Americans Underground: Secret City of WWI (2017) - full transcript

A new discovery.

How far down, how many meters?

Could... Xav, can you
hold this for me, please?

Merci.

Yes.

Ok. Ok.

Ok, thank you.
I'll be careful.

You find a hole in the ground.

And you crawl down into that hole.

And you're in a different world.

Oui.



Yeah, I'm ok, Francois.

I'm safe.

I'm just amazed at what's down here.

Wow.

American photographer
and explorer Jeff Gusky

has entered a rare window into a war

most Americans barely remember:

World War I.

To escape the terrible
carnage on the surface,

men on both sides took refuge in
underground shelters like this,

and they left their mark.

There's a name, Louis Lefevre.

L-e-f-e-v-r-e.

Another name by Louis Lefevre,



under this heart.

It's a pregnant woman.

Signs of humanity in a world gone mad.

Jeff Gusky's mission

is to document these long-forgotten havens

hidden beneath the surface.

In 1914,

Europe, the middle east,
and parts of Africa

are plunged into a conflict,

the likes of which the world
has never seen before.

World War I

is the industrial revolution

turned from the factory floor

to the battlefield.

It is mechanization,

it is large-scale destruction,

it is high technology of its day.

Not just a war on the ground,
but also a war in the air.

All the great powers

are drawn into this killing machine.

Germany and the Austro-Hungarian
and Ottoman Empires

battle against Britain, France,

Russia, Italy,

and ultimately, the United States.

The fighting is the most intense

along the western front...

A 400-mile corridor of trenches

filled with millions of weapons and men.

We all know the
phrase of "going over the top"

and going across "no man's land"
into the battlefield.

But what most people don't realize,

even people who study World War I,

there were these adjacent spaces

where thousands of soldiers lived

for extended periods of time.

In this parallel universe below ground

many of those men left evidence
of who they were...

Their own individual stories.

In the 21st century,

when few Americans
are touched directly by war,

our closest experience
may be the emergency room.

It may be a gunshot wound,

it may be an overdose,

it may be a pregnancy emergency,

a psychiatric emergency,

we have to take care of everything.

Are you allergic to any medicines?

No.

Jeff Gusky's passion for a forgotten war

grew from his work as a doctor.

My job as an emergency
physician is to save lives.

We're on the front lines,

just like in World War I,
they were on the front lines.

In my work as a photographer and explorer

I was fortunate to find places
that had history in the raw.

His images from underground

have captured a view of World War I

few even knew existed,

and where all sides contributed.

When you go down in these spaces

and you see some of these artworks,

particularly the very personal ones,

you really sort of feel like
the souls of these individuals

are still here.

For Jeff Gusky,

bringing to light these long lost souls

has become a mission...

One he hopes will deliver
an even greater reward.

Chemin des dames,

an area of northern France.

It means "road of the ladies."

Jeff Gusky hopes
it will lead somewhere else.

For years, he's photographed
French and German carvings.

Hello!

Hello, Jeff. Come on.

Now he's heard
of an underground city nearby

that once housed
thousands of American troops.

They fought here
in the last year of the war

in trenches now largely vanished.

Some friends of mine
told me about this place,

and they knew the farmer.

Are you excited about this opportunity?

A little bit, yeah.

Jeff's friends belong to soissonnais 14-18,

an association working
with local landowners

to preserve and protect
the remains of World War I.

One of them tells him about a hidden world

beneath Francois Aubry's farm.

Wow!

That fought here.

Wow.

As many as

500 underground sites

lie close to this

45-mile section

of the western front,

crossing the Chemin des Dames plateau.

Both sides used them as troop quarters.

In April 1917,

the trenches here see some
of the heaviest fighting.

A massive French offensive fails
to break the German lines.

But for Jeff Gusky,

this is more than just
another underground site.

He hopes American soldiers

left a vivid record of their presence here.

And before me was an underground city.

This place is huge.

It just seems to go on and on and on.

Oh, my gosh, look.

Here's a dog...

Man's best friend.

What Jeff is entering
is a centuries-old quarry,

a source of limestone for building,

dating back perhaps to the middle ages.

