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Two months ago little Gilberte Dieu and her mother left their home in the Somme to go see the soldier father who was in a hospital, badly gassed. When they reached the town where he was they learned that the Germans were approaching their home, and if they wished to save any of thir possessions they must hurry back. They started home, only to find they were too late. Again they turned around to go back to the Hospital, hoping to find the father better, and learned that he was dead. Now they are living in a quiet old town in Normandy. Gilberte is as pale as if she had been ill a long time, but she has been adopted by the Company E of the Telegraph Battalion, and the money they have sent will provide her generously with good food and warm clothing for next winter. Perhaps these the memory of what the war has done to her will fade out partly from her tragic little face. The A.R.C. administers the funds for the maintenance of all the children adopted by the American troops
Two months ago little Gilberte Dieu and her mother left their home in the Somme to go see the soldier father who was in a hospital, badly gassed. When they reached the town where he was they learned that the Germans were approaching their home, and if they wished to save any of thir possessions they must hurry back. They started home, only to find they were too late. Again they turned around to go back to the Hospital, hoping to find the father better, and learned that he was dead. Now they are living in a quiet old town in Normandy. Gilberte is as pale as if she had been ill a long time, but she has been adopted by the Company E of the Telegraph Battalion, and the money they have sent will provide her generously with good food and warm clothing for next winter. Perhaps these the memory of what the war has done to her will fade out partly from her tragic little face. The A.R.C. administers the funds for the maintenance of all the children adopted by the American troops
A family whose history has been a stormy one and the father shot for refusing to collect loot. The family was living in Lille when it was sacked in October 1914. The older girl on the right was arrested for giving chocolate to French prisoners and was locked up for two weeks. Finally her mother had to buy her release from the German Commandant by selling her wedding ring and all the family treasures. This money went either to the German government or to the Commandant. The case is typical of a large member of arrests made about that time. Another daughter twenty years old was taken away by the German Commandant and has never been seen since. The family was rapatrie through Evian. They were brutally treated on the way and had to sleep in the open fields for 19 days with hardly any food. They are sheltered by the A.R.C. in the comfortable home shown in the picture. They have been given furniture and the older children have secured employment through the A.R.C. Two sons are in the French Army
The mother of Andre Claudel died a year ago. His father was killed in the Argonne and Andre is so quiet, so serious, that he seems much more than ten years old. He is like a young old man in all he says and does. He is one of the best students at the refugee colony at Caen where he has lived ever since he was driven away from his home in Lorraine by the shells and poison gas of the Germans. His teacher says: "Il travaille dans la perfection," his work is perfect. Sometime he will go back to Lorraine when the Boches have been driven out. He says: "I like the American soldiers. They have come to protect my country. And I like especially my God-fathers." They are the Army Field Clerks of Section G-5, General Staff. The AMERICAN RED CROSS administers the funds for the maintanence of all the children adopted by the American troops. Sept. 1918
Renee Grouyer, "the adopted daughter" of the Intelligence Section of the Army Field Clerks, 2nd Section, GHQ, cant's play ball very well, but she is one of the best little mascots in France. A testimonial to her abilities may be obtained easily from any member of her godfathers' section. She has big blue eyes and dimples and is as brown as a hazelnut because she plays out of doors all day long. She is a refugee child from the Meurthe et Moselle and lives now, with 300 other little refugee children at the Caserne du Chateau in Caen. The AMERICAN RED CROSS administers the funds for the maintanence of all the children adopted by the American troops
The mother of Andre Claudel died a year ago. His father was killed in the Argonne and Andre is so quiet, so serious, that he seems much more than ten years old. He is like a young old man in all he says and does. He is one of the best students at the refugee colony at Caen where he has lived ever since he was driven away from his home in Lorraine by the shells and poison gas of the Germans. His teacher says: "il travaille dans al perfection," his work is perfect. Sometime he will go back to Lorraine when the Boches have been driven out. He says: "I like the American soldiers. They have come to protect my country. And I like especially my Godfathers." They are the Army Field Clerks of Section ... General Staff. The American Red Cross administers the funds for the maintenance of all the children adopted by the American troops
Andre Ecuier, although he is only four years old, has lived through months of German raids and bombardments. When his father was killed, he and his mother were taken, with a Colony of refugee children whose homes in Nancy were endangered, into a quiet Normandy town where Andre goes to school and learns to march and to sing the soldier songs of Lorraine. He has been adopted by the Supply Company of the Q.M.C. No. 303. He asked his mother to write his god-fathers and to say "today, after bombardments in my home, I am safe and sound. I end with a big kiss for my dear parrains." The AMERICAN RED CROSS administers the funds for the maintanence of all the children adopted by the American troops. September 1918
