It's A Saturday Morning Bonus Podcast For 05-24-25

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Memorial Day.

Speaker 3 (00:03):
It traces its roots to.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
The aftermath of the American Civil War, which claimed more
lives than any other US conflict and led to the
establishment of national cemeteries. The holiday was originally known as
Decoration Day. It was a day when Americans would decorate

(00:26):
the graves of fallen soldiers with flowers, flags, and wreaths.
The first widespread observance was on May thirtieth, eighteen sixty eight,
organized by General John A. Logan of the Grand Army
of the Republic, a Union veterans group. Several towns claimed

(00:52):
to be the birthplace of Memorial Day, including Waterloo, New York,
which was officially recognized by the federal government in nineteen
sixty six for holding an annual community wide event honoring
our War Dead starting in eighteen sixty six, one hundred
years earlier. Originally honoring only those who died in the

(01:12):
Civil War, the holiday was later extended to commemorate American
military personnel who died in all wars, including World War One, two, Korea, Vietnam,
and more recent conflicts. The term Memorial Day became more
common after World War Two, and in nineteen seventy one,

(01:34):
Congress declared itd a federal holiday, officially naming it Memorial
Day and moving its observance from May thirtieth to the
last Monday in May, creating a three day weekend. It
wasn't a dedicated last Monday in May before, it was
a set day so it could fall in the middle

(01:56):
of the week. Now, the day of the month that
it occurs differs every year because it's set based on
where it is in the month, not say December twenty fifth,
which is December twenty fifth, regardless where it falls. Thomas
Connor holds the William P. Harris Chaff of Military History

(02:18):
at our beloved Hillsdale College, where he has taught since
nineteen eighty three. He is the author of War and Remembrance,
The Story of the American Battle Monument's Commission, which explores
the history of US memorials abroad. We thought his lecture
on War and Remembrance at Hillsdale College was appropriate this weekend.

(02:40):
We hope you enjoy this Saturday podcast. We do appreciate
any of your suggestions as to things you come along
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(03:03):
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Speaker 1 (03:27):
Good evening.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
I'm Matthew Spalding, Associate vice brend Dean for Hillsdale College
here in Washington, d C.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Welcome to the Kirby Center.

Speaker 4 (03:35):
In his first inaugural Hibraham Lincoln famously talked about the
mystic chords of memory, the ones that would swell the
course of the Union when they are touched by the
angels of our better nature. Those chords, if you recall,
stretched from every living heart and hearthstone back to every
battlefield in Patriot Grave. It's a question that go go

(04:00):
back to ancient time. I have in mind the great
Greek myth of Antigony, who she wants.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
To bury her brother who died in the Battle fhel
at Thebes.

Speaker 4 (04:11):
It's always been a question what do we do with
those killed in battle in foreign lands? Our guest this
evening has written a book on the smallest of federal
agencies with one of the most noble of missions to
oversee twenty six overseas cemeteries honoring one hundred and thirty

(04:33):
nine thousand war dead. The book, which is called Warren Remembrance,
the story of the American Battle Monument's Commission. I have
to say the book is not available because it's already
sold out its first printing, although we have you can
order it, and I encourage you to do so. If

(04:53):
you order it, the school Hillsdale will ship it to you,
and our speaker has books plates which he will sign
here that you can put in the book. So I
strongly encourage you to do that. It's a history.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Of those who take care of those dead. I've started
reading it this afternoon. It's a wonderful book.

Speaker 4 (05:17):
The pictures of the sites, most taken by the author,
by the way, are very fascinating. Most of us know
Thomas Connor, Tom Connor, he's the William Harris professor of
Military History at Hillsdale College. He teaches Western Heritage and
American Heritage, which are two courses in the Hillsdale Cork curriculum.

(05:37):
He also teaches upper level courses on European history and
the Two World Wars. He is one of the colleges
currently longest serving faculty members. He's also one of the best,
and he's been named Professor.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Of the Year.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
I can't count how many.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
Times at this point, and so he's always he's always popular,
and I am especially happy to introduce him as a
dear friend and, among others, a teacher of both my
wife and my daughter.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
So I give you Thomas Connor.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you Matt for that
nice introduction. You stay at a place long enough, you
will be what intergenerational in your contacts anyway. But I
want to welcome you to this presentation. I hope it
will appeal to the better angels of your nature. And

(06:49):
there are a couple of people I want to acknowledge
and thank before we get into the presentation proper. I
certainly want to thank the entire staff here Kirby Center,
Matthew Spauling, Matthew Morrell, andrew Heim, all the technical crew

(07:09):
or who have made it possible to actually display some pictures.
The nature of this story I think imposes veritable necessity
on whoever's doing it to show pictures of these monuments
and the cemetery sites, because therein lay the real beauty

