In 1919, Villagers and soldiers helped rebuild chateau-thierry
U.S. Navy Archives
by Kathy Warnes
The village of Chateau-Thierry has lived through centuries of history, and German and AEF soldiers helped reclaim it from the ruins of World War I.
In February 1919, the guns that echoed across the River Marne and shells that shattered the wooden rooftops and walls of Chateau-Thierry had been silent for eight months. The optimism of peace lured Chateau-Thierry residents back from hiding to rebuild their homes and lives despite the winter cold. The guns of war had scattered the survivors, but they were slowly gathering and returning. A hotel, hastily but thoroughly rebuilt, awaited American pilgrims. In February 1919, the Great War had been over for three months, since the Armistice of November 11, 1918.
A Historic Town, A Castle, And A Poet’s Stone House
Chateau-Thierry nestles in the valley of the Marne River with wooded hills standing like parallel sentinels on each side. The streets of Chateau-Thierry rise in terraces above each other and houses with walled gardens line the main boulevard at river level.
The battlements and walls of the Thirteenth Century Chateau-Thierry, supposedly built for Frankish King Thierry IV, soar above the surrounding trees and gardens and the old castle provides a vantage point to view a panorama of hills, valleys, rivers, towns, and villages below. The stone house where the Seventeenth Century poet and fable writer Jean de La Fontaine was born still stands in Chateau-Thierry.
Chateau -Thierry , The Last Stop On The Road To Paris
Chateau-Thierry gained another measure of fame when in May through July of 1918, the French and American armies successfully halted the German Spring Offensive and drive toward Paris, only fifty miles away. The Germans bombarded Chateau- Thierry, giving it the distinction of being the farthest point of their Army’s 1918 offensive.The Allied Expeditionary Forces under General John J. “Back Jack” Pershing saw some of its first European action at Chateau Thierry.
On May 27, 1918, the Germans attacked the Allied Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front and by May 30, 1918, German troops were shelling Chateau-Thierry. The American and French soldiers prevented the Germans from crossing the Marne River, decisively checking the German offensive. Thousands of young French, British, German, and American soldiers fell at Chateau-Thierry and the Marne and many Allied soldiers are buried near the Marne battlefields just west of Chateau-Thierry.
Captain Lloyd W. Williams Fights Far Away From Home
Captain Lloyd W. Williams of the United States Marine Corps, fought at Chateau-Thierry to help defeat the German Army. Born in the small town of Berryville, Virginia, on June 5, 1887, Lloyd W. Williams graduated with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute class of 1907, and he eventually joined the Marines. Between June 1 and June 26, 1918, the Fifth Marines helped fight the fierce battle of Belleau Wood, near the Marne River.
On June 2, 1918, in the thick of the battle on the defensive line just north of the village of Lucy-le-Bocage, a French officer and his retreating men advised Capain Williams to withdraw. According to H.W. Crocker in Don't Tread on Me: A 400-Year History of America At War, Captain Williams replied, "Retreat? Hell, we just got here!"
Nine days later on June 11, 1918, Captain Williams led an assault that scattered the German defenders at Belleau Wood. On June 12, 1918, Captain Williams died, torn by German shrapnel and blinded by mustard gas. Marine officials posthumously promoted Captain Williams to Major Williams and awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart. He was buried in Bony or Flanders Field, near the Belleau Wood Battlefield.
Soldiers Return to Chateau-Thierry
Chateau-Thierry bore the scars of battle.Store buildings on both ends of the bridge across the Marne had ragged, gouged places in their walls where shells had hit them. Rifle and machine gun bullets had pocket marked buildings. A dozen bullets pierced the clock in the Chateau-Thierry Railroad Station.
On February 7, 1919, a Stars and Stripes story described the German return to Chateau-Thierry, only this time instead of firing machine guns, the German, French, and American soldiers wielded hammers as part of the great clatter of rebuilding. They nailed boards on the sides of wrecked shop fronts, and strung telephone and electric light wire. They stiffened walls with concrete and stone and replaced boarded up shop windows with new glass.
Chateau-Thierry Braces For a New Invasion
The people of Chateau-Thierry anticipated a surge of American pilgrims to their village. They managed to open a hotel, completely walled and roofed, and standing out among the wrecked houses like a sentinel on the Chateau-Thierry castle battlements. This first hotel open after the Armistice offered beds with bullet pierced wooden panels, doorknobs gashed with machine gun bullets, and rows of holes in doors and window casings, reminders of house to house fighting.
Shop owners who had barely finished removing wooden barricades and replacing window panes offered battle souvenirs with the name Chateau-Thierry stamped on them to American visitors.
Day and night every train from Paris deposited a band of pilgrim Americans, many of them in uniform. Scores of sailors on leave stopped at Chateau-Thierry on their way to the battlefields. Officers and soldiers on leave hurried through the streets out toward Belleau Wood and the scarred country toward Fismes and Soissons. Many of them had fought with the Second and Third Divisions,helping to check the last great German Drive on Paris.
