Top O' the Mountain: John Francis Brosnahan's Final Resting Place

Oise-Aisne American Cemetery; Block A, Row 39, Grave 6

Forty-some years ago while wandering through the Catholic cemetery in Brattleboro Vermont (my Irish ancestors are buried there), I spotted a memorial plaque to a man named John Francis Brosnahan. Several marriages in my ancestral family are with Brosnahans, yet I had not heard of John Francis. The plaque reads:

BROSNAHAN

In Loving Memory Of

Priv. John F. Brosnahan

Co. L 306 Inf

Who Gave His Life in France

For His Country

Buried in Fismes, France

The family gravestone adjacent to the above adds more information:

Sept. 9, 1887

John Francis

Aug. 19, 1918

I dug right in to find more about John. He was born down the road from Brattleboro on a farm in Vernon, Vermont to Irish immigrants, Patrick Brosnahan and Catherine Brosnahan (yes, that's her birth name). Old issues of the Vermont Phoenix newspaper mention details about John's earlier life. He had an excellent school attendance record. He played football at Brattleboro High School and held down a job at Fenton's men's furnishing store. After graduation he took bookkeeping courses at Albany Business College and then found employment with Hall, Hartwell & Co. in Troy NY. According to the Phoenix, he made regular visits home to see his parents and siblings in Brattleboro. By 1911 he was living and working in New York City at Hanover Exchange Bank, and then at B. Altman & Co. department store. He remained single all his life.

Brosnahan received his draft notice in August 1917 and went into training at Camp Upton on Long Island on October 10. His rank was Private First Class in Company I, 306th Infantry, 77th Division. On April 16, 1918 he sailed for France with his company on the steamer Kashmir.

By August that year American troops were facing German troops along their defensive lines at the Vesle River near Fismes, France. Full-scale battle was fought from August 3rd to September 1st with terrible loss of life. German howitzers were dropping shells among the American lines, hidden German machine gun nests poured fire onto advancing troops, and flame throwers were so effective that the town of Fismes was destroyed.

On August 19th, 30-year-old Private Brosnahan was killed by shell-fire. His commanding officer, Captain Earl Marshall, mentioned in a letter to Brosnahan's mother that he was "apparently killed instantly by the explosion of a shell." My first thought was this simple explanation was to spare widowed Catherine any thought that her son suffered, yet the documents relating to his death use the word "none" in the space where wounds would be documented, indicating he probably didn't know what hit him.

John's last letter home, written August 3, carried the remark, "The soldier's life is a great life." We know that combat was fierce on French soil in the summer and fall of 1918. Trench warfare and constant shelling and sniper fire made a soldier's life horrible, but which man was going to confess fear and misery to his distressed mother at home?

Deceased soldiers were first buried in temporary ground near battle sites, and then moved to other accommodations as conditions allowed. Brosnahan's remains were moved several times until the establishment of Oise-Aisne American Cemetery near Fismes in the early 1920s. At this time families of the fallen were given the option to have their soldier brought home for US burial, or to be buried among comrades near where they fell. In this cemetery just over 6000 Americans were laid to rest, and though the specific reason for the Brosnahan family to make this choice is unknown, it was a common one. Tens of thousands of Americans are buried in France.

On our visit to Oise-Aisne we identified ourselves as family of an interred soldier. The superintendent -Bert- pulled out all the stops. He gave us copies of documents pertaining to Brosnahan's military service. Bert handed us American and French flags to plant on the grave, and carried a small bucket of damp sand from Omaha Beach as he accompanied us out to the grave site. He showed us how to rub the sand across the stone's inscription to make it more visible in photos, and we planted the flags in front of the grave, as seen in the photo below. I'm positive we are the first family members ever to visit Brosnahan's grave. Of all the things we did and saw on our European visit this summer. honoring a fallen soldier was the most moving and satisfying.