After lunch, we drove to the Meuse-Argonne American Cemery and Memorial. We met the superintendent of the cemetery near the main building, and picked out a few names of 14,246 buried there to look up.
Benjamin Bowie was a black American soldier with the 92nd Division. His eulogy, by Isabel Morales, is found here. Soon after promotion to caption, Marcellus Chiles commanded a battalion during a wet-gap crossing, where he was wounded. He continued leading his troops forward, until he could go farther. After turning over command, he was evacuated, but died of his wounds on November 5th, 1918 -- one week before the fighting stopped. Chiles was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
This chapel is along the southern part of the cemetery; its outer wall has the 954 names of those who were missing in action.
From there, we headed south to the nearby Montfaucon American Monument.
Because it was only finished in 1937 -- just two years before World War II started -- the momument gets comparatively fewer visitors than other, more famous places. Next to the it lies the ruins of the church called the Collegiale de Saint German, which was destroyed in the early days of World War I, and never rebuilt.
This site has a good overhead view, which helps in undersanding the layout. The Wikipedia site's picture (below, left) is from the southwest; mine (below, right) is not as good.
Instead, I think my best picture from the southeast.
Afterward, we made our way to Verdun. What took the American First Army nearly two months to traverse, we were able to cross in a couple hours. I traced our path in red on the map.
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