Military History | Monument de Bathelémont — It Could Not Be Inaugurated
· 1918-11
Unreviewed contributionBy kevin · · Report an issue
Find memories left by people near you.
Distribute Bounty
This will distribute the bounty equally among all qualifying memories. This action cannot be undone.
Cancel Bounty
Are you sure you want to cancel this bounty? The remaining amount will be refunded to your account.
Success!
Operation completed successfully.
Error
Something went wrong.
Military History | Monument de Bathelémont — It Could Not Be Inaugurated
kevin
On 3 November 1918 a stone shaft went up on a square in the middle of Bathelémont, a year to the day after the first three American soldiers killed in action in France died in a raid nearby. It could not be unveiled. The sector was still under the fire of German guns, and eight days were left before the Armistice; the panel at the site records that Marshal Lyautey inaugurated the monument officially only after the war.
The catalogue caught up twenty years later. Page 527 of "American Armies and Battlefields in Europe", published by the American Battle Monuments Commission in 1938, gives the row in five columns: "To first three Americans killed at front during the World War"; "In Bathelémont (Meurthe-et-Moselle) 12 kilometers north of Lunéville"; "Stone shaft, about 18 feet high"; date erected, 1918; "Erected by the French." Across the table's four pages 1918 is the only year printed earlier than 1919, though eight cells give no year and say only "Soon after the Armistice."
Corporal James B. Gresham, Private Thomas F. Enright and Private Merle D. Hay, all of Company F, 16th Infantry, 1st Division, were killed in a German raid at Le Haut des Ruelles on 3 November 1917 and buried in a meadow beside the château, where French soldiers already lay. They were exhumed in 1921 and repatriated. The panel credits a subscription organised by the prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle, gifts from 160 communes, a model designed by Louis Majorelle of the École de Nancy and the work of Auguste Vautrin.
German troops dynamited that monument on 6 October 1940. A granite stele replaced it on 9 May 1955, and was moved beside the communal cemetery and inaugurated again in 1977. Its plaque names the three men and nine comrades who died between 13 and 23 November, all buried here from 1917 to 1921. A fragment of Majorelle's stone stands alongside, under a plate reading Monument de Majorelle.
📸 Cover: the 1955 stele at Bathelémont, photograph by Paul.schrepfer, 2025, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: American Battle Monuments Commission, "American Armies and Battlefields in Europe" (1938), page 525, the plate captioned "French Monument at Bathelémont", cropped to the plate and its caption — the 1918 monument photographed before its destruction; a United States Government publication, public domain, scanned by the Internet Archive.
changes?
delete this memory?
We detected that you have a Blox in your crypto wallet! We will import the Blox into your account.
Click on done below to complete the import.
Welcome Back!
Sign in to preserve cherished moments
Don't have an account?
Welcome!!
Sign up and start preserving cherished moments
?
?
Choose your payment method
Buy with Metablox Credit
Do you want to mint Blox with Metablox Credit?
Which Crypto would you like to use?
Purchase Confirmed!
Your Blox is being minted on-chain and will appear in your profile shortly.
Log in or sign up to claim your Blox.
How many credits do you want to buy?
$100 USD = 1 Metablox Credit = 1 Blox.
Use Metablox Credit to mint any Blox you want on the map.
expand_more