(07:30):
of this whole story. But there's another gentleman I'd like
to recognize. He's not bashful, but he may not have
been expecting this. But it's a great honor for me
to have had the full cooperation of the American Battle
Monuments Commission across the whole ten years that I've been
working on this book. And my chief contact all that
time when we first met ten years ago, Michael Conley

(07:54):
was the public affairs officer. Now he's the chief of
staff at the headquarters office in our Lion, and he's
here tonight. So i'd like to acknowledge and thank Mike Jain.
I want to talk about the book, what's what it's about,
a little bit about how I came to write it,
a little bit about how I put together this story,

(08:19):
and finally we'll give a little sneak preview of some
of the To me, anyway, most interesting discoveries that I
made while doing the research, and then leave the rest
of the discovery of those interesting findings to you, those
of you who do choose to buy the book. And

(08:41):
I'm very sorry that it is not available. It's kind
of a good problem and a bad problem to have.
I think the first printing run was a bit small, so,
but we're hopeful to get more books out there because
the I'm very grateful to the Hillsdale College Market Division.
They had brought their full weight to bear on getting

(09:04):
word out. And I don't think either I or the
University of Kentucky Press, which actually published it, was prepared
frankly for the impact of their efforts. But you see
the title of the book, it's called War in Remembrance.
I actually learned when I proposed that title to the
publisher they were a little reluctant to agree to it

(09:26):
right away, but they ultimately did you know that that's
the title of a Herman Wuk novel, his sequel to
another Herman Wuck novel, of the Winds of War? And
I thought the title was suitable and I'll say the
reasons why for that, But strategically, I think you may
remember back in two thousand, there were a lot of

(09:48):
Floridians who voted for Ralph Nader thinking they were going
to vote for al Gore. So I'm hoping that people
will buy this book thinking they're going to get one
of the great World War II novels. Maybe that might
even lead to a third printing. But the book is
genuinely about war and remembrance, because those two words, in

(10:11):
some ways anyway sum up the story of the American
Battle Monument's Commission. It was found in nineteen twenty three
by an Act of Congress. That's five years after the
First World War ended, of course, and it is the
product the existence of this agency, which is now in
its ninety fifth year. It was a by product of
the war, but for World War One and the fact

(10:33):
that we lost so many men overseas, and then once
it was all over, we had to decide as a government,
as a people where those bodies would ultimately be interred.
But for that there would have been no real need
for the American Battle Monument's Commission. But at the end

(10:56):
of the war, as it turned out, each family who
lost a soldier was given the opportunity to tell the government.
The War Department did the canvassing whether they wanted the
body of their dead husband, dead son, dead nephew, whoever
it might have been sent home for private burial in
the States or left in what would ultimately become a

(11:19):
permanent American cemetery. And one of the most interesting findings
in my own research, because you know, there was a
second generation of the creation of waries and memorials after
World War Two, But the percentage of families that decided
they wanted the bodies brought home versus the percentage of

(11:41):
those who opted to have the bodies kept in the
theater of war and buried in an overseas cemetery was
exactly the same. To the end of each World War, sixty
one percent one of the bodies brought home, thirty nine
percent said keep them where the particular individual fell, be
buried with his comrades forever, on foreign soil, friendly soil,

(12:04):
but foreign soil. So that's the war part of the
story of the American Battle Monuments Commission, But the remembrance part,
that's the ongoing mission of the agency. The agency is
heart and soul committed to fostering, furthering, promoting remembrance of

(12:25):
the soldiers who died in our overseas wars. But I
think in even the largest sense in the business part
of their mission, as they see it, is to promote
remembrance and honoring of all who have served, survivors and
those who made the ultimate sacrifice alike, and in recent

(12:46):
years particularly, but Mike is very proud and deservedly so,
the efforts the agency has made, particularly in the last
ten fifteen years, to beef up their educational programs. And
there's a wonderful websit www. Dot ABMC dot gov that
I encourage all of you to go to just to

(13:07):
see the kinds of things they're doing. But I've said
to Mike many times since the agency first began, they've
been in the education business. Because when you see some
of the photographs of the memorials and monuments particularly, you
see they have maps on them, they have inscriptions on
them that are designed not just to honor and remember

(13:31):
the soldiers, but also to honor and remember the cause
for which Americans have historically fought and given their lives
in overseas wars. So that's the war and remember its part.
The ABMC itself is actually two entities. It is an

(13:51):
agency Matt Spaulding described it as the smallest government agency,
federal agency. I don't know for a fact that that's true.
Mike may know. But four seventy five to eighty million
dollars a year in spending they do their work. There
are a little over four hundred employees, most of whom

(14:12):
by a large majority are foreign nationals because the business
of preserving and maintaining the sites is largely done by
foreign nationals. Where the cemeteries and monuments are Frenchmen, Belgians, Italians, Dutch,
et cetera. And then there are headquarters staff here in Arlington.

