Suresnes American Cemetery and Memorial

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First World War Commemorative Garden

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Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, September 22, 2025

1. Suresnes American Cemetery Marker

Carl A. Keune, Private, US Army
164th Depot Brigade and 32nd Engineer Regiment,
Company F, 89th Division
February 23, 1919
Plot B, Row 10, Grave #26 (influenza)
Laclede, Missouri

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2. Marker detail: Ford Model-T Vehicles

Drivers with the American Field Service quickly discovered that Ford Model T was one of the best vehicles for maneuvering around the shell holes and rubble near front line aid stations.

Excerpt:  When war broke out in 1914, the American Colony of Paris organized an "ambulance" — the French term for a temporary military hospital — just as it had done in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The volunteer drivers of 1914 found themselves behind the wheels of motorized, not horse-driven, vehicles: Model-Ts, purchased from the nearby Ford plant in Levallois-Perret.
When the United States entered the war in April 1917, the organization renamed itself the "American

3. Marker detail: Frank Buckles

Frank Buckles, born in Bethany, Missouri, served as an ambulance driver during World War I. Buckles passed away in 2011 at the age of 110; he was the last surviving American World War I veteran.

Field Service", thus establishing today's well-known acronym, "AFS". While American media described the ambulance and transport units as easy duty, many volunteered for AFS to join the fighting as fast as possible. Before the AFS was absorbed into the much larger, federalized U.S. Army Ambulance Service in autumn 1917, it had numbered more than 2500 volunteers. It had actively recruited its drivers from the campuses of American colleges and universities, promoting morale by creating units with volunteers from the same schools. All financed their own uniforms and transportation to France and often found themselves serving under extremely dangerous missions on the Front. By the end of the war, some 127 men who had served with the AFS had been killed and a notable number of individuals and units had earned the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de Guerre for their heroic actions as drivers.

Excerpt:  A United States military cemetery in Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine, France. It is the resting

4. Marker detail: Suresnes American Cemetery location

place of 1,559 American soldiers killed in World War I and 24 unknown soldiers of World War II. A panoramic view of Paris can be seen from the site, which is located high on the slopes of Mont-Valérien.
Originally a World War I cemetery, designed in 1922 on Boulevard Washington by French architect Jacques Gréber, Suresnes American Cemetery now shelters the remains of U.S. dead of both World Wars. Bronze tablets on the walls of the chapel record the names of 974 World War I missing. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified. The World War I memorial chapel was enlarged by the addition of two loggias dedicated to the dead of World Wars I and II, respectively. The expanded memorial was dedicated on September 13, 1952. In the rooms at the ends of the loggias are white marble figures in memory of those who lost their lives in the two wars. Inscribed on the loggia walls is a summary of the loss of life in the Armed forces of the United States in each war, together with the location of the overseas commemorative cemeteries where American war dead are buried.

Excerpt:  A United States Army corporal and the last surviving American military veteran of World War I. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1917 aged 16 and served with a detachment from Fort Riley, driving ambulances and motorcycles near the front lines in Europe. During World War II, then aged 40, he was captured by Japanese forces while working in the shipping business and spent three years in the Philippines as a civilian prisoner. After the war, Buckles married in San Francisco and moved to Gap View Farm near Charles Town, West Virginia. A widower at age 98, he worked on his farm until the age of 105.
In his last years, he was honorary chairman of the World War I Memorial Foundation. As chairman, he advocated the establishment of a World War I memorial similar to other war memorials in Washington, D.C.
Buckles was awarded the World War I Victory Medal at the conclusion of that conflict, and the Army of Occupation of Germany Medal retroactively following the medal's creation in 1941, as well as the French Legion of Honor in 1999. His funeral was on March 15, 2011, at Arlington National Cemetery, with President Barack Obama paying his respects prior to the ceremony with full military honors.