THE STORY
The Arlington Marker – Part 1
Creation and Dedication
The Borne de Terre Sacrée (Sacred Soil Marker) at Arlington was the second in a series of monuments created by artist Gaston Deblaize honoring those who had fought and died for France in World War I.
As a combat veteran himself, Deblaize wished to express his gratitude for the life-saving arrival of American troops in 1917. Driven by this goal, Deblaize sculpted a large Sacred Soil Marker to be placed in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
This marker was escorted to the United States in February 1929 by General Eugène Mariaux, Governor of Les Invalides and Director of the Army Museum.
The marker was placed west of Clayton Avenue in the Section 18 of the cemetery, where many American soldiers who fell in France during the First World War were buried.
In March 1929, a delegation of 39 French veterans traveled to the United States for a goodwill tour, intended to reciprocate a similar visit made by representatives of the American Legion in 1927.
The group was led by Admiral Emile Guépratte, founding president of the Association of the Croix de Guerre, General Boulet Desbareau, and the Count de Pusy de Lafayette, a descendant of the Revolutionary War hero. The rest of the party consisted of French recipients of the Croix de Guerre, including a nurse, Elizabeth Sancerne.
Upon arriving in New York City on March 11 , the group was received by the American Legion, local French leaders and Mayor Jimmy Walker. The delegation next traveled to Philadelphia, and then on to Lafayette, Indiana, before returning east to Washington, D.C.
While the party was traveling, news arrived of the death of French General Ferdinand Foch, the supreme commander of the Allied armies on the Western Front at the end of World War I. The passing of this French national hero dominated the news cycle and overshadowed the rest of the tour.Nonetheless, on March 21, the delegation was received at the White House by President Herbert Hoover.
The next day, March 22, 1929, at a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, the delegation placed soil from the American battlefields of the Great War into the marker, and it was permanently sealed.