Returning from Chemin des Dames: Unearthing Stories in Search of Global Citizenship

In travelling to the Chemin des Dames, I prepared myself to receive, learn, and experience a culture outside of and different from my own. For much of the trip, that’s exactly what I did: ask questions, engage with speakers, and connect the travel portion of the course with the wealth of knowledge I inherited from Professor Lisa Britton.

And that wealth of knowledge was vast. We learned about the graffiti soldiers carved into limestone caves, the cathedrals at Laon and Reims, the Chanson de Craonne, the figures assembled by artist Christian Lapie to honor the Tirailleurs Senegalais, and the overlooked Franco-American ties woven into the region—from Black soldiers of the 370th Regiment to American ambulance drivers, many of them university students, who lost their lives in service to the war before the United States had officially entered the conflict.

What I found most inspiring was the spirit and passion of the local experts and WWI history buffs who shared this history with us. Their fascination with and dedication to the stories and realities woven into the land they call home often left me speechless and awestruck. They did not call themselves inhabitants of the Chemin des Dames lightly, but rather proved and honored their rootedness in this place through an endless dedication to honoring, understanding, reiterating, and sharing the history of their villages, hometowns, and greater region. They did not shy away from ambiguity and nuance in their storytelling, but rather embraced it and found meaning within the complicated, messy, and often overlooked details of WWI.

This experience and appreciation for these historians quickly became a moment of introspection for myself: if someone visited my hometown in Indiana or the city of Philadelphia I am lucky enough to study in, would I be prepared to inform them on the historical figures, major events, and moments of nuance that give those places meaning? Would I be able to meet them with the enthusiasm I was met with in Laon, Paissy, Vauxaillon, Craonne, Vassogne, Fismes, and Reims?

That’s the biggest question I am taking with me back home to Philadelphia: global citizenship does not merely mean curiosity in receiving, understanding, and compartmentalizing the teachings of those we meet in places we don’t call home. It also means being prepared, when the time comes, to share the stories of the places we do call home, of making ourselves ambassadors and representatives of the history embedded in the buildings in which we work, the homes in which we live, and the very earth upon which we walk. And perhaps global citizenship means something more than I first thought: the devoir de mémoire, the duty to carry forward the stories of the places we pass through, long after we have left them.