All these strokes were made by hand

as quarrymen were taking blocks of stone

out of these underground mines
for castles and cathedrals.

Wow, this is the eyepiece
of a French gas mask

just laying here.

A French soldier
looked through these eyepieces

to protect their face from gas.

I wonder if these helped to save a life.

That soldier may have been part

of the second French attack in late 1917.

It finally drives the Germans

out of the quarry they've occupied

since the early days of the war

and where they, too,
left behind their mark.

The Germans were very organized

in the way they marked different sectors.

And they just left everything in place,

so all around you,
you see objects of daily life.

You find food cans and tobacco pouches

and clocks and pots and pans.

And you find shells.

Fortunately this is not live.

Over several hours,

Jeff Gusky finds plenty of images, too,

but none obviously American.

Beginning to wonder if the story is false,

he enters a new gallery.

The walls are blank.

But then...

Oh, wow!

This is huge!

This is amazing!

Looks like it was made yesterday.

It's been in darkness
for almost a hundred years.

Mechanic a. Ardine.

Company g 103 U.S. infantry.

South Brewer, Maine.

I've never heard of that town.

Not only German then French,

but American soldiers, too,

made this their temporary home.

E.j. Laskey,

Manchester, New Hampshire.

This guy is from Boston, Massachusetts.

Elvin r. Dickerson, so...

Or nickerson.

Looks like hundreds and hundreds
of Americans were here.

And they lived here.

I keep seeing New England names.

I keep seeing guys from,
from Maine and New Hampshire,

Vermont, and Massachusetts.

In April 1917,

the United States
finally enters World War I.

Woodrow Wilson has basically campaigned

as the president who kept us out of war.

And then finally in 1917,

the Germans, who are really
desperate to break the deadlock

on the western front,

but they can't do it with their army,

return to unrestricted submarine warfare.

With her passenger and
merchant ships under attack,

America declares war on Germany.

Americans knew perfectly well

how bad the war was,

and they nevertheless,
in April 1917, joined the war,

and I think that the explanation
really rests in a lot of ways

in their sense that civilization
itself was at threat.

In this vast underground city,

Jeff Gusky has uncovered hundreds of images

made by American soldiers in World War I.

Who were they?

Can he find their descendants?

And what do these intriguing symbols mean?

Explorer Jeff Gusky arrives in New England

on the trail of the names
of American soldiers

he's found in an underground
quarry in France.

I'm in Concord, Massachusetts,

heading to the Massachusetts national guard

archive and armory.

It's kind of eerie

knowing that some of the young men

whose names I photographed in France

may have lived on this street

and that they were transplanted
rather suddenly

from this peaceful place...

To hell on earth.

Good morning.
Len Kondratiuk. Welcome, Jeff.

Hey, general Kondratiuk, nice to meet you.

Lieutenant Jonathan Bratten.

Jeff Gusky has come to meet two experts

in New England regiments from World War I.

This is really the first chance I've had

to talk to anyone

who knows about what these names mean.

And they're guys from Maine,

they're guys from Connecticut,
from Massachusetts, and...

Brigadier general Len Kondratiuk

and lieutenant Jonathan Bratten

are historians

with the Massachusetts and Maine
national guard.

What part of the front was it?

It's right in the chemin de dames.

That's where the yankee division

first went into the lines
in February, march of 1918.

Oh, wow.

So this is one with
what, about eight names on it.

Look, the squad commander,

corporal blodgett from company e,

the 101st infantry, which was from Boston.

What's amazing to me is the detail on this.

Looks like to me they just
listed their names

just a few days ago

as opposed to a hundred years ago.

They're so proud of what they do.

Auto rifle squad, and then they even have

their chauchat automatic rifle down here.

I was simply blown away, I was amazed

because I had no idea that

anything like this existed.

I knew right away that it had
to be the yankee division.

The yankee division is
the nickname that was given

to the 26th U.S. division,

which was an amalgamation

of different national guard regiments

that had existed for...
Some of them hundreds of years.

28,000 men in all.

Jeff Gusky has uncovered

a record lost for a hundred years.

