Verdun to Pont-à-Mousson

The weather in this part of France turned cold and rainy overnight and stayed that way for the rest of the day. I decided to return to the Verdun battlefield this morning in an attempt to find the exact spots where my grandfather had been. I think I got pretty close--as close as I'm going to get without tramping through the woods with a compass to find the aid stations he serviced. I wouldn't want to set off any unexploded shells.

It's been ninety years since the slaughter here and most of the battlefield has grown over into a managed forest. It was hard to equate the photos of the area that Grant Willard took showing a desolate, cratered, moon-like surface with the beautiful, peaceful autumn forests I found today.

It was difficult to spot this:













In this:















From Verdun I drove southeast along the Meuse River and a beautiful canal built alongside, the surface of the canal like a mirror. At St. Mihiel I turned east into the heart of what had been the German-held St. Mihiel Salient, a knife-like protrusion in the Western Front. In September 1918 the Americans fought the Germans for the first time on their own and won a decisive victory. The salient was removed.

This part of France is very rural. I doubt the land has changed much in thousands of years. The towns are very small--a church, a townhall and a WWI monument. I passed some of the spots where my grandfather spent the spring and summer of 1918 seeing some of the most grueling action just south of the salient. While in these tiny villages he and his comrades were subjected to chemical warfare. They were all shaken out of their sleep my a mustard gas shell exploding outside their quarters. They spent the night in the cellar in the gas masks with rats dying around them. In the following days they were gassed further while removing the wounded. Grant wound up in the hospital for a few days.

By September, Grant and his unit were working the eastern end of the offensive around Pont-à-Mousson. That's where I'm spending the night.There has been a bridge across the Moselle here since the Middle Ages, but the present one was built after heavy bombardment during both world wars. The town survived relatively unscathed, despite the importance of the St-Gobain iron foundry – the name Pont-à-Mousson is familiar throughout France as just about every manhole cover in the country is made here.

Here's what was on my grandfather's mind ninety years ago:

Sunday, October 27:

Got 3 hours of sleep last night. Pretty good for me on post. Our guns cut loose this A.M. at 4 o’clock and a couple of big boys over back of us somewhere shook me out of bed. Sat in the dressing station until 6 A.M. when I got a call to Sommerance. "Fritz" raised hell in Fléville last night. Several new shell holes in the road and many newly killed horses.


Read Pres. Wilson’s reply to German plea for armistice. Hope there is no armistice until we have German militarism ousted. Don’t think it will be long now. What is the new German system going to amount to?


Took a shower bath this A.M. at headquarters -- the first since returning from Paris. Everybody has cooties!