World War I vets remembered
Special ceremony honors century-old sacrifices
WOONSOCKET – Roger Beaudry’s work to call attention to the 78 city men and women who served and gave their lives during World War I was recognized with a special ceremony of remembrance held at American-French Genealogical Society headquarters at 78 Earle St. last Sunday afternoon.
The goal of the gathering was not to recount the history of World War I or how it had evolved or even to question why “so many millions of young lives had to end,” Beaudry said while opening the program, which also featured remarks by Mayor Lisa-Baldelli-Hunt, U.S. Representative David N. Cicilline, Matthew McCoy of the Rhode Island World War I Centennial Commission, and Amandine Lebas, Deputy Consul General of France in Boston.
“These topics have already been discussed by dozens of historians a lot smarter than me,” Beaudry said. “My discussion is much more personal. I only wish to bring to your attention an event that occurred one hundred years ago and touched the lives of about 2,000 local young men and women out of the over 4 million that were mobilized during this conflict,” he said.
Memories of the “soldiers, sailors, nurses, ambulance drivers and telephone operators,” represented by the local contingent going off to World War I “slowly dim with time,” he said.
“Their sacrifices should not. My only goal today is that you each take back with you a new found respect of what they endured. A better understanding of about what the mom and dad, aunt or uncle, grandma and grandpa went through. Whether on the front lines or stateside they all gave something of themselves,” he said.
The story of Woonsocket residents in World War I began in part through the connections the city’s onetime mayor, Aram Pothier, made with manufacturing company owners during two trips as the state’s representative to the Paris Trade Exhibition in the 1880s and ’90s, Beaudry told the gathering.
Pothier’s work brought Joseph Guerin, a Belgian textile manufacturer, to the city where he and his family set up the Guerin Mills, the city’s first large scale foreign textile spinning plant.
Other Belgian and French manufacturing families, the Lepoutres led by Auguste Lepoutre with their Lafayette Worsted Co., and Charles Tibeghien, founder of the French Worsted Co. mills at Hamlet, took advantage of the city’s labor force while also bringing in many of their countrymen to staff their growing Woonsocket operations.
“By 1914 Woonsocket had a strong economy and a large immigrant base. In July of that year, events a half a world away would disrupt life in Woonsocket and leave many families anxious about the friends and relatives they left back home,” Beaudry said. “When word was received that Belgium and France were at war with Germany, dozens of workers, many of which were still citizens of France and Belgium left their jobs and immediately enlisted in their native countries’ military,” he said.
By the time America entered the war on April 6, 1917, the number of city residents fighting abroad may have been as high as 85 men from Woonsocket fighting for France alone, he noted. “I am not able to find the number of men who left to fight for Belgium, England, Canada or Italy,” he said.
Beaudry’s research project found that as the United States entered the world conflict in 1917, Woonsocket had already lost a mechanic in the Royal Naval Air Service, a soldier in the Canadian army and seven soldiers fighting in the French army.
When the United States declared war on the Central Powers, “Woonsocket like every other city and town in the nation heeded its country’s call and sent its young men and women off to do their duty,” he said.
“Some men enlisted immediately, others waited to be drafted. Women signed up to be Red Cross or Navy Nurses, telephone operators, or served in clerical positions,” he said. Two of its women going off to the war would also lose their lives during the conflict, according to Beaudry.
The war also prompted large numbers of women to be recruited into the jobs vacated by the men going off to fight in the war, just like what would happen in the 1940s as the United States fought World War II.
Many troops did not begin to arrive in Europe until the fall of 1917. On Jan. 30, 1918, Sgt. Jean St. Hilaire died at Camp Morrison, Virginia, of tuberculosis, Beaudry said.
“He was Woonsocket’s first casualty of war while serving in the American Expeditionary Force,” he said. On May 1, 1918, a freighter, the SS Era, was torpedoed and sunk off the Mediterranean coast of France, he continued. “Eleven men were killed in this sinking, six of them were from the merchant crew and five were naval gunners. Apprentice seaman Arthur E. Johnson of Woonsocket was one of the naval gunners and was lost at sea,” Beaudry said.
“Orphaned at a young age, he later in life lived with an aunt and at the age of 16 left to join the Navy. He was only 17 when he was killed,” Beaudry said.
