THE STORY
Origins – Part 3
The Great Markers in France
After creating the small Sacred Soil Markers, Gaston Deblaize then created a larger, 1.2 meter-high version, upon the front of which he sculpted a cross, evoking those marking the graves of soldiers who had died on the field of honor.
The first boundary marker of this type was created in early 1929. , Placed in the Saint-Louis Cathedral at Les Invalides in Paris. It would be officially dedicated on December 12, 1929, during a ceremony officiated by the Bishop of Verdun. This original marker remains intact, and can be viewed on site today.
Subsequently, five others were dedicated throughout France:
* * * *
On August 23, 1931, on the Guernic Reef off the Quiberon Peninsula on the Atlantic coast of France.
This marker was dedicated during the Gold Star pilgrimages of 1930-33, in which the mothers of America’s World War I fallen were brought to France to visit the graves of their lost loved ones. It looked out over the ocean route traversed by these women – the same waters many of their sons had crossed when traveling to fight for France’s freedom in 1917-1918. The marker bore the inscription: To the American Mothers in Memory of their Valiant Sons.
The original marker was destroyed by artillery fire in 1942, during the Second World War. A replica was placed on the beach at Fozo in 1997.
* * * *
On October 18, 1931, in Cinq-Mars-la-Pile in Central France.
With the support of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a marker was erected in memory of Marine General Robert Dunlap, a veteran of the First World War. In 1931, while attending the French War College, Dunlap was passing through Cinq-Mars-la-Pile when he lost his life trying to save a woman during a landslide.
The marker was destroyed but replaced with an identical replica in 2024.
* * * *
On July 31, 1932, in Meures, in what is now the Haute-Marne Department of France.
This marker was placed in the village where Gaston Deblaize had set up his workshop and where he created the Sacred Soil Markers.
At the foot of the marker, wheat was planted, which is still symbolically harvested every year and ceremonially placed at each of the other markers.
* * * *
On September 30, 1933, atop the Vignola beacon in Ajaccio in Corsica.
The marker honored the thousands of Corsicans who died for France during the Great War. It featured a bas-relief depicting the death of Gaston Deblaize’s Corsican friend Alexandre, an enlisted soldier, killed in the Aisne region on October 8, 1918.
* * * *
On June 9, 1935, several months after Gaston Deblaize’s death, at Bois-le-Prêtre, near Verdun.
The Association of Veterans of the 356th Infantry Regiment placed a Sacred Soil Marker near the location at which Deblaize had spent nearly two years at the front.
The marker was presented as a gift from Renée Deblaize, Gaston’s widow. Although vandalized in 1974, it was replaced in 1976.