People not acquainted well with the First World War might be surprised there was more than one Battle of the Marne.  The first battle was by far the more famous, but the second proved to be as decisive, if not more, than the first.  In this campaign, American units fought for lengthy periods of time in division sized units in a truly international campaign.  The bulk of the effort was French, but there were British and Italian troops fighting alongside the Doughboys, throughout.  The American efforts in the Second Marne are remembered in the ABMC – American Battlefields and Monuments Commission – Oise-Aisne Cemetery equidistant between the town of Fère-en-Tardenois to the west and Nesles to the east – about 1 kilometer either direction.

OISE-AISNE ABMC

Oise-Aisne is the second largest of the ABMC’s WW1 cemeteries.  There are 6,012 headstones with 100 Jewish Stars of David among the Latin Crosses.  A Wall of Missing in the chapel lists 241 American soldiers who went missing in the area.  Nine sets of brothers lie buried here.  The cemetery holds the graves of 597 soldiers whose identity is unknown – including at least one French soldier.

This cemetery is not as well-known as some of the others.  The cemeteries of Meuse-Argonne and St Mihiel are located by the battlefields of famous American offensives.  Aisne-Marne with Belleau Wood is all about the Marine Corps.  But the battles fought in this vicinity – the grounds cleared by the 42^nd Division at the end of July 1918 during the Second Marne campaign – were as important if not more than the latter battles in turning the tide against the Germans.

SPANISH FLU

Look through the few with stories placed online at Find-a-Grave is an education.  Included among the early deaths are men who worked with the Ambulance Service, car accidents, several who drowned while swimming, but disease stands out.  Several died a few short days after getting to France – measles, scarlet fever, but spinal meningitis and pneumonia stand out the most. 

The Spanish flu supposedly erupted in February 1918.  Could a lot of these cases have been early harbingers?   Maybe those dead here are from other causes than the H1N1 virus which raged uncontrollably from 1918 until 1920, but there are still a lot who died lying here before they got a chance to see action at the front.

Those here who died after December 1918 did so also largely from the flu.  There are pages of these cases on the website.  The flu killed outright but also easily took those in hospitals who had been wounded or gassed at the front. 

THE WOMEN

Included among the dead of Oise-Aisne ABMC are seven nurses and another eight females who worked with the YMCA for the most part.  One, Mary Agnes Moore, was the sister of a trio of movie stars – Owen, Matt and Tom.  Tom was the first husband of Mary Pickford.  Mary died of pneumonia.

Another YMCA “hospital recreation worker”, Pauline Hildreth Field, did not die of the flu but of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.  She came from well-to-families in New York.  Her mother and her moved to Hollywood, California – where Mary Moore was also from – in 1915.  Joining the Red Cross, she came over to France in the summer of 1918.  She was the director of the Red Cross canteen in Dijon.  Then, at age 34, she killed herself 24 May 1919.

THE SECOND MARNE

The majority of those buried here at Oise-Aisne ABMC Cemetery died from combat.  Many died from the fighting in the Battle of the Second Marne which raged through here between 15 July and 6 August.  Ten divisions of the American Expeditionary Force – AEF – took part in the campaign which reduced the large salient resulting from the third German Spring Offensive of 1918.  The AEF took part in the truly international campaign alongside 44 French, 4 British and 2 Italian divisions. 

In a mostly attacking mode – after 18 July – the AEF suffered a significantly higher number of casualties than their allies.  Most of the losses incurred by the British and Italians were in the initial stages of the campaign, the final German Spring Offensive – Friedensturm (“Peace Offensive”) in a defensive role.  The higher losses indicate the steep learning curve fighting on the Western Front.  Some of the education you see here at Oise-Aisne.  That “education” described excellently in Mark Grotelueschen’s The AEF Way of War and Richard Faulkner’s The School of Hard Knocks.  These two books go a long way to explain the long casualty lists suffered by the AEF in 1918, especially here at the Second Marne.