Few photos survive of the quarries,

and only sketchy descriptions.

So who were these men of yankee division

who left behind their names?

They had about 2,000 mainers

who have probably
never left the state of Maine,

because it's a small rural state.

You mainly have
paper mill workers, lumberjacks,

fishermen, potato farmers.

What amazes me is the esprit that they had.

These were hardy new englanders

from the woods of Maine and New Hampshire

and the clerks and mechanics
of the Boston area.

Soon they'd be inscribing words

on a French quarry wall

to keep alive memories of home.

So you'll see underground

in big bold letters,

"Red Sox 7, yanks 4."

1918 was the last year

they won the series,

and they're obviously very proud of it.

Nearby, another New England soldier

carves a self-portrait.

At a third site,

a German chisels a striking image

of field marshal hindenburg.

When one side took over
a space from another side,

they didn't destroy what they saw there.

All of the soldiers,
whatever side they were on,

recognized that the carvings
that an individual made

had meaning,

and they sort of left those things there.

The Americans' French allies,

who've lived in the quarries for years,

produce some of the most
profound and elaborate artwork,

like a ship named "Liberty,"

sinking beneath the waves.

It really does

represent the idea

that the first world war

really was a great disaster,

not only in terms of loss of life,

but also just profoundly

changing how the world looked at itself

and how we interacted with one another.

As a bulwark against
such an apocalyptic vision,

another quarry contains
a delicately carved altar

whose inscription reads,
"god protect France."

And just adjacent to it
are a series of steps

which take you up to the trenches,

which then take you out
onto the battlefield,

and you know those soldiers

would pass by that religious altar

walking up those steps,

knowing what they were about to face.

Similar fears

surely drove the Americans
of yankee division

whose names Jeff Gusky
has most recently photographed.

I'd love to know if there are relatives

that are still alive.

I'd love to know about who these guys were.

You know, you get a sense
of their personality

from their carvings.

Whether through names or symbols,

Jeff Gusky is counting on these historians

to help him reach a much higher goal:

To connect these ghostly names

to living descendants.

I can go through

and start looking up the Maine names.

Thank you.
That would be fantastic.

Company, move out!

At the time that the
United States enters the war,

there are about 120,000
soldiers in the army.

It is, I think, the 16th
largest army in the world.

It's not an enormous force.

In fact,

many believe the United States

will fail to raise an army

of significant size.

Part of the reason

that Americans surprise everyone so quickly

is that the level of volunteering

is really remarkable.

The number of people who volunteer

to join forces like the yankee division

really sort of brings
the numbers of soldiers

through the roof.

Within a year,

two million American troops
will deploy overseas

to fight on the western front.

We have 139,000 cards down here,

so sometimes it takes a few minutes,

and many of the soldiers
have the same names.

And oftentimes there'll be the next of kin

on the back of the card,
which will give us a lead.

Arthur blodgett.

Ok, I got it.

That's him.

Len Kondratiuk quickly
tracks down corporal blodgett,

the squad leader
in one of Jeff Gusky's photos.

Another squad member,
19-year-old Harold Lombard,

soon follows.

Jonathan Bratten turns up
another 19-year-old...

Ralph T. Moan
from East Machias, Maine,

who wrote a diary about the war.

Which is just
an absolutely incredible find,

especially timed with having just found out

that he left his carving in France.

An early entry
describes running the gauntlet

of German u-boats in the Atlantic.

"We're now in the danger zone,

so the destroyers
were continually..."

On the lookout for submarines.

We'd been out of land for two days now,

but on the tenth day sighted england.

And at 7 P.M...

Moan goes on to
describe yankee division's time

in the French quarry,

including a catastrophic event there.

Then Jonathan Bratten
makes another discovery.

Corporal George Currier,
who enlisted in Bangor, Maine,

has a son, Jim, who's alive
and knows his father's story.

When he was young, he was a teamster.

He worked in the woods
and had a team of four horses

and hauled wood, lumber out of the woods.

Then when he was 16, he went
in the national guard,

probably with some friends.

They went to fight Pancho Villa
down at the Mexican border.

