The last of the Mrs. Anderson stories continues this week. We leave off with what she taught her 4th-grade class about Sgt. York as a Medal of Honor winner in WWI. He received the Medal of Honor for killing 28 Germans and taking 132 prisoners.
Jim continues...
“On our trip to France, we stopped at the Meuse-Argonne area, a place I hadn’t been to before. I looked over Google Earth to find some likely-looking spots.
We found a number of artifacts out in the woods, including live artillery shells and grenades. When we stopped for fuel, a friendly Frenchman said, "We don't see many Americans anymore." He also asked if we were going to visit the site where Sgt. York won his Medal of Honor.
We hadn’t planned on it, but our group had become ardent artifact hunters. So, we drove through a small town, and found an area adjacent where the French military (not the U.S.) maintains a rough trail. Unable to drive the trail due to the wet conditions, we walked a bit until we found a marker that identified the approximate spot where he captured the large haul of prisoners.
This really was not the spot, according to my reading of his account. I knew that York had been higher on the hill, an area too steep to construct a road.
We went up the hill and it didn’t take long to find the remnants of a German trench. Unlike the British, French or Americans, the Germans were fighting a defensive war. Doing so, they built fortifications of concrete to prevent being pushed out, and augmented them with machine guns.
We fanned out to search for artifacts, however no digging took place in the forest carpet of leaves, as you don’t know what lies below.
In only a few minutes, Victor Mrotz yelled, ‘Over here! What’s this?’ At the base of a tree were a dozen German Potato masher hand grenades. This was a full box just left there almost 100 years ago.
We kept our distance and photographed them. The wooden handles had long-since rotted away, but the priming fuse holes had blue corrosion around them. They were live! We carefully probed with our fingers, and came up with empty brass shells and two live 8mm machine gun shells!
Then the marker on the road below indicated that near here was where Sgt. York captured his prisoners. The German trenches, grenades, machine gun bullets, plus the fact that York’s account mentions capturing a machine gun strong point, and I would say the probability was high that this is where Sgt. York captured his prisoners!
After returning home, I tried to identify the German grenades. They had wooden inserts in the grenade. Prior to 1916, they were filled with black powder and after the introduction of high explosives, they proved too powerful and a hazard to the thrower.
The German’s put a wooden spacer in the grenade so they contained less of the new high-explosive powder and handled like the old ones. The cases were also stamped metal, an indication that they were produced in 1917 or 1918. Again, this is the correct time period of when York won his medal.
Areas of Europe are still filled with the debris of war. Yes, we have had battles here on our continent. There are battles that secured this land for us, the internal battle of the north and south, but nothing is like the widespread destruction seen in Europe.
Did you know that there is land that no one farms in Europe because it is so full of unexploded ordinance? During WWI, in the valley of France’s Somme River, a million artillery shells a week traded sides.
Due to the swampy ground and the old black powder, about 15 percent of the shells didn’t explode. Almost 100 years later, there are still an estimated 1.5 million unexploded shells in the ground.
Because the land is still so contaminated, it is often not always worth the time and effort or the risk to remove them. The theoretical life of gunpowder is 885 years, but the real worry today is poison gas shells. The shells are starting to corrode.
In the spring, farmers in our own area often pick up the rocks that are in their way or a detriment to their crops, and pile them beside the field. In the war-torn areas of Europe, the unexploded shells are called the Iron Harvest as the shells work their way to the top.
The farmers pile the shells along the edge of their fields, serving as grim reminders of the cost of wars. The French military makes the rounds on country roads every couple of weeks, and take the shells for demolition. Twenty years ago, about 30 farmers a year were killed.
Today, it is only about a dozen. And you thought farming was hazardous here!
Some areas grow up into small forests because the area was so bad it isn't worth the time, effort or danger of trying to clear the land. The land is still hillocky with craters from the explosions; hardly a square yard was untouched. The trees grew up in the unfarmed soil too.
Every village was destroyed. Not a wall is left standing after an artillery barrage of up to 60,000 shells per day. Some were rebuilt. Some never were.
Over 500,000 pounds of live ammunition is disposed of every year, ammunition that was buried with the people who died there and were all too often buried in the trenches they died in.
The scars of war are everywhere. In the springtime, when the fields are bare, white areas of the chalk underlying the soil are visible. There are shell impacts, or trenches dug to avoid the rain of steel.
It isn’t only artillery shells that are unearthed. Hand grenades are in abundance, and more personal items like water bottles, bayonets, entrenching tools, and mess kits are found, which doesn’t bode well for what happened to their erstwhile owners.
The artillery was so vicious that about a quarter of a million soldiers have no known grave. They were simply blown to bits. The British forces lost 58,000 men on the Somme alone on the first day! They maintain the cemeteries very well and have constructed huge monuments that list the names of all of the missing.
What isn’t listed is the impact on families and the countries. Almost a quarter of an entire generation of men were casualties, and even higher percentages from places like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.”
A detective story concluded 57 years after first heard from his 4th-grade teacher, 4500 miles away! Who knows what effect each of us has on others?
Birthdays and anniversaries:
• Thursday, May 30th: Payton Allen Misgen, Daniel Larson, Molly Hanson, Chuck Crabtree, Shirley Nelson, Julie & Toby Oquist.
• Friday, May 31st: Nathan Jensen, Jerry White, Pat Draayer, Ryan Sletten, Jim Hamor, Robert DuBois, Cierra Hanson.
• Saturday, June 1st: Carter Anthony Martens, Randy Hagen, Brandi Hagen, John Hanson, Bert Wiersma, Phyllis Benson, Joe Wallace, Julie Dulas, Kenny Toft, Maria Misgen, Tony Sommers, Bob Flim, Glenn Gerdes, Lindsey Lembke, Denise Evenson Wilson, Jeff & Sharon Lageson, Orville & Mavis Langlie.
• Sunday, June 2nd: Maia Kathleen Peterson, Brent Dobberstein, Angie Goodnature Kath, Taylor Draayer, Sue Jensen Kuckenbecker, Steve Kasper, Cindy Olson, Barry Esplan, Krystle Lonning, Donald Haberman, Ahston Haried, Trent Hanson, Brandon McLaughlin, Tammy & Garth Gonnering, Greg & Nicole Shultz, Eric & Snow Lee, their 6th.
• Monday, June 3rd: Isabella Grace Kohn, her 3rd; Devin Matthew Haddy, his 6th; Justin Stieglbauer, David Hall, Troy Vavra, Jason Jenkins, Michael Bartness, Angie Kasper Christenson, George Kasper, Chrisopher Conley, Max Miller, Esther Van Ravenhorst, Misty (Ebnet) & Jeremy Krueger, Eric & Christine Nelson.
• Tuesday, June 4th: Dale Miller, Becky Nordland, Jim Borchert, Judith Severson, Warren Nelson, Jamie & Tina Hagen, Art & Doris DeNeui, Jan & Andrew Bernau, their 6th.
• Wednesday, June 5th: Beulah Crabtree, Marcia Vermedahl, Shawn Johnson, Paul Krull, David Reistad, Mike Rossing, Lisa Jensen Nord, Jack Butler, Greg Oswald, Michael Schmidt, Ron & Jolee Johnson, Stacy (Osmundson) & Trevor Titus, Erica (Van Kampen) & Jacob McClaskey, Elzo & Joy Peterson.
May you find joy and pleasure all around you on your special day.
