Military History | Mémorial de l'Escadrille La Fayette, Marnes-la-Coquette — Imposing Memorial of Cut Stone

"American Armies and Battlefields in Europe", published by the American Battle Monuments Commission in 1938, says the eight permanent American cemeteries in Europe hold the graves of every member of the American forces whose body remains there — and then lists the exceptions. Forty-two men left in their original graves at their relatives' request. Those released to families for private burial. Those never found. And "18 who are buried beneath the Lafayette Escadrille monument at Garches, near Paris, where 21 of their former comrades of the Escadrille are also buried."

They were an exception because they did not fit the category. The same volume explains that the Escadrille "was composed of Americans who volunteered to become aviators in the French Army before the United States entered the war", and that 90 of those volunteers were eventually commissioned in the American Army. The squadron later passed into American service as the 103d Aero Squadron. Men killed before that transfer died in French service.

The monument states the arrangement plainly. Cut into the stone in English and in French: "AN AVIATION CORPS RECEIVED INTO THE ARMY OF FRANCE, 20 APRIL 1916." A panel beneath it thanks six French officers by name, three of them marked with a cross.

Veterans of the Lafayette Flying Corps raised it, Alexandre Marcel designed it, and it was dedicated on 4 July 1928. The commission's table gives its character as "Imposing memorial of cut stone" and its remarks as "Erected by unit. Contains bodies of members." The crypt was built with 68 sarcophagi, one, the commission says, for each aviator of the Lafayette Flying Corps who lost his life in the war. Forty-nine aviators and two French commanding officers lie in them. The rest are empty.

The owning foundation ran short of money in the 1990s. The memorial was restored in 2015 and 2016, and in January 2017 the commission took ownership of the site it had catalogued as an exception seventy-nine years earlier. It stands off Boulevard Raymond Poincaré at Marnes-la-Coquette, open daily except 25 December and 1 January.

📸 Cover: the memorial from the front, the arch inscribed to the dead of the Escadrille La Fayette, the names cut in columns beside it and the battle names (Flandres, Somme, Aisne, Marne, Vosges, Oise, Alsace, Argonne) along the colonnades; photograph by Asticoco, 2021, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: the bilingual inscription panel quoted above, with the tribute to the six French officers beneath it; photograph by Chabe01, 2023, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.