Stained-glass soldiers: Europe’s churches preserve American war memories

LITTLE EASTON, England — A sign outside the Church of St. Mary the Virgin reminds visitors that the building is nearly 1,000 years old.

Inside, stone tombs rest beneath a high timber ceiling, and wall paintings predating Columbus’ first voyage across the Atlantic remain visible.

In the south chapel, something more modern and unexpected appears: a bright stained-glass window showing Jesus, arms outstretched, with U.S. warplanes soaring above his head and American airmen by his side.

The window is one of at least 30 in European churches that commemorate U.S. military efforts during the world wars. As the United States marks Memorial Day on Monday, they serve as reminders that American sacrifices are recognized far beyond the country’s shores, where memories endure, but not always in the same way.

The windows are located in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and Luxembourg, and each has a unique backstory. Some were created in the interwar and postwar years, in some cases replacing windows destroyed in battle. Others were installed decades later, often in areas where Americans were stationed or fought. Some honor a single soldier, while others commemorate entire units or branches of the armed forces. Veterans who served in Europe and families of fallen troops helped fund many of them.

Despite the differences, a common thread among all the windows is that Europeans accepted them into their most sacred spaces, preserving stories of the U.S. military in a medium traditionally associated with biblical imagery.

Several of the windows can be found in France’s Normandy region, including two at the church of Notre-Dame de l’Assomption in Sainte-Mere-Eglise.

Genevieve Pasquette, 90, who has attended the church since childhood, remembers going to Mass with her grandmother during the Nazi occupation. In the early hours of June 6, 1944, American paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division descended on Sainte-Mere-Eglise as part of the D-Day invasion, making it the first town liberated by Allied forces.

A stained-glass window installed at the church in 1969 depicts the scene, showing the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus as parachutes fill the sky. Two prominent paratroopers descend beneath them.

“It was magnificent,” Pasquette said of her first impression of the window. “It served as a tribute to what we had been through, but also to those young soldiers who had been killed.”

The window — and another installed in 1972 depicting St. Michael, the patron saint of paratroopers, and 82nd Airborne Division symbols — sparked regular conversations about the war during weddings and baptisms, Pasquette said.

Today, those stories are often told by tour guides. Normandy’s war sites draw millions of visitors each year, many of whom stop at Notre-Dame de l’Assomption.

Wendy Wyatt of North Carolina, whose grandfather was killed in World War II, was among those visitors in March.

“It gives me a lot of pride,” Wyatt said, gazing up at the stained-glass paratroopers, calling the memorial a way to “honor his sacrifice.” Nearby, other visitors took photos with their phones.

While Pasquette welcomes the visitors, she believes the windows resonate differently with them.

“Of course they don’t see it the same way,” she said. “For those who were here during the war, it’s different.”

From one church to the next, the windows vary widely in style. Some reference the military subtly through insignia or symbolic imagery and tend to blend into their surroundings. Others incorporate more overt depictions of troops, weapons and well-known national symbols like the U.S. flag.

At Saint-Pierre Church in Biville, Normandy, a stained-glass window shows American soldiers firing machine guns. At the Church of St. James the Apostle in Grafton Underwood, in central England, a window dedicated to the 384th Bomb Group features a large B-17 bomber and two bombs beneath the unit’s slogan, “Keep the Show on the Road.”

Such displays can prompt mixed reactions.

“Personally, I would prefer windows in a church to be of a religious nature,” said Rev. Sue Hurle at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Little Easton.

In addition to her church’s window with Jesus and the warplanes — a tribute to the 386th Bomb Group — a second one on an adjacent wall shows an American airman holding the hands of two children beneath a U.S. flag.

Hurle said she appreciates that the unit’s wartime presence remains part of the village’s history, but added that “it is very hard to remember war without glorifying it.”

Military imagery has appeared in church stained glass for centuries.

An over 350-year-old example can be found at St. Chad’s Church in Farndon, where a window commemorates Royalist soldiers from the English Civil War and depicts 17th-century uniforms and weapons.

“I think it surprises people because that’s not necessarily what they think of when they think of stained glass,” said Jasmine Allen, director and curator of the Stained Glass Museum in Ely, England, when asked about modern military imagery in church windows.

But the line between sacred and secular in church stained glass has never been absolute, she added.  

“Churches and cathedrals are places for the community, so they are always going to represent society at that time in some way … capturing the moment when the window was commissioned,” she said.

American military windows installed over decades reflect not only conflict and sacrifice, but how communities chose to remember them at particular moments.

The church of Sainte-Vierge-de-l’Assomption in Brieulles-sur-Meuse in northeast France, where Americans fought during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in World War I, shows how differently some of those memories are experienced today.

Light from a stained-glass window depicting a fallen American soldier and a wounded French soldier beneath Jesus on the cross filters through the nave, falling across a cobweb-covered statue of the Virgin Mary and a dry holy water dish. In an upstairs balcony, thick dust covers abandoned books.

Eric Huard, the mayor of Brieulles-sur-Meuse, who provided access to the church, said services are held intermittently, but the building is otherwise closed. As a result, the memorial window, inscribed in French as “offered by the families in memory of their heroes,” is seldom seen.

Infrequent use of churches is common in rural France, driven by small populations and growing secularism.

In northern France’s Belleau, a church rebuilt after World War I with funds collected by veterans of the 26th Division of the American Expeditionary Forces holds Mass only once a year, on Memorial Day. It includes stained-glass windows depicting a U.S. soldier.

