The Ends of the World Wars in Northern France

The twentieth century was bitterly hard on northern France. The two world wars devastated vast stretches of the countryside and brought misery for years to the people living there. In mid-September, we visited two places that brought that past to life, one a museum and another a celebration of the liberation. First the museum.

World War I at the Franco-American Museum at Chateau Blérancourt

The Franco-American Museum at the Chateau of Blérancourt

When we arrived at the Franco-American Museum, we were welcomed by Catherine Assous. She talked about the history of the chateau, about the renovations it had undergone over the last six years, and the legacy of Anne Morgan and CARD. The museum at Blérancourt has three distinct themes—the French in North America, the Americans in World War I, and the influence of French art on U.S. artists. The first section covers the French colony in Canada and the support by France for the American Revolution and its influence on the subsequent creation of our new democracy. Lafayette is featured as well as those American revolutionaries like Franklin and Jefferson who lived in Paris. Liberty is a constant theme in this section. 

French explorations of North America in the 1600s. Map from the exhibit.

The Statue of Liberty, Lafayette, and Franklin on the far right. From the exhibit.

The second section focuses on World War I and in particular a group of 350 American women volunteers who came to this part of France to help with the recovery from the war. Anne Morgan (daughter of the financier J.P. Morgan) led this effort. She created Comité Américain des Régions Dévastées (the American Committee for the Devasted Areas) or CARD. The women did a variety of jobs from driving and maintaining ambulances and Ford trucks to teaching and creating libraries, from nursing to supervising the rebuilding of destroyed homes and distributing food, clothing, furniture, and other household items. CARD covered five cantons, 127 villages, and served 60,000 people. To fund such wide spread humanitarian aid, Morgan raised $5,000,000 from her American contacts.

Anne Morgan on left and Anna Dike on the right who was the day-to-day administrator of CARD.

For an example of the work that CARD did, here is an excerpt of a letter by Anne Morgan to her mother, Frances Tracy Morgan, on 29 July 1918, as the German offensive faltered:

“Dearest Mother,

            I am more than sorry to have missed writing for so many days, but these last two weeks
            have been regular nightmares….
         
            It really is all going most wonderfully and the girls are all doing a yeoman’s piece of
            work. When you realize that in four weeks they have served over two hundred thousand
            cups of drinks and given cigarettes to at least fifty thousand more men on the road that
            could not stop for the drink, you can have some kind of an idea of the way they are all
           doing….
           We are going to have the farm done this week with the forty odd refugees that are already
           working on it, and all the famous cows from Blérancourt that have had all the exercise in
           the last two offensives….
          What this recent battlefield means is a horror beyond words, not only the villages but the
          woods are literally shot to pieces and of course it will be some time yet before the Service
         d’étapes des Champs de Batailles can do the cleaning up which is such a ghastly job, even
         at the best….
         It looks now as though we would soon have a lot of civilian work on our hands again as
        the army and the administration are both desperately anxious to help the people back in
        this region immediately … and it is desperately important to make sure of the harvest within
        the next few weeks. As their houses are uninhabitable and what are standing have been
        utterly pillaged, we have been asked to pitch in at once and see what can be done.
        Well, Dearest, must leave you now and go off to bed as I am dead with sleep and must be
        off early in the morning. Give no end of love to every one and believe me as always your
        adoring daughter, Anne.”
Many of Anne’s letters to her mother from this time are preserved at the Morgan Library in New York City.

One of the most interesting parts of the exhibit is a monitor that displays newsreel footage taken by CARD volunteers about their activities. They shot a lot of film to aid with their fundraising appeals back in the states. In one segment, it shows them loading up trucks with newly built furniture, driving through the ruins of the nearby villages, and delivering it to grateful French families.

A Ford truck driven by CARD volunteers making its way with furniture through a town destroyed by Germans. 

From the newsreel.

Another part of the footage shows a recreation of a multigenerational family abandoning their home as Germans attacked. CARD did help many families escape the German offensive in the spring of 1918 and the organization had to move their headquarters from the Chateau at Blérancourt (today’s museum) to another chateau thirty miles away.  

French family loading into a CARD truck to escape the German offensive in Spring 1918. From the newsreel.

As I watched the film,  I realized how vindictive the Germans were as they withdrew from France during the summer of 1918. They blew up homes and villages that they had lived in for four years. They cut down orchards and destroyed farm machinery. Little was left standing and into this war ravaged landscape, the CARD women moved back in to assist.

The film also documents other humanitarian work of CARD. It shows them teaching young children in classrooms, visiting homes as nurses, opening up libraries, cooking and feeding people. From 1917 to 1924, the women of CARD worked tirelessly to help relieve the human suffering brought on at the end of World War I. 

As war clouds built over Europe, Morgan (at age 66) and other volunteers returned to France in 1939 and again organized aid for families, especially women and children. They hurriedly abandoned their HQ at Blérancourt on May 14, 1940, thirty minutes before the Germans arrived and continued their work in Vichy France. At the end of that year, Morgan returned to the U.S., but two women, Eva Dahlgren and Rose Dolan, stayed to provide aid not just to families, but to French men held in local POW camps. These two women, along with 100 other Americans, were arrested by the Germans in mid-January 1943 and held in a hotel in Baden-Baden for 15 months until released in a prisoner exchange on the Spanish border.

