It could be the place the phrase \u201chell on earth\u201d was invented.<\/p>\n
Near St. Mihiel, France, June 1918. No Man\u2019s Land. Nine American soldiers, fresh recruits seeing their first combat in World War I, hunkered down in a bomb crater, pinned down by Imperial German\u00a0MG 08 machine gun fire, artillery shells bursting around them.<\/p>\n
Lift your head above the rim of the crater, you\u2019re dead. But you can\u2019t stay here long.<\/p>\n
Then a shell containing poison gas hits near the center of the crater. Two men panic, scramble out, are mowed\u00a0down almost instantly by gunfire. Others\u00a0struggle to put on their gas masks, while others are overcome by the direct attack of mustard gas.<\/p>\n
Similar moments repeated\u00a0themselves\u00a0over and over\u00a0during the savage battle now known as\u00a0the Meuse-Argonne Offensive<\/a>\u2014the Battle of the Argonne Forest.\u00a0The\u00a0largest independent American offensive against the Imperial German Army during\u00a0\u201c the war to end all wars,\u201d it produced an estimated 110,000 American casualties\u2014more than 2,300 per day.<\/p>\n And this scene was one of many captured last Saturday by award-winning director Jo Throckmorton \u201987<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>and his\u00a0creative collaborators filming a documentary he hopes will remind today\u2019s generation of the terrible sacrifices made by American soldiers during\u00a0\u201cthe war to end all wars.\u201d<\/p>\n The film, shot at the\u00a0Great War Association\u2019s battlefield site outside of Newville, PA, was commissioned by\u00a0the American Battle Monuments Commission, is being produced by\u00a0Boston Productions Inc.<\/a>\u00a0with BPI’s Chief Creative Officer Bob Noll<\/a> as director of photography,\u00a0and will be displayed at the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery<\/a> in France, where more than 14,000 American soldiers are buried.<\/p>\n “The\u00a0film represents the experiences of American troops in this Argonne campaign,\u201d says\u00a0Mike Knapp, Director of Historical Services the Commission.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re hoping that when visitors come to the cemetery and see the film they\u2019ll get a deeper understanding\u2014rather than just seeing headstones and the crosses and the walls of the missing, they\u2019ll have a better sense of what our soldiers went through in that battle.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the\u00a0\u201cactors\u201d in the\u00a0film are from the\u00a0the\u00a03rd\u00a0United States Infantry Regiment\u2014known as the\u00a0\u201cOld Guard.\u201d <\/a>The regiment has served since 1784 and is the Army\u2019s oldest active duty infantry unit.<\/p>\n “Rather than trying to find actors or re-enactors, we reached out to the Old Guard,\u201d says Knapp, who was one of several historical advisors for the project. \u201cIt\u00a0gives them a connection\u2014helps them understand their heritage. And they are all the right age. It\u2019s hard to find actors or\u00a0reenactors\u00a0who are all the right age, fit, and trained as\u00a0infantryman, and that\u2019s what we were able\u00a0to get. And it\u2019s paid off\u00a0huge dividends.”<\/p>\n Also advising Throckmorton is the Commission\u2019s Deputy Secretary and historian Rob Dalessendro. He hopes the film and the centennial observances of World War I will remind today\u2019s generation of the hardships and sacrifices of American soldiers during World War I. He notes that World War I veteran and author Laurence Stallings in his book\u00a0The Doughboy<\/em>s worried that\u00a0these sacrifices seemed to be forgotten.<\/p>\n “Stallings bemoans the fact that if you asked any child in America in 1940 what the pivotal battle was in American history, that child would say Meuse-Argonne<\/a>,\u201d Dalessendro explains. \u201cHe says by the fall of 1945, a child might answer Normandy or the the Battle of the Bulge. World War I was forgotten, and all those people who perished for America in World War I were forgotten.<\/p>\n “I\u2019d like us to\u00a0redeem this\u2014and have children today at least know where the Meuse-Argonne was and know that we fought there.”<\/p>\n We\u2019ll have the complete story in the Spring 2016 issue of <\/em>Wabash Magazine\u00a0and audio and video from the set at <\/em>WM Online.\u00a0\u00a0In the meantime, here are some photos from the weekend\u2019s filming at the Great War Association\u2019s battlefield site outside of Newville, PA\u2014a location Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery Superintendent Dave Bedford says bears a striking resemblance to the original battlefield.<\/em><\/p>\n Click here to watch<\/a> a\u00a0behind the scenes video about\u00a0Morgan’s Raid<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0a documentary for Boston Productions on which Throckmorton also worked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It could be the place the phrase \u201chell on earth\u201d was invented. Near St. Mihiel, France, June 1918. No Man\u2019s Land. 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