Remembering the Seventh
It is entirely appropriate that November 11 — Armistice Day — both falls during the month of the Holy Souls and on the feast of St. Martin of Tours. It’s not unlikely that the souls in Purgatory added their voices to plead for peace that November of 1918, and St. Martin, who had himself been a Roman soldier, was no doubt leading the cause from Heaven. (Indeed, his father having been in the Imperial Horse Guards, St. Martin was born into a military family).
The Seventh Regiment Memorial is on Fifth Avenue at 67th Street. The sculpture of seven doughboys was created by Karl Illava, a veteran of the Seventh, in memory of the regiment’s men who died breaking the Hindenburg Line as part of the British Fourth Army in 1918. Grace Glueck noted (in the New York Times) that the realism of Illava’s monument “puts us in touch with the drama of history in a way that abstract art cannot”.
These photos are from a May 1956 ceremony marking the foundation of the Seventh Regiment. While, scandalously, the Seventh has since been disbanded (and the beautiful armory its members built with their own resources illegally seized & demilitarized by the State), the dead of the venerable regiment are still remembered each year on the weekend closest to Veteran’s Day.
Incidentally, it was at this intersection — Fifth Avenue & 67th Street — in 1931 that Winston Churchill was hit by an automobile and nearly killed. Historians tell us that he was visiting Bernard Baruch who lived nearby, but I fancy the old bulldog wanted to have a look at the Seventh Regiment Memorial.
12:36 am
Thank you for the pictures. I’d seen that memorial before, but never knew what it was.
4:03 am
Dear Mr. Cusack,
Thank you so much, for these lovely pictures of the 7th.
Dad and his brother were in E Company as young men, back in the 1930s. I’ve a photo of them, standing side by side, wearing the famous uniform.
As a lifelong New Yorker, with an intimate knowledge of the City, he would have enjoyed your blog thoroughly. I can assure you that his daughter does.
Cordially,
Laurie Morrow
6:59 pm
Superb.
When America was still America, and New York New York.
9:59 am
Magnificent monument, and pictures.