#souilly

22 Voie Sacree, Souilly France, December 2018.

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22 Voie Sacree

The 1916 headquarters for Field Marshal Philippe Pétain during the 1916 Battle of Verdun. Located in the village of Souilly France, 20km south of the city of Verdun. 

French Marshal Philippe Pétain and Commander in Chief Joseph Joffre at 22 Voie Sacree in 1916, photo Wikipedia

A plaque on the side of the building reads:

It was in this town hall that during the night of February 25 to 26, 1916, the Marshal Petain, then General Commandant The 2nd Army set up his headquarters and took the strength of the battle of Verdun. From May 1st, 1916 and until September 21st, 1916 the command of the 2nd army was exercised successively by Generals Nivelle Cuillaumat Hirschauer.

This same building served as the headquarters for US General John J. Pershing and the American First Army in 1918 during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

A memorial behind the building lists the citizens of Souilly that were lost in the Great War.

It was a pretty early morning when I visited the village. Some of the town folk were walking down the street towards the coffee shop and shot me a strange expression, probably wondering what this tourist was doing in their village at this early hour.

Anna Rochester, a 1911 graduate of Smith College, feeds a soldier in France.

Several women's colleges in the United States organized units of alumnae to serve with the Red Cross during the war; with forty-seven members, Smith's was the largest. When the women returned home, Smith president William Allan Neilson lauded them: "They did not make any claim, the government did not insure them, they were paid no pension, they asked for no bonus. They did the thing for its own sake." Rochester again volunteered with the Red Cross during World War II.

In Europe, even the nobility volunteered as nurses' aides. Britain's Dowager Duchess of Sutherland signed up, created her own ambulance unit consisting of a surgeon and several nurses, and insisted on being called "Sister Millicent." In August of 1914, she spent the first of countless days caring for the wounded and recorded in her diary: "What I thought would be for me an impossible task became absolutely natural; to wash wounds, to drag off rags and clothing soaked in blood, to hold basins equally full of blood, to sooth a soldier's groans, and to raise a wounded man while he was receiving extreme unction."

Photograph by Lt. Adrian Duff, Souilly, Meuse, France, 1918