Montsec American Monument

 From the St. Mihiel Cemetery we drove 12 miles to Montsec, 

A village clustered about the foot of a prominent butte,  

Then up a windy road to the American monument, 

Commemorating the swift September battle of St. Mihiel in 1918. 

We admired the view of Lake Madine, 

The fields of electric-yellow rapeseed, 

Fat Charolais, hills covered in plum trees, 

And thought of Grandpa Sam's description of that battle, we had read on the way:

(It started at 1:00 a.m. on September 12)

We opened up our artillery, and that artillery was close enough that you could read a newspaper . . . It was that light. It was just a continual boom! We fired on them for a couple of hours, and then we went into the town and there were, oh, thousands of men dead there that we had killed. 

  They had kept the French women there; but the women hid up pretty well. We evacuated the women, The Americans did; they just took load after load of women and girls out of that town that next day.

And the Austrians who were left, they surrendered. 

And then that town, was considered an allied town. 

Rental Apartment in Montsec, France