(14:32):
There's also a sizable contingent in an office outside Paris,
the European Office. That's one of the entities that the
ABMC is. But the second entity it is is a commission,
an oversight board of eleven members, all presidential appointees. There's
a chairman and a secretary and staffers. But then they're

(14:56):
the eleven civilian members of the commit The members of
the commission are unpaid. They meet on average what three
times a year, might more often than not on this
side of the pond, but once a year maybe on average.
There's a big anniversary coming up next year, the seventy

(15:17):
fifth anniversary of D Day, And Mike just told me
at dinner tonight the Commission will actually go to Normandy
and meet over there next spring. So it's an independent agency,
which is something of a miracle, you might say, for
an agency so small to have avoided all these years

(15:39):
being absorbed by some larger agency. And there were a
couple of near misses that I learned about and wrote
about in the book. But I think the key person,
at least in establishing the agency as an independent agency
was its first chairman, General John J. Pershing, the only

(16:02):
soldier in American history to hold the honor of the
extraordinary rank of General of the Armies while he was alive.
Some people in the Army consider that a sixth star rank,
and Pershing was given that rank. He learned about it
in September of nineteen nineteen as he was literally sailing

(16:24):
home from Europe with the mission accomplished of the American
Expeditionary Forces which he commanded, and it was obviously an
extraordinary elevation he Pershing is resting now in Arlington National Cemetery,
and he is the highest ranking soldier in that cemetery.
But you'd hardly ever know that, because he has the

(16:46):
simplest headstone possible for anybody to have in that cemetery.
So I hope if you haven't yet, he's buried on
Pershing Hill, and you can certainly find it in Arlington
and go pay your arm George Washington, of course, was
elevated posthumously to the rank of General of the Armies,
but not till nineteen seventy six in connection with the

(17:08):
bi centennial, so Washington never enjoyed that rank when he
was alive. The second chairman, by the way, was General
of the Army George C. Marshall. Eleven stars between the
first two chairmen of the ABMC. But Franklin D. Roosevelt
actually said it was recorded in a press conference that

(17:31):
he gave. I don't know whether this ever got back
to General Pershing or not. But by the end of
the nineteen thirties, after the first collection of overseas memorials
had been built and dedicated, General Pershing himself was suspicious
that the agency might go out of business because it
had accomplished its mission. But Franklin Roosevelt told a press

(17:54):
conference in nineteen thirty nine he says as long as
General Pershing is alive, I'm.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
Not going to touch the ABMC.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
And it's dodged a couple moments later in its history
when it looked like it might be absorbed into a
larger agency, but it still remains independent. President Trump has
repopulated the members of the Commission, chairman, and secretary. There's
just one vacancy, I think on the Commission right now.

(18:23):
But the agency reports directly to the President. How did
I come to write this book. I've been visiting these
overseas sites, many of which you're going to see displayed
on the screen momentarily. I've been going to these sites,

(18:44):
and maybe my first visit to the Normandy Cemetery in
nineteen seventy eight, and I've been going back frequently with
student groups almost annually since that time. And if any
of you have seen any of these sites, you know
that their beauty is is incomparable, and the quality of
the maintenance and the preservation equally incomparable. And I also

(19:10):
learned because when you take a student group to one
of the sites, the personnel there, the administrative personnel, supervisory personnel,
are always Americans. At these sites, they may notice you
and so I've been able to have many, many conversations
with staff enough to know that this is an unusually

(19:33):
dedicated and competent group, forthcoming, welcoming without fail, and they
love to tell the story of their own sites. But
they also are well aware, as I was made aware myself,
that very few Americans know the story. So I hope

(19:54):
this book will get the word out, so to speak,
and bring to the agency and it's personnel, and also
to the sites themselves the attention that they have always merited.
Another reason why I wrote the book. The other reason, well,

(20:17):
one of two other reasons, when I found out and
realized that no one else had ever covered this subject.
There's no other book that purports to tell the story
of the ABMC. I'm a first time author, I said
last week in Hillsdale. I never expected to give birth
to anything at age sixty eight, but here this book

(20:41):
has arrived. But I had the idea about ten years
ago to start it, and Victor Davis Hansen, who was
a great friend of Hillsdale College and who was at
that time a member of the Commission. I ran the
idea by him when we were traveling in Europe, and
without hesitation, he said yeah, do it because he was

(21:04):
aware as a commissioner that there was no book length
history of the Commission. And I knew enough about writing
books to know that that's every author's dream to come
by a topic that nobody else has really done, So
that was a second reason. Thirdly, ever since I was

