Return to Cheppy

Mayor Jean Lamorlette, me, Mme Saunier

   
     My return to Cheppy took place over two days beginning yesterday afternoon when I met with the mayor, Jean Lamorlette. I had emailed him in advance, and so he knew quite a bit about my father’s experiences. After chatting for a while -- he’s been mayor since 1995 and serves six-year terms -- he took us to what my father called the “Dutch [German] kitchen” where he breakfasted on the morning of the second day, Sept. 27. It’s still there!

The German kitchen

     Mme. Saunier’s parents owned the property in 1914. When the Germans invaded, they were evacuated first to the Vosges Mountains, but when the Germans went there, her parents were evacuated to Belgium. When they returned to the property after the war, their house was gone and a steel-reinforced blockhouse stood in their backyard with a tunnel into a hillside. The front of the building was used as a kitchen; the side building as a hospital. Sturdy concrete pillars supported steel beams holding up the roof. Mayor Lamorlette speculated that the American army had simply taken over the building after seizing Cheppy and put its own mess there.
     I teared up seeing it because my father had wanted to return in the 1960s, but my mother didn’t want to go. The thought that if he had returned, he would have seen the building was still there overwhelmed me. Plus, I was moved by the consideration the mayor and Mme. Saunier showed a stranger.
     Just up the road was the ravine my father had mentioned in his diary. He spent the night of Sept. 26 there, before moving to the German kitchen the next morning. The ravine was the site of a lot of action. German machine gun nests lined the ravine. An American officer was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for leading an attack on those. Harry Truman mentioned in his letters that his outfit stopped there.
     Just west of that, towards where the Americans started, is the Missouri Memorial erected by veterans of the 35th Division. And Mayor Lamorlette pointed to the field behind the memorial and  explained that is where George Patton was wounded. Several years ago, Patton’s grandson contacted the mayor, and the two of them visited the location.

The German cemetary at Cheppy

     Mayor Lamorlette then took us to the German cemetery. 6,165 German bodies -- or body parts -- are buried there, but not nearly that many markers can be seen. I noted that while most of the markers were crosses, a few were conventional tombstones and asked the mayor what they were. He assumed they were not Christians, and indeed, when we looked at the inscriptions we saw Stars of David and Jewish names, the most notable of which was Josef Rothschild. The terrible tragedy and irony of so many Jewish men dying for Germany in WWI with the Holocaust of WWII was not lost on any of us.

The grave of Josef Rothschild at the German cemetary

     Before leaving, the mayor, who is a farmer and whose family has lived outside Cheppy “forever,” said that he had run over a shell while working his field last week. It exploded, and he had to call the fire department. So WWI remains very real for him.
     Today we set out early to fill in the details of Dad’s exploits. No one seemed to know where Buzemont was. That is the hill army records show his machine gun company was located on the morning of September 26, 1918. That is, no one knew until we stopped by the office of the mayor of Vauquois. The mayor was busy, but the secretary said it must be the same as Buzemont farm and gave us directions. It proved to be private land, but we parked the car and hiked a half mile to the top of the hill. From there we had a clear view of Butte Vauquois and are sure that’s where Dad arrived at 11:00 the night before the battle, almost exactly 100 years ago as of the time of this writing, and from where the Meuse-Argonne offensive began for him.

Butte Vauquois seen from Buzemont farm

     We then followed Dad’s route from Cheppy to Varennes, then north to Charpentry and Balny. To get there, I followed what I knew to be an old Roman road. The 35th Division took heavy casualties  following that route because it ran along a ridge for a mile, exposing the Americans to constant fire from German artillery and guns. The 35th made it to both towns and the ridge line on which they stood only to be hit by a counter attack by a German division that collapsed the 35th. After five days of fighting, only 300 men out of 28,000 could be organized to hold the line against the Germans. So total was the collapse that the entire 35th was pulled off the line and sent back to a rest area, never to fight again before the armistice, which came only 47 days after the Meuse-Argonne offensive was launched. As President Wilson and General Pershing believed it would, waiting until the entire American Army was ready to fight brought a quick end to the war.

The steps at the American memorial at Montfaucon

     From Balny and Charpentry, we visited Montfaucon, the high hill the Germans held some ten or so miles from Cheppy that overlooked the entire area. We decided not to climb the 272 steps of the circular staircase that is inside the even higher American memorial on Montfaucon. We did see the reinforced observation post the Germans had constructed in the tower of a destroyed church at the top and gnarled trees whose limbs were shot off during the fighting 100 years ago. I had read that the old trees can’t be cut down because they are riddled with bullets and shell fragments that ruin power saws.

The American cemetary

     Our tracing of Dad’s part of the war ended at the American cemetery where 14,000 are
buried. Flags of the United States and France still decorated each grave from last Sunday’s
ceremonies. I stopped by the visitors’ center and left a copy of my book on Dad’s experiences
with Bruce Malone, Jr., the superintendent.
     We ended the day by driving to Verdun, walking along the Meuse River, and dining outdoors
next to a British couple. Tomorrow morning, I return to Cheppy one last time, to Buzemont
where my father’s experience five days of the horrors of combat.