Military History | Pershing Memorial Bridge, Dun-sur-Meuse — An Ornamental Wrought-Iron Railing on a Bridge

The American Battle Monuments Commission's 1938 table of American memorials in Europe lists this one under Character as "An ornamental wrought-iron railing on a bridge." Under Location it gives only "Dun-sur-Meuse." The commission had no name to print, because the veterans of the 5th Division had not built a monument and had not built a bridge. They had paid for a component of a bridge the commune already owned. American War Memorials Overseas prints the English panel, which says the veterans of the division constructed this parapet to commemorate their crossing of the Meuse and the establishment of a bridgehead on the east bank. The cover photograph shows what the parapet marks. Dun-sur-Meuse was taken by the 5th Division on 5 November 1918 and the bridge over the Meuse was already down; American soldiers are laying heavy timbers across the wreckage, roofless houses behind them. The dates do not agree. That register puts the dedication at 4 July 1931, where the commission's table says 1932. It also records the bridge destroyed again in 1945, and the Society of the Fifth Division paying to restore the parapet a second time. The commission's road notes place the memorial exactly: "in center of town stop at village monument passed on the right. The bridge adjoins the monument." It still does, at about twenty metres. Two present-day registers list the whole structure as the Pershing Memorial Bridge, though the panel text names no general. On the commune's own map it is the Pont de la Paillette, carrying the D998. 📸 Cover: American Battle Monuments Commission, "American Armies and Battlefields in Europe" (1938), page 323, the plate captioned "American Soldiers Constructing Heavy Timber Bridge at Dun-sur-Meuse, November 1918" — a United States Government publication, public domain, scanned by the Internet Archive and cropped to the plate. Second image: page 306 of the same volume, "Airplane Photograph of Dun-sur-Meuse Taken From the South," rotated upright — area view.