An Unusual View: Looking into the Past and the Future--St. Quentin, 1917

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This lovely, seemingly antique daguerreian view is what the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) commander General JJ Pershing saw at the front lines of St. Quentin in July 1917.  The U.S. had entered the war, finally, on April 2 1917, nearly three years after the war began, landing in France 13  June 1917 and entering almost immediately into battle at Chateau-Thierry.  On 2 July Pershing estimated that the U.S. would need a million fighting men; the day that this photo was published in The Illustrated London News, he revised that estimate to three million.  The view he was seeing here was more than of a town about to be pounded by thousands of artillery shells--the magazine was sharing a view of what the European and Empire countries had been seeing for 31 months, and what the Americans would now be sharing for another 17 months. 

It is a beautiful and deadly view, seen through French field binoculars at the tip of the front for the battle.  The large building to the right is the town's Gothic cathedral/collegiate masterpiece:  it was old and large, with a 370-foot-long and 130-foot-high nave.  It was a highpoint for that part of France, and was the burying place for St. Quentin and St. Victorious--their graves would be covered by the rubble of the cathedral's collapsed roof very soon after this picture was taken.  The building was shelled and burned all night long--the French blaming the Germans and vice versa. 

If Pershing had really good sight he might've been able to see the 116,000 American soldiers who would be killed in battle, though I suspect he had a pretty good idea of what was to come, thinking as he did that he need 3 million soldiers.  To be utterly fair I don't think that he could've possibly  seen in his imagination  what 9 million dead soldiers looked like, or what 16 million dead soldiers and civilians looked like, or what 37 million dead and wound soldiers and civilians looked like, all the casualties of this war, all done in 4 years. 

I've found it odd in a way that I've not really been able to explain that Pershing is buried so very close to Ira Hamilton Hayes at Arlington.  I used to leave a good twig on Jackson's headstone on Memorial Day, and then get that unusual, uncomfortable emotion on seeing the large Pershing monument just a few hundred feet away. 

Soldiers Lost in WWI:

 # 1        Russia:      1,811,000        
# 2       France:        1,397,800       
# 3       United Kingdom:     885,138       
# 4       Italy:     651,010       
# 5       Serbia and Montenegro:     275,000       
# 6       Romania:     250,000       
# 7       United States:     116,708       
# 8       Canada:     64,944       
# 9       Australia:     61,928

Altogether more than 37 million people would be wounded or killed during the war, including 16 million soldiers and civilians killed and 21 million wounded.

Comments

[Joy Holland]

Both of my grandfathers survived this war--one serving in a Nottinghmshire Regiment, the other in the merchant marine stationed in Gibraltar, where my father was born. My Notts. grandad had the worst of it by far. The story I heard as a ten year old was that he came home covered in lice and had to take off his uniform in the outside toilet. After the war he always slept with his hands clasped behind his head, the only only pillow he had known in the trenches. My ex's grandfather served in the Austrian army. I imagine them shooting at each other across the killing fields--and missing.

[Jeff]

It's possible you'd still be with us, Joy, even if one grandpa had killed the other, because, well, um, it's kinda like the reason one is Jewish only if one's mother is Jewish. I mean, it *was* wartime.

[John Ptak]

Excellent insights, Joy. I found the head-on-hands story a secret and appreciation. My mother's father fought for the AEF; his brother fought with the Italian army. I suspect that brother v brother stories like these are the long stuff of war.