Keeping a Mexican revolutionary at bay

is child's play compared to what awaits

yankee division in France.

Three years fighting

on the western front

has produced a bloody stalemate.

Neither side has advanced
more than a few miles

and at a cost of millions of lives.

Now the Germans are poised
to make a desperate gamble

for victory.

Chemin des dames.

Quiet now, but a hundred years ago,

a deadly sector of the western front.

Explorer Jeff Gusky is back,

this time with expert support.

Military historians

Len Kondratiuk and Jonathan Bratten

have come to see for themselves
the underground city

occupied by yankee division.

Composed entirely of regiments
from New England,

they're among the first American divisions

to arrive on the western front
in early February 1918.

They're there at a very critical time

that most American units are going to miss,

because the Germans are planning

their great spring offensive.

They've reached
a settlement with Soviet Russia,

which has just gone through
the Russian revolution.

The war on the eastern front
is over, right?

So it means that the Germans
can now concentrate

all of their forces on the western front.

Over half a million of them

will soon arrive to confront the Americans,

who've barely completed their training

in the techniques of trench warfare.

In the hidden world of World War I,

it's totally raw,

it's untouched, it's unfiltered.

You get to experience

a completely authentic

original moment in your life.

With only flashlights to guide them,

it takes a while to get their bearings.

Ok, please be careful.

This ground is loaded
with dangerous objects.

But then,

a first trace of yankee division.

Oh, my god.

That almost looks like a rifle.

It is a rifle,

the 1903 Springfield rifle for k company.

It is. Yep.

2nd Maine perhaps with the 2?

Yeah, yeah.

Cool, Len.

And that's the insignia

they wore on their uniform.

Right.

While they were here,

it was on their uniform.

And then here's more.

Jeff leads them to a familiar name.

Oh, my god. This is...

Mechanic R.T. Moan.
There's Ralph Moan.

That's Ralph Moan.

When you read about somebody

and then you suddenly see this
very spot where they were...

Because these guys were all buddies,

he talks about them in his diary.

They formed a singing quartet.

Ralph moan was a baritone.

But Ralph moan and his buddies

were apprehensive entering
these strange new quarters.

...about three miles
nearer the first line...

Let's go back this way.

Take a look at this.

Wow.

There's a skull
and crossbones. You see that?

Yeah

"Death Avenue."

It's an ominous sign.

Jonathan Bratten recalls
a passage in moan's account.

When they first got here,

they were told not to touch anything

because the Germans had booby-trapped

large portions of the cave.

But it just seemed like
one of those soldier myths

that gets passed around the army,

and I didn't really put
a lot of stock in it.

This is a major roof collapse

that I think could be
related to moan's story.

1,200 frenchmen were quartered

in one part of this cave,

but they were simply wiped out,

for the Germans had the whole cave mined.

That whole section blew to pieces

so not a frenchman escaped.

We are very likely standing atop a cemetery

that no one knows about.

Um, there are men under here,

their bodies...

Ralph moan sums up
the grim realities of war

he and his fellow soldiers are facing.

I think we're getting
into an area that is your unit,

uh, the 101st.

Take a look at this, Len.

Oh, man, that's pretty cool.

Oh, my gosh.

That's a work of art.

Do you know any of these names?

I do. I do.

I recognize their names

because I actually have
their military records.

And corporal blodgett is
from Medford, Massachusetts.

He is the section leader.

His squad, it's made up
of irishmen and Yankees.

It's America at its best.

There are two lombards.

Are they brothers?

They are.

Francis Lombard and Harold Lombard.

Records show the
brothers enlisted the same day

and survived the war,

but Len is still trying
to find out what became of them.

And what's interesting to me

is that here's a picture

of a chauchat machine gun,

and that's what they carried
throughout the war.

The United States didn't have
any small machine guns.

The French equipped the Americans

with this chauchat machine gun.

Guys, there's chauchat
magazines to hold the rounds

for that very gun.

Possibly carried by the same squad.

Yeah.

The squad carries
another piece of equipment

to protect them against
one of the real horrors

of World War I...

Poison gas.

