The Forgotten

​August 2015- Like a family of fatigued ducklings, we followed my husband down the hill, rolling our suitcases down the single-width, round edged sidewalk, past the road sign for Ahornstrasse.  Excitement to see our new home helped push back the vibrating, ear ringing, exhausted buzz that had been dogging me for hours.  At least the kids had passed out on the ICE Train from Frankfurt to Stuttgart.  We’d left Seattle more than twenty-four hours ago, and Idaho a couple of weeks before that.  I was grateful my husband knew where we were going.  He had arrived in Germany ten days before us, being deployed there for the US Navy. 
 
“The most eventful month of my life”
October 1918 France- Albert John Carpenter, age 19 enlisted in the 36th Division of the 142nd Infantry with men from the Texas and Oklahoma National Guard during WWI. [i]
 
June 2016- We left from our home in Steinbach Am Glan, Germany.  From above, it looks like a Tetris board of yellow rapeseed fields and hayfields in the valleys, and forests on the upper hillsides and hilltops.  Half-timbered homes and barns are common.  Most villages are several hundred years old, some thousands, dating to the Middle Ages or Antiquity.[ii] 
 
October 1, 1918-     Tuesday – Heavy artillery fire on front all night and most of the day.  Continual roaring.i
 
When we walked the paths, on the Beech forested hills above our home, copper color metal plates on large moss-covered stones announced Celtic Chieftain burial mounds (Keltisches Hugelgrab, um 450 v. Chr.) from 450 BC.  In contrast, our bright new house was built of modern sand and limestone brick masonry.  It had a red tile roof, radiant floor heating, and high efficiency tilt and turn windows. 
 
Wednesday 2-     Signal school in a.m. and wrote letter home and did not send it.  War news looks very good, watch the lights on the front after dark.  One German plane bombed the town at 10 p.m.i
 
In a valley to the north of us, an old grandfather was missing three fingers.  He showed me his hand, and told me his story when we were looking for a home to rent.  He still lived in the home he was born in.  When he was a very small boy during WWII, an American plane flew over.  Bullets were fired through the ceiling into his bedroom.  He kept his life but lost three fingers.
 
Thursday 3-     Signal School all day.i
 
It’s hard to picture war planes flying over these peaceful hills and valleys.  Yet, this is a community that used to be one third Jewish.  Three Hundred years of Jewish history in this village, and the only trace remaining is the Jewish Cemetery.  The lucky ones, that didn’t die at Auschwitz.
 
Friday 4-    School in a.m.  Quick notice to pack up In the evening and after dark.  Tools, trucks from Champignuel to Somme Suippes.  Some cold ride.  Went through ruined Chardous(sp).  Billeted at 4 p.m.i
 
With his metal detector, our American neighbor had found a Roman coin from 400 AD and unexploded WWII munitions buried in our area.  He excitedly showed us the hand pressed gold coin, and told us there was an ancient Roman summer home in the hills nearby.  He said that we lived on a major Celtic migration trail, and that there had been two witches that lived in Brucken, the next town west of us.  They had watched the traveling celts go through, waited for the stragglers, and caught then beheaded them.
 
Saturday 5-    Got up late made a little coffee.  Watched the war activities and cannon roaring at the front.  Saw 2000 wounded French soldiers go through in ambulances.  Last good night sleep.i
 
Here, two blond heads, one American and one German, often huddled together over the rainwater rippling in the gutter between our two homes, racing floating sticks.  Some days they lounged on our doorstep, trading words for things they saw and making up a mixed language they both understood, or jumped scooters or bikes off the sidewalk, shouting to egg each other on to bigger tricks.
 
Sunday 6-     Up early.  Marched from Somme Suippe, now just inside of Hindenburg line.  3 p.m. in Champagne and Verdun sector.  See much war ruin and lots of dead Boche and French.  Marched to front lines with light packs and 220 round of am.i
 
On long summer days, the German boy’s grandma (Oma) could be heard through the open windows, squawking in frustration, “Geh mit David spielen!”  (Go play with David!).  Luka and David, as playmates, gave Luka’s Oma much needed breaks from his seemingly endless pestering and energy.  His Oma watched him while his mother worked, and summer days without the structure of school, were hard on her.
 