CANNON FODDER

The mass of men found here at Oise-Aisne ABMC are young privates, the cannon fodder for any war.  Many were volunteers and many were drafted.  Of the ten divisions taking part in the Second Marne, four were Regular Army (1, 2, 3, 4), four were National Guard (26, 28, 32, 42) and two were National Army (77 and 93).  All divisions heavily depended on draftees.  The Regulars may have had a few more officers and NCO’s than the Guard or National divisions, but not many.  The Second Division is well known for including the Marine Brigade in its mix gaining it notoriety from another angle the other divisions did not receive.  Later on, all of the divisions would take part in the Meuse-Argonne AEF finale while the 1, 2, 4, 26, 28 and 42 would play a role in the St Mihiel prelude.

Second Marne is the scope of another post.  There are a lot of little sites to see in a rather large area, from the Marne in the south to the Aisne River in the north.  Besides the Oise-Aisne ABMC cemetery and to the southwest, the Aisne-Marne ABMC Cemetery, there are Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries, French cemeteries, German cemeteries – one has a section reserved for Danes from southern Schleswig, and there are Italian cemeteries – the Italians suffered almost 10,000 casualties just to the east of the AEF.

Beyond the Second Marne campaign, it is important to remember the cemetery here is an amalgamation of many other cemeteries around France. Many of those lying here at Oise-Aisne ABMC were from far away – sailors, nurses, doctors, others from the Naval Hospital cemetery in Brest, for example. Pauline Field, who we already saw, died in Dijon. Men killed in other nearby campaigns – Aisne-Marne, Chateau-Thierry, and a variety of other fights in the May to June 1918 timeframe as American units were fed into the maelstrom trying to ebb the German offensives.

THE YOUNG

James Abdallah is one such young man. Dying of disease 9 October 1918, James was probably a replacement soldier since no unit is given. The young man came from Marshalltown, Iowa – his name is on a memorial there in Riverside Cemetery. His place of birth was Palestine, an example of the diverse backgrounds of men of the AEF.

Homer J. Wheaton was a corporal in the 101st Infantry Regiment of the 26th Division. Previously, he had served on the Mexican border before coming to France. Wheaton died in a training accident. Someone dropped a live grenade. Homer retrieved it and while trying to throw it away, the grenade exploded. He gained the first Distinguished Service Cross – DSC – awarded during WW1.

Charles Keith Powell had just graduated from Claremont High School in California before joining his other two brothers in the Great War. As a member of the 38th Regiment of the 3rd Division, Powell had survived the last German offensive 17-18 July as they had crossed the Marne in the hope of cutting the Paris-Reims rail line. In the counteroffensive following – part of the Second Marne, he was killed in the bow of a boat crossing the Vesle River 7 August 1918. His Company G had 260 men in it on 15 July, but by the war’s end only 56 of the original complement was left.

THE AVIATORS

Several aviators lie buried here, including Captain James Ely Miller who was the first Army aviator to die – 9 March 1918.  Miller commanded the 95^th Aero Squadron – Miller Field on Staten Island is named after him.  In July 2017, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross posthumously.

First Lieutenant Alexander Bern Bruce died at the age of 24 on 17 August 1918.  He was born in Seattle but grew up in Massachusetts attending Phillips Academy, Andover and graduating from Harvard in 1915.  He attended the Officer Training Course in Plattsburg – as did several other young officers buried here. Eager to get into the war, Alec was an ambulance driver with the American Ambulance Field Service before switching over to become a pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille. With America in the war, he shifted to the 94^th Aero Squadron.

THE FIELD GRADES

Colonel Joseph W. Cavender was a lawyer from Cody, Wyoming.  He had been active in the Wyoming National Guard before the war and came to France as the commander of the 148^th Field Artillery rising to the rank of colonel.  He died of his wounds 5 September 1918.  Possibly Cavender came to France on the HMS Baltic, the same ship which had brought General Pershing – and one George Patton who was on Pershing’s staff – over to France. The Baltic was alongside the Tuscania when it was torpedoed off the Scottish island of Islay 5 February 1918.

Major Harold D. MacLachlan is the highest-ranking Marine officer buried here.  He died of the flu in a hospital 27 September 1918 before reaching the field.

