American Cemetery at Belleau Wood in 1918. This ground was actually ceded to the United States by France following the war in gratitude for the American sacrifice.
The American military cemetery at Belleau Wood is reportedly gigantic. It is, apparently, three times as large as the one in Normandy for those buried there following their deaths, in the Second World War, in 1944.
Something to pause and consider.
Nothing will ever take away the deserved honor of those who died liberating France in 1944, nor in particular those who landed on the Norman Coast on June 6, 1944, and the following horrific days. It was a horror that can hardly be imagined, and US troops there, together with troops from the UK, Canada, and yes France, deserve to be remembered.
But it's hardly recalled that June 6 was also the opening phase of another big battle in France in which American troops would also serve valiantly, arguably save France, and die in large numbers. The Battle of Belleau Wood.
French refugees in Paris, June 7, 1918.
On another topic, I've (rather obviously) been posting a lot of photographs from 1918. And something really shows in them.
It's sort of a triviality, but women's fashions changed enormously in the two decades between the Great War and World War Two.
Indeed, they'd changed enormously by the 1930s, and for younger women, by the 1920s.
The photograph shown above is a tragic scene. But only the little girls in the photo could be misaken, maybe, for a little bit later era. Everyone else is definitely clothed in a pre 1925 fashion. What happened to cause that?
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