Meanwhile, Saint-Pierre Church in Brassac-les-Mines continues to hold weekly Mass, but officials say a recent burglary has forced them to keep the doors locked at most other times. Inside is a stained-glass memorial honoring American Lt. Robert J. De Lorenze, who died from battle wounds in June 1944.

Even in churches that are usually open, American memorial windows are not always noticed. During a visit to Chelmsford Cathedral northeast of London in April, Stars and Stripes spoke with five visitors. Only one was aware that the memorial window at the main entrance honors the United States military, despite the official U.S. seal in the glass and “America” written in the marble floor below.

“It’s quite strange, we never actually noticed this stained-glass window before,” Katie Pearce, who was visiting with a friend, said. “It’s quite shocking because we come here quite a lot.”

In Weldon, Northamptonshire, residents work to ensure the memorial window in their church is not overlooked.

The church, also named St. Mary the Virgin, has been part of Sandra Whitlam’s life since 1942, when she was christened there at one month old. At the time, the U.S. 401st Bombardment Group was based just outside the village.

Whitlam said the local children used to count the American aircraft as they left for missions at night and again when they returned during the day. She remembers a Christmas party the Americans held on base, with fruit and other delicacies families had not seen for years during wartime rationing, and recalled servicemen tossing candy to children as they passed through the village.

“The Americans were very, very good to us children because we didn’t have a lot,” she said.

When the war ended and the unit prepared to leave Britain, it donated a stained-glass window from the base chapel to the church. It shows two hands shaking beneath a cross and overlapping flags of the United States and the United Kingdom.

“We make sure the children know about it,” Whitlam said, adding that students from the village school regularly visit the church to see the window and learn about the more than 1,000 members of the 401st who were killed, wounded or listed as missing in action.

While Whitlam suspects younger people “in the towns” may no longer feel the same connection to the U.S. wartime role, she believes attitudes remain different in Weldon.

“I hope when my generation goes, the next generation will carry on and not forget,” she said. After a brief pause, she pointed to the window and added: “But they won’t forget, because it’s always here.”

It’s normal for communities like Weldon, where American troops were based, to retain stronger and more lasting memories of the Americans and their role in the war than broader national memories, according to Jenny Edkins, a University of Manchester scholar whose research focuses on memory and politics.

But Edkins said memory is never fixed, and memorials cannot preserve a single permanent understanding of history.

“In general terms, memorials seem to me to change their meaning over time, depending on other things that are going on,” Edkins said. “It doesn’t take a lot to change memory.”

In some cases, shifting attitudes can lead to memorials being removed. In recent years, several stained-glass windows in the United States have been taken down after criticism that they glorified Confederate figures, romanticized slavery or contained racist imagery.

One of the most prominent examples involved a stained-glass panel at Yale University that depicted enslaved Black people picking cotton in an idealized antebellum scene.

As the distance from World War II grows, the way the U.S. military is perceived in Europe is shifting. A stained-glass window honoring the U.S. 3rd Air Division of the 8th Air Force at St Andrew’s and St. Patrick’s Church in Elveden, England, describes the Americans as fighting for the “cause of world freedom.”

Today, younger generations are more likely to associate the U.S. military with more controversial conflicts, including those in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose goals are often seen as less clearly defined.

In France, many now see the United States as threatening, according to a January poll by IFOP, one of the country’s most respected polling firms.

The survey found that 51% of respondents believe the United States could pose a military threat to France in the coming years, while 42% described it as an “enemy country.” The poll was conducted at a time when President Donald Trump repeatedly suggested the United States should take control of Greenland, a territory belonging to NATO ally Denmark, and at times declined to fully rule out the use of military force.

Still, Jacqueline Gudenburg, a choir member at Saint-Maurice Church in Eschweiler, Luxembourg, said it would take far more than recent political tensions for her community to start changing its opinions of the American soldiers who fought there during the Battle of the Bulge.

One of those soldiers was Pvt. George Mergenthaler, who was killed in action in the village. After the war, his family sent funds to help restore the damaged church.

Today, parish priest Henri Hamus delivers sermons in Luxembourgish beneath a stained-glass window bearing the seal of the United States and the Mergenthaler family crest. From the choir balcony, Gudenburg and other members look down on a mural depicting Jesus alongside an apostle painted in Mergenthaler’s likeness.

Gudenburg said people in the community are well aware of the current tensions between the United States and Europe, but that they have little impact on how they view the American imagery and memorials in the church.

“The history of the soldiers from the United States, it’s our history,” she said. “It’s too integrated.”

Lilian Pfluke, a retired U.S. Army major who established the nonprofit American War Memorials Overseas in 2008, said preserving that shared history is an important function of the memorial windows.

Her organization has documented thousands of nongovernment war memorials honoring Americans overseas. The American Battle Monuments Commission also maintains dozens of monuments and more than two dozen American military cemeteries abroad, many in Europe, some with chapels that include stained-glass windows commemorating U.S. units.

Pfluke said the role of all of these in commemorating fallen Americans and the camaraderie between the United States and its European allies is especially relevant today, as questions over the future of the transatlantic alliance grow.

“It’s important to have these stained-glass windows, these memorials, these monuments to keep that memory alive,” Pfluke said, “to keep reminding people that it hasn’t always been like this, and it doesn’t need to be like this in the future.”