The ‘Sammies’ of World War One Bordeaux

by Hélène Brun-Puginier

Head down into the 19^th century limestone cellars of Château Barbe Blanche in Lussac St Emilion and you’ll find remnants of century-old graffiti scratched onto the walls, attesting to the strange history of the site. Among the graffiti, you’ll find the date 1918 scratched repeatedly in the stone, along with the words ‘USA’, ‘Okla’ and more well-worn remnants of English words.

They were written, almost certainly, by American soldiers known as ‘Sammies (the name comes from Uncle Sam) who had come to France during World War One to fight alongside the French army.

General John Pershing, the commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) and Lieutenant (future General) George Patton disembarked at Boulogne-sur-Mer with the first American troops on June 16, 1917.

The troops followed, disembarking at a variety of different ports from where they were sent to join the Front. Between 1918 and 1919, 100,000 soldiers arrived in Bordeaux on 700 ships that sailed into the Bassens port in Bordeaux.

Among them were 20,000 African American soldiers, known as The Labour Batallion. For much of the late 19^th century; African American troops were used to protect the US-Mexican border, but by World War One, they were no longer used for combat assignments, and instead shifted to manual labour and support roles. During World War One, the US was under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, and although he never issued an executive order to the fact, segregation became the de facto practice, and the word done by the Labour Batallians was an example of this. They built, among other things, the extension to the Bordeaux port (and left behind a culture of jazz music in Bordeaux that continues today).

There were numerous logistics operations put in place for the American troops across the region, such as:

• Major General’s camp, in the old Faculty of Medicine, place de la Victoire.
• Seaplane base in Pauillac.
• Petrol stocks held in Blaye and Saint-Loubès.
• Heavy artillery training camp in Libourne.
• A large hospital in Mérignac able to receive 10,000 injured soldiers.
• A water treatment plant in Coutras.

From 1918 to 1919 the Bassens port (which became known as New Bassens) welcomed up to 20 ships per day bringing with them 2,500,000 tonnes of material, from ambulances and cranes to cars, trucks, fuel and armoury.

At the same time, in the commune of Libourne, not far from Lussac in early 1919, an American field hospital was built. Comprising 30 beds, set up in Château Terrien called Camp Hospital No 104, it was located just over 1km from Château de Barbe Blanche. It was created to treat the injured and the ill from the Libourne area, where the troops were grouped before shipping home to America.

These were young soldiers convalescing, and inevitably some of them ended up meeting local girls.  The city of Bordeaux recorded 188 marriages between American soldiers and local girls between March 1918 and December 1920. In one stretch, between May to July 1919, 7% of marriages carried out in the city were French-American unions, almost one in 10! Many were celebrated in small Bordeaux chapels officiated by military priests or accompanying American Christian associations.

Lussac and the surrounding communes saw similar pattern, with at least ten French-American marriages carried out between 1918 and 1919 – among them it seems the soldiers who wrote the graffiti at Château Barbe Blanche, located just over 1km from the field hospital and directly next to limestone quarries.

To find out more about the origin of the graffiti, I asked a local. She explained that both of her grandmothers had married Sammies and had gone with them to live in Philadelphia after the war. She was sure that at least one of those two soldiers had written the graffiti. We can even imagine that the quarries were used for romantic dates between the young lovers…

The authorities largely approved of these marriages, seeing them as a way to create closer relations between the two countries, and administrative rules were often loosened to ease the establishment of marriage licences.

The death of so many French men during World War I may partly, but not wholly, explain this phenomenon. The desire to marry isn’t uniquely female. There was in the United States, even since the founding of the country, a chronic deficit of women, that had got better but remained in evidence, and the opportunity to take home a wife was often a tempting one.

The first American troops left Bordeaux in November 1918, with following waves going right through to early 1920. In total 205 ships took 49,121 officers and 358,223 troops back to their homes in the States.

One further details about these underground quarries. You can also find a few pieces of grafitti that date from the Second World War, evidence of a less happy occupation. This was a place that was occupied by the German Army, as Lussac was situated very close to the Demarcation line between the Free and Occupied Zones.

Maim image: postcard from 1918 or 1919 showing Lussac village with two ‘Sammies’ in front of the Grand Café. They are recognisable from their uniforms and hats.