CHARLES FAIR

Versailles - Part 2

The next stop was the Memorial to General Pershing at Versailles. This is another privately funded memorial, and the reinforced concrete is showing its age. It is a very simple memorial in the shape of an upended concrete block. It is situated just over 1 mile WNW of the town centre on the crest of a hill on the rue Etats-Unis (D185) to Ville d'Avray. Across the road is an identical memorial to General Lafayette, the Frenchman who helped out the Americans some 150 years before Pershing returned the favour. I have since found out that these two memorials are in fact merely plinths and were originally surmounted by bronze equestrian statues of the two generals. The book "Petain et les Americans" by Jacques le Groignec (1995, Nouvelles Editions Latines ISBN 2-7233-0510-4) has a picture of both memorials at their inauguration on 6 October 1937. The fate of the statues remains a mystery to me.

The other major memorial in Versailles is the National Memorial to the Gendarmerie. It commemorates gendarmes who have fallen in all wars, and one of the panels stated that over 2,000 were killed and over 3,000 wounded in the Great War. It is in the middle of a roundabout in the Place de la Loi, (law) which is one mile to the north of the Chateau on the D186.

My final stop on Armistice Day was at Versailles Communal Cemetery (St. Gonards). It is shown in "The Silent Cities" and contains nearly 200 Commonwealth graves, 167 British and 3 Canadian from the Great War. These men died in No. 4 General Hospital which must have been located in the town. The graves are mainly 1914 with some 1915 and a few from the Aisne fighting of 1918. It was the first time that I have visited a CWGC cemetery and found no entries in the visitors book, so I felt that I had done my duty that day. The cemetery also contains a 1914-18 French plot, and 1939-45 German and French plots.

The cemetery contains a fascinating plaque to the first French Victims of the Grande Guerre. It stated that at 5 am on 4 August 1914 the *croeiser* Goeben dropped some *obus* ( 3D shells) on the town, thus killing some citizens, the first victims of the war. I presume that this was a Zeppelin as Versailles is a rather long way inland for this to have been a naval action. This was not an action I had heard of, but suspect that it may have been reported in the British press. Does anyone know anything about this incident? The plaque itself is now incorporated into the base of a modern memorial to civilian victims of war, particularly those killed in North Africa i.e. Algeria.

The Chateau at Versailles is undoubtedly one of the most famous palaces in the world and is well worth a visit on its own merits. The Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors on 28 June 1919, thus formally ending the Great War five years to the day after the assassination that started it. France of course used the Treaty to avenge her defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1871 Wilhelm of Prussia was crowned Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany in the very same room.

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