No one likes a gas mask.

It really curtails your vision,

um, you're like...

If you suffer from claustrophobia,

it's got to be absolutely horrible,

but they're essential.

Especially when out in the open.

Using a period map,

Len Kondratiuk and Jonathan Bratten

study yankee division's battle plan.

With pinon being the front lines,

the cave being back here...

What would you say
that is? About, uh...

About 5 kilometers according to the map.

Yep.

German artillery
could still reach the cave.

Oh, easily.

The underground quarry

lies a few miles behind the front line.

Each company moves forward for a week

across a landscape bearing
no resemblance to today.

It has been blown to smithereens.

It's like a moonscape.

Trees are destroyed,

these muddy trenches,

a lot of the vegetation
has been blasted away.

And their problem is that there

literally is no place to hide.

On the surface, everything was destroyed,

it was dehumanized,

it was no longer hospitable to life.

And underground,

you find a world

where you could be human.

After a week spent on the front line,

the quarry provides a welcome relief...

An underground city
complete with electricity,

telephones, and other facilities.

Some of the remnants are still here.

What is this?

You know what that is?

What is it?

That's a rail car

used by the narrow Gauge line down below.

That's how they would
move the supplies around.

Oh, that is... yeah,
that's a wheel.

Yeah, sure enough.

Donkeys would pull this.

These were run by French soldiers,

and the Americans would feed the donkeys.

And the donkey would stop
once you fed them.

So it took the French soldiers
days to figure out

the Americans were just playing with them.

The first world war
is an interesting combination

of the most modern weapons,

but combined with

ancient forms of transportation,

like the horse or the mule

for pulling artillery, carts, ambulances.

Just to the left is a guy riding a horse.

He's wearing a campaign hat.

Exactly.

Yankee division soldiers

pay tribute to these animals
in their carvings.

This one is also going to touch your heart.

Corporal George Louis Currier,

company G 103 U.S. infantry.

February 14, 1918.

It's a cross.

Don't we know his ancestors?

His son still lives?

Yeah, and he talks about his father.

Uh, he had a horse
that he was taking care of.

And men developed a very, very,
very personal connection

with their animals.

My dad saw that the gas was,

they were having a gas attack,

and his thing was to get to the horse

and to get that gas mask
on the horse before anything,

and he'd take care of himself afterwards,

and I'm sure that's where he got gassed,

it was doing that.

Over the years, uh,
physically and medically,

he suffered for taking care of the horse,

and it shortened his lifespan

in the end.

Jeff Gusky leads his team

to a section of the quarry

that has always intrigued yet baffled him.

There's a mystery in this place.

I've never been able to figure it out.

Why here do you have Indian carvings?

And I think I can find some of them above.

Let's see.

Wait, here. Look at this.

- Oh.
- It's a canoe.

Yeah, that's your typical birch bark canoe.

Do you have any idea
why you'd have Indians here?

What this could be a symbol of

is there were the nine
Passamaquoddy in company I,

and they all came
from pleasant point, Maine,

which is where the nation exists now.

There are, yeah.

There were Indians, yeah, in company I.

Initially skeptical
about the story himself,

Jonathan Bratten digs deep into
the Maine military records.

When I got down to
examining the actual roster,

lo and behold, it's true,

there were nine of these guys,

including the chief's son,

Moses Neptune.

And these guys served
in company I throughout the war.

More astonishing still

is that these native Americans

would volunteer to fight
in the first place.

When we entered World War I in 1917,

Passamaquoddys didn't have
the right to vote,

they didn't have the right
to own land individually.

A lot of rights
that people take for granted.

Citizenship to the American Indians

in the United States

didn't come about until 1924.

For Jeff, this poses a new challenge.

Are these carvings the work
of native Americans?

Holy cow!

That's a full relief
of a headdress and everything.

That's incredible.

But none of the carvings has a name.

And without a name,

Jeff Gusky's team has no definitive proof

connecting the Passamaquoddy
to these intriguing symbols.

In his final days at Chemin des Dames,

Ralph moan engages in a bloody night fight

with a German patrol.

Second platoon got wise.

