Hello From a French Village That Recalls the U.S. as a Staunch Ally

French visitors are coming to Washington with an old U.S. battle flag and a plan to rekindle memories of the American soldiers who rescued their region during World War I.

More than a century after the fighting stopped, the U.S. Army’s First Division has not fully faded from memory in Cantigny, the tiny hilltop village in northern France that it helped to save in World War I.

In the woods, there is the trench that was once the unit’s muddy forward position. In a cellar, graffiti scrawled on stone by young, green doughboys, among the first Americans to see action in that war. In patches of farmland, the live shells that for years have turned up during plowing.

And in an otherwise unremarkable back room, grenades and shell casings found in the fields, along with a faded flag with 48 stars, thought left behind as the unit marched east to fight more.

In the history books, the battle at Cantigny in May 1918 is recalled as a crisis point in the war. The Allied forces, replenished by the arrival of newly minted American soldiers, beat back a spring offensive by German units looking to aim their booming guns at Paris.