(21:28):
a college student, I've been in the grips of World
War One. It's really the event in history that I'm
most passionate about. Ever since I read Barbara Tuckman's The
Guns of August as a college sophomore, I've always had
this yearning to learn more about World War One, but
also to talk about it, as I do in about

(21:50):
sixteen different classes back at Hillsdale College. But this book
is obviously about an agency that has had a mission
through both world Wars. But there is a certain imbalance
I freely concede in my own coverage of this story
in favor of World War One. There's seventh chapters in

(22:13):
the book. Four of them deal with the aftermath of
World War One, even before anyone knew there was going
to be a second World War. The fifth chapter deals
with the fate of the monuments and cemeteries from the
First World War, while the Second World War came first
through the territory as the Germans invaded France and Belgium,

(22:34):
where all are northern France and Belgium, where all are
World War One sites except for the cemetery in England are,
the war came through there in nineteen forty and then
back through there in nineteen forty four. General Eisenhower's force
and Ike actually had a stint attached to the ABMC

(22:54):
in the late nineteen twenties, And one of the most
touching things I found in my own research was a
telegram that General Eisenhower sent to General Pershing on the
occasion of Pershing's eighty fourth birthday September thirteenth, nineteen forty four.
If you know your chronology of the Second World War

(23:15):
in detail, you know that by September nineteen forty four,
most of northern France and a goodly portion of Belgium
had been liberated. So Ike was able to and he'd
Ike had already sent out officers to go here, go
there and check on the condition of our cemeteries and
World War One monuments, and those officers had reported back

(23:36):
to Ike, So he sent Pershing a telegram on his birthday,
and I said, just thought you'd like to know that
the monuments, which Ike knew that Pershing had poured his
own heart and soul into creating, he knew then that
they were safe. So but that's the fifth chapter. Then

(23:56):
there's a chapter on the building of the World War
Two memorials, and a conclusion which basically compresses the history
of the last fifty or fifty five years of the
agency into about twenty pages. Mike has already teased me
about a second book, or a second edition and expanded edition.
I had a word limit when I signed the contract

(24:18):
for this book. I did intend to cover the later
years a little more thoroughly, but had to abandon that hope.
But maybe we'll pick it up again at some point.
How did I do the book? Since there was very
little literature on the ABMC, The overwhelming bulk of the

(24:39):
research is archival And I learned this as a graduate student,
and I kind of make a joke about it, but
archival history to me is doing history in the raw.
You read the documents. I handled all kinds of letters
signed personally by Calvin Coolie, Frank Glenn Roosevelt, Pershing. I

(25:02):
handled a number of Pershing correspondents handwritten letters that came
back from wartime France with reports on how the monuments
and cemeteries were doing. The official records of the agency
are in the National Archives out at College Park. I
went to the Archives downtown to look at records of

(25:25):
the Commission of Fine Arts, which was another commission actually
a little older than the ABMC. But the Fine Arts Commission,
as some of you may know, is responsible for overseeing
the artistic quality of any memorial built by the United
States government. So the Agency is still beholden to the

(25:45):
Fine Arts Commission for approval of its own artistic designs
whenever they want to do anything on the cemetery grounds
or monument grounds overseas. General Pershing's private papers were a
big sol for me there in the library at Congress
General Marshall's personal papers, or in the Marshall Library in Lexington, Virginia.

(26:08):
I went there. I went out to the Eisenhower Library
in Abilene, Kansas, had a wonderful week out there back
in twenty ten or twenty eleven reviewing. I made very
detailed notes on the year that he spent with the ABMC,
and I got a lot out of that there are
archival holdings in each one of the cemeteries. There are

(26:32):
archives in the European Office outside Paris. I worked very
selectively there, with the possible exception of the Normandy Cemetery
where the archival holdings are most extensive. But a lot
of the records in the overseas sites have not really
been sorted through catalog so it's kind of a challenge

(26:54):
to get much out of them. But I did get
my fair share of nuggets, I think, out of out
of that material to including. One of the most fascinating
events recorded in the files held at the Normandy Cemetery
were accounts of Steven Spielberg's time there for the filming

(27:15):
of Saving Private Ryan back in nineteen ninety seven, and
one of the most moving things about that was to
see evidence that actually came out in the press months
later in some cases, but evidence of how the cemetery
had affected both Spielberg and the star of the movie,
Tom Hanks. They were very candid about. Tom Hanks in fact,

(27:39):
said that when he first arrived in the cemetery he
thought only of the crosses, the headstones, the stars of
David that marked the graves, but the longer he was there,
the more he realized that underneath each of those headstones
was a human life, remains of a human being whose
life had been cut short. And I know this is