We jumped up and put hand grenades

and machine guns to them.

One man had his head blown off

and it made a ghastly sight,
suspended in the barbed wire.

The snipers got about...

He ends his diary

in march,

and it says I'm going to cut
this diary out right now,

no one wants to remember
what we've been through.

From now on all we see is hell.

And "hell" is capitalized.

It hits you right here.

March 18, 1918,

yankee division leaves the front.

But when the German spring offensive

smashes through allied lines,

yankee division will be called upon

to fight a crucial battle.

German forces are within
striking distance of Paris.

Wow.

Explorer Jeff Gusky and his team

discover an American eagle

carved by an unknown soldier
from yankee division.

But in 1918, the quarry
they recently occupied

falls back into enemy hands.

In late June,

the Germans storm south

as far as the marne river.

In the center of the hastily
assembled allied defense line

barring their way to Paris,

German forces once again
find yankee division.

They meet in
a picturesque-sounding place...

Belleau wood.

The woods were so battle-scarred

that you could barely dig in

because there were so many dead bodies.

Military historians

Len Kondratiuk and Jonathan Bratten

make their way to
yankee division's front line,

while Jeff Gusky meets up
with historian Rob dalessandro.

The truth of the matter is

that yankee division

spent thousands of lives,

casualties killed in action or wounded,

to take this piece of ground.

Right here?

Right here, right where we're standing.

And this hill was almost impossible to take

because of the effects of artillery.

So this is the devil.

A German field artillery piece.

And it all comes down to
this little part right here.

This is called the recoil mechanism.

And it allows artillery to be used

over and over again very quickly
in a pinpoint fashion.

They were under fire the whole time.

I mean, this could either be
a fighting position

or a big shell hole.

Rob, I've seen hundreds
and hundreds of American names

in darkness on the walls
of underground cities.

Is this what drove them there?

Exactly.

If you're out in the open

and these guns are raining down on you,

you're finished.

That barrel was a killer

of thousands and thousands of soldiers.

And artillery really reaches its primacy

during the first world war.

After two weeks of hard fighting,

yankee division and the allied forces

prevail at belleau wood

and begin pushing the Germans back.

They must have been exhausted

because they advanced,

I think about nine miles
during the offensive.

15 kilometers in heavy machine-gun fire,

artillery, gas, not eating.

And if you're advancing in gas,
you've got your gas mask on.

The war wasn't over
at that point by any means,

but it was absolutely
a crucial turning point.

The Germans never are able to
make another large-scale impact

on the front lines.

The Americans begin to chip away

and eventually break through
pretty spectacularly

in the fall of 1918.

Among the 3,000 yankee division soldiers

killed and wounded in July 1918

are several whose names
Jeff Gusky and his team

have come to know from
the Chemin des Dames quarry.

Oh, yes!

This is a guy from Maine.

Leroy Hoskins.

Oh, my gosh!

What's so important about Hoskins?

So you know how we talk
about family connections?

Yeah.

There were three Hoskins...

Yeah.

In company f 103rd, all from Milo.

Two of them were brothers.

Leroy was their nephew.

And Leroy was wounded in action severely.

It's strange, but in a small town

he had two uncles named Hoskins also

that were enlisted

at approximately the same time,

one of which was killed in the war,

and of course one of them,
my grandfather, was wounded,

so two out of three in one family

is quite a number when
you look at the town of Milo,

which only had 2,000 people at the time.

Harold Lombard
with the automatic rifle squad

is one of the lucky ones.

He made it through the war unscathed,

returned home, and started a family.

On a quiet street in Springfield, Vermont,

Jeff Gusky manages to track down
two of his three sons,

David and Harold Lombard, Jr.

Hello.

Well, Jeff Gusky!

At last we meet.

Mr. Lombard,
it's a pleasure.

- Hooray!
- It's a pleasure.

- Jeff, Dave Lombard.
- Good to meet you.

It's a pleasure.

Harold, Dave, I have something to show you

that you probably never knew existed.

A photograph of an inscription

that your dad wrote in 1918.

And this came from where?

This is an underground city.

