At 3 a.m. on Nov. 3, 1917, as the men of Company F, 16th Infantry Regiment, First Division were mostly sleeping in trenches and dugouts near the French village of Bathelémont, the Germans attacked with artillery and shock troops.

It was a lightning strike, lasting only a few minutes, but when it was over, 11 doughboys had been taken prisoner, and three — Cpl. James Gresham, Pvt. Merle Hay and Pvt. Thomas Enright — had been killed. They were the first soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces to die in combat in the Great War.

Back in the United States, the three men’s names and images were used to raise money. The French, though, had other ideas. Almost immediately, they began planning a monument in their memory, commissioning an impressive stele to be unveiled in the village center on the first anniversary of their deaths. More than 150 French towns and villages made donations to its construction. It was completed on time but could not be officially inaugurated as planned on Nov. 3, 1918; the Germans were too close.

The ceremony was held shortly after the armistice, and for more than 20 years thereafter, people made pilgrimages to the memorial. But eventually another generation of Germans got even closer, and on Oct. 6, 1940, they blew it up — not inadvertently, with a shell, but with carefully placed dynamite.