June 2008
Our brand new and exclusive 80-page tour guide is now on sale. You can buy online via Paypal. We can mail our tour guide book worldwide. More details...
24th March 2008 - Châtel-Chéhéry
A new café will be opening in Châtel-Chéhéry on July 13th 2008. To be called the Café Culturel it will be situated in a little house near the church when refurbishment is complete. The scheme is being orchestrated by Chatel Loisirs which is an NGO whose task is to promote the villages to tourism. The idea is that it will be a meeting place for both local people and tourists, it will contain a library and animation for children. It will also sell souvenirs, some of which will relate to the 82nd Division and Alvin York. I am informed that in order to complete this project 20,000 Euros needs to be raised. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions please contact Michael Kelly who will pass the information on to the parties concerned.
22nd January 2008 Pte Joseph Konotski
David Kornacki a Police Detective from Ludlow Police Dept, M.A. has been in contact. His grandfather was Pte. Joseph Konotski who was a member of Alvin York's section. Joe fortunately survived the engagement in the Argonne forest although he was wounded in a later confrontation. David has heard the stories as handed down to him by his relatives but he is anxious to learn of any additional information. Please contact him via this website.
JOURNEY TO YPRES, THE SOMME & THE ARGONNE
The 90th Year Commemorations of Sgt. York & The Lost Battalion
Tuesday,September 30th - Monday, 6th October 2008
On this memorable journey across the Western Front Battlefields of France & Belgium, you will visit the 'Immortal' Ypres Salient where many thousands of British Commonwealth soldiers lost their lives between 1914 & 1918.
You will see the killing fields of Passchendaele and the Somme and learn of the battle of Bellinglise on the Hindenburg Line where to 30th 'Old Hickory' and the 27th New York Divisions fought in September 1918. You will witness the mytic Forest of the Argonne where the American Expeditionary Forces were in action in 1918.
On this the ninetieth anniversary of his feat, you may walk in the footsteps of the American hero Sergeant Alvin C. York of the 82nd Division who came from Pall Mall in Tennessee.
You will be guided over the ground where he fought by members of the Sergeant York Project Team, who in 2006 discovered the site where York killed 21 and captured 132 German soldiers. You will visit the site of the 'Lost Battalion' at Charlevaux and see the area where the outstanding bravery of just a few men resisted a concentrated German attack for a period of 5 days.
You will be present at the unveiling of the Sergeant York Bust, chiselled from bronze by Dr. Sam Barnes, a gifted sculptor from Tennessee. You will meet the people of the small village of Châtel-Chéhéry, known to Alvin York and where the inhabitants suffered under German occupation for most of the Great War.
This is an All-Inclusive tour not to be missed. Please follow this link here to Bartlett's Battlefield Journeys for the itinerary, the cost and the contact details.
Stop Press: This tour is filling, book early to avoid disappointment! 04/22
The York Bust by Dr. Sam Barnes
'On Fame's Eternal Camping Ground'
By: Trefor Jones
The book title comes from the poem written by the American Theodore O'Hara after the battle of Buena Vista in 1848
When, after the Great War of 1914-1918, the Imperial War Graves Commission began its immense task of erecting headstones to mark the graves of Britain ’s dead, and those of the armed forces of her Empire, the next-of-kin of the deceased were offered the opportunity to have a personal epitaph added to the official information inscribed on each stone. The response from the bereaved families was extraordinary, bringing forth words which ranged from the homespun to the resoundingly lyrical and embraced a wide variety of sentiments. Based on five years’ research, this new book by Trefor Jones presents a study of more than 1,500 epitaphs on headstones in the cemeteries of Belgium and France . These tributes to young British, Australian, Canadian, Newfoundlander and South African sons, husbands and brothers of that lost generation, buried far from home, provide an eloquent and moving demonstration of the power and beauty of language. Although certain to interest students of the Great War, and the Western Front in particular, the book is not ‘about’ the war and will appeal equally to the general reader. It offers a compelling insight into the attitudes of the era, and a remarkable variety of responses to the loss of young men cut down in that unimaginably awful conflict, whose remains lie buried in the foreign soil on which they fought and died.
It is available for sale from Bartlett's Battlefield Journeys,
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German Gas Mask Found at York Site
This is a picture of one of the German gas masks that was recovered close to the scene of Alvin York's action. It is shown after stabilisation by the Heritage Service Conservation Department at Lincoln, England. The whole process took 10 months to achieve.
Gas Mask before treatment
(Click here for photograph of gas mask as found)
Click on above link for some of the artifact photographs taken by the York Project Team in November 2006
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