Back Over There

by RICHARD RUBIN

  We walked across his front lawn and around his house, all four walls of which are still pocked with holes, hundreds of them—bullet holes, shrapnel holes, shell holes. And yet, he said his family was relatively lucky. As we walked back out his front gate and into town, wandering down the narrow streets packed with row houses, Marc told me: “Eighty percent of the homes here in town were destroyed during the war.”

  “So these were all rebuilt after the war?” I asked.

  “Not really,” he said. “People used the reparations money to fix the walls and roofs, but that was all they could do. These houses look all right on the outside, but inside they’re a mess—the floors and walls are mismatched and unstable, the pipes are all patched up poorly, the wires are dangerous and so are the staircases, all of it going back to the war. The owners can’t afford to fix them up, so they just keep renting them out for less and less money. I’m trying to start up a program that would change these things, but it’s very difficult; people don’t like change, even when it is for the best.” The houses really did look OK on the outside—not pristine or even all that clean, maybe, but they appeared at least to be solid, not the kind of place you might be afraid to enter, much less live in. As can be the case with people after a war, sometimes it’s the invisible damage that’s the worst.

  We walked out into the plaza and toward the old halle, or marketplace, built in 1550. Lots of towns and villages in this part of France have them, open spaces topped by pitched roofs supported by pillars. With its very steep and very tall roof, Fère’s halle is a focal point of the town, but a century ago the mayor wanted to tear it down because it was so badly damaged during the war. I have seen pictures of it, roof full of holes, open space full of timbers—not in books, but on postcards.

  It may strike you as odd that someone would think to put an image like that on a postcard. The first time I ever beheld one—it bore a photo of Romagne-sous-Montfaucon in ruins, as I recall—I wondered: Who would ever think of sending someone such a postcard? How could they imagine the recipient would be glad to discover such a thing in their mailbox? I never found the answers to those questions, I’m afraid, and while I still think they are strange, I can no longer consider such postcards unusual for the simple reason that I have come across hundreds of them, and do not doubt that millions were printed and sold. Some of them feature photos of soldiers, not all of whom were alive, and hospitals, and cemeteries; pictures of laborers, prisoners, newly homeless civilians. People didn’t collect these cards: They sent them. Often, what they wrote on the back had absolutely nothing to do with the photo on the front. Or even the war. And sometimes it did, which is even worse. I have one postcard that features a scene of utter destruction in downtown Baccarat, on a site across the street from the hôtel de ville where a florist’s shop sits today. It was stamped and mailed; on the back, a man whose name is illegible wrote, in French:

  Baccarat, July 17th, 1915

  With my best memories. I have deeply regretted not to be able to pass through Sainte-Menehould, where I wished to find some details about our beloved Lucien.

  The only reason you can still see Fère’s halle in person, and not just on old postcards, is because Étienne Moreau-Nélaton refused to allow it to be torn down. He did more than that, actually, going so far as to purchase the intact roofs off several otherwise-destroyed stores and have them moved to and patched together atop the marketplace. He did even more to save the church, which sits behind it. It dates back to around 1300, and didn’t fare all that much better during the war. Marc told me his great-grandfather had written a book about the church before the war, and that it was used, later, to guide the restoration effort. Actually, he wrote nine such books about nine different churches, all of which ended up being used the same way.

  The church in Fère is unusual in that it is filled with beautiful religious paintings, many of which were either purchased for it by Marc’s great-grandfather or commissioned by him. There used to be more: The Germans stole some; others were destroyed in the shelling. Up above is a series of stunning stained glass windows, all replacements; none of the originals survived. After the war, Marc told me, his great-grandfather commissioned the artist Maurice Denis to make new ones. One features the image of an angel, wings spread, looking skyward in grief as he cradles the body of a slain poilu. It seemed very personal to me.

  “The windows,” Marc explained, “were dedicated to my great-grandfather’s son, Dominique. He was killed in Belgium in May 1918.” He gazed at the soldier for a moment. “His only son.”

  May 1918. In a single month, Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, friend of the crème of France’s artistic community, an artist himself and a writer and photographer and collector and bon vivant who owned the grandest house in town, lost his home—his grandfather’s home—and his only son. How he was able to do anything after that—much less restore two of the most important places in Fère—is a mystery to me. I’m not even sure how his great-grandson can talk about it a century later.

  * * *

  About twelve miles north and east of Fère is the town of Fismes. Fismes—pronounced “Feem”—sits on the Vesle River, which was the original objective of Operation Blücher-Yorck in May 1918, before it went so well that the Germans decided they might as well go on and take the Marne, too. Fismes had been a settlement since well before Roman times, and it presented a lot of geographical advantages: In addition to commanding the river, it was a railway hub and a stop on the road to Reims, and easily defensible thanks to the heights that surround the village of Fismette (or Little Fismes), just across the river. So rather than just hold it, the Germans decided to really fortify Fismes, should they ever have to retreat back to the Vesle. Which they did, just two months later.

