Military History | Moutchic-Lacanau — Those of Their Number Who Here Gave Up Their Lives
· 1919
Unreviewed contributionBy kevin · · updated · 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 | Moutchic-Lacanau — Those of Their Number Who Here Gave Up Their Lives
kevin
The American Battle Monuments Commission's 1938 table allows the monument four words: stone obelisk. It dates it "soon after the Armistice" and records that officers and men of the station paid for it by subscription.
The stone is more particular than the table. The survey that catalogues American memorials abroad transcribes its dedication: to the memory of those of their number who here gave up their lives. Nine names are cut on it.
Moutchic was a school. The Navy dates the station's establishment on the Étang de Lacanau to August 1917 and its disestablishment to January 1919. In between it taught flying, gunnery, bombing, photography and reconnaissance to pilots who had done their first training at home.
What killed the men at that address is in the Bureau of Navigation's roll of the naval dead, printed by the Government Printing Office in 1920. Seaplane accidents on 12 April, 7 July and 14 August 1918. A drowning on 13 August. A bomb explosion on 20 August, at a school that taught bombing. Lobar pneumonia on 30 September. Not one of the deaths that roll records at Moutchic is enemy action.
The two documents do not hold the same men. The roll puts Claude Albert Baker's death at naval aviation headquarters in Paris in December 1917, and Dale Vern Campbell's at the air station at Pauillac in August 1918. Both are named on the obelisk, which says here. The roll also records Earl Joseph Vath, killed by the bomb explosion at Moutchic, whom the nine transcribed names do not include.
Three years after the Navy left, a French Red Cross society bought the ground for a children's sanatorium. The commanding officer's villa still stands at the lake end of the avenue; the commune restored it and reopened it in 2018 as a public hall.
📸 Cover: a Donnet-Denhaut flying boat, hull marked 507 DD, on the apron at Moutchic, 18 March 1918 — Naval History and Heritage Command NH 60766, public domain. The station, not the obelisk, for which no freely licensed photograph was found. Second image: the commanding officer's villa, the station's last surviving building, photograph by Ulli 2mecs, 25 August 2019, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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