Military History | Sommepy American Monument, Blanc Mont — We Will Commemorate Them All Alike
· 1926-3
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Military History | Sommepy American Monument, Blanc Mont — We Will Commemorate Them All Alike
kevin
On the morning of Thursday 4 March 1926 the House Committee on Foreign Affairs put its question to Senator David A. Reed of the American Battle Monuments Commission. Representative Hamilton Fish had introduced H.R. 9694, authorising $30,000 for a monument in France to what the bill called the "colored American Infantry regiments attached to the French Army" — the 369th, 370th, 371st and 372nd, the four regiments of the 93rd Division, parcelled out to French divisions, their American equipment turned in and French rifles issued in its place. The bill named no site. The committee's report said one was expected near Séchault.
Reed answered with a rule rather than a refusal. The commission built nothing for a unit smaller than a division, and it had decided in May 1925 that a single $30,000 monument near Sommepy would carry the operations of the 2nd, 36th and 93rd. "There will be no discrimination against these regiments in favor of the Second Division, but they will be treated the same way," he told the committee. "We will commemorate them all alike."
The majority reported the bill out regardless; four members filed a minority report on 20 April urging that the choice be left to the commission, and the Senate Committee on Military Affairs reported favourably on 28 May. The commission built none. Asked again in 1931 by a representative of the 369th, its secretary repeated that Sommepy would cover them all.
Arthur Loomis Harmon's limestone tower rose on Blanc Mont ridge between 1929 and 1932. Four plaques are cut into its walls, one to a division. The Historic American Buildings Survey recorded the 93rd Division's as RIPONT, SÉCHAULT, ARDEUIL, TRIÈRES FARM. The commission still keeps the site; it closed the observation platform in August 2024 and the grounds remain open. The village Fish wanted his monument beside is named on the wall of the monument he did not get.
📸 Cover: the monument's north front, Blanc Mont ridge — photograph by François GOGLINS, 31 August 2013, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: the American Battle Monuments Commission plaque on the entrance pillar, same photographer and licence.
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