Johnson was commended by the Secretary of the Navy for bravery and efficiency at the time of the sinking of the SS Era and was the first Woonsocket citizen to be killed in action during the United States’ involvement in the war, according to Beaudry.
“They were buried with full military honors in local cemeteries and their families would visit their graves and mourn their loss,” Beaudry recalled. “Many other families, however, chose to leave their son or brother or husband where he had fallen surrounded by his comrades in arms. Although this conflict ended 99 years ago please let’s not forget their sacrifices,” he said.
‘A wonderful lesson in history’
Baldelli-Hunt was the first to thank Beaudry for his work in recalling the city’s contributions to World War I, and noted he had given those present a “wonderful lesson in history and that is a reminder of just how important our veterans are to us, the sacrifices they that they made and the fact that we need to remember the sacrifices,” she said.
“I think today what you have done, the work you have done with any support staff you have, is critical to the residents of Woonsocket and those beyond our borders to understand the sacrifices of the veterans from World War I,” she said.
The mayor also detailed the city’s efforts to revive the old memorials once dedicated at road intersections around the city with new plaques that serve as a reminder to residents today “of the loss that we suffered just within the City of Woonsocket.” The city’s work will also include the rededication of a city park to the World War I participants.
“The memorial squares are often driven by or walked by and people just don’t recognize that they are there. And we can’t let history to continue to pass without us making certain that there is something of significance that is a reminder so we understand, our children understand, and our grand children understand what was sacrificed during that time,” Baldelli-Hunt said.
Cicilline said that Beaudry’s project helps to commemorate “the more 30,000 Rhode Islanders who served in World War I including more than 2,000 residents right here in the City of Woonsocket.”
“But in particular today, we are all paying special tribute to the 78 men and women who gave their lives in the defense of our country during the First World War,” he said.
While explaining his work as a commissioner and state coordinator for the Rhode Island World War I Centennial Commission, Matthew McCoy told the gathering that Beaudry’s and the American- French Genealogical Society’s work commemorates “the service and sacrifice of veterans, not only here in Woonsocket but also in Providence County,” for which Beaudry is the county coordinator and commissioner on the Rhode Island World War I Centennial Commission.
“What you are doing today, is exactly the type of thing we are trying to do throughout the state of Rhode Island to commemorate the thousands of Rhode Islanders who answered the call to service in 1917 and many of them before, from 1914 on, who went to France, many of whom did not return. So I applaud Woonsocket for their support of these veterans and all of the veterans and I applaud Woonsocket for the rededication of the Memorial Squares and the park,” he said.
Amandine Lebas told the gathering how it was “truly a great honor for me to be with you here today in Woonsocket,” as they paid tribute to the 4.3 million American soldiers who participated in the First World War.
Those soldiers went to war “because they believed in a better future,” she said. Of the total number of U.S. residents going to fight, 120,000 “gave their lives in the hope that peace and freedom would prevail,” she said.
Among the soldiers enlisting from Woonsocket were those who joined the armies of their native coun- tries such as France and United Kingdom, she said.
“Thanks to the countless hours of research conducted by the American-French Genealogical Society, we have more information about 78 young soldiers from Woonsocket, eight of whom chose to fight under the French flag,” she said.
She also acknowledged the relatives of the soldiers, some granddaughters, or nieces of the long ago service members, who had attended as well, and presented two with certificates of appreciation from the French government.
The memory of those soldiers, she said, “is still in our minds, the sacrifices that these young soldiers gave for the call of freedom, should not and will never be forgotten.”
The First World War was a critical period in history, and “saw the death of more than 21 million people worldwide and forever redefined the World order,” Lebas said.
“This commemoration is also the occasion to reaffirm the lessons that our democracies have taken from this conflict. Notably this commemoration reminds us of the absolute need for World wide peace. It also reminds us of the absolute necessity to continue building a world that is regulated by the international community embodied today by the United Nations. This is the object of France and President Emmanuel Macron,” she said. “What’s more, this commemoration is also a testament to the strong friendship between the United States and France. From Yorktown and Lafayette to the beaches of Normandy, our two countries have always stood shoulder to shoulder intertwining destinies,” she said. Follow Joseph B. Nadeau on Twitter: @Jnad75