Original subtitles

New discovery.

How far down? How many meters?

Could... Could you hold this for me, please?

Merci.

Yes?

Okay.

Okay, thank you. I'll be careful.

You find a hole in the ground,

and you crawl down into that hole,

and you're in a different world.

Oui?

Yeah, I'm okay, Francois.

I'm safe.

I'm just amazed at what's down here.

Wow.

American photographer and explorer Jeff Gusky

has entered a rare window into a war most Americans

barely remember: World War 1.

[explosions]

To escape the terrible carnage on the surface,

men on both sides took refuge

in underground shelters like this.

And they left their mark.

There's a name, Louis Lefevre.

L-E-F-E-V-R-E.

Another name by Louis Lefevre.

Under this heart.

It's a pregnant woman.

Signs of humanity in a world gone mad.

Jeff Gusky's mission is to document

these long forgotten havens hidden beneath the surface.

[explosions]

In 1914, Europe, the Middle East,

and parts of Africa are plunged into a conflict

the likes of which the world has never seen before.

World War I is the industrial revolution

turned from the factory floor to the battlefield.

It is mechanization, it is large scale destruction.

It is high technology of its day.

Not just a war on the ground, but also a war in the air.

All the great powers are drawn into this killing machine.

Germany and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires

battle against Britain, France,

Russia, Italy, and ultimately, the United States.

The fighting is the most intense along the Western front,

a 400 mile corridor of trenches filled with

millions of weapons and men.

We all know the phrase of "going over the top".

And going across no-man's land into the battlefield.

But what most people don't realize,

even people who study World War 1, there were

these adjacent spaces where 1000s of soldiers

lived for extended periods of time.

In this parallel universe below ground,

many of those men left evidence of who they were.

Their own individual stories.

In the 21st century,

when few American are touched directly by war,

our closest experience may be the emergency room.

May be a gunshot wound, it may be an overdose.

It may be a pregnancy emergency,

a psychiatric emergency.

We have to take care of everything.

Are you allergic to any medicines?

No.

Jeff Gusky's passion for a forgotten war

grew from his work as a doctor.

My job as an emergency physician is to save lives.

We're on the frontlines, just like in World War 1,

they were on the frontlines.

In my work as a photographer and an explorer,

I was fortunate to find places

that had history in the raw.

His images from underground

have captured a view of World War 1

few even knew existed,

and where all sides contributed.

When you go down in these spaces,

and you see some of these artworks,

particularly the very personal ones,

you really sort of feel like the souls of these individuals

are still here.

For Jeff Gusky, bringing to light these long lost souls

has become a mission,

one he hopes will deliver an even greater reward.

Chemin Des Dames,

an area of Northern France.

It means "road of the ladies."

Jeff Gusky hopes it will lead somewhere else.

For years, he's photographed French and German carvings.

-Hello. -Hey!

Hello, Jeff!

Now he's heard of an underground city nearby

that once housed 1000s of American troops.

They fought here in the last year of the war

in trenches now largely vanished.

Some friends of mine told me about this place

and they knew the farmer.

Are you excited about this opportunity?

A little bit, yeah.

Jeff's friends belong to Soissonnais 14-18,

an association working with local landowners

to preserve and protect the remains of World War 1.

One of them tells him about a hidden world

beneath Francois Aubry's farm.

Wow.

They fought here.

Wow.

As many as 500 underground sites

lie close to this 45-mile section of the western front,

crossing the Chemin Des Dames plateau.

Both sides use them as troop quarters.

In April, 1917, the trenches here see some

of the heaviest fighting.

A massive French offensive fails to break the German lines.

But for Jeff Gusky, this is more than just

another underground site.

He hopes American soldiers left a vivid record

of their presence here.

And before me was an underground city.

This place is huge.

Just seems to go on and on and on.

Oh my gosh, look.

Here's a dog.

Man's best friend.

What Jeff is entering is a centuries old quarry,

a source of limestone for building

dating back perhaps to the middle ages.

All these strokes are made by hand

as quarrymen were taking blocks of stone

out of these underground mines for castles and cathedrals.

Wow, this is the eyepiece of a French gasmask

just laying here.

French soldier looked through these eyepieces

to protect their face from gas.

I wonder if these helped to save a life.

That soldier may have been part

of the second French attack in late 1917.

They had finally driven the Germans out of the quarry

they've occupied since the early days of the war

and where they, too, left behind their mark.