Their humanitarian work continues. In fact, one of the organizations that Morgan created still exists today as AMSAM (Association Médico-Sociale Anne Morgan) in the Soissons area.

An organizational chart of AMSAM today. From an exhibit about CARD at Soissons, France.

In addition to highlighting the humanitarian work of CARD at the end of the war, this section of the museum also illustrates how other Americans helped win the war. Soldiers are shown through paintings and drawings by the artists who were on the front lines. 

Painting by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge, American Soldiers at the Belgian Front, 1918. From the exhibit.

The last part of the museum is an extensive collection of American artists who studied in France and either returned to the U.S. or stayed in Paris to paint. It is an interesting overview of how France influenced art, especially in the first part of the 20^th century. Finally, part of the grounds are a garden that features plants and trees from the Americas. 

An American Field Service ambulance used by CARD. From the exhibit.

The Franco-American Museum is a moving tribute to the connections between the two countries that go back to colonial days in America and recognize the indispensable aid that each gave the other in their times of need.

The World War II Re-enactors at the Liberation Celebration

The next day, we went to the 75^th anniversary of the liberation of a village outside of Compiegne with our friends Sylvie and Patrick. About 250 people live in Antheuil-Portes where ten times that number gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the end of that town's German occupation. There were living historians reenacting rural village life seventy-five years ago with threshing wheat, blacksmithing, wool carding, and fire fighters in period costumes careening their water pump through the streets in a routine more like the Keystone Cops.

Working with wool at the Liberation celebration.

Getting a ride in an authentic World War II Army jeep. 

What captured my attention the most was the Military Engineer Association’s encampment. Dressed in World War II uniforms and helmets, this group of French living historians recreated their American field HQ with a large tent, a kitchen, a radio system, a .30 caliber machine gun, a forge, and other equipment. Impressively, these men and women from Amiens in northern France were using military equipment preserved from 1944-45. 

The camp of the Military Engineer Association. Notice the K rations in front and the desk with a map, type writer, and radio equipment.

A French re-enactor dressed as an American paratrooper.

I approached one of them and asked if he spoke English, saying I was an American. He replied that he too was an American, at least for this night, and we both laughed. Philippe explained who they were and then showed us how to use the two plate mess kit so that you can have a free hand to eat with while standing up. He pointed to the system of 50 gallon garbage cans with burners underneath used to clean mess kits. He also gave me a field radio unit from the 1940s to talk to him across the camp. I knew I was holding the type of radio that my dad and millions of other soldiers used during World War II.

Philippe illustrates how to eat out of mess kit. He also points to the washing system with 50 gallon cans. 

Philippe said that when they set up their field camp for visiting U.S. military, the Americans are amazed and comment that there is not much of this in the states. He asked me if there were similar groups in the U.S. who recreated World War II. I told him not many, saying that the Civil War and the American Revolution attract more re-enactors than the World Wars. Perhaps that is because as horrific as both of the world wars were, they did not destroy the countryside in the U.S. like in Europe. Every year on the anniversary of D-Day, the group sets up camp near Colleville-sur-mer at Omaha Beach. They invite visitors and even offer rides in their authentic Jeeps around the beach. Their e-mail is assomilitaryengineers@gmail.com.

Phillip connecting the wires for the field radio.

After we learned about the way that their camp worked, Philippe talked about his family’s history during World War II. His great-grandparents had to house a German soldier in their home. He had food, and his family did not, so his great-grandmother Berthe stole some of the German’s food. She was caught and put into a motorcycle side car which roared off to the German commandant. A soldier said to Phillip’s dad (who was five) that his grandmother was “Kaput” and dragged a thumb across his neck. Phillip’s dad cried until his grandmother was brought home unharmed.

Phillip also mentioned that both of his parents remember U.S. GIs arriving at liberation and handing out candy. After years of privation and oppression, liberation was joyously embraced almost everywhere it happened. In fact, all this summer and fall, liberation celebrations have occurred from Normandy through Paris to northern France. No wonder several thousand people showed up at Antheuil-Portes to celebrate, many who probably had their own family stories about the Nazi occupation of France. The evening ended with a large fire-works display, at times accompanied by American music from the 1940s.

A band entertaining the large crowd at the Liberation celebration.

The Franco-American alliance at Blérancourt, illustrated by a brave group of women volunteers at the end of World War I. A liberation celebration to mark the liberation of their village during World War II. The U.S. played vital roles in the defeat of the totalitarian regimes of Germany in both wars, which is only fitting since France gave invaluable help in money, arms, and military might in our fight against Britain during the Revolution. Allies need to work together for freedom to reign, even if the help is reciprocated more than a century later. It was a special treat to experience both of these memories of the end of the World Wars in northern France back to back.