The Disson M1917 and later M1918 trench knives, or “knuckle dusters” were a uniquely American item in the Great War
In February 2018, a French undertaker working in a cemetery in Villers-sur-Fere, a village about 60 miles northeast of Paris, discovered a set of undocumented remains. The fallen warrior was found with assorted field equipment that included a steel helmet, a trench knife, and an ammo belt full of 30.06 cartridges.
The undertaker contacted authorities and, it was discovered that American forces battled German forces in the village in the summer of 1918. This led to calling in a Great War archaeology expert and the American Battle Monuments Commission.
ABMC historians consulted the memoir of famed Army Chaplain Francis P. Duffy, which describes the burial of U.S. Soldiers from the 42nd “Rainbow” Infantry Division in the location where the remains were discovered. Notably, three Soldiers of the 42nd’s 150th MG Battalion earned the Distinguished Service Cross at Villers-sur-Fere in July 1918, one posthumously.
They were not the only ones, as the main color in the Rainbow division in France was red.
During its time on the Western Front, the 42nd participated in six major campaigns across 264 days in combat in 1917-1918 and incurred 14,000 casualties– a whopping one-out-of-sixteen casualties suffered by the American Army as a whole during the war. The fallen included poet Sgt. Joyce Kilmer– -the author of the poem “Trees“-who was killed in action.
In the end, the lost Joe discovered at Villers-sur-Fere in 2018 was laid to rest with full military honors alongside 6,000 of his fellow countrymen this week at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France.
The ceremony is reportedly the first burial of an unknown U.S. Soldier from World War I since 1988 and the first burial at Oise-Aisne since 1932.
Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade carry a casket with the remains of a World War I unknown soldier at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France, June 7, 2023. Photo By: Russell Toof, American Battle Monuments Commission. VIRIN: 230606-D-GJ885-005
Notably, Kilmer, who was killed near Oise-Aisne, is buried at the same cemetery, (Plot B, Row 9, Grave 15).
With that, Kilmer’s “Rouge Bouquet,” a tribute to the 19 Americans killed by a German artillery bombardment in the Rouge Bouquet wood near Baccarat, France in March 1918 comes to mind. An excerpt reads:
“In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet
There is a new-made grave to-day,
Built by never a spade nor pick.
Yet covered with earth ten metres thick
There lie many fighting men,
Dead in their youthful prime…”