(28:01):
part of the ongoing ambition of the agency, is literally
to do everything it can to bring those dead soldiers,
fallen soldiers to life, even years after they actually lost
their lives in either of the two World Wars. What were
some of the most interesting discoveries. I'll try to just

(28:22):
throw out a couple and then we'll turn to the
slides and I'll narrate as we go. But there was
a very surprising controversy back in the nineteen twenties in
relation to that choice that I noted earlier was given

(28:45):
to each of the families, if you can believe this,
But the journalistic community, and there were actually some committees
organized to further one viewpoint or another. But a lot
of people who didn't necessarcessarily have a direct stake because
they didn't have a fallen soldier in their family, but
they weighed in on the choice they thought the families

(29:08):
of dead soldiers should make. There were partisans of both
points of view. Those who thought the bodies should be
brought home tended to be skeptical of the idea of
leaving fallen American soldiers abroad, especially in a place like France.
Believe it or not, that soon after the war there

(29:28):
was a certain skepticism as to how the French might
treat the interminents of large numbers of Americans. So would
they look to exploit the fact that Americans would would
come overseas to visit the sites, etc. But those who
thought that the bodies should remain overseas were suspicious of

(29:54):
the funeral director's lobby in the United States, that that's
the real reason why families were being pressured to have
their their dead family members brought back. So and it
was almost an unseemly quality to that debate. Not as

(30:14):
bad necessarily as the debates we're living through right now
in our politics, but considering how sensitive an issue it
is for families to decide where they want to love
one buried, I was quite taken aback by that. I
certainly gained a very deep appreciation and broad appreciation of

(30:38):
the contribution that General Pershing made to the work of
the agency. I've already referred to that and similarly with
General Marshall. But the interesting thing about these findings is
that there's a rich biographical literature on both these these
great Americans, but very little to nothing of any concepts

(31:00):
on the service that Pershing gave for the last twenty
five years of his life to the ABMC, and that
Marshall gave as chairman for the last ten of his life.
The third and fourth chairman, by the way, were also
like General Marshall, World War Two, Generals Jake Devers, who
had been the sixth Army Group Commander, among other roles

(31:23):
that he played in the Second World War. He's the
only one of the first four chairmen to have been
at every single meeting that took place during his chairmanship.
General Eisenhower appointed him. President Nixon relieved him at the
end of the nineteen sixties because of General devers advanced years.
But then the fourth chairman of General Mark Clark, who

(31:44):
served for the last fifteen years of his life. I
don't know how many of you know much about General Clark.
His generalship is normally not praised unless it's General Clark
talking about it. But he wrote President Carter a letter
shortly after mister Carter took office. I think General Clark

(32:07):
might have been concerned that President Carter might relieve him
of this position because President Nixon had initially appointed Clark.
But he said, frankly, mister President, this is the highest
honor that my country's ever conferred upon me to be
chairman of this commission. So and I'm sure all of
his successors have felt similarly. So that was an interesting

(32:32):
discovery to see the succession of very significant and great
generals who gave their final service to their country in
this role. And finally, I've already mentioned this, but the
sort of ongoing tension you might say, between the agency
as an independent agency and the rest of the bureaucracy,

(32:55):
which threatened on a number of occasions to absorb it.
To see how that bullet kept being dodged was a
very interesting discovery as well. So I'd like to go
for the remaining fifteen or twenty minutes to the slides
and just talk about what you're seeing obviously, and elaborate

(33:17):
a bit on some of the backstory to the images
so that can convey a bit more about the history
the agency.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
This is.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
What you would see when you enter the reception area
of an overseas cemetery, a photograph of the current commander
in chief when this picture was taken, it was President Obama.
Then you have the Secretary of the Commission and the
head of the European Office. It was Max Cleland and

(33:52):
Mike do you recognize that picture on the right, Okay,
General Hawkins. And underneath you have the whole collection of
former chairman starting with Pershing to the left and General
Frederick Franks, who was a George W. Bush appointee who

(34:15):
was removed from the position on the day that President
Obama took office. But General Merrill McPeak, who is mister
Obama's choice for Chairman, had not been in office long
enough to be pictured there. But this is a statue
of General Pershing in his hometown in Missouri. Any of
you know the hometown. I don't even think there's a

(34:38):
traffic light there. It's in the northwestern part of Missouri.
It's place called Leclead. Pershing left there in eighteen eighty one,
I believe, to go to West Point and the rest,
as they say, is history. Now, this is the arguably

(35:01):
the most important single World War One monument in France.
It's on a hill called Montfaucon in the mews ar
Gone battle area. It's one hundred and seventy five foot
high doric column capped by a statue of Liberty, and

(35:22):
the statue of Liberty on top is looking out into
the infinity of time and space in the direction from
which the American troops came. The Battle of the Mewsargne
began on the twenty sixth of September nineteen eighteen. It
ended on Armistice Day at eleven o'clock in the morning.
Forty seven day long battle. It's the bloodiest battle in
American history, one hundred and twenty two thousand casualties dead