Another colonel, Colonel Frank Allen Wilcox died in the first official wave of the Spanish flu 9 February 1918 at a hospital in Tours.  He was a colonel in the National Army. Wilcox was a West Point graduate of the class of 1892 having served in the Spanish-American War, the Philippines and as a battalion commander in the 16th Infantry Regiment in Pershing’s Mexican adventures. He was the interim commander of the regiment when they arrived – the first of the AEF in France – in the summer of 1917.

WEST POINTERS

Of West Pointers buried here, Arthur Edward Bouton was the second highest-ranking as a major in the 9^th Infantry Regiment.  Leading his battalion ably on 1 July, they captured the village of Vaux just west of Cote 204 – the large American monument at Chateau-Thierry is on top. Involved leading his troops near Soissons two weeks later, he died hit by a shell fragment, a posthumous DSC earned in his death.

Kenneth Paul Murray took the entrance exam for the academy in 1914 at the age of 16.  Graduating 31 August 1917 – his class accelerated ten months also suffered the most deaths (10) during the war – he died 15 July 1918 leading a counterattack east of Chateau-Thierry as a platoon leader in the 38th Regiment – part of the defense leading to the moniker of the ‘Rock of the Marne‘ bestowed upon the 3rd Division as a whole.

PLOT E

Do a internet search for Oise-Aisne Cemetery and after the Wikipedia and ABMC sites, up pops Oise-Aisne Plot E.  There are only four quadrants in the main cemetery – A, B, C, and D.  E was added after World War 2.  This area is off to the east side of the visitor center to the south of the main cemetery.  Here are the remains of men found guilty of crimes involving rape and murder committed during or shortly after that war.  There are 94 men who were executed and whose remains ended here. 

The only case not involving rape and/or murder was Eddie Slovik. Caught after deserting twice, he was executed.  His remains were removed in 1987.  Another burial, Alex Miranda was exhumed in 1990 – both cases the cost went to the families.  Miranda murdered his sergeant, but there seems to have been a question as to his sobriety. He was drunk at the time of the crime and if too drunk, a possible manslaughter charge might have been more proper.  The graves are marked only by a flat stone with numbers.  The numbers – no names – correspond to the guilty.

JOYCE KILMER

Perhaps the most famous person in the Oise-Aisne ABMC Cemetery is the poet Joyce Kilmer, known mainly for his popular poem Trees.  A prolific writer, his wife was also a poet.  Kilmer’s reputation suffered because his classicist style religious allusions – he was known as the leading American Catholic poet of his generation. Both style and religiosity were quickly out of date in literature circles with the end of the war.

Kilmer enlisted early in America’s war with the New York 69^th Regiment, a National Guard unit.  The regiment became one of the multistate 42^nd Division.  He could have become an officer but insisted as remaining one of the men.  He did become a sergeant and out on a patrol one night – 30 July 1918 – only a few hundred meters away from where the cemetery is, a German sniper killed him.

Douglas MacArthur, a brigade commander in the division – and later would lead the division – spent time kneeling in front of Kilmer’s grave after the war – 1931 – deep in thought.

On July 24, the 42nd Division relieved the embattled US 26th Division during the height of the Second Marne. The 69th led the way suffering 264 dead (including poet Sgt Joyce Kilmer), 1,350 other casualties out of the 3000 man regiment in four days fighting. With the Germans retreating, brigade commander Douglas MacArthur wanted to push onward but was told the regiments felt “too fatigued”. Only the 69th replied it would “consider an order to advance as a compliment”. MacArthur exulted “By God, it takes the Irish when you want a hard thing done!” There is no evidence the two ever met before Kilmer’s death.

TREES

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree

But maybe even better, since this post is about a veterans cemetery in a far off land, let us end with Kilmer’s

MEMORIAL DAY

“Dulce et decorum est”

The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
Of men-at-arms who come to pray.

The roses blossom white and red
On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
And martial music cleaves the sky.

Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
They plunged for Freedom and the Right.

May we, their grateful children, learn
Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
At last the accolade of God.

In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace . . . Who brought a sword.