Monday 7-      4 a.m. went in support for the Marines.  Dug a little hole 10 inches deep and slept 2 hours.  Light shelling all day, two men of platoon killed and two wounded.i
 
Loading our family into our rusting Toyota Sienna, we took the Autobahn to Paris, on our way to Normandy, to find the sites of Major Winters, and the 101st Airborne from Band of Brothers.  To see Utah and Omaha Beaches and the cemeteries.  To learn more about D-Day and WWII.
 
Tuesday 8-     Will “go over the top” in 10 minutes.  Later.  a heavy artillery barrage.  Many Boche prisoners taken and machine guns also and also many Americans killed.  A German counterattack 4 p.m.  unsuccessful.  142nd lost heavy.i
 
There is one straight shot on the map from Landstuhl to Paris which we take.  It should take less than five hours.  Over the French border, we passed corn fields and power lines.  Judging from the view, we could have been crossing Nebraska, but on a smaller scale.
 
Wednesday 9-     The battle continues.  Boche burning many towns back of lines.  Boche lay artillery barrage on relay station, a shell just went over my head and killed Lt. Lowery.  St. Etienne under heavy fire all day.i
 
We passed a sign for Verdun.  I know it’s a WWI battlefield.  But I don’t know anything about it.  Maybe we can stop on the way home.  We are trying to beat evening commuter traffic in Paris.
 
Thursday 10-     Battle Still rages.  Marines go to the rear for a rest.  Panthers hold sector along more towns burning behind lines.i
 
We discover why we should take a circuitous route on the way home.  Moped madness.  Motorcycle mayhem.  Impossible Paris traffic.  Bedlam, chaos, pandemonium.
 
Friday 11-     142nd casualtys (sp) still enlarging.  Am very weak only two good meals since on front.  12 a.m. a gas shell came over.  Did not get my gas mask on quick enough.  Sent to field hospital.  Taken about 20 pills and sent back to lines at 10 p.m.i
 
The fearless, helmetless, Parisians, straddling motor bikes in their professional clothing and scarves, swarm the roadways, slamming into cars.  Regardless of traffic lanes, or the damage the greatly outnumbered automobiles might do them, they throw themselves in their way.
 
Saturday 12-     My lungs are very soar (sp) and throughing(sp) up blood.  Took charge of telephone at 2 p.m. on duty till 12 p.m.  144th infantry goes over the top.  Drives Boche back.  First hot meal since on front.i
 
We find peace past Paris, in a riot of climbing roses on crumbling, several-hundred-year-old stone farmhouse walls.  Pink, red, and white blooms dot the vines.  Red poppies and yellow yarrow grow in the grass.  Flynn the Belgian Shepherd meets us with his friendly tail, and Moby Dick, the ginger tabby, prowls into the bushes.  Hilary, our host, greets us in tall rubber boots.  Chickens peck in the farmyard.  We stay in a converted barn, with its whitewashed, one-foot-thick stone walls, now a modern apartment inside.  This is one of several similar farms in sleepy Saint Pierre du Mont, which found itself in the Omaha sector in 1944.
 
Sunday 13-     It has rained all day.  Boche retreated 25 kilometers.  Still sick from gas.  Marched from St. Etienne to Vaux Champagne.  Very, very tired.i
 
When we walk along the hedgerows to the end of the road, we can climb down a ladder on a cliff, to the seashore, but need to pay careful attention to the violent tides so as not to get quickly overtaken.  Later, we discover the Boulangerie and Patisserie in Grandcamp Maisy, ten minutes away.  My husband and kids rave about the bread and pastries.  I can’t eat them, but they smell divine.
 
Monday 14-     My Company digs in and prepares for another Battle.  Boche have good positions on Aisne River.   Very dark now and then Boche shells would come near.  Still raining, sleep in open all night, nearly froze.  an awful headache.  French artillery close to my hole.i
 
The Normandy American Cemetery seems to commercialize D-Day and death.  It is overrun with interested Americans, getting over a million visitors a year.  The German Cemetery is all bleak dark grey stone and empty.  I know these were once boys like Luka.  They had parents who grieved for them, families who missed them, many with no stake in Hitler’s agenda, and no choice as to whether they served.
 
