles west of Chateau-Thierry there is another imposing memorial commanding a wide view of he Marne river valley. Its inscriptions strongly stress the Franco-American  ties symbolized by the battle there. Nearby stands also a statue of a rifle-toting U.S. marine moving to attack. It pays particular tribute to the role of the 4th Marine Brigade in taking Belleau Wood and turning back the German offensive. 

Amid the almost constant current worry about the fragile state of Franco-American relations, a visit to the cemetery and monument provides an unforgettable reminder of what Americans have done for France in its times of trouble.

As the inscription on the hilltop memorial notes: “Time will not dim the glory of their deeds.”

Chateau-Thierry is  only an hour’s drive or an hour’s train ride northeast of Paris, By car it is reached easily on the Autoroute A-4 going from the French capital toward Reims.

It is hard to miss. Well before the turnoff toward the town and the cemetery drivers are alerted on the autoroute by a blue background road sign with a white cross and an American red white and blue shield. Ahead, it announces, lies an “American Memorial of 1918;”  Smaller route signs direct visitors from the edge of Chateau-Thierry to the cemetery site about six miles to the northwest. 

For those planning an overnight stay there are Campanile and Best Western motor hotels at the entrance to the town, which has its own claim to fame as the ancestral home of the well-known French fable writer, Jean de la Fontaine.