The Spring Offensives of 1918 rocked the Allies to the core.  For a moment, it appeared the Great War could actually be lost.  Enter America and the American Expeditionary Force – AEF.  General John J. Pershing had been pushing against the desires of his fellow Allies to insert American troops as they became available into the ranks of the French or British armies.  In the emergency of spring 1918, Pershing finally relented, agreeing to allow American divisions already present into the front lines as needed.  The Aisne-Marne ABMC – American Battlefield and Monuments Commission – Cemetery is a result of that decision. 

ABMC AISNE-MARNE 

A dramatic towering chapel stands at the northern base of the hills of Belleau Wood – the Bois de la Brigade de Marine – with graves arcing around in a semicircle creating a very memorable picture.  There are 2,289 gravestones – 250 unknown – with 1,060 other names inscribed on a Wall of the Missing inside the chapel.  33 Stars of David and three sets of brothers among the graves.  The chapel, Romanesque in style, was built directly over frontline trenches occupied by men of the 2^nd Division during the campaign.  As the brochure points out, look close at decorative carvings to see trench scenes and patches of the AEF divisions that fought in the area from May until September 1918. 

cemetery concentrations

As with all ABMC cemeteries, it is important to realize the dead are not all necessarily from the battles fought in the immediate vicinity.  Other bodies came here as 700 cemeteries became only eight.  A number of deaths caused by disease lie here with the Spanish flu accounting for the vast majority.  While many of the dead came from the fighting around here, the battle campaigns mix somewhat with Oise-Aisne ABMC cemetery. Men falling during the fights of early summer 1918 ended up at both cemeteries regardless of the battles. Many, dying later of wounds received in a battle, lie buried in hospital cemeteries. The concentration of the hospital cemeteries determined a final resting place and not necessarily the campaign they fell during.

I could find no women buried here – no nurses nor YMCA staff.  I do not know if this was a conscious decision on the part of ABMC or not.  The cemetery is one of the smaller cemeteries which also, probably played a role. 

Below are a sampling of the men who rest in peace at the Aisne-Marne ABMC Cemetery.

MEDAL OF HONOR 

Weedon Edward Osborne graduated from the dental school at Northwestern University in 1915 before joining the Naval Reserve as a dental surgeon in May 1917. His short career began on the battleship USS Alabama – December 1917 to March 1918. He then moved to the 6^th Marines as a replacement dental officer. 

On 6 June 1918, it was all hands-on deck for the Marines. Osborne was working at a first aid station that day. Company commander Captain Donald Duncan was wounded as he was leading his Marines in an attack towards the village of Bouresches on the east edge of Belleau Wood.  Osborne was one of the men carrying Duncan to safety, but an artillery shell exploded killing both men. 

Osborne won the Medal of Honor for his actions posthumously.  He is one of three dentists to have received the medal and one of two to received the medal dead. 

TIFFANY CROSS

Osborne’s medal is on display at the US Navy Museum in Washington, DC.  The medal was confiscated by the FBI in 2003 from someone trying to sell the medal – it is illegal to sell a Medal of Honor.   

The medal received was Tiffany Cross.  In 1919, new guidelines stated Medals of Honor only were awarded during combat situations.  The Navy came up with two forms of the medal, in order circumvent the combat requirement and still be able to issue the award to men going above and beyond the call of duty in the normal line of duty.  The inverted star issued to men in the normal line of duty while the Tiffany Cross given for combat actions.

The Cross issued to 21 Sailors and 7 Marines between 1919 and 1942 but the medal was never very popular with awardees.  The inverted star version once again became the standard in 1942 as guidelines changed to allow non-combat issuances of the medal. 

SOLDIER’S CEMETERY – AISNE-MARNE ABMC CEMETERY

Aisne-Marne is a soldier’s cemetery for the most part. Soldiers lying here are, for the most part, enlisted men with a few company grade officers – captains and lieutenants – added for good measure. Now, that probably has more to do with familial repatriation. Officers of higher rank may have been more apt to have families wanting the remains of their loved one brought back to the US, so they could be grieved for closer at hand. 

LEADER

There is one officer here of field grade level – major and above – Brigadier General James McIndoe. McIndoe is the highest-ranking officer found in all of the WW1 ABMC cemeteries. He was a graduate of West Point in 1891. Finishing fourth in his class, McIndoe had his choice of branches and chose the engineers. He worked on engineering projects until the Spanish-American War in 1898 when placed in charge of submarine defenses – mines and torpedoes – for the Verrazano Narrows approach to New York’s harbor.  

After the war, he continued with river and harbor improvements along the Gulf Coast before coming to Portland, Oregon in 1908. There in charge of lighthouses, he served until 1914. A year in the Philippines, then back to the US to command the 2^nd Engineer Regiment in August 1917.  

He took some time off from that post to supervise the creation of divisional training centers for the nascent AEF before, In March 1918, returning to lead his former regiment through the first battles. Elevated to Chief Engineer for the 4^th Corps for the St Mihiel campaign, he served in that capacity until October when appointed AEF Director of Military Engineering and Engineering Supplies. At that post, 6 February 1919, McIndoe died from complications of the Spanish flu. 

THE MEN – MARINES

Sergeant Thomas Pinckney Arnett served with the 1^st Battalion of the 5^th Marine Regiment.  He fell during their 6 June attack on Hill 142 just to the west of Belleau Wood.  He had just married 22 August 1917, before going overseas 10 December.  Arnett was 27 years old.