Old residents of the town came out and smiled upon all of the new life. They looked forward to the coming of summer and sunshine, and the continuous coming of Americans. Eventually, hotels for tourists arose on foundations that had once held townhouses secluded behind iron fences and stone walls.
Major Williams Travels from Chateau-Thierry, France, to Berryville, Virginia
In 1921, as some of the scars of war were beginning to fade from the buildings of Chateau-Thierry and the minds of the villagers, the family of Major Lloyd Williams arranged for his body to be exhumed from the Flanders Field Cemetery and returned to the United States to be reburied in Green Hill Cemetery in Berryville. Newspapers, both local and national, followed his casket with stories and pictures as soldiers loaded it on a Navy ship in France. A military honor guard from Quantico Marine Barracks escorted the casket the entire trip.
When his casket arrived in New York, General John J. Pershing eulogized Major Williams, and then his casket traveled on a train from New York to Washington D.C. to Berryville. On July 21, 1921, hundreds of people welcomed Major Williams home. Legionnaires from Lloyd Williams Post 41 of the American Legion led the funeral procession to the grave in Green Hill Cemetery.
Newspapers throughout America and Europe, including The Stars and Stripes, celebrated the life and death of Major Lloyd Williams. The Second Battalion, Fifth Regiment of the United States Marine Corps earned the title of the most highly decorated battalion in the Marine Corps. It adopted the reply of Major Lloyd Williams to the French commander “Retreat, hell!” as its motto. Virginia Polytechnic Institute named a building Major Williams Hall to honor Lloyd Williams.
Other Americans Contribute to Chateau-Thierry
George I. Clopton, a Virginia private in the Sixth United States Marine Corps, Second Division, died near Chateau-Thierry during the 1918 German Spring Offensive and so did Charles S. Richardson, a Virginia Marine sergeant from the Sixth USMC, Second Division. They are buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at Belleau. They didn’t take part in the joint German, French, and American February 1919 rebuilding and renewal of Chateau-Thierry, but they and thousands of other American and French soldiers helped make it possible.
References
Adams, Simon and Crawford, Andy. World War I. DIC Publishing, 2007.
Crocker, H.W. Don’t Tread On Me: A 400-Year History of America At War, From Indian Fighting to Terrorist Hunting. Crown Forum, 2006.
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. Mariner Books, 2000.
Neiberg, Michael S. Fighting the Great War: A Global History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Strachan, Hew. The First World War. Viking Adult, 2004.
The village of Chateau-Thierry has lived through centuries of history, and German and AEF soldiers helped reclaim it from the ruins of World War I.
In February 1919, the guns that echoed across the River Marne and shells that shattered the wooden rooftops and walls of Chateau-Thierry had been silent for eight months. The optimism of peace lured Chateau-Thierry residents back from hiding to rebuild their homes and lives despite the winter cold. The guns of war had scattered the survivors, but they were slowly gathering and returning. A hotel, hastily but thoroughly rebuilt, awaited American pilgrims. In February 1919, the Great War had been over for three months, since the Armistice of November 11, 1918.
A Historic Town, A Castle, And A Poet’s Stone House
Chateau-Thierry nestles in the valley of the Marne River with wooded hills standing like parallel sentinels on each side. The streets of Chateau-Thierry rise in terraces above each other and houses with walled gardens line the main boulevard at river level.
The battlements and walls of the Thirteenth Century Chateau-Thierry, supposedly built for Frankish King Thierry IV, soar above the surrounding trees and gardens and the old castle provides a vantage point to view a panorama of hills, valleys, rivers, towns, and villages below. The stone house where the Seventeenth Century poet and fable writer Jean de La Fontaine was born still stands in Chateau-Thierry.
Chateau -Thierry , The Last Stop On The Road To Paris
Chateau-Thierry gained another measure of fame when in May through July of 1918, the French and American armies successfully halted the German Spring Offensive and drive toward Paris, only fifty miles away. The Germans bombarded Chateau- Thierry, giving it the distinction of being the farthest point of their Army’s 1918 offensive.The Allied Expeditionary Forces under General John J. “Back Jack” Pershing saw some of its first European action at Chateau Thierry.
On May 27, 1918, the Germans attacked the Allied Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front and by May 30, 1918, German troops were shelling Chateau-Thierry. The American and French soldiers prevented the Germans from crossing the Marne River, decisively checking the German offensive. Thousands of young French, British, German, and American soldiers fell at Chateau-Thierry and the Marne and many Allied soldiers are buried near the Marne battlefields just west of Chateau-Thierry.
Captain Lloyd W. Williams Fights Far Away From Home
Captain Lloyd W. Williams of the United States Marine Corps, fought at Chateau-Thierry to help defeat the German Army. Born in the small town of Berryville, Virginia, on June 5, 1887, Lloyd W. Williams graduated with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute class of 1907, and he eventually joined the Marines. Between June 1 and June 26, 1918, the Fifth Marines helped fight the fierce battle of Belleau Wood, near the Marne River.
