My Stranger, My Grandfather

The true story of a grandson's basement find of a weathered document that leads to a Purple Heart 105 years later for a forgotten private in the United States Army's 3rd Division at the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918. But it also leads a grandson on a journey to find the grandfather he never knew. That private was Peter Joseph Hebert from Taunton, Massachusetts; a man his grandson and his family never really knew. One of the millions from the United States that served, his exploits are detailed from the time he joined the U.S. Army in the "Great War" to the Second Battle of the Marne as a member of the 6th Engineers, Company A, United States Army 3rd Division. It was the Second Battle of the Marne in July of 1918 that turned the tide against the Germans and led to their ultimate surrender.

From a poor young carpenter in Southeastern Massachusetts to an unlikely journey to France to fight in the Great War, Private Peter Hebert fought in the trenches and endured the hell of World War I. He fought alongside the British in March of 1918 with the American Expeditionary Force and with the American 3rd Division at The Second Battle of the Marne which took place from July 15 -18, 1918. Enduring a four-hour bombardment on July 15 and a full-blown assault by the Germans at the Marne River salient, he somehow survived until he was poison gassed and almost killed on July 16; that was the day the American 3rd Division stopped the final German assault and earned the moniker "The Rock of the Marne". The heroics of the 3rd Division saved Paris which was only 60 km or so away from the German assault.

This is his World War I story and of those that fought with him in that historic battle that saved Paris, turned the tide for the Allies and finally ended the war. But it is also the story of his return to the United States and the wounds he carried for the next 58 years. Meticulously researched and told without reservation by his grandson, it is poignant, personal work detailing a common soldier's journey to the horrors of the killing fields of France and the horrors that would not let go when he returned to the United States. Peter Hebert's grandson tries to understand and find his estranged grandfather nearly fifty years after his death.