A New Hampshire mom and avid historian is hoping that people in the Pine Tree State can help her win what she calls a race against time to learn as much as possible about the 54 World War II soldiers from Maine who are buried or memorialized at an American cemetery in Belgium.
“It’s a big undertaking,” Aimee Fogg of Gilford, New Hampshire, said Friday of the project to document the Maine soldiers. “When I do find family members, a lot of the time the families don’t even know who these men are. I’m dealing with the second generation now, and they’re trying their best to help me based on the memories of what they’d been told. Sometimes when I do locate a widow or a sister, I have to deal with the effects of time on their memories. And when I do find families, I’m quite ecstatic. I often tell them that no detail is insignificant.”
Fogg, a 37-year-old mother of three, said she first became interested in the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Homburg, Belgium, when she became curious about the fate of one of her relatives — Paul M. Lavoie from Nashua, New Hampshire.
He was her grandmother’s younger brother and no one in the family knew what had happened to him other than he had been killed in Europe during the war. She researched her great-uncle, who fought with the U.S. Army, and learned that he was killed in action in 1945 in Schmidt, Germany, and had been interred at the cemetery in Belgium.
In 2010, she and her husband went to Europe and spent a week walking on Lavoie’s route of march through Belgium and Germany. When they went to pay respects at the simple white cross that marks his grave at Henri-Chapelle, they were the first family members to ever go there.
“In the cemetery, it’s very peaceful. It’s sacred,” Fogg said. “All those crosses lined up … each marker represents a life, and a family. It’s very overwhelming.”
That is how her quest began: simply, with her wanting to find out what happened to just one man. In the years since, it has gotten much bigger.
After tracing Lavoie’s fate, Fogg decided to research and collect the stories of the other 39 New Hampshire men buried there, and published them in a 2013 book called “ The Granite Men of Henri-Chapelle.” She followed that with telling the stories of the 25 Vermont men buried there, and now has turned her attention to the Maine men.
Altogether, there are nearly 8,000 men interred at the European cemetery and 450 men declared missing in action who are memorialized there. While she may not be able to tell the stories of all of them, Fogg said she will try her best.
“I think it’s important,” she said. “These men had families. They had lives. They had children they probably never had the opportunity to meet. They had goals and aspirations, and they put that all on hold. They sacrificed their lives for complete strangers. I call this project a celebration of life. It’s a chance for us, and my generation, to honor these men and acknowledge their sacrifices.”
If anyone recognizes one of the names of the Maine men buried at Henri-Chapelle and knows something about him, she asks that they let her know. Every little bit of information will help her tell the story of the solder beyond his military rank. When Fogg talks to the families of the soldiers, she will ask about their personalities, any funny stories, what the men liked to do for fun and their goals and aspirations.
“The most important question is what do they want a complete stranger 70 years from now to know about their relative,” Fogg said. “There’s a saying that a person dies two deaths. The first is when he or she takes his last breath. And the second death is when their name has stopped being spoken. The objective of my project is to make it so these men are not simply forgotten, so what they did will not be diminished or overlooked.”
To reach Fogg, email henrichapellecemetery@gmail.com, send a message through the Facebook page “ They Speak: Voices of Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery” or visit theyspeak.org.
The Maine men are:
Pfc. Lewis S. Alley; Pfc. John H. Barker; Pfc. Armand M. Beaudoin; 1st Lt. Benjamin H. Benson, Camden; Pfc. Herman Berube; TEC 5 Donald H. Booth; Pfc. Ernest H. Bower; 2nd Lt. Burrell B. Budden; Staff Sgt. Parker F. Crabtree (MIA); Pfc. Louis A. Croce; TEC 5 William Curry; Pfc. Curtis Lawrence; Sgt. Dolphis M. Daigle, Bangor; Staff Sgt. Kenneth F. Davis; Cpl. Harold E. Dick; Pfc. Dana W. Edwards; Sgt. John W. Farrington; TEC 5 Clovis C. Gardiner; Pfc. Desmond R. Gray; Pfc. Everett L. Green; Staff Sgt. Alec Gwazdosky (MIA); Pvt. Bernard C. Helstrom; TSgt. Edward J. King, Jr.; Pfc. William W. Knight; 1st Lt. Roger T. Lane (MIA); Pvt. Harold L. Leavitt; Pvt. Thomas L. Levasseur; Pfc. Lloyd F. Linkletter; Pvt. Roland J. Marquis; TEC 5 Joseph R. Martin; TEC 5 Thomas C. McCarthy; Pfc. Howard C. McMahon; Pfc. Raymond Mercier; Pfc. Clifford L. Merrithew; 2nd Lt. Sydney R. Miller (Portland); Pfc. Raymond F. Moran; Sgt. Albert P. O’Brien; Pvt. George D. Pierce; Cpl. Robert A. Rainey; Pvt. Fred H. Reed; Pfc. Edward J. Ricci; Pvt. Joseph E. Richard; Sgt. Lawrence Robinson, Jr.; TEC 5 Martial J. Roussel (MIA); Pfc. Edward K. Small (Belfast); Staff Sgt. Paul E. St. Onge; Pvt. Bertrand J. Thibeault; Pfc. Roger A. Turmenne; Capt. Wallace A. Vaughan; Pvt. Joseph S. Veilleux; and TEC 4 William H. Wender.