'If you're a veteran, you're a veteran'

In 1919, Emily Raine Williams – then the chief nurse at Fort McHenry General Hospital No. 2 in Baltimore, Md. – came to St. Mary’s Cemetery in Baltimore to visit the gravesite of Marie Moss. A U.S. Army nurse, Moss was the first Maryland nurse to die in service to her country.

During her visit, Williams noticed that the gravesites of four French Navy Reservists buried there were in disarray. The markers were sunken in the ground, and the area around each had not been cared for in a long time.

Williams had the cemetery caretaker fill in the ground around the gravesites, while she gathered flowers from a nearby field and placed them on each grave. After that, she made it her responsibility to come by the gravesites each year on French Memorial Day and place a French flag and poppy on the graves.

A few years later, Williams reached out to The American Legion’s Baltimore District Council to ask if the Legion would take on the responsibility. The Legionnaires agreed to, and Williams stayed on as chairman of the event until 1959. And since then, it’s been Legionnaires from Maryland’s District 4 who have carried on the memorialization of the four sailors, most recently on Nov. 5.

The ceremony includes a 21-gun salute, the playing of taps, and the singing of the U.S. and French national anthems. Four French sailors enrolled at the U.S. Naval Academy attend every year, while most years the ceremony also includes a representative from the French government.

Maryland’s District 4 is responsible for the annual service. This year’s master of ceremonies from Maxine Canty, a past district commander and current commander of American Legion Post 285 in Baltimore, where she is a Paid-Up-For-Life member.

“(Veterans) have that bond. It’s a veteran bond,” Canty said. “I don’t care what country you’re from. If you are a veteran, you are a veteran, and we consider you in our veteran family. That’s the way I feel.

“I don’t know (the French sailors). I don’t know their families, their history or anything about them, except that brief history. But they’re veterans.”

Three of the four sailors – Pierre Chatodal, Louis Brazzard and Louis Gouger – died after contracting influenza, while Joseph Mevel drowned while swimming in Port Covington. All three died in 1918 and were given military burials at the cemetery after their next of kin couldn’t be located.

Canty said District 4 is simply repaying a debt to those in other countries that ensure the gravesites of U.S. servicemembers buried there are maintained in a dignified manner.

“A lot of our guys have been killed in other countries,” she said. “They have gravesites all over France. There are dozens of them there, and they take care of our graves there. The least we can do is take care of the ones that we have here. That’s what we’re doing now.”