Famous Ankles

Near the clamshell in Central Park (at the level of 69th Street and just to the east of Fifth Avenue) is a war memorial that I have never noticed before.

It’s the World War I memorial to the dead of the 307th Infantry, 77th Division of the Allied Expeditionary Forces from New York. The area is marked, but it is very unobtrusive. There’s a stone with information carved into it. It’s already fading away. But it notes that from 1917 to 1919 there were 590 deaths of officers and men. Yes, WWI only lasted until 1918, but I presume some died of their injuries after the armistice.

The memorial is spread out and really consists of plaques in front of trees.

There’s a second larger stone, more professionally done (and recently cleaned of grafitti) that commemorates the members that were, I guess, masons from the order of the Knights of Pythias.

There are two kinds of plaques. The first is copper and shiny. I didn’t see one that didn’t have some sort of prymarks or damage. One each of these is a list of names of the 590. The names on the different plaques don’t seem to overlap. Each group of soldiers has their own plaque.

The second type of plaque is more brass. This one commemorates the members of the machine gun company who were killed in action. Two sergeants and ten privates in this case.

There’s actually a bit of an overlook of the area nearby. An outcropping of schist and I got a grand overview of it.

Some of the trees that had plaques in front of them have already been removed. Perhaps age, perhaps blight. I don’t know if there are plans to replant, but I would certainly hope so.

-H

This entry was posted on June 26, 2008 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Central Park, Manhattan, Wanderings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.