Renee Grouyer, "the adopted daughter" of the Intelligence Section of the Army Field Clerks, 2nd Section, GHQ, cant's play ball very well, but she is one of the best little mascots in France. A testimonial to her abilities may be obtained easily from any member of her godfathers' section. She has big blue eyes and dimples and is as brown as a hazelnut because she plays out of doors all day long. She is a refugee child from the Meurthe et Moselle and lives now, with 300 other little refugee children at the Caserne du Chateau in Caen. The AMERICAN RED CROSS administers the funds for the maintanence of all the children adopted by the American troops
Two little shoes found in the pockets of a mortally wounded Belgian soldier, have touched the heart strings of the nurses, attendants and physicians in the French Hospital where he lies at the point of death. The story of the shoes is a heart stirring one. With a letter they were found in this Belgian cyclists pocket. The letter was addressed to his wife from whom he had been separated since the destruction of Termonde, their home. In tender words he penned the message stating that he was enclosing a pair of shoes (hanging at the head of the bed) for their three year old baby with the money he had earned as a scout in King Alberts army. The tenderness of the letter and the mute pathos of the little shoes have moved every one in the hospital to employ every known agency of skill, science, and hard work, to snatch the brave soldier from the pathway of the "Grim Reaper" and restore him if possible to his little family. The incident is probably the most touching one yet met with by the hospital attendants
Two months ago little Gilberte Dieu and her mother left their home in the Somme to go see the soldier father who was in a hospital, badly gassed. When they reached the town where he was they learned that the Germans were approaching their home, and if they wished to save any of their possessions they must hurry back. They started home, only to find they were too late. Again they turned around to go back to the hospital, hoping to find the father better, and learned that he was dead. Now they are living in a quiet old town in Normandy. Gilberte is as pale as if she had been ill a long time, but she has been adopted by Company E of the 406th Telegraph Battalion, and the money they have sent will provide her generously with good food and warm clothing for next winter. Perhaps with these the memory of what the war has done to her will fade out partly from her tragic little face. The AMERICAN RED CROSS administers the funds for the maintanence of all the children adopted by the American troops
Summary
Title, date and notes from Red Cross caption card.
Photographer name or source of original from caption card or negative sleeve: Hine.
Group title: Adopted children.
Gift; American National Red Cross 1944 and 1952.
General information about the American National Red Cross photograph collection is available at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.anrc
Temp note: Batch 33
American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) encountered a multitude of orphaned children when they joined the war in 1917. Grassroots orphans’ relief efforts sprang up in France as early as 1914. A 1916 advertisement in The New York Times stated that in August of 1914, a group of drafted factory workers demanded that an organization should be formed to care for their potentially parent-less children. This first charity was founded by M. Vilta, the head of the Paris Université Populaire. It was known as the Association Les Orphelins de la Guerre, War Orphans’ Association. In 1915, the CNSA (National Relief and Food Committee) created the Oeuvre nationale des orphelins de guerre (National war orphans charity) in order to help children who had lost their parents due to the war. This section was created with the support of the very active Commission For Relief in Belgium (CRB). Across the Atlantic ocean, they were supported by a broad network of charitable donors and private citizens including philanthropist William D. Guthrie, Catholic Archbishop John Cardinal Farley, US Supreme Court Chief Justice Howard Douglass White, and French ambassador William H. Sharp, the American Society for the Relief of French War Orphans, which solicited funds from Yale University. In August of 1914, a group of New York-based philanthropists, and several former French residents including August F. Jaccacci, Mrs. Cooper Hewitt and Frederick René Coudert Jr. began the most wide-reaching orphans’ relief organizations, the Franco-American Committee for the Protection of Children of the Frontier. The Committee was assisted by the Service de Transport France-Amerique, a shipping service for transferring goods across the ocean to help the French. The Committee spread and advertisements printed in publications like the Chicago Tribune. Funds collected from the solicitation on the orphans’ behalf by the American public through the advertisements paid for ophan’s care and education that reportedly cost “16 cents a day.” In addition to relief agencies’ fundraising campaigns, the US Red Cross hosted several large-scale Child Welfare Expositions in Saint Etienne, Lyons, and Marseilles in 1917. By December 1, 1917, the Franco-American Committee for the Protection of Children of the Frontier recorded that they had aided 1,365 children. Despite the war environment, most of the children in American Red Cross photographs appear to be calm and well-fed despite their uprooting and the horrors that they may have witnessed. On April 12, 1918 Stars and Stripes newspaper reported that 38 children were adopted by Infantry companies. The Great War resulted in six million orphans across Europe.