Germans were very organized in the way they marked

different sectors.

And they just left everything in place,

so... all around you, you see objects of daily life.

You find food cans and tobacco pouches

and clocks and pots and pans.

And you find shells.

Fortunately, this is not live.

Over several hours, Jeff Gusky finds

plenty of images, too.

But none obviously American.

Beginning to wonder if the story is false,

he enters a new gallery.

The walls are blank.

But then...

Oh, wow. This is huge.

This is amazing.

Looks like it was made yesterday.

It's been in darkness almost 100 years.

Mechanic A. Ardine.

Company G, 103, U.S. Infantry.

South Brewer, Maine. I never heard of that town.

Not only German, then French,

but American soldiers, too,

made this their temporary home.

E. J. Laskey. Manchester, New Hampshire.

This guy is from Boston, Massachusetts.

Elvin R. Dickerson.

So... or Nickerson.

Looks like hundred and hundreds of Americans were here.

And they lived here.

I keep seeing New England names.

I keep seeing guys from Maine and New Hampshire,

Vermont and Massachusetts.

In April, 1917,

the United States finally enters World War 1.

Woodrow Wilson has basically campaigned

as the president who kept us out of war.

And then finally, in 1917,

the Germans who are really desperate to break

the deadlock on the western front,

but the can't do it with their army,

return to unrestricted submarine warfare.

With her passenger and merchant ships under attack,

America declares war on Germany.

Americans knew perfectly well how bad the war was.

And they nevertheless in April, 1917

joined the war.

And I think the explanation really rests

in a lot of ways in their sense that

civilization itself was at threat.

In this vast underground city,

Jeff Gusky has uncovered hundreds of images

made by American soldiers in World War 1.

Who were they?

Can he find their descendants?

And what do these intriguing symbols mean?

Explorer Jeff Gusky arrives in New England

on the trail of the names of American soldiers

he's found in an underground quarry in France.

I'm in Concord, Massachusetts heading to

the Massachusetts National Guard archive and Armory.

It's kind of eerie knowing that

some of the young men whose names I photographed

in France may have lived on this street,

and that they were transplanted

rather suddenly from this peaceful place

to hell on earth.

Morning, Len Kondratiuk. Welcome, Jeff.

Hey, General Kondratiuk, nice to meet you.

Lieutenant Johnson Bratten.

Jeff Gusky has come to meet two experts

in New England regiments from World War 1.

This is really the first chance I've had

to talk to anyone who knows

about what these names mean.

And, uh... they're guys from Maine,

they're guys from Connecticut.

From Massachusetts. And...

Brigadier General Len Kondratiuk

and Lieutenant Jonathan Bratton are historians with

the Massachusetts and Maine National Guard.

What part of the front was it?

It's right in the Chemin Des Dames.

That's where the Yankee division first went into the lines

in February and March, 1918.

Oh, wow.

So this is one with about eight names on it.

Look, the squad is commanded by Corporal Blodgitt

from Company E, the 101st infantry,

which was from Boston.

What's amazing to me is the detail on this.

Looks like to me they just listed their names

just a few days ago as opposed to

100 years ago.

But they're so proud of what they do.

Auto rifle squad, and they even have their

Chauchat automatic rifle down here.

I was simply blown away. I was amazed.

I had no idea that anything like this existed.

I knew right away that it had to be the Yankee division.

The Yankee division is the nickname that was given

to 26 US Division which was an amalgamation of

different national guard regiments that have existed

for, some of them, 100s of years.

28,000 men in all.

Jeff Gusky has uncovered a record lost for a hundred years.

Few photos survive of the quarries.

And only sketchy descriptions.

So who were these men of Yankee division

who left behind their names?

They had about 2000 Mainers

who probably never left the state of Maine

because it's a small, rural state.

You mainly have paper mill workers, lumberjacks,

fishermen, potato farmers.

What amazes me is the esprit that they had.

These were hardy New Englanders

from the woods of Maine and New Hampshire.

And the clerks and mechanics of the Boston area.

Soon, they'd be inscribing words on a French quarry wall

to keep alive memories of home.

So you'll see underground

in big bold letters

"Red Socks seven, Yanks four."

1918 was the last year they won the series.

Yes.

And they're obviously very proud of it.

Nearby, another New England soldier carves a self-portait.

At a third site, a German carves a striking image

of Field Marshall Hindenburg.

