How I get to Cheppy

Reims Cathedral was where French kings held their coronations. Outside the cathedral is a statue of Joan of Arc, who helped Charles VII ascend the throne here in 1429.

    We start in Reims, after first flying from Washington D.C. to France.  Although we came to see the cathedral, once here we discovered how fitting a start Reims is. 

The cathedral suffered damage during WWI, as visible in this photograph.

One of two rose windows on the Western wall of the cathedral.
The larger is original; this smaller rose window was created in
1936 to replace a window that had been bombed out.

The Gate of Mars is just up the street from our hotel.  This dates back to the first century A.D. when the Remes sided with Romans against the Belgian nation, and the Romans made Reims the capital for the region.  We learned this at the Roman forum in Reims, whose granary, or something, still stands, albeit somewhat underground. 

The Roman Granary in Reims

The bellicose history continued through WWI when the famous cathedral was largely destroyed.  In WWII, Reims was headquarters for the Allies in the region and so was the site of the German surrender.  But whereas I imagined that occurred in a quaint French house, it took place in a large, rambling three-story brick building large enough to hold an army staff.  Nearby is Reims' memorial to its sons who were killed in WWI, but there is no memorial to the Americans.  But, last night we met two men from Brest who said there is an enormous tower memorial to the Americans in that seaport.  800,000 American troops went through there in WWI.  He said Brest remembers to this day what the Americans did.  To paraphrase Claude from Brest, We were defeated until the Americans came.

The building in Reims where the surrender took place at the end of WWII

WWII surrender table in Reims

Books on the subject

   My research on what Dad was doing included the 35th Division  history files at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, his diaries, and several excellent books.  One was D. M. Giangreco's The Soldier from Independence: A Military Biography of Harry Truman.  It has recently been re-released by the Potomac Books imprint of the University of Nebraska Press Soldier from Independence.  Robert Hugh Ferrell also wrote an account of the battle and the 35th Division's failure in Collapse at Meuse-Argonne, the failure of the Kansas-Missouri Division.  Collapse at Meuse-Argonne as did Edward Lengel in To Conquer Hell To Conquer Hell. George Patton's role is mentioned in Carlo D'Este, Patton a Genius for War Patton, A Genius for War.

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Getting to Cheppy in 1918

   In a later post, I'll explain how I'm getting to Cheppy.  But in this post, I'll talk about how Dad got there.
   The 35th Division history says it began pulling out of the Vosges on September 15.  But this is not what Dad wrote in his diary.  He said that on September 11, they moved to be in reserve for the fight at St. Mihiel, which he spelled St. Michael.  Anyway, he moved in trucks, apparently because of the heavy machine guns.  The Division history said it marched 110 kilometers to Charmontois before breaking into smaller elements and moving to towns nearer the front.  The movement of the 35th and other American divisions into position to launch the Meuse-Argonne offensive was done with as much secrecy as possible.  It worked:  the Germans were taken by surprise.  The planner of all this was a young colonel named George C. Marshall.