DEATH BY FLU!!! An American Cemetery in Paris | History Traveler Episode 40

okay I'm at my place of departure I'm a complete idiot and I do this all the time I forgot to leave my knife at home so we're going to hide it in this plant and we'll see if it's still there whenever I get back okay well I am at the airport which is a place that one tends to be whenever they find themselves in a flying situation and we've had a chance to go to some pretty cool places on the history traveller series but I am super excited about place that we're getting ready to go for this trip and I don't want to say exactly where it is yet but I'll give a hint it requires one of these [Music] [Music] okay didn't get together if they get the camera up and do any filming of our landing because pretty stressful getting ready to jump on our connecting flight and almost missed it just because we got some delays but anyway get ready to hop on transatlantic leg alright there's all for the next seven hours and they are in the back of the plane [Music] all right well we are in Paris France I got to thinking on the plane ride over here at the beginning of the video I kind of set it up like it was going to be a big surprise not thinking that the title of the video is probably going to have Paris in it but had a little bit of a hang-up with our rental car they didn't have it at the spot that our terminal was at but anyway we're looking for it now and pretty pumped about this trip I'm over here on a training tour leading a tour to another country later on in the spring and the company's putting on training flew me and my wife over and while we're here we're gonna hit all kinds of cool places we're going to go to Normandy gonna go up into Belgium so you can be watching for several videos following this one so we're pretty pumped about this trip guarantee that there's going to be a lot of cool sights a lot of cool history and I can promise you a lot of me mispronouncing french so here is our ride for the week okay well we made it through the streets of Paris and we're on the western end of the city right now pretty close to our hotel and you can see the structure behind me looks a little bit like a fort that's because it is this is called I think the pronunciation is mont valerian this is a place that is a military fortress that was established in 1841 and it was designed to protect the western end of Paris and if you look behind me you can see it is quite the view so anyway prior to this being a fortress Thomas Jefferson had a little place here that he liked to visit there was a guest house whenever he was the ambassador in France and during World War one there was an American Cemetery that was set up very close to here so here on our big tour of Paris we've got people running by but our first stop is going to be the American Cemetery [Music] well I can see right now that me not being able to speak French is going to be a problem on this trip anyway here's a kind of an overview sketch of monta valerian I'm going to take a look at a few other pieces of this place now we're walking down this path we have no idea where we're going but we're hoping that it takes us somewhere so here's a pretty good look at the outer wall of the fortress and I guess that this is the main gate now I think this is still an active military base so you can't get in there as you can see by this little access right there pretty cool-looking place though alright well we had to do a little bit of extra walking I'm not ready to walk through some mud here go around this had to do a little bit of extra walking but we finally found the American Cemetery we saw it whenever we were driving in but walking to it was a little bit different story so this is going to be the very first World War 1 cemetery that I've ever been to [Music] so this cemetery was started in 1917 which is whenever the Americans got into the Western Front area and then it was dedicated by Woodrow Wilson whenever he was here in 1919 so we're running a little bit short on time because we have some other places that we have to be so we're gonna go inside this complex here and just just see what they got in there [Music] so this is just inside the front door and has this mosaic it says AEF down at the bottom which stands for American Expeditionary Force and then this I guess you would call it an altar and it says I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish [Music] [Music] now this is kind of interesting this you'll notice is an individual named Cecil Barkley and he died March 25th of 1919 which is odd because the war ended on November 11th of 1918 now it turns out that there are a lot of people here that died from the influenza outbreak that killed millions and millions worldwide one of the worst global pandemics that the world has ever seen turns out that a virus is a lot more deadly than war oh wow I just happened to come across this here's somebody named Ella Dalton who was a nurse at nurse camp Hospital for a and C died May of 1919 here's another one at camp hospital for died May of 1919 holy cow here's another one same place Alice Hagedorn another nurse that died in May 25th 1919 so these are okay here's another 1919 February 21st another 1919 so these are most likely all victims of the Spanish flu holy smokes now this is tragic here's a guy George Patterson and he died November 14th of 1918 three days after the Armistice dadgum that is awful have to wonder whether it was the flu or whether he had sustained some injuries that he succumbed to later on Wow now this cemetery is primarily a cemetery for World War one soldiers but there are some World War two soldiers here 224 to be exact and they are unknown here rests and honored glory comrade-in-arms known but to God Wow now all total there are over 1500 soldiers that are buried here at at the CERN a American Cemetery forever looking out over the city of Paris here from the West pretty amazing place so from here we're going to move to a different part of the fort but that'll probably be in the next video [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 14,130

Rating: 4.9638991 out of 5

Keywords: history, history traveler, travel, france, travel france, paris, american cemetery, history underground, wwi, unknown soldier, military, jd huitt, cemetery, grave tour, cemetery tour, suresnes, tomb, wwi history, cdc, coronavirus, n95, nurse

Id: QIXOqETF7K8

Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 02 2020