When one side took over a space from another side,

they didn't destroy what they saw there.

All of the soldiers, whatever side they were on

recognized that the carvings that an individual made

had meaning and they sort of left those things there.

The American's French allies

who've lived in the quarries for years

produced some of the most profound and elaborate artwork.

Like a ship named Liberty sinking beneath the waves.

It really does represent the idea that

the first world war really was a great disaster.

Not only in terms of loss of life,

but also just profoundly changing how the world

looked at itself and how we interacted with one another.

As a bulwark against such an apocalyptic vision,

another quarry contains a delicately carved altar

whose inscription reads "God protect France."

And just adjacent to it are a series of steps.

which take you up to the trenches

and take you out to the battlefield

and you know those soldiers

would pass by that religious altar

walking up those steps,

knowing what they're about to face.

Similar fears surely drove the Americans of Yankee division,

whose names Jeff Gusky has most recently photographed.

I'd love to know if there are relatives that are still alive.

I'd love to know about who these guys were.

You know, you get a sense of their personality

from their carvings.

Whether through names or symbols,

Jeff Gusky is counting on these historians

to help him reach a much higher goal:

to connect these ghostly names

to living descendants.

I can go through and start looking up the names.

Thank you, that would be fantastic.

Company, move out.

At the time that the United States enters the war,

there are about 120,000 soldiers in the Army.

It is, I think the 16th largest army in the world.

It's not an enormous force.

In fact, many believe the United States

will fail to raise an army of significant size.

Part of the reason that Americans surprise everyone

so quickly is that the level of

volunteering is really remarkable.

The number of people who volunteer to join forces

like the Yankee division really sort of

brings the numbers of soldiers through the roof.

Within a year, 2 million American troops

will deploy overseas,

to fight on the western front.

We have a 139,000 cards down here.

So sometimes it takes a few minutes and many

of the soldiers have the same names.

And oftentimes there will be the next of kin

on the back of the card, which will give us a lead.

Arthur Blodgitt.

Okay, I got it.

That's him.

Len Kondratiuk quickly tracks down

Corporal Blodgitt,

the squad leader at one of Jeff Gusky's photos.

Another squad member, 19-year-old Harold Lombard,

soon follows.

Jonathan Bratten turns up another 19 year old,

Ralph T. Moan from East Machias, Maine,

who wrote a diary about the war.

Which is an absolutely incredible find,

especially timed with having just found out

that he left his carving in France.

An early entry describes running the gauntlet

of German U-boats in the Atlantic.

"We are now in the danger zones.

The destroyers were continually..."

...on the lookout for submarines.

We'd been out of land for two days now

but on the tenth day, sighted England.

and at 7:00 P.M...."

Moan goes on to describe Yankee Divisions

time in the French quarry,

including a catastrophic event there.

Then Jonathan Bratten makes another discovery.

Corporal George Currier who enlisted in Bangor, Maine

has a son Jim who's alive and knows his father's story.

When he was young, he was a teamster.

He worked in the woods and had a team of four horses

and hauled wood... lumber out of the woods.

Then when he was 16, he went into the national guard

probably with some friends.

He went to fight Pancho Villa down

at the Mexican border.

Keeping a Mexican revolutionary at bay is child's play

compared to what awaits Yankee division in France.

Three years fighting on the western front

has produced a bloody stalemate.

Neither side has advanced more than a few miles,

and at a cost of millions of lives.

[gunfire]

Now the Germans are poised

to make a desperate gamble for victory.

[explosions]

Chemin Des Dames.

Quiet now, but a hundred years ago,

deadly sector of the western front.

Explorer Jeff Gusky is back, this time with expert support.

Military Historians Len Kondratiuk

and Jonathan Bratten have come to see for themselves

the underground city occupied by Yankee division.

Composed entirely of regiments from New England,

they're among the first American divisions to arrive

on the western front in early February, 1918.

They're there at a very critical time

that most American units are going to miss

because the Germans are planning their great Spring Offensive.

They've reached a settlement with Soviet Russia,

which has just gone through the Russian revolution.

The war on the eastern front is over, right?

So it means that the Germans can now concentrate

all of their forces on the western front.

Over half a million of them will soon arrive

to confront the Americans who barely completed

their training in the techniques of trench warfare.

In the hidden world of World War 1,

it's totally raw.

It's untouched. It's unfiltered.

