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Part I
Chasing the Legend
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Part II
Battle of the Argonne Forest
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Part III
Our French Connections
Chasing a Legend...
While developing the idea for Argonne Cellars and replaying my grandfather’s stories of drinking French wine during WWI, I became more curious about his experience.
Just where did this happen? Was it even true…or had he made up a story to interest a little boy?
“Yes, I know your grandfather’s unit very well…come to France and I’ll show you where grand-père was…”
Connecting with the Argonne Region A whim and a discovery
I was unprepared for my first discovery. Enter Jean-Paul DeVries, an interesting guy who owned Museum Romagne 14-18; a small museum located in the Argonne region of France and devoted to WWI. And so, on a bit of a whim, I scanned my grandfather’s 100-year-old discharge papers and sent him an email…
His answer surprised me and came with a call the next morning. “I know your grandfather’s unit very well, come to France, I’ll show you where grand-père was…”
His response was so weird that I reiterated I was just interested in doing some video work to tell our “story” and I just needed to be pointed in the right direction. And then he replied, "but you don’t understand, I know where he was."
An Unexpected Revelation How did a stranger know so much about our family's history?
How did this man I had never met know so much? I begged for an explanation.
"He was in the 9th Infantry, 2nd Division; the very day he entered the war, his unit broke through the Hindenburg Line…the furthest the Germans had ever advanced, and it ended the war 10 days later.”
I was incredulous and blurted out, “Yes, but just how do you know all this?”
His reply was ironic. “I know this because your grandfather was only 8 kilometers from my village. Come to France; I’ll show you.”
Jean-Paul DeVries shows where my grandfather passed by in 1918.
The Journey to France Tracing my grandfather's footsteps through the Argonne Region
We saw where his unit broke through the German lines, discovered foxholes in a forest where he spent the next night, and toasted his memory on a lonely country road where he was wounded, near Bantheville.
And oddly, Jean-Paul did confirm one other thing. Yes, there were stories of French villagers giving American soldiers wine. Just like the guys in this photograph we found after our return to the states. And the eerie thing? The patch on their shoulders reveals that out of 1.2 million soldiers in that battle, they’re all from my grandfather’s unit.
