Name/Title
StereographEntry/Object ID
2023.055.3.0183Description
A black and withe stereograph. Image is of a grave yard with numerous white crosses, an American flag flies in the background. Above the image "W297 (Star)" is printed, below the image "19250 The American Cemetery at Belleau Wood." is printed, to the left of the image "Keystone View Company COPYRIGHTED Manufacturers MADE IN U.S.A. Publishers" is printed, to the right of the image "Meadville, Pa., New York, N. Y., Chicago, Ill., London, England." is printed. On the reverse the following is printed:
19250
THE AMERICAN CEMETERY AT BELLEAU WOOD
Year by year since the war closed this resting palce of our American dead on the gentle hill slope just to the east of Belleau Wood is bieng more carefully beautified. We see it here soon after it was laid out, the greaves bearing wooden crosses which will eventually give place to more permanent stone markers.
Better known, perhaps, to the American public in general than any other of our cemeteries in France, this one at Belleau Wood will be a place of pilgrimage for untold thousands of American generations yet to come. There they will always find American caretakers, and the Stars and Stripes floating over the graves, borne up by the breezes of a foreign but a deeply friendly land. And all around this resting place of the infantrymen and Marines who fell in Belleau Wood, Bouresches and Vaux; Monneaux, Torcy, Bellau, Givry and the fields and hills between o(unreadable) desperate days of June and July, 1918, they will find the pleasant wheat fields starred with poppies the dark green orchards and woodlands, the red-roofed villages and the gentle hills stretching away to the horizon, which the men lying here helped to redeem from the hands of alien invaders and to restore to their rightful owners.
Americans, reflecting upon the deeds of those countrymen of theirs lying asleep in the soil of France, will realize, as perhaps the French already do, that although dead they are still performing a vital function in the world in thus keeping before the minds of the people of two great nations the bonds, cemented by mutual helpfulnss and self-sacrifice, which have connected them since the days of the American Revolution, now made deoubly binding by the events of the World War.
Copyright by The Keystone View CompanyCollection
Photograph Collection