Military History | Kemmel American Monument, Vierstraat — Eighteen Days, Said Three Times
· 1929
Unreviewed contributionBy kevin · · Report an issue
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Military History | Kemmel American Monument, Vierstraat — Eighteen Days, Said Three Times
kevin
Between 18 August and 4 September 1918 the American 27th and 30th Divisions held a stretch of front south of Ieper — Ypres — under British command. The German army had taken the Kemmelberg, Mont Kemmel on French maps, that spring, and the fighting the two divisions joined was the Ypres-Lys offensive. The Flemish heritage register puts the 27th Division's casualties across those eighteen days near 1,300 and the 30th's near 800. Many of the dead lie at the American cemetery near Waregem, the only one in Belgium.
Eleven years later the American Battle Monuments Commission set a block of white stone beside the Kemmelstraat, about 500 metres southwest of the Vierstraat crossroads. The road had been a supply line to the front, and American troops called it York Road. George Howe of Philadelphia designed what went on it: a wide platform reached by two steps, an iron fence on stone posts, and a rectangular block with a sword cut in flat relief on either side of the text and a helmet lying on a laurel wreath below.
The front face makes no claim. 27TH DIVISION 30TH DIVISION, it reads, ERECTED BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO COMMEMORATE THE SERVICES OF AMERICAN TROOPS WHO FOUGHT IN THIS VICINITY, AUGUST 18–SEPTEMBER 4, 1918. No ground taken, no opponent named, no outcome. The left face repeats it in French and the right face in Dutch, the two languages of the country it stands in; the divisional insignia are on the back.
The commission still maintains the site. In a photograph taken in February 2015 a small wooden remembrance cross with a paper poppy leans against the stone below the carved helmet, and the beeches around the lawn are bare.
📸 Cover: the English face, photograph by Redgy Decuyper, 28 February 2015, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: the platform and fence from the roadside, same photographer, same day and licence.
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