U.S. Army Private 1st Class Raymond W. Maker, left, and the
key he says he took from Verdun, France, around the end of World War I.
His grandson, Bruce Norton, is in France today to return the key back to
the town.
One hundred years ago on this date, U.S.
Army Private 1st Class Raymond W. Maker wrote in his diary “today is one
of the happiest days of my life."
“The War is off, thank God. And
all the boys have gone about half mad with joy. Bands are playing all
day and at night all kinds of flares in the sky,” he beamed, capturing
the relief felt among Allied forces as World War I officially came to an
end.
It was a thrilling moment for Maker who, during the war, had
been hit with mustard gas from the German army, wounded by artillery
fire during the Muese-Argonne offensive –
the deadliest battle in U.S. military history – and later went on to earn a Purple Heart for his service.
And
now, a century later, on this Veterans Day – marking the 100th
anniversary of the armistice that ended The Great War – his grandson,
Bruce Norton, is in France retracing Maker’s footsteps and honoring him
by returning a key his grandfather took during the war. Norton is
joining the many Americans remembering the heroics of family members
from generations past.
“My grandfather never spoke about the war
to me, and it was only after his death that war stories were told at
family gatherings about his service in France,” Norton, a former Marine
and military author who is writing a book about Maker’s service, told
Fox News.
The upcoming book, titled “Letters of a Yankee
Doughboy,” contains more than 120 letters Maker wrote from the front
lines of the war to his family in Framingham, Mass.
Maker would often write home to his family during World War I. He
is pictured here as a young boy, on the far right of the bottom row. To
his side, from right to left, are his stepsister Harriet, sister Eva and
brother Clifford (Kip). His uncle Edward, wearing a Union Army
uniform, is second from the left in the middle row, next to Edward's
brother, Andrew. Both of those men fought for 19th Maine Regiment during
the Civil War. Maker's father, Winfield, is standing in front of the
bicycle on the far right.
(Courtesy Bruce Norton)
Norton said he
was given the letters in a box in 1992 while visiting his mother in
Rhode Island. But something else inside that box became integral to his
current trip to France this Veterans Day – a key that Maker took from a
gate in the town of Verdun shortly after the war ended, which Norton is
returning today to its rightful home.
“All I want to do is correct a wrong,” he told Fox News.
The
story of how the iron key ended up in Norton’s possession began in
1914, when Maker joined the Massachusetts National Guard. Three years
later, his unit was activated and became the U.S. Army’s 26th Infantry
Division, which set off to France and encountered heavy combat.
“I
hope that it won’t be so very long before I see you all again and do
not lose heart if you do not hear from me very often because I may be in
places where I cannot get a chance to write but will every time I can,”
Maker wrote home on Oct. 6, 1917, in one of his first letters to his
sister, addressed to “My Dear Eva & all the folks.”
One of the letters Maker wrote.
(Courtesy Bruce Norton)
Over the next few
years, Maker would – sometimes on a daily basis – pen letters to his
family describing his World War I exploits as a wireman, who Norton says
would “go out after these barrages and string communication wire
between positions.” He also kept a diary with shorter entries.
“The
fellow that was with me and myself laid in a large shell hole for about
30 hours running a telephone station, and then we got out and we went
into the woods and found a dugout, and being about all in, we fell right
to sleep and then the Boche started shooting over gas,” Maker wrote to
his brother Kip on July 27, 1918, recalling the moments he was gassed by
the Germans in France.
“We did not hear the shells and a fellow
came running in with his mask on and yelled, “Gas, Gas.” Well, Kip, we
put on our masks but a little too late because it had gotten us before,
while we were asleep. And if that fellow had not yelled when he did, I
would not be writing to you now, I guess,” he added.
Maker mentions the key he took from Verdun in a letter to his sister, Eva.
(Courtesy Bruce Norton)
Maker mentioned
in his writings about being in Verdun in November of that year, the same
month of his 26th birthday and the signing of the armistice. He noted
in a past letter of his travels about amassing a “pile” of German
helmets from the battlefields and a “lot of German stuff,” but it wasn’t
until January 1919 that he made mention in his writings of the key from
Verdun.
“I got a letter from Kip a day ago and he said you got
the helmet OK. Was there a key in the helmet? If there was don’t lose it
because I stoled it out of the north gate at Verdun and it is worth
something,” Maker wrote to Eva.
A 1956 article by the Providence
Sunday Journal, reprinted in a draft version of Norton's book and
provided to Fox News, references the key and further explains that
“besides being six inches long and heavy, [it] has the added value of
belonging to the historic North Gate of the Verdun Citadel where the
German advance was squelched.”
The article makes mention of a Mrs.
Charles A. Post, a Rhode Island resident who traveled to Verdun that
year to return the key she received from Maker, who in response was
given “an official certificate from the senator-mayor of Verdun for this
unexpected addition to the battle site’s historic collection.”
Norton was able to learn more about his grandfather's life through
the dispatches that were sent home from the front lines.
(Courtesy Bruce Norton)
Except, decades later, Norton says he found out the events described in that article were not all that it seemed.
In
an excerpt of Norton’s book, he writes “in October, 1992, during a
visit to Rhode Island, my mother brought out a box from within her
closet and said, “I have some things I want you to have. Here are all of
your grandfather’s letters from World War One, and this is the key to
the North Gate of Verdun, France, the one that Daddy mailed back to Aunt
Eva.
“In 1956, your grandfather gave a key to a lady, a Mrs.
Post, who was traveling back to France and she presented that key to the
mayor of Verdun, but what she did not know was the key that Daddy gave
to her was an ornate iron key a friend of his had made by the Providence
Casting Company in North Providence,” the excerpt adds.
The real
key presumably exchanged hands amongst Maker’s family members in the
years following World War I. Maker died in 1964 after a severe heart
attack and stroke. It is not immediately clear today where the gate
stood in Verdun in which the key was taken from.
The key will be accepted today at the Verdun Memorial in France.
But Norton is now meeting today with Thierry Hubscher, the director of the
Verdun Memorial,
to return it, a spokesperson there confirmed to Fox News. The Memorial
says it may put the key into an exhibit about the Americans’ arrival in
the region.
“We are particularly honored that Major Bruce Norton
chose our establishment for the symbolic return of the key to an
important site of the town of Verdun,” Hubscher told Fox News in an
email. “This story is absolutely incredible. This key will have taken a
journey of over 10,000 kilometers before coming back to its place of
origin 100 years later.”