Photos by M. M. Cooper: on the map, in Google Earth (KML)

IS BEAUTYFULL!!!!!!!!

ah.... les obsèques du général FOY.....

Thanks. Come to think of it, you could practically land a very small plane at this spot.

Victor E. Chapman, one of America's first fighter pilots, is apparently buried here, at the Meuse-Argonne American military cemetery. Chapman has an empty grave in the crypt of the Lafayette Memorial at Villeneuve l'Etang. Chapman was one of the original seven founding members of the l'Escadrille américaine (later known as l'Escadrille Lafayette) in the spring of 1916. The squadron was composed of American volunteers flying in French uniform under French command. The squadron was financed partially through funds provided by Wm. K. Vanderbilt. This was before the U.S. entered WWI and before the U.S. had its own air force. A Harvard man and the son of an eminent scholar, Chapman was studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris when the war began. Like other members of the Escadrille he first volunteered and served in the trenches with the French Foreign Legion before transferring to flying. Chapman was the first Escadrille pilot KIA. Wounded earlier in the day he nonetheless went up a last time to deliver oranges to his friend Clyde Balsey, lying wounded in a field hospital. Chapman was brought down by a pair of Aviatiks near Beaumont.

Preferential crashing zone: 020°/2,7 NM/AD, at the bottom of the valley.

Old Rodomum.

Prayer for peace.