All Quiet on the Western Front

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All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque describing the physical and mental suffering of German soldiers during World War I, and their alienation upon returning home from the front. The novel was so powerful in its anti-war sentiment, that Adolph Hitler banned the book and burned all copies in Nazi Germany.

The western front for Germany was France. The words "all quiet on the western front" referred to the daily dispatches that were sent from the trenches in the front to the rear headquarters. "All quiet" meaning that no action had taken place. The phrase became a synonym for the drudgery and routine of surviving daily warfare. This drudgery was punctuated only occasionally by fearsome and deadly combat. More often survival was a search for food and an escape from boredom and the deadly fire of snipers.

Captain James Madison Pearson served in Second and Third American Infantry Divisions in and around Graffigny, France. He and his soldiers faced and fought the same soldiers Remarque wrote about in his novel.

It is my grandmother's father's family that I wonder about when thinking about Remarque's novel. Captain Pearson's future wife, Marguerite Chevallier Meine was raised in the little French town of Graffigny, a town close to Remarque's western front. Marguerite's father was Charles William Meine and he came from Freiburg, Germany. He served in the German military rising to the rank of colonel, but as he died in 1911, it would seem that he saw his action in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. In that war, the German armies decisively defeated the French. Following the surrender of first Paris and then France, the German armies pulled back from Paris and stationed in the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.

Although Colonel Meine died before the outbreak of World War I, he came from a large German family. Undoubtedly, he had many nephews of military age who fought in the German army during World War I. It is not hard to imagine that one or more of my grandmother's cousins were young German privates alone and afraid in the trenches along the western front facing Captain Pearson.

chevallier

Our great-grandmother's name was Laura Chevallier. She lived in Graffigny-Chemin, married, and raised two daughters one named Margureite, our grandmother. The picture to the left is of the house in Graffigny (picture from the collection of George Campbell). The lady to the left of the house is Laura Chevallier Meine.




"Chevalier" is translated literally from French as “horseman”. The French title is originally equivalent to the English knight. Chevaliers of the French royal orders had some territorial title by which they were designated. After the revolution, Napoleon reserved the right to himself of appointing chevaliers of the empire.

French knights figured prominently in the history of France as is noted in the following excerpt from a wikipedia note on the History of France.

Les chevaliers francs jouent un rôle prépondérant dans la reconquista de l'Espagne musulmane dès le milieu du XI^e siècle. Ils sont si nombreux à participer à la première croisade à la fin du XI^e siècle, que les États créés après la prise de Jérusalem en 1099 sont appelés États francs d'Orient.

The cemetery in Graffigny contains a grave stone for the family Chevallier. There is also a beautiful stain glass window in the church across from the family house. The family owned portions of property in and near the village of Graffigny.

Marguerite Tony Lilly Chevallier Meine Pearson

There are at least two sides to every story; the other side of the the story of James Madison Pearson is his wife, our grandmother, Marguerite Tony Lilly Chevallier Meine Pearson. What a name - but more on that later. She was born in Hannover, Germany, on the 26th of April, 1890, which would have made her six years junior to James. She was raised in the village of Graffigny-Chemin, France, in what was formerly part of the historic region of Lorraine. Her mother Julie Laura Chevallier of Graffigny-Chemin, married Charles Guillame (William) Meine of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.

Marguerite had one sister, Marie Leunn Paula Meine. Whether Paula was the younger or older of the two siblings is still a bit of a mystery. The report of the Ancestors of Marguerite (Legacy 4 Aug 2009) lists Paula as the first child and Marguerite second. Moreover, the physical resemblance in the photograph of the two sisters along with their mother favors Marguerite as the younger sister. And yet, the confusion still exists. In a letter dated 1959 from a French notary, Paul Morel to Paula, he refers to Marguerite and Paula as major and minor at the time of their father's death in 1913. Marguerite then at the age of 23 would clearly have been at the age of majority - but what of Paula? Perhaps two or three years separated the two sisters, perhaps as many as four years. Paula as the younger of the two, would then have been a minor under the guardianship of her mother as the letter suggests.

There is a second possibility - that sometime before the First World War, Paula married a German citizen and, as a result, forfeited her rights to French property at the end of the war. To maintain her rights, the family would hold to the position that Paula was the younger of the two children.

This conclusion is speculation on my part, fueled by the stories we heard as grandchildren of Granny (Marguerite) feuding with her sister Paula over language and inheritance. Granny clearly favored the French side of the family, even to the point of reverting to the name of Chevallier instead of Meine after the war. In correspondence with her sister, she used French and adamantly refused to read her sister's letters in German. Finally, the family money had been put into German War Bonds during the war and were worthless at the end of the war. If Paula had indeed married a German citizen before the war, she would have influenced her mother to invest the family's savings on the losing side.

As I say, this is all speculation. Somewhere a birth record for Paula or other document will lay this mystery to rest.