It was a quarry prior to World War I,

going back to the middle ages.

How does it make you feel?

It's, I, it...

It makes me feel I'm with
my father right there,

underground.

That means a lot.

No, it really means a lot.

And it's wonderful of you
to bring these pictures.

It's an honor.

Yeah, that's the brothers,

right next to each other,

on the wall there.

Besides his brother Francis,

Harold had with him
another constant companion.

A new testament,

a pocket version,

that he carried in his pocket
all through the war.

And on the leading fly leafs,

he's listed right there

are all the battles that
they fought in, I believe.

Today has been a day I will never forget.

I held a Bible

that was in the pocket
of this gentleman's father

when he wrote his inscription

almost a hundred years ago.

I was there last Thursday,

underground in France,

in front of that inscription,

just where he would have been.

The only inscription

with an exclamation point after it

is the one that says "home."

And I can imagine what a wonderful scene

that must have been

and how grateful his parents were

and how glad they were to see
Harold and his brother Francis

finally come home
from this awful, awful war.

Jeff, welcome to Maine.

Jonathan, great to see you again.

Good to see you again.
Come on in.

At the military historical society museum

in Augusta, Maine,

with the help of
lieutenant Jonathan Bratten,

past and present
are about to converge again.

I've got something for you.

Great.

This was left by your grandfather

almost a hundred years ago underground,

beneath a farm field in France,

where he was for about six weeks
during World War I.

Corporal Leroy Hoskins, company F.

Can you picture him with his bayonet,

carving into the stone?

He was a pretty
detailed guy, so yes, I can.

He'd want to make sure
everything was just right

so people would know he was there.

There's no question about that.

This is, uh, a photo of my grandfather

right after the war.

He was smart enough
to marry this lady right here,

who's my grandmother.

I found out personal stories

that are so human.

For example, one young man

signed his name in a very particular way.

February 14, 1918.

George Louis Currier.

Yeah, that's his writing.

You recognize it?

Yes, it is,

'cause I can tell by the way he,
the gs in his name.

As a matter of fact, it's really funny

because when I print,
I print just like that.

It's like a shipwrecked person

who wants someone to know
that they once lived,

and so they put a note in a bottle,

and decades after that shipwrecked person

is gone from this earth,

it washes up on shore and someone finds it.

But one set of inscriptions

is still unaccounted for.

Those mysterious
American Indian carvings...

Are they from the Passamaquoddy

or someone else?

North of Verdun in France,

Jeff Gusky follows a trench line

where yankee division fought
its final bloody campaign

of World War I.

In the Meuse-Argonne region,

1.2 million American troops,

the largest number of the war,

attack as the allies push
the Germans to surrender.

The Meuse-Argonne offensive,

October, November 1918,

is the deadliest or costliest

military campaign

in American history.

The casualties are just enormous.

We lost,

to both combat and disease,

over 125,000 men.

Jeff's drawn here by one unit,

the Passamaquoddy Indian squad.

He's looking for evidence
that might connect them

to elusive symbols
carved on the cavern walls.

In the final days of the war,

the squad is attacking
German strong points like this.

I feel like I'm walking

on almost sacred ground.

The last full day of the war,
November 10, 1918,

the American yankee division

were in the midst of
a violent battle right here,

pushing the Germans back.

Among them is
the Passamaquoddy chief's son,

Moses Neptune.

I found this letter
written by Moses Neptune

talking about the war

and how everybody's going to church

and how he's sending most
of his money to his parents.

School children and all who help...

I have sent $20 to you
and hope you will get it.

I'm going to send $5 to my brother Joe.

All the boys have gone to
hospital with the flu.

Only George Stevens and I
stayed with the company...

The family received that letter

two weeks after they were
notified by the military

that their son died.

He was destined
to be the traditional chief,

and perhaps he joined the military

to go, uh...

Get some worldly experience.

I'm not sure.

On the last full day of that war

he lost his life,

and we lost him,

as a family and as a nation, you know...

Passamaquoddy nation.

Moses Neptune is among the last

of the roughly 10 million soldiers killed

before World War I finally ends

on November 11, 1918.

