White markers of American valor

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By Corinna Lothar

VERDUN, France.

A soft rain falls as we tramp through the mud of Camp Moreau — Lager Moreau to the men of the German 9th Landwehr division. Nine decades on, only angry ghosts haunt an abandoned power station, tunnels, showers and sleeping caves, all left as they were when the doughboys of the 368th U.S. Infantry wrested this camp from the enemy in early autumn 1918.

On a spring morning in the Argonne Forest, when winter has not yet loosened its bitter grip on the countryside, we imagine for an instant the misery that World War I — the Great War, "the war to end all wars" — made of the lives of the millions of soldiers who fought and died here.

Serge Tourovsky, a retired French soldier who volunteers as a guide at Camp Moreau, accompanies us, along with his 10-year-old son, Joffrey. He says he's here to remind his son's generation of what happened in this forest.

Mr. Tourovsky dons a German uniform to escort us through the camp, pointing out the tunnels through which the Germans moved men, supplies and arms to the trenches; 1,600 men occupied the camp, rotating between the trenches and the confines of the camp for rest and recuperation.

When we shake hands in farewell, tears come to the old soldier's eyes.

"Many Frenchmen haven't forgotten," he says. "With the heart, we are with you. God bless America."

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With 2008 marking the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I, a visit to the places where American soldiers fought and died evokes memories of that war. The names are familiar to an older generation: the Marne, the Meuse, Argonne Forest, Verdun, Champagne, Lorraine.

Begun in 1914, the war by 1917 had reached stalemate, with soldiers on both sides weary of the senseless killing, the horrific living conditions and, above all, the criminal irresponsibility of the generals who presided and plotted strategy. French deserters routinely were shot by their officers. Disease, hunger and despair were the daily portion.