On June 2, 1918, in the thick of the battle on the defensive line just north of the village of Lucy-le-Bocage, a French officer and his retreating men advised Capain Williams to withdraw. According to H.W. Crocker in Don't Tread on Me: A 400-Year History of America At War, Captain Williams replied, "Retreat? Hell, we just got here!"
Nine days later on June 11, 1918, Captain Williams led an assault that scattered the German defenders at Belleau Wood. On June 12, 1918, Captain Williams died, torn by German shrapnel and blinded by mustard gas. Marine officials posthumously promoted Captain Williams to Major Williams and awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart. He was buried in Bony or Flanders Field, near the Belleau Wood Battlefield.
Soldiers Return to Chateau-Thierry
Chateau-Thierry bore the scars of battle.Store buildings on both ends of the bridge across the Marne had ragged, gouged places in their walls where shells had hit them. Rifle and machine gun bullets had pocket marked buildings. A dozen bullets pierced the clock in the Chateau-Thierry Railroad Station.
On February 7, 1919, a Stars and Stripes story described the German return to Chateau-Thierry, only this time instead of firing machine guns, the German, French, and American soldiers wielded hammers as part of the great clatter of rebuilding. They nailed boards on the sides of wrecked shop fronts, and strung telephone and electric light wire. They stiffened walls with concrete and stone and replaced boarded up shop windows with new glass.
Chateau-Thierry Braces For a New Invasion
The people of Chateau-Thierry anticipated a surge of American pilgrims to their village. They managed to open a hotel, completely walled and roofed, and standing out among the wrecked houses like a sentinel on the Chateau-Thierry castle battlements. This first hotel open after the Armistice offered beds with bullet pierced wooden panels, doorknobs gashed with machine gun bullets, and rows of holes in doors and window casings, reminders of house to house fighting.
Shop owners who had barely finished removing wooden barricades and replacing window panes offered battle souvenirs with the name Chateau-Thierry stamped on them to American visitors.
Day and night every train from Paris deposited a band of pilgrim Americans, many of them in uniform. Scores of sailors on leave stopped at Chateau-Thierry on their way to the battlefields. Officers and soldiers on leave hurried through the streets out toward Belleau Wood and the scarred country toward Fismes and Soissons. Many of them had fought with the Second and Third Divisions,helping to check the last great German Drive on Paris.
Old residents of the town came out and smiled upon all of the new life. They looked forward to the coming of summer and sunshine, and the continuous coming of Americans. Eventually, hotels for tourists arose on foundations that had once held townhouses secluded behind iron fences and stone walls.
Major Williams Travels from Chateau-Thierry, France, to Berryville, Virginia
In 1921, as some of the scars of war were beginning to fade from the buildings of Chateau-Thierry and the minds of the villagers, the family of Major Lloyd Williams arranged for his body to be exhumed from the Flanders Field Cemetery and returned to the United States to be reburied in Green Hill Cemetery in Berryville. Newspapers, both local and national, followed his casket with stories and pictures as soldiers loaded it on a Navy ship in France. A military honor guard from Quantico Marine Barracks escorted the casket the entire trip.
When his casket arrived in New York, General John J. Pershing eulogized Major Williams, and then his casket traveled on a train from New York to Washington D.C. to Berryville. On July 21, 1921, hundreds of people welcomed Major Williams home. Legionnaires from Lloyd Williams Post 41 of the American Legion led the funeral procession to the grave in Green Hill Cemetery.
Newspapers throughout America and Europe, including The Stars and Stripes, celebrated the life and death of Major Lloyd Williams. The Second Battalion, Fifth Regiment of the United States Marine Corps earned the title of the most highly decorated battalion in the Marine Corps. It adopted the reply of Major Lloyd Williams to the French commander “Retreat, hell!” as its motto. Virginia Polytechnic Institute named a building Major Williams Hall to honor Lloyd Williams.
Other Americans Contribute to Chateau-Thierry
George I. Clopton, a Virginia private in the Sixth United States Marine Corps, Second Division, died near Chateau-Thierry during the 1918 German Spring Offensive and so did Charles S. Richardson, a Virginia Marine sergeant from the Sixth USMC, Second Division. They are buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at Belleau. They didn’t take part in the joint German, French, and American February 1919 rebuilding and renewal of Chateau-Thierry, but they and thousands of other American and French soldiers helped make it possible.
References
Adams, Simon and Crawford, Andy. World War I. DIC Publishing, 2007.
Crocker, H.W. Don’t Tread On Me: A 400-Year History of America At War, From Indian Fighting to Terrorist Hunting. Crown Forum, 2006.
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. Mariner Books, 2000.
Neiberg, Michael S. Fighting the Great War: A Global History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Strachan, Hew. The First World War. Viking Adult, 2004.