First Lieutenant Orlando Chester Crowther led his company, the 67^th, one of only two of five companies of the 1^st Battalion of the 5^th Marine Regiment making to the starting line for the 6 June assault on Hill 142.  Crowther won the Navy Cross and the Distinguished Service Cross, posthumously, for successfully capturing one German machine gun nest. He died trying to capture a second.

THE COLLEGE MEN

Second Lieutenant Carleton Burr graduated from Harvard University in 1913.  He was eager to get in on the action – went through the Plattsburgh Officers Training course in 1915 – and joined the American Ambulance Field Service – AAFS – February 1916.  Working with the AAFS, first as a driver, he later served as an area director until the end of January 1917. Returning to the US, Carleton enlisted in the Marine Corps in June, drawn by their slogan “First to Fight”. 

Given a commission, Burr became the Battalion Intelligence Officer.  Suffering from a gas attack in Belleau Woods and invalided to a hospital near Angers, he recovered in time to march in the Bastille Day parade in Paris. Returning to his unit on 18 July, the very next day, shrapnel killed him near Vierzy, as the division attacked during the Second Marne.

Second Lieutenant Thomas Williams Ashley graduated from Amherst College in 1916.  Shortly afterwards, enlisting in the Marine Corps, Ashley became an officer.  A platoon leader in Crowther’s company – the 67^th, he was wounded in the attack on Hill 142, later dying.

YOUTH OF THE ARMY

Private First Class Thomas R. Cottingham enlisted from his home in South Carolina at the age of 15. One year later, he was declared “missing” and later “dead”.  He soldiered in the 28^th Regiment of the 1^st Division.  The day he went missing, he might have been part of Company K led by Second Lieutenant Samuel I. Parker. Parker won a Medal of Honor for leading his depleted platoon and a group of French Colonials in an attack on a German strongpoint capturing 6 machine guns and 40 prisoners on 18 July.  Cottingham’s young body was never found.  His name is among those engraved on the Aisne-Marne ABMC Cemetery chapel Walls of the Missing.

Sergeant Orlando Michael Loomis, Jr. was almost 18 when he died 7 June, a soldier in the 30^th Infantry Regiment – 3^rd Division. 7 June was the first day the regiment took up new positions to the east of Chateau-Thierry. He tried to enlist the year before, but his mother temporarily was able to rescind the enlistment due to his youth. Loomis succeeded in convincing her to allow him to join a few weeks later, however.

YOUNG AND OLD

Jose Leon Madrid was a Private First Class in the 110^th Regiment of the 28^th Division.  He came from Tucumcari in eastern New Mexico. In order to enlist, he gave a false birthdate – 1894 instead of 1900.  Madrid fell to a sniper 29 June during the Second Marne on the Ourcq River, three miles south of the Oise-Aisne ABMC Cemetery.

The oldest buried in the Aisne-Marne ABMC Cemetery seems to be Lieutenant Samuel Soyster Crouse – 54 years old at the time of his death.  A platoon leader in Company C of the 110^th Infantry Regiment, Samuel’s son, Edgar, served with the same company.  Company C had a long history going back to Revolutionary War times. The men were mostly from Somerset County in Pennsylvania.

Two companies of the 110^th were embedded with the French 125^th Division along the Marne just east of the 38^th Infantry Regiment.  Crouse’s Company C was overrun after French soldiers retreated without telling the Americans 17 June, exposing their flanks to German penetration.  Crouse was among the dead. Captured by the Germans, Edgar saw his father lying dead on the road as he was being taken to the rear. He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp, but he survived and enjoyed a long life until 1966.

DIVERSITY FOUND IN THE AISNE-MARNE ABMC CEMETERY

The AEF was full of young men from families new to America coming from around the World. Private Haroutun Afarian came from an emigrant family from Armenia. As he recovered from wounds suffered during the Meuse-Argonne, a weakened Afarian died of disease 5 March 1919.

First Lieutenant George A. Ball was born in Bethlehem, Orange Free State – his father an Episcopalian minister served for twenty years as a missionary in South Africa. The family later moved to North Carolina where from George joined the 30th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Division. He died 6 June on the first day the regiment took up positions along the Marne east of Chateu-Thierry. His brother Francis was a major in the Canadian army with the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry Regiment and his father an Episcopalian minister who had served for twenty years as a missionary in South Africa.

Private First Class Martin Hjalmar Buskrud came from a Norwegian family in Minnesota. Enlisting in the Army from Washington State, Buskrud with the 20th Engineers elected to stay on after the war. The Spanish flu killed him 22 December 1918 at the age of 30.

THE PILOTS

First Lieutenant Alfred Richard Metzger Jr. died in a flying accident 10 May. He was in a Breguet 14 out of the 7th Aviation Instructional Center near Clermont-Ferrand. In 1930, his mother visited his grave here at Aisne-Marne ABMC Cemetery as part of the Gold Star Mothers program.

First Lieutenant Carter Landram Ovington was 19 when he joined the Escadrille Lafayette as a pilot serving as secretary for the squadron for three years. When America declared war in 1917, the squadron disbanded with most joining the AEF.

Ovington became a lieutenant in the American army but still flew for the French Air Service. His plane collided with another plane 29 May, east of Chateau-Thierry, behind enemy lines. His body never recovered.

After the war, his mother had a small stone bench inscribed with his name built along a road a half mile south of the little village of Lagery – equidistant from Reims to the east and the Oise-Aisne ABMC Cemetery seven miles to the west. Ovington’s name inscribed also included on the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial.