Military History | Pont Mémorial, Fismes — Total Length of Side Trip, One Mile

The American Battle Monuments Commission's 1938 road guide breaks off its account of the fighting on the Vesle to send motorists on an errand. "The State of Pennsylvania has built a memorial bridge over the Vesle between Fismes and Fismette. To visit it, bear right at road junction indicated in the next paragraph, go to open plaza in town, turn left and cross railroad to bridge." Total length of side trip, one mile. Amount of time required, fifteen minutes. Twelve years earlier the same commission had voted to prohibit American memorials in France except those judged useful to the communities holding them, "civic buildings, bridges, fountains and the like." Here it was routing its own readers to one.

The crossing was fought over from early August 1918. The 32nd Division reached the river first, the 28th relieved it, and Fismette on the far bank changed hands repeatedly. The commission's own caption to a wartime photograph reads "Main Bridge Between Fismes and Fismette Destroyed by the Retreating Germans"; an American press caption of May 1928 said instead that the old bridge "fell under shellfire in August, 1918." The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the city of Meadville paid for the replacement, and 250 Pennsylvania National Guardsmen, one from each unit in the state, were to sail on 19 May 1928 to help dedicate it and other memorials. A pier carries the sentence in French: CE PONT DÉDIÉ A LA 28e DIVISION DE L'ARMÉE AMÉRICAINE A ÉTÉ ÉLEVÉ PAR L'ÉTAT DE PENNSYLVANIE EN MÉMOIRE DE CEUX QUI DONNÈRENT LEUR VIE POUR LA LIBÉRATION DE FISMES 1927. The English panel commemorates instead "the heroic service and notable achievement" of the division.

It was blown again in June 1940, replaced by a footbridge under the occupation and a temporary span in 1946, and rebuilt between 1955 and 1958. Its columns, stone figures and bronze lantern standards were re-erected on the new deck, and the figure of Peace stood headless until 1994. Departmental traffic crosses it now. One plinth beside the parapet is cut 1918, and the sign below it reads La Vesle.

📸 Cover: G.Garitan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons — the memorial bridge over the Vesle, its two figure columns and the road across it, 2013. Second image: the same photographer, CC BY-SA 3.0 — the bronze lantern standards on the parapet plinths, one of them cut 1918. Both show the bridge as rebuilt in the 1950s, with the 1920s memorial elements re-erected on it.