The gunfire stopped.
The killing was over.

The terrible traumatic injuries
would happen no more.

But the scars of a hundred years ago

are still with us.

Jeff Gusky knows the
Passamaquoddy fought valiantly

among these ruins.

Look at this.

But did Moses Neptune and his brothers

carve these symbols?

It's a mystery that's been
waiting to be solved

for a hundred years.

I was able to go into the caves in France.

And when you get down there,

there's just carvings all over the walls.

Military historian Jonathan Bratten

has come to find out if
Jeff's photos contain details

only a Passamaquoddy
tribal member can identify.

And is this type of headdress...

At the time period,

this would be the type of headdress.

Our traditional headdress is
shaped a little bit different.

But in the late 1800s,

a lot of the men joined the wild west show,

and they came back with
these sioux head bonnets.

Wow.

And you can see the profile.

To me it looks like one of the soldiers.

And then he's got the headdress
sort of radiating out of him.

If I saw this earlier,
I could have showed you

some paintings of the exact same thing.

We have lines radiating out of them

to show the spiritual connection.

But it's this image of a simple object

which turns out to conceal hidden meaning.

Can you see the outline?

Do you think it's a canoe?

Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah.

It took a while.

I was focusing on those symbols.

The crucial clue

is invisible to anyone
who's not Passamaquoddy.

I don't know if you see that,

but you can see it's almost like
a German swastika.

For us it's been a cultural symbol

for thousands and thousands of years,

and it means peace and friendship.

The images of the culture
are more important

than an individual's initials or names.

Yeah.

Yeah, these are powerful, powerful symbols

that they were there.

Finally,

the connection Jeff Gusky and his team

have been searching for.

And now, ladies and gentlemen,

the grand entry.

Thanks in part to Jeff Gusky's images,

the courage shown by
the Passamaquoddy soldiers

who carved them

is finally being recognized.

In July 2016, at the community hall,

some 300 tribal members
gather for a special ceremony.

Many are veterans, proudly
wearing their uniforms.

Passamaquoddy people
have been involved in wars

since time immemorial,

protecting our homeland.

Today we'll be honoring Samuel Dana,

George Stevens, Sr.,

Moses Neptune,

Henry Sockbeson,

David Sopiel,

and Charles Lola.

During World War I,

when the soldiers were wounded or killed,

they didn't receive the recognition

that other soldiers received

because they weren't citizens.

Almost 100 years later,

that wrong is finally being put right.

Medals will be presented

by lieutenant Bratten and Linda Allen.

The families of
the six Passamaquoddy soldiers

wounded or killed in action

while fighting with yankee division

are receiving the honors denied
to them during their lifetime.

On behalf of the Maine army national guard

and the bureau of veterans services,

we present the gold star
honorable service medal

to the family
of Moses W. Neptune.

Moses was the son of the tribal chief,

William Neptune.

So let it not be said
that the Passamaquoddy

did not send their best to war

in defense of their nation
and their country.

To come face to face
with their family members

after seeing what they've done in France...

You can't put into words

the type of, um, feelings that you have.

Thank you. Thank you.

Your father,
David T. Sopiel,

who was wounded outside
the woods of Epieds, France,

on July 22, 1918...

His actions were critical

in winning the battle of Chateau-Thierry.

I think when they carved
their names and their symbols

of their culture and heritage

on the walls at the chemins des dames

was asking to remember us.

And I think, uh,
that's what we're doing now

and it's what we must continue
to do in the future.

For the tribe, it's completing the circle,

the circle that we know things
will be right eventually,

even for the warriors of World War I.

Far from the celebrations,

Jeff Gusky can still feel proud.

His photographs have helped
bring an ancient injustice

to light.

It spurs him to continue.

These young men who wrote their names

on the walls of the underground cities

almost a hundred years ago

have family members that are still alive.

And I realize now that
the work is just beginning.

It's important to realize

that great historical events
are not fought by masses;

they're fought by individuals.

And the stories of every individual

is what makes up that story.

This is so beautiful.

It looks like a guy from New Hampshire.

There are hundreds of stories
left to be told.