French town planning museum
honoring Americans' WWI efforts
Story and photos by Steve
Liewer, Stars and Stripes
A 1st Infantry Division
color guard from Würzburg, Germany, stands at attention during a French-American Veterans
Day observance in Fléville, France. |
FLÉVILLE, France — The crash of artillery shortly before dawn on Oct. 4, 1918,
meant freedom would soon be at hand for the people of this flyspeck farm village on the
edge of the Argonne Forest.
Along a front 70 miles long, the troops of the American Expeditionary Forces had begun
the last big offensive of the Great War. More than 20 divisions would advance at once,
dislodging the Germans from their fortress-like trenches, and forcing the Central Powers
finally to sue for peace five weeks later.
At the tip of the American wedge was the then-new 1st Infantry Division, already known
as "The Big Red One." Its troops would liberate Fléville (pronounced fluh-VEEL)
and several neighboring villages in the Meuse-Argonne region northeast of Paris — and
earn the eternal gratitude of the French citizens who live there.
They did so at a fearsome cost: 1,726 of the division’s soldiers died in the
campaign, and 7,730 more were injured.
Eighty-three years after the armistice that ended World War I, several officers and
soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division’s headquarters in Würzburg, Germany,
returned to the Argonne. They joined hundreds of French citizens in remembering the war
dead.
Mayor Damien Georges of
Fléville, France, welcomes troops from the 1st Infantry Division to Veterans' Day
ceremonies in the Meuse-Argonne region. |
"This is really hallowed ground for the Big Red One," said Sgt. Major Cory
McCarty, the unit’s senior enlisted soldier. "It’s part of my
responsibility to let the soldiers see this. It gives them a sense of belonging to
something."
Over the weekend, a color guard, a firing squad and a bugler from the 1st ID performed
at seven memorial ceremonies in and around Fléville, including one near the 14,025
American graves at the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery. They gave up a holiday weekend at home to
do it.
Sgt. Johnnie Chapple, 30, of Modesto, Calif., had heard about the history of the Big
Red One. The Veterans Day observances let him see that history up close.
"It means a lot more to me now," Chapple said. "I didn’t have any
idea what these guys went through. When they played ‘Taps,’ it gave me
chills."
This was the third straight year 1st ID troops had joined in ceremonies on Veterans Day
and Memorial Day. That is largely because of the efforts of Frédéric Castier, who has
turned the remembrance of American veterans of World War I into a personal mission.
Castier, 37, said he has long been a student of World War II history — especially
the Normandy invasion, which occurred just down the coast from his home in Calais, France.
Five years ago, though, he began reading about the First World War. He visited the
Meuse-Argonne region northeast of Paris, where some of the fiercest trench warfare took
place, and discovered almost nothing had been done to preserve those sites.
Castier, who then spoke little English, contacted veterans of the 1st ID’s 16th
Infantry Regiment, which suffered heavy casualties at Fléville and later adopted the
town’s coat of arms as its regimental crest.
Spec. Matthew Buehler,
24, of the 1st Infantry Division band blows Taps during a Veterans' Day observance in the
Meuse-Argonne region of France. |
Castier attended a 1st ID reunion in the United States, and presented his idea for a
museum to commemorate the regiment’s sacrifices. The response to his plan has been so
enthusiastic, it has grown to include all of the 1st Infantry Division and many other
divisions that fought in the Meuse-Argonne campaign.
"Now the project is more and more expansive," he said.
Castier envisions a museum on a hill just south of Fléville, with a small park nearby.
The museum will celebrate the history of Franco-American friendship, dating back to the
American Revolution.
Although the project is still only an unpaid hobby, Castier said he has raised about 80
percent of the $4 million he anticipates will be needed, some of it through funds from the
French and European governments. He is currently working with the Chicago Tribune
Co.’s McCormick Foundation, which already supports a 1st ID museum in Wheaton, Ill.,
for another grant.
In the next few months, Castier said, his museum’s board will launch a feasibility
study. Construction could begin within two years.
He hopes the museum will draw tourists to the rolling hills and forests of the
Meuse-Argonne region, a beautiful but depressed rural area with little industry except
dairy farming and forestry. He also hopes to see the battlefield sites preserved, along
with dozens of small war memorials that were erected by Americans in the Argonne following
World War I, but which have long been neglected.
Frédéric Castier, 37,
has worked for the past four years for the construction of a World War I museum at
Fléville, France, memorializing the deeds of American soldiers in the Meuse-Argonne
region. |
Castier said it seems World War I has been all but forgotten now that nearly all of the
war’s veterans are dead, and it has been overshadowed by the monumental horror of
World War II.
"It’s important to keep the memory [of World War I] to the next generation.
It’s a duty to me," he said. "You wouldn’t be here today if the
Americans hadn’t come, and I would speak, maybe, German."
Fléville Mayor Damien Georges has enthusiastically backed Castier’s plans. A park
ranger who moved to Fléville only a few years ago, he has nevertheless steeped himself in
the town’s long and turbulent history.
Through a translator, Georges told Stars and Stripes that about 600 people lived in the
village before the Germans invaded in 1915, and nearly all of them had fled after the
occupation. At the time of the American attack, the German army had built a hospital and
large laundry facilities in Fléville.
The American attack drove out the Germans but destroyed most of the buildings. Some
were rebuilt in the 1920s, but Georges said many people took their war-indemnity checks
and moved elsewhere. The town has never fully recovered.
Fléville was occupied once again during World War II, and again was liberated by U.S.
forces. That cemented the town’s bond with the United States, in spite of sometimes
prickly relations between the governments of France and the United States since the war.
Today, only about 150 people live in Fléville. Nearly all of them braved sub-freezing
temperatures Sunday to honor the American war dead in front of a 2-year-old monument to
the Big Red One at the village hall.
"Fléville was actually wiped off the map eight times in various wars,"
Georges said. "It’s very important to remind people that so many [Americans]
died to save this little village."
It is a debt the French have pledged they will remember.
"We don’t forget that, two times in 40 years, the American forces pushed back
the invaders," said French Gen. Ivan Dujonc, who spoke at several of the Veterans Day
ceremonies. "I can only say: American soldiers, thank you."
For more information about the museum project, visit the Arthur S. Tozar
Museum’s Web page at: membres.tripod.fr/ASTozar_museum.
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