(35:45):
and wounded together. It's the bloodiest battle in American history
because it was a very intense battle, but it also
lasted over a long period of time. The Battle of
the Bulge is a very close second in terms of
the overall casualties from nineteen forty four forty five. But
this monument was dedicated on the first of August nineteen

(36:05):
thirty seven. General Pershing was there, Marshall Petin was there,
the commander of the French army during the last couple
of years of the First World War. The President of
the French Republic was there, and President Roosevelt was on
his yacht in the Potomac, but he gave a live
radio address that the audience heard. Most of the Frenchmen,

(36:28):
of course, couldn't understand it, but it was something of
a path breaking undertaking and it came off successfully for
a live radio broadcast to actually reach its audience. The
monument was erected on the ruins of a village called

(36:53):
mont Falcon, and that's the ruins of the village church.
The French government gave us the ground but we didn't
really take full possession of it until we'd worked out
a liability agreement with the French because they considered it

(37:13):
a dangerous place. And it probably still is. The ground
underneath its honeycombed with underground bunkers. There's still if you
look hard enough, you can cut yourself on rusty barbed wire,
even to this day. The architecture of the monument was
John Russell Pope, who later did the Jefferson Memorial and

(37:37):
had a very testy relationship Pope did with the Secretary
of the Commission at the time, but he was given
this chore in recognition of the fact that he was
one of the great architects of his day. The next
three shots are just shots from the top of the memorial,
and as you look at each one, realize again that

(37:58):
you're looking at the bloody battlefield in American history. The
monument occupies a commanding spot. One can see miles from there,
and one can see the monument miles away from it.
And all that's deliberate pershing one of these memorials to

(38:19):
be seen from miles away, because he hoped that anyone
who saw the monument would just have to come get
a closer look and actually visit it, and anyone who
visited there would be reminded of what the Americans had
contributed to the war effort. The second biggest monument of
World War One, vint Each, is on a hill called

(38:40):
Molt Sec south of Verdunn. It's was in the sat
Mihel sector. The Battle of sat Miel began on the
twelfth of September nineteen eighteen. It was the first major
battle that the United States fought as an independent army.
And this monument crowns its height this day. First you

(39:02):
saw a perspective from distance. Now you see it closer up.
But next you're going to see the view from the memorial.
So this monument was actually rather heavily damaged during World
War II by American tank fire. The Germans were there
in the closing weeks of August or beginning weeks of September.

(39:24):
The Americans had to blast them out of there, and
the monument was hit several times, but easily enough repaired
in the aftermath of the war. Now this monument is
the third most important monument. It's on Hill two four,

(39:49):
which is military language for a hill outside Chateau Tierre
in France, about thirty five miles east of Paris. The
architect for the monument was the first consulting architect for
the commission, a Frenchman transplanted to Philadelphia, where he was
on the faculty of the School of Architecture at the
University of Pennsylvania. Paul Philippe Krach was his name. Cre

(40:12):
E t He designed that memorial. It's the n Marne Memorial.
The Commission just opened up a new visitor center underneath
the memorial, which I was able to visit last spring.
It's an extraordinarily fine piece of work, very informative panels,
and even they even have some footage of Pershing giving

(40:38):
his dedicatory address at the muse Argonne monument. And here's
the ever present map to which I made reference earlier.
It's designed to acquaint people who visit the monument with
some of the action that took place around it. One
of the smaller memorials World War One memorial there were

(41:00):
eleven World War One memorials all together, is in the
village of Cantigny. Some of you may know that the
First Division saw action there at the end of May
nineteen eighteen. They drove the Germans out of this village
and then managed to hold it against the inevitable German
counter attack. And it was a big plus for the Americans,

(41:21):
the first time really that we'd been bloodied in an
action that we took pretty much by ourselves. And the
monument is right in the center of the little village
in Picardia, I think it is in France. And then
the ever present map and explanatory panels again. This monument

(41:43):
is on top of a ridge in Champagna. It's called
near the village of Sompi. The dedicatory plaque there saying
that the monument is plainly erected to remind people how
grateful the United States is for the service of the

(42:04):
men in this area, the soldiers in this area. This
is the view from the top of the memorial. You
can see down in the foreground. They're German trenches that
still survive. They're actually meant to survive. And this just
simply reemphasized the point that the agency, the ABMC, was
very much intent to put its cemeteries and its monuments

(42:27):
right on the battlefields. There are individual panels along the
base of the memorial honoring the divisions that did the
bulk of the fighting. There you see the second thirty
sixth Division, and this other plaque refers to the forty