  In this case they were being pursued by the 32nd Division, the same doughboys who would charge up Côté Dame Marie in the Argonne that fall and thus inspire awe in Jean-Pierre Brouillon a century later. The 32nd, National Guard from Wisconsin and Michigan, had a high percentage of German-Americans in its ranks, which didn’t seem to bother the French, who bestowed upon them their divisional nickname, “Les Terribles”; I believe they meant it as a compliment. As the Terribles approached Fismes, they would have passed over turf that is today a campground filled with caravans and tents occupied by Roma, or Gypsies. People in Fismes will invariably advise you to steer clear of that campground, avoid even passing by if you can. At the same time, they kind of take a grudging pride in having a Gypsy camp, since Gypsies go where the work and money are. Fismes, with around five thousand inhabitants, is one of the larger towns in the area.

  It’s also storybook pretty, spread out not around a plaza but in a cross along two main roads—one running parallel to the Vesle, the other running right down to it—lined with little shops and houses, Mansard roofs and brick chimneys. At the crossroads sits the hôtel de ville, one of the most striking public edifices I have ever seen. I lack the architectural vocabulary to describe it adequately, so I’ll just call it a cross between the castle at Disney World and a cuckoo clock. Like the rest of Fismes, it was largely destroyed during the battle that began shortly after the 32nd Division crossed what is now the Gypsy campground; afterward, it looked like a giant foot had come down and crushed most of it to dust. I know because I saw it on a postcard.

  The 32nd attacked Fismes on August 4, 1918, and spent two days taking it, during which time the Germans withdrew across the river, blew up the bridge behind them, and shelled Fismes mercilessly from the heights behind Fismette. With the Germans back across the Vesle, General Pétain declared the Second Battle of the Marne officially over at 8:45 p.m. on August 6—two months to the day after the 2nd Division charged Belleau Wood. That night, the 32nd, having taken nearly five thousand casualties in the offensive, was relieved by the 28th, whose emblem, a red keystone—they hailed from the Keystone State—was referred to by some as a “bucket of blood,” a nickname that was soon extended to th
e entire division.

  The battle may have been officially over, but Fismes was hardly quiet; there were still pockets of Germans scattered throughout the town, and snipers in many of the buildings, which made Fismes an urban battlefield, a first for the Americans. To make things worse, General Jean Degoutte of the French Sixth Army, who had command authority over all the American divisions fighting in that sector, became fixated on the idea of establishing a bridgehead on the other side of the Vesle, from which he intended to pursue the Germans further. He ordered the 28th to cross the river and take Fismette. This was problematic: The Germans, of course, had already turned the bridge to rubble; they’d also filled the river with debris and barbed wire. And they had utter command of the Vesle, and Fismette, from the heights surrounding the village. The Americans demurred. Degoutte insisted. The Americans, he said, could send enough men over the rubble to build pontoon bridges; if they crossed at night, the Germans wouldn’t be able to see them.

  Degoutte was wrong about that; and the sun eventually rose, which made things even worse. After several tries, the Americans were able to drive the Germans out of Fismette, but the Germans counterattacked almost immediately. The Americans never could get more than a few hundred men across, and had an extremely difficult time supplying them, since the Germans were still shelling the Fismes side of the river, too. Still, the Sammies, outnumbered ten-to-one or more, managed to hold on to Fismette for nearly three weeks, sheltering in the ruins of houses and shops from German bombardments and counterattacks by elite troops armed with flamethrowers. Finally, on August 27, the Germans overwhelmed the Americans, capturing or killing more than two hundred of them. Only thirty or so escaped, swimming back across the choked Vesle to Fismes. Fismette was now destroyed and lost.

  It’s no longer destroyed, but it still seems lost; even before I knew its history, I felt Fismette was haunted somehow. It’s friendly enough to the eye, I suppose, a dozen or so little houses and a small roundabout full of colorful flowers, and unlike Belleau, it still has a functioning bakery, which is bright and welcoming, and where I once bought a baguette and a plastic baguette-shaped bag with handles to carry it in, the bag costing twice as much as the baguette. Still, it seems remarkably lifeless; many of the little French villages I visited were deserted as I walked their streets, but Fismette, though its houses were as neat and well kept as any, felt abandoned. A lot of villages that were destroyed during the war were rebuilt on different sites. Maybe they had the right idea.

  In August 1918, getting from Fismes to Fismette could take hours and quite possibly cost you your life. Today it takes about twenty seconds, a quick stroll across a sturdy, wide bridge built in 1927 by the state of Pennsylvania in honor of the 28th Division. It’s ornate, fronted by two tall pillars topped by statues of Columbia and her French counterpart, Marianne, and embedded with eagles and doughboy heads and keystones and symbols and inscriptions in French and English. It’s the kind of thing that really impresses you if you actually notice it, which I suspect is not the case for most of the people who traverse it daily. It says a lot about the men of the 28th that they and their state built such a thing. Frankly, if I had been through what they had there, I doubt I would ever want to hear about Fismes and Fismette again, much less commission a bridge there.