Tuesday 15-     Rested all day Thank God.  Boche seem to be resting easy also.  Nothing but artillery fire.i
 
In the British Cemetery, gravestones bear personal epitaphs from their families.  I read: PRIVATE T.J. WHEELER, THE DURHAM LIGHT INFANTRY, 20TH AUGUST 1944 AGE 18, HE LEFT A HAPPY MEMORY, HAD YOU KNOWN THIS BOY OF OURS, YOU WOULD HAVE LOVED HIM TOO,[iii] and GUNNER, J.A. BALL, ROYAL ARTILLERY, 19TH AUGUST 1944 AGE 33, TREASURED MEMORIES OF A DEAR HUSBAND & DADDY, GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS.”  I’m glad it’s drizzling.  It could be my husband, my sons.
 
Wednesday 16-     Received letter from Mother.i
 
D- Day, June 6, 1944, 18,000 paratroopers dropped in full moon light, easy targets for the surprised, sleepy Germans who fired on them.  Their saving grace being that they were not expected.[iv]  
 
Thursday 17-     Boche shelling all day.  Went to sleep in a house just vacated by the Boche.  Had to move on account of shelling the town.  Two artillery men killed and several wounded.i
 
In Sainte-Mere-Eglise, a village of 2400, a fake life size paratrooper dangles from the steeple of the church by his parachute.  It represents Private John M. Steele of the 82nd Airborne who got caught and dangled there for two hours on D-Day, before the German’s captured him.[v]
 
Friday 18-     Taken a shave, bath and picked codies (sp) (cooties) for two hours off from clothes.  Not much doing on front outside of snipping  (sp) and patrols.i
 
The church windows, blown out by Allied bombing, have been replaced with stained glass scenes of dropping paratroopers surrounding Mary holding the Christ child, with planes circling her head.
 
Saturday 19-     Has started to rain again.  The river Aisne and Canal Du Nord seem to have made a good strong (hold) for the Boche.  We are nearly flanked on the right by the Boches.  The French are unable to advance on our right.  We may be taken prisoners at any minute.  May have to through (sp) my diary away destroy it.i
 
Our guide shows us a picture of a dark haired five-year-old girl in a fur coat.  She was killed by a stray bomber bullet, as she stood in the church square with other celebrating French citizens.  We learn our guide’s grandparents had lived in Caen.  A German stronghold, it was bombed mercilessly for months.  “They were free, but their lives were ruined.” she said.
 
Sunday 20-     Same activites as before.  (French still unable to come up on our right.)  Many killed.i
 
My kids, tired of listening to our French Guide, just want to dig in the sand and swim at Omaha beach.  Their favorite memory is later swimming there, even though it ended abruptly with a frigid bulleting rain.
 
Monday 21-     Still raining.  Our holes getting very mudy (sp) and cold.  On a detail to dig dugout for Col. N. French layed down an artillery barrage which made smoke for miles but still unable to advance.i
 
At Point du Hoc, my son David, a skinny, blonde boy in blue, flies from a vine covered square of cement, three times his size.  It’s lying at an odd angle on top of another massive square of cement, edges rough from the bomb that ripped the thick-walled bunker into raw pieces and tossed them.  They are surrounded by long and short [vi]grasses, like some kind of delightful destruction garden.  Hitting the ground running, he takes a path down a bomb crater, across the middle and up the other side.  He passes a collapsed pile of crumbled cement with crooked, rusted rebar sticking out in all directions.  Hairy tangles of barbed wire cover the large gun emplacement of a mostly intact bunker, that he skips down cement steps to explore.  David plays here for hours, like it’s his very own parkour course.  US Army rangers, exposed, climbed the cliffs here with German soldiers shooting at them from above, in the early hours of June 6, 1944. 
 