(42:52):
second Division that was the Rainbow Division. So many of
the divisions in World War One were organized state by state.
Thirty second Division was known as the Rainbow Division. That's
the division Douglas MacArthur fought with, and that's because it
literally had soldiers in it from coast to coast, like
a rainbow stretching across the continent. This is what the

(43:13):
cemeteries actually look like, a very different look from what
you see at Arlington. For one thing, the headstones are
much higher off the ground and they are overtly I
dare say, unapologetically, unabashedly religious shapes Latin cross for the
Christian dead, Star of David for the Jewish dead. This

(43:35):
is from the muse Argon Cemetery, which is the largest
ABMC cemetery in Europe. There are over fourteen thousand men
buried there and about half the total dead from that battle,
and very sad to say that no American president has
ever visited there. That's perhaps all the evidence we need

(43:57):
to suggest how little remembered, even in the centennial year.
I fear to say the Great War is for us.
Every cemetery has a chapel. This is the muse Argon
chapel in Romanesque style. Chapel is on the highest part

(44:20):
of the cemetery, so there's a very panoramic view approaching it.
This palm was actually left on the altar of the
chapel on dedication day for the cemetery, which was Memorial
Day in nineteen thirty seven. It was left there by
the President of France and he was there in General

(44:44):
Pershing's company. This is what the cemeteries look like on
Memorial Day. Each individual grave is decorated. In this case,
because this is a French cemetery, this is the Wasen cemetery.
Our second largest World War One cemetery. You see an
American flag and a flag of the host country. If

(45:05):
it were in Belgium, it would be a Belgian flag.
In Italy, an Italian flag from World War Two, so forth,
and so on so but it makes for a spectacular site,
and all those flags are put in by hand as well.
This is what the interior of a chapel can look like.
This is a bellow wood chapel, but again unabashedly Christian

(45:32):
symbols inside inscriptions, stained glass windows, and this one I
can't see them, but they're there, and up and down
the walls in this particular case names of the missing
as well. Each of the cemeteries obviously honors those buried there,
but there are walls of the missing each place, so

(45:54):
the total number of soldiers honored is actually an excess
of those with individual interments. At the end of World
War One, families were given the opportunity to create a
verse or some memorable passage that they would like to
have engraved on the back of the headstone of their

(46:15):
dead loved one. This is an idea that we took
from the British. The British created their war cemeteries before
we did. And for those of you who ever visited
either a World War One or World War Two cemetery
maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission of the British Government,
you'll see just about every grave at the base of

(46:38):
it has a very moving inscription. First time I ever
visited such a cemetery was in Bayeux in Normandy, and
my father was along as a World War Two veteran,
and he read about six or eight of the inscriptions
and just couldn't go any further. They're very personal, very loving,
very moving. But for some reason the people the United

(47:00):
States didn't rise to that challenge. They're only nineteen headstones
in the twenty nine thousand plus headstones with names on
them that have those inscriptions. The crosses are of Carra marble,
Italian marble with a beautiful silvery vein to it. It

(47:20):
was quite a controversy about that, the idea that we
were going to get our material for the headstones from
Italy as opposed to using good old American granite. The
American Granite Association pitched quite a fit at a succession
of Commission meetings. Finally, General Pershing had to tell them
in nineteen twenty six that the issue was closed and

(47:42):
they weren't to come back and try to browbeat the
Commission anymore. In fact, the Italian marble came in at
low bid. Granted would have been three or four times
more expensive per headstone, but it was the purity of
the whiteness that ultimately I think clinched the deal. This

(48:05):
is the gravestone of the son of one of the
original members of the Commission, the woman by the name
of Jacqueline Cody Bentley. She was a gold Star mother
from Chicago. She was one of the original seven commissioners.
Her son had died in nineteen seventeen. He's buried in
the was Ain Cemetery, and I have a picture a

(48:26):
couple of pictures in the book of Missus Bentley and
also General Pershing at that grave when the entire Commission
went over there in nineteen twenty four to inspect the
cemeteries in the monument sites. This is the only piece
of privately donated artwork in any of the American Cemeteries's

(48:48):
a beautiful statue of an American dough boy, given by
a mother whose son is buried in the sat Miell Cemetery.
That's where the statue is. She paid thirty thousand dollars
for this at the end of the nineteen twenties, and
the Commission initially voted not to allow the statue in
there because they didn't want to have to rule on

(49:08):
individual submissions for private donations. But when General Pershing found
out a couple of years later that the woman in
question was the daughter of James G. Blaine, who was
Republican nominee for president in eighteen eighty four, he changed
his mind, and Pershing, as a young man, greatly admired