  The walk from the bridge back up to the hôtel de ville is a pleasant one, with views of the train station down below and bars and cafés and shops along both sides of the road. Toward the top of the hill I passed a dry cleaner whose mascot, painted on the shop window, is a steam iron dressed as Uncle Sam (minus the beard, of course—that would just be ridiculous). That struck me as strange. A few minutes later, standing on the front steps of the hôtel de ville and staring out across the plaza, I saw an American flag, which did not. Then I remembered I was not in America, and suddenly it did.

  The flag flew outside a two-story corner building with a green-and-white awning that read “Bar de l’Hôtel de Ville.” It was evening, around half past seven, so I walked over to see if I could get a drink and something to eat with some Americans. There weren’t any; in fact, none of the eight or nine people in there spoke a word of English. I asked the man behind the bar, a big fellow with a mustache who resembled an older Freddie Mercury, if the flag was in honor of the 28th Division, perhaps.

  “Quoi?” he replied.

  “Les Américains,” I said. “14–18.”

  Nothing.

  “The bridge,” I said, pointing in its general direction.

  “Ah!” he said, and nodded, then stopped and shook his head. “I didn’t think of that, but no.”

  “Then why?” I asked.

  “I love American cars,” he said. “And motorcycles.” His patrons, men and women, nodded along. It was then that I noticed, attached to the highest part of the walls, American license plates, one from every state in the union. Lots of tribal license plates, too. And longhorns, and a steer skull, and a dreamcatcher, and horseshoes, and a Buick service sign, and a Harley-Davidson service sign, and flags: several American and at least one Confederate, flags with motorcycles and big rigs and one of an enormous $100 bill, Benjamin Franklin’s pursed lips in that setting conveying the sentiment I know—right? There was a banner with an eagle and Old Glory and the motto “Proud to Be an American,” and a wooden sign with an eagle and the Stars and Stripes and the motto “Américain Car Club de France,” and some posters for their car shows, and baseball caps and trucker caps and cowboy boots and, in one alcove, guitars and wooden Indians and saddles and spurs and, naturally, a life-sized bust of Elvis. I should point out that the only newish American cars you see on the roads in France these days are Fords, and maybe, if you’re in the right town at the right time, one black Jeep.

  “Vous êtes Anglais?” the bartender asked me.

  “Non,” I said. “Je suis Américain.”

  And the drinks were on the house. All night.

  * * *

  Fismette may have been a defeat, and it may not have been a part of the Second Battle of the Marne, but it was not without consequence. General Pershing was outraged—at General Degoutte’s insistence upon sending Americans on what he should have known was a suicide mission (there were unengaged French units nearby who could have done the same thing; further proof, Pershing surmised, that Degoutte suspected it would fail), and at his own generals who knew better but didn’t ignore or otherwise circumvent Degoutte’s orders. After all, General Dickman, commander of the 3rd Division, had done exactly that the previous month at the Marne, and as a result had saved the day. Pershing’s resolve that American troops fight only in American armies entirely under American command stiffened; and for the rest of the war, with very few exceptions, they would.

  Whether General Dickman’s, shall we say, creative interpretation of his orders was regarded more as courage and genius than insubordination at the time or merely appears so now, with the aid of hindsight, I cannot say. He was promoted to corps commander the following month, if that tells you anything. And I can tell you that the French certainly don’t hold a grudge. People in Champagne are as crazy about the Second Battle of the Marne as people in and around Château-Thierry are about Belleau Wood. They hunt down postcards and old maps, walk the sites, read every contemporary account they can find, or at least every one they can find in French. Some are said to have collections to rival Gilles Lagin’s. The retired couple who owned the chambre d’hôtes where I was staying told me about one such enthusiast in the area, a gentleman in his late seventies or eighties named Jean Vedovati whom they had known in passing. They hadn’t heard from or about him in years, they said, and suspected he might have since died, but made some inquiries anyway and discovered, to everyone’s delight, that he was still very much alive, and that he would be happy to have us over to his hilltop farmhouse, outside the village of La Chapelle-Monthodon on the Mézy side of the Marne. He greeted us at the door, a slightly stooped man with white hai
r, somewhat thin on top and bushy on the sides, wearing a gray zippered cardigan sweater (it was a warm June morning) and a grin that was at once both innocent and conspiratorial.

  He welcomed us inside, and we sat down at a long wooden table in his kitchen with his wife. I asked him, in French, about his name; his father’s ancestors, he told me, also in French, had come to the area from Italy. He’d lived there his entire life, he said, and had heard a lot about the battle, but had only developed an interest in it in the 1980s, after he’d retired. He asked what I knew about it; I gave him the basic outline, then added that I had met someone, a 103-year-old man, who had been here with the 3rd Division’s 76th Field Artillery Regiment, and had very nearly been killed at Le Charmel a couple of weeks later. He nodded, thought for a moment, then started telling me about the exact area where the 76th had been deployed nearby. He’d written a book about the battle, he told me, Les Combats dans la Vallée de la Marne (Fighting in the Marne Valley), that spelled it all out; asked his wife to fetch a copy, then showed me a map inside and pointed to the area he was talking about.