Wonderful and horrible things to tell: Nevada County veterans among the Meuse-Argonne Offensive

A trip to pay tribute

In early September, I traveled to the Meuse-Argonne battlefields and visited many of the American World War I cemeteries.  At the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery I was privileged to visit the graves of five members of our community who are buried there: Edward J. McGanney, Rhodes R. Smith, Hedley Hill, Albert L. Pinkham, and Onorato Gadda.

They are but five of the 14,246 dead buried at that vast and beautiful "silent city."  Their presence there is a reminder of the hundreds of largely forgotten men and women of Nevada County who served so far from home one hundred years ago.

Linda Jack is a member of the Nevada County Historical Society. See more on the historical society's special project "Over Here: Nevada County's Experience of World War" at http://www.nevadacountyhistory.org. Programs and events were funded by a grant from California Humanities and their partner the National Endowment for the Humanities.