It is rather surprising that movies of the Meuse-Argonne offensive exist and are online. This first one doesn't identify the location. It may be later in the offensive, after Dad's division was taken out of combat. However, at about 2:20 you can see a wagon go by with one of the big, heavy French machine guns of the type that Dad's company was using then. It is pulled by mules, and Dad, a farm boy, wrote about taking care of the mules at Camp Doniphan in Oklahoma.
Meuse-Argonne offensive
This movie of burials is identified as taking place at Cheppy. This would have been at the time Dad was there. Burials at Cheppy
On a different movie note is this clip on YouTube. Varennes, a town a few miles west of Cheppy and within the 35th Division's sector on September 26, 1918, was where French King Louis XVI was captured as he was fleeing to the safety of the German border to escape the Revolution. He as taken back to Paris and later executed. Thus, Varennes's brief fame was as the place Louis XVI was captured. The incident was turned into a movie La Nuit de Varennes, or A Night in Varennes. Le Nuit de Varennes This map shows both Cheppy and Varennes-en-Argonne. Map The King's night in Varennes was in 1791. Dad's night in Cheppy was 127 years after that My visit will come 100 years after Dad's.
My father Harold Johnston fought at the opening of the Meuse-Argonne in WWI. He never went back, but I did on September 26, 2018, exactly 100 years later. This is his story from 1918 and mine from 2018.
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