Tuesday 22-     Just received orders must trade sectors with the French on our right.  (got a good hot meal before starting.)  (Having worked all night on front line).  Telephone out of order cause of much worry.i
 
We drive home the circuitous way, avoiding Paris and its army of attack scooters.  We see an American WWI Cemetery sign and take the exit thinking it may be Verdun.
 
Wednesday 23-     Now on French sector that they were unable to take.  We must drive Boche back.  2nd Battalion on front with 200 hundred men instead of 800.  Had to go back about to a town named Leffencourt to get some signal equipment.  I wrote a short letter to Mother.  (Have lost my riffle(sp) pack and half of my clothes)  Got a riffle off a dead comrade of mine.i
 
Driving lost, through the deserted green countryside, we stumbled on the classical columns of the Pennsylvania State Monument dedicated to their soldiers lost there.  We walk the pillared lawn, and drive on.
 
Thursday 24-     Am now on front line with telephone and a buzzer.  Getting ready to go over the top.  142nd Still losing in strength.i
 
And find the stately, symmetrical Stone gate houses and wide tree lined avenues, of the carefully architected and exquisitely landscaped Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, with miles, and miles, and miles of marching American white crosses from WWI.  It is not Verdun.  There could be no American Cemetery for Verdun.  We did not fight there.  Why did I not know?
 
Friday 25-     Our eats have run out, but still trying to keep up good spirits.  Have my phone in a shallow hole behind a rock wall.  Boche throwing 88’s and machine gun shells on us.i
 
Stunned, overwhelmed, awed, we wander.  1.2 million American men fought here.  All I can think is:  all of these American boys, fighting and dying out here, so far from home, and I’ve never even heard of it!  Who remembers them?  (Meuse-Argonne is the deadliest battle in American History with over 120,000 total casualties.[vii])  Chills run down my spine.  So many crosses!  A staggering, shattering, devastating number of crosses.
 
Saturday 26-   Preparing for the last battle.  Many French and American artillery batteries set for action.  About 40 machine guns several French mortars.  No sleep, no eats, blue and very home sick.i
 
Rather than swarming with visitors like Normandy, it is deserted.  Hushed, tranquil, undisturbed, stunning.  Wind in the trees, birds, worms, are these soldiers’ only companions this day.  And us.  Obsessively reading the names on the white crosses, names of boys and men from familiar states.  States I’ve lived in, or visited.  I think:  I see you!  I feel like I need to read as many as possible, knowing it’s only a tiny drop.  Knowing they don’t care anymore.  But I feel like someone should!
 
Sunday 27-      At 4 p.m. will go over the top in 30 minutes.  (Everything very, very, still.  Not a word was hardly spoken between men.  At 6 p.m. they have gone over the top.  All o.k. Objective reached.  We have lost 2 men so far.)  A big shell lights within a few feet of my head.  Have taken 130 prisoners and several guns.  142nd won more praise from French General.i
 
There is no playing here, not even the desire.  The kids cry as they read the Wall of the Missing, 3724 names.  The cemetery’s architecture seems to exceed the Capitol Mall to me.  Here, in nowhere France.  It’s stunning, appropriate, isolated, forsaken.
 
Monday 28-    Our relief has finally arrived, a division of French.  Will relieve front lines at 10 p.m.  (Boche shell us but mostly with duds.)i
 
Geoffrey Wawro, (Time), writes; The American role in the First World War is one of the greatest stories of the American Century, and yet it has largely vanished from view…It must be baldly stated:  Germany would have won World War I had the U.S. Army not intervened in France in 1918…The American battle in Meuse – Argonne, from September 26 to November 11, 1918, pierced the most redoubtable section of the Hindenburg Line…The American offensive was, a British war correspondent concluded, “the matador’s thrust in the bull-fight.”  It cut the German throat.[viii]
 
Tuesday 29-    We are out at last!!!! (Left Boche at 3 a.m. and hiked to Michault by 12:30 p.m.)  Ate everything we could find.  (Took trucks at 3 p.m. and rode to Somme Sippe by 11 p.m.) (All in)i
 
