Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Friday 25 May 2018
Then and now: France's World War I battle-scape

By LAURENT REBOURS Just a week before the
Associated Press Nov. 11, 1918, armistice
PARIS (AP) — U.S. troops that ended the war, hun-
fighting in France in World dreds of American supply
War I found a landscape trucks rumbled through a
ravaged by trench warfare muddy street in Beauclair.
and chemical weapons, Today cars ride along its
churches gutted by bombs asphalt, past a monument
and used as makeshift hos- to villagers lost in what's
pitals, and villages turned known in France as the
into military prisons. "Guerre du 14-18," or "the
A century later, those War of 1914-1918."
same verdant fields, rebuilt Every village here has such
churches and quaint villag- a monument, the names of
es greet American tourists the dead etched in memo-
and other world travelers, riam.
showing barely a trace of American military engi-
what they endured. neers crisscrossed northern
The Associated Press has France to rebuild bridges,
revisited sites across the for- roads and other essen-
mer Western Front as the tial infrastructure, some of
U.S. commemorates fallen which still stands.
soldiers on Memorial Day, Some details are gone,
and Europe prepares to however. The well where
mark 100 years since the German prisoners drew
war's end. The AP looked water in Pierrefitte-sur-Aire,
afresh at scenes from 1918 watched over by an Ameri-
in the Ardennes, Somme, can soldier, is now covered
Argonne and Meuse re- in pavement.
gions, captured in images On the day of the armistice,
held in the archives of the American soldiers celebrat-
U.S. National World War I ed victory with war-weary
Museum and Memorial. villagers in Stenay. Today,
The Americans arrived late This combo of two photographs shows; at left, Estella Margaret Kendall at the grave of her son, children run carefree up
in the war, in 1917, and Harry N. Kendall, in 1931 and at right, a view of the same location 100 years later on March 25, the church steps where the
gave crucial help to Brit- 2018. revelers stood.
ain, France and other allies Of the 2 million Americans
fighting Germany. allied troops were strug- tionless nearby. Today, chil- in nearby Neuvilly-en-Ar- who took part in World War
The wartime gloom lifted gling to push back the dren ride a toy tractor past gonne became a field hos- I, 116,516 died and about
briefly when U.S. troops front line, which had nearly the same spot. pital for U.S. troops. 200,000 others were injured.
marched in a Fourth of July reached the French capi- In a war that claimed some Bombed out and full of rub- Many of the dead rest at
parade in the summer of tal. 14 million lives — 5 million ble, it was still the sturdiest the Meuse-Argonne Ameri-
1918, through a Paris whose Near Verdun, U.S. soldiers civilians and 9 million sol- building in town. can Cemetery and Memo-
historic buildings and cob- ran through the main street diers, sailors and airmen Patients lay on the floor in rial in Romagne-sous-Mont-
blestone streets stand little of Exermont trying to es- from 28 countries over four rows, exactly as the recon- faucon.
changed 100 years later. cape German fire, as a years — and left 21 million structed pews now stand It is the largest U.S. ceme-
To the north and the east, comrade-in-arms lay mo- wounded, the town church today. tery in Europe to this day.q

This photo dated March 25, 2018, shows an inside view of a church in Neuvilly-en- This photo provided by National World War I Museum and Memorial dated July 4,
Argonne, eastern France. 1918 shows American troops in a Fourth of July parade in Paris, France.