Military History | Église Saint-Pierre, Seicheprey — Funds Were Supplied by an American

The American Battle Monuments Commission printed its opinion of privately raised American memorials in its 1938 guide, at the head of the table that lists them. Its own government project, it wrote, "adequately commemorates all units of the American forces in Europe during the World War," and "the erection of any additional American monuments abroad would not be in good taste and should be prohibited."

The table follows, running to page 527, and each entry credits whoever paid for it: the State of Missouri, the State of Ohio, the city of Holyoke, the citizens of Amiens, the men of a division, the officers of a naval air station, public subscription, the French, the American Red Cross. One row credits a person. Under Unit or event commemorated it reads "American soldiers who were killed near Seicheprey"; under Location, "On outside of church in Seicheprey (Meurthe-et-Moselle), near door"; under Character, "Small ornamental plaque of bronze"; under Date erected, 1929. Its Remarks column reads, in full: "Funds were supplied by an American." No other entry in the table credits an individual.

Nothing else in the volume goes near it. The row carries no "See picture" reference. Seicheprey appears in the index at five pages, and 527 is not among them. The commission's own road tour reaches the village four hundred pages earlier, stops for the Connecticut fountain alongside the church and allows three minutes for the walk, and says nothing about a bronze plaque a few steps further on.

Seicheprey was destroyed in the fighting. The communauté de communes dates the rebuilt village to 1925, and Église Saint-Pierre belongs to that reconstruction: a stone tower, an open porch, a door onto the square, the fountain on the grass outside. American War Memorials Overseas, which surveys American memorials abroad, holds one record for this commune, and it is the fountain. None of these records says whether the bronze is still beside the door.

📸 Cover: American Battle Monuments Commission, "American Armies and Battlefields in Europe" (1938), page 527, the table of American World War memorials in Europe erected by agencies other than the United States Government, cropped to the column headings and the Seicheprey row — a United States Government publication, public domain, scanned by the Internet Archive. Second image: Église Saint-Pierre at Seicheprey, its porch and door, photograph by Aimelaime, 14 March 2012, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons; the plaque is not legible in it.