In an article entitled, On Hallowed Ground, a Place of Painful Beauty, David Laskin, (New York Times), writes; As exquisite as any French park or chateau grounds, the cemetery is a formal garden of perfectly clipped trees, immaculate lawns, fountains and roses and long white rows of grave markers. Given its beauty, it's also strange how empty the place is — and stranger still since this is the largest American military cemetery in Europe… When we Americans think of travel inspired by world war, Normandy is what springs to mind…Yet the countryside north and east of Paris is rich in memories — and monuments — of United States involvement in the other world war. Twenty-six years before D-Day, more than two million American soldiers were in France… What's astonishing when you travel to these battlegrounds is how much remains on, or just below, the surface and how few people there are looking for it.   
 
Wednesday 30-     Hiked from Somme Sippe to Vallmy.
 
Laskin continues; “…an invisible gardener ran a mower; a child's voice drifted up. The rest was silence. In all these 130 acres, there was but a single family strolling between the perfect rows of square-pruned lindens that divide the graves into eight equal quadrants.[ix]
 
Thursday 31-     We are on march by daybreak hike from Vallmy to Donnmarton 16 kilometers.
 
As we near the border of Germany, we pass through French villages that have traditional German architecture.  Even long before two world wars, these border lands have traded hands so many times, they look unsure of their origin.  We’ve seen Rome, yet the most complete Roman ruins we’ve seen are in Trier, Germany, Constantine’s capitol.  As we reach our German village, with it’s green, yellow and tan tartan fields, and history laden hills, I know I don’t begin to understand all the history here.  It’s like a French pastry called Mille-freulle, meaning 1000 layers. 
 
What did Meuse -Argonne teach me?  I read a lot of history.  I have read hundreds of books on WWII, and watched documentaries and movies.  Not because I’m hyper focused on WWII, but because there are many, and they came to my attention.  I did read one series on WWI, but I don’t remember anything from it.  I don’t believe our American consciousness, includes WWI to a large extent.  I’m with Laskin.  Meuse-Argone feels like Hallowed Ground, and I want to learn more.
 
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Definition:  Boche- Websters:  1.  A German Soldier.  2.  Any German.i
 
[i] Library of Congress, Albert John Carpenter Collection, collected 2018, Image 1 of Diary transcription, accessed 4/11/23, [https://www.loc.gov/collections/veterans-history-project-collection/serving-our-voices/world-war-i/world-war-i-rememebered-100-years-later/wwi-remembered-diaries-and-memoirs/item/afc2001001.00225]

[ii] Wikipedia, List of towns and cities in Germany by historical population, last edited on 19 January 2023, accessed 2 May 2023, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns_and_cities_in_Germany_by_historical_population#Antiquity]

[iii] Information taken from personal photographs, taken 26 JUN 2016, Bayeux Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 1945 boulevard Fabian Ware, 14400 Bayeux,

[iv] The Normandy American Heroes blog, Rudy Passera, 16 MAR 2017, [The Story of John Steele, the Sainte-Mère-Eglise Paratrooper (normandyamericanheroes.com]

[v] US ARMY, Sgt. Fay Conroy, June 2, 2009, Church tower, windows pay tribute to paratroopers who jumped into first town liberated during WWII, accessed 11 APR 2023, [ https://www.army.mil/article/22006 ]

[vi] Army Historical Foundation,  Megan Johnson, accessed 3 May 2023, [https://armyhistory.org/rudders-rangers-and-the-boys-of-pointe-du-hoc-the-u-s-army-rangers-mission-in-the-early-morning-hours-of-6-june-1944/]
 

[vii] National Archives, Military Records, The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, last reviewed 4 Apr 2023, accessed 11 Apr 2023, [ The Meuse-Argonne Offensive | National Archives ]

[viii] Time, Everyhing You Know About How World War I Ended Is Wrong, Geoffrey Wawro, Accessed 3 May 2023, [https://time.com/5406235/everything-you-know-about-how-world-war-i-ended-is-wrong/]

[ix] The New York Times, On Hallowed Ground, a Place of Painful Beauty, David Laskin, 30 September 2007, accessed 3 May 2023, [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/travel/30footsteps.html]