(49:29):
mister Blaine. So there the statue is. But if they
were going to make an exception over anything, I'm glad
they did it with that one. This is Superintendent Michael
Kons some years ago. Michael has posted at the Normandy Cemetery.
Now I believe he's director of Visitor Services over there,
but in twenty ten when that picture was taken, he

(49:49):
was superintendent at sat Me Hell And he's taken the
flags down, which is done every day at every cemetery
to symbolize a duty day completed. And I've heard one
cemetery superintendent say this. I've read it elsewhere that there's

(50:10):
a belief, and I think for very very sound and
poignant reasons, is every soldier buried in one of those cemeteries,
resting abroad is still serving his country by reminding us
all of the price of freedom. This is the Cambridge
Cemetery in England, the World War two cemetery. Now you

(50:33):
can see a little bit difference in architectural style. They
are more rectangular chapel building for example, we don't argue
about whether a chapel is in the case of the
World War One chapel is Gothic or Romanesque. With these,
they're more modern. They're about thirty six hundred of our

(50:53):
soldiers buried in Cambridge, the majority of them flyers. And
here's the wall of the mid at Cambridge Cemetery, and
there are actually more names on the wall of the
missing than there are buried in the cemetery. There were
five thousand names on the wall. The missing. Two of
them would be very well known. I suspect everyone here,
Glenn Miller and Joseph Kennedy Junior. So many were lost,

(51:19):
of course in bombing raids and whatnot, lost in places
where their bodies just simply couldn't be recovered the ever
present battle maps. This is at Cambridge. Again. Every cemetery
chapel has a memorial, an article of remembrance to commemorate

(51:42):
the Jewish dead. This is ten Roman numerals signifying the
Ten Commandments with the Star of David. And there you
see more of a perspective, but the Jewish symbol is
still there at the base of that right now hand pillar.
This is the Britney Cemetery, built very much in the

(52:05):
style of the local parish church, with the chapel in
the middle, built of stone that is native to the area.
Beautiful flora, very colorful cemetery. It's actually the second cemetery
that we have in Normandy. But I'm just taking a
wild guess, but I'll bet for every one person who

(52:27):
visits Brittaney, ten or twenty go to the one that
overlooks Omaha Beach. Unabashedly religious inscriptions in the interior of
the chapel designed to comfort those who visit. And then

(52:49):
finally we come to what has to be the best
known of all of the ABMC sites, the Normandy American Cemetery.
This was Memorial Day twenty eleven. Old Glory flies next
to the French cry color one Memorial Day, each of
the graves decorated with flags of the respective countries. Off

(53:14):
in the distance this picture you can see the ocean
and the Channel when our soldiers landed on d Day.
Once they fought their way off the beach and up
the bluffs, they came right across the ground where the
cemetery currently is located. Currently it's not going anywhere, I
promise you, Normandy, again and again. This next picture is

(53:58):
of two of the sun of President Theodore Roosevelt on
the right hand side the grave of the headstone inscription
is accentuated because Theodore Roosevelt Junior was a Medal of
Honor winner. But next to him is his younger brother, Quentin,
who actually died in the First World War, but at

(54:19):
the request of the Roosevelt family after the Second World War,
when the oldest of the Roosevelt brothers wound up in Normandy,
Quenton's grave was moved. It's this pair of graves. I
think there are over forty sets of brothers in the
Normandy Cemetery to this day, but this is one of

(54:40):
the most frequently visited spots. This is the new visitors
center dedicated in two thousand and seven, and Mike has
told me over dinner tonight it's being renovated again, hopefully
ready in time for the seventy fifth anniversary next year,
where when there will surely be a new crush of visitors,

(55:05):
including the heads of state, who I'm sure will be
there on June sixth. And finally, this picture, the white
haired lady is a World War Two widow Billy Harris.
Excuse me, Peggy Harris, it's her name. Her husband, Billy
is buried in the cemetery. He was shot down in
Junior July nineteen forty four. He was twenty two years old.

(55:28):
They had just married prior to his going off into
the service. For about sixty years, Peggy was not aware
that her husband was actually in the cemetery, but she
ultimately learned that that's where he was, so she has
made a visit. I don't know that she's able to
make the trip anymore, but for a string of years

(55:51):
annually she would be over there on Memorial Day. She
never remarried because she never really knew for certain until
she learned that her husban was buried in Normandy that
he was in fact dead. So everybody knows her. That's
her receiving a red rose from a member of the
cemetery's staff, and that was a Memorial Day twenty eleven

(56:13):
as well. And I like to end with this because
her story is just one of thousands and thousands of stories,
because every one of the headstones marks the grave of
someone who was connected in life to a network of
friends and family. And the cemeteries are meant, of course

(56:38):
to honor and remember all of those dead soldiers. But
it's a call upon us to do the same. So
thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
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(57:13):
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(57:38):
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(58:00):
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