You get to experience a completely authentic

original moment in your life.

With only flashlights to guide them,

it takes a while to get their bearings.

Okay, please be careful.

This ground is loaded with dangerous objects.

But then, a first trace of Yankee division.

Oh my God.

That almost looks like a rifle.

That is a rifle, a 1903 Springfield rifle.

-It is. -For K company.

Second Maine, perhaps, with the 2.

-Yeah. -Yeah.

-Holy cow. -Cool.

And that's the insignia they wore on their uniform.

Right.

While they were here, it was on their uniform.

And then here's more.

Jeff leads them to a familiar name.

Oh my God, this is...

Mechanic T. Moan. There's Ralph Moan.

That's Ralph Moan.

When you read about somebody then you suddenly see

this very spot where they were,

because these guys were all buddies.

He talks about them in his diary.

They formed a singing quartet. Ralph Moan was a baritone.

But Ralph Moan and his buddies

were apprehensive entering these strange new quarters.

About three miles near the first line...

Let's go back this way.

Take a look at this.

Wow.

There's a skull and crossbones.

-You see that? -Yeah.

Death Avenue.

It's an ominous sign.

Jonathan Bratten recalls a passage in Moan's account.

When they first got here, they were told

not to touch anything

because the Germans had booby-trapped

large portions of the cave,

but it just seemed like one of those soldier myths

that gets passed around the army,

and I didn't really put a lot of stock in it.

This is a major roof collapse

that I think could be related to Moan's story.

1200 Frenchmen were quartered in one part of this cave,

but they were simply wiped out for the Germans had

the whole cave mined.

That whole section blew to pieces so

not a Frenchman escaped.

We're very likely standing atop a cemetery

that no-one knows about.

Um... there are men under here.

There are bodies.

Ralph Moan sums up the grim realities of war

he and his fellow soldiers are facing.

I think we're getting into an area

that is your unit, the 101st.

Take a look at this, Len.

-Oh, man, that's pretty cool. -Oh my gosh.

That's a work of art.

Do you know any of these names?

I do. I do.

I recognize their names

because I actually have their military records.

And Corporal Blodgitt is from Medford, Massachusetts.

He is a section leader.

His squad is made up of Irishmen and Yankees.

It's America at its best.

There are two Lombards, are they brothers?

They are. Francis Lombard and Harold Lombard.

Records show the brothers enlisted the same day,

and survived the war,

but Len is still trying to find out what became of them.

And what's interesting to me is

a picture of a Chauchat machine gun,

and that's what they carried throughout the war.

[gunfire]

The United States didn't have any small machine guns.

The French equipped the Americans with

this Chauchat machine gun.

Guys, there's Chauchat magazines to hold the rounds

for that very gun.

Possibly carried by the same squad.

Yeah.

The squad carries another piece of equipment

to protect them against one of the real horrors of World War 1:

poison gas.

No one likes a gas mask.

It really curtails your vision,

um, you're like... if you suffer from claustrophobia,

it's got to be absolutely horrible.

But they're essential.

Especially when out in the open.

Using a period map, Len Kondratiuk

and Jonathan Bratten study Yankee divisions battle plan.

...being the front lines.

The cave being back here,

where would you say that is, about...

About five kilometers.

-According to the map. -Yep.

German artillery can still reach the cave.

Oh, easily.

The underground quarry lies a few miles

behind the front line.

Each company moves forward for a week,

across a landscape bearing no resemblance to today.

It has been blown to smithereens.

It's like a moonscape.

Trees are destroyed.

These muddy trenches.

A lot of the vegetation has been blasted away.

And their problem is that

there literally is no place to hide.

On the surface, everything was destroyed.

It was dehumanized.

It was no longer hospitable to life.

And underground,

you find a world where you could be human.

After a week spent on the front line,

the quarry provides a welcome relief.

An underground city complete with electricity,

telephones and other facilities.

Some of the remnants are still here.

What is this?

-You know what that is? -What is it?

That's a rail car used by the narrow gauge line

down below, that's how they would move supplies around.

That is... yeah, that's a wheel.

-Really? -Yeah, sure enough.

Donkeys would pulls this.

These were run by French soldiers

and the Americans would feed the donkeys.

And the donkey would stop once you fed them

so it took the French soldiers days to figure out

the Americans were just playing with them.

[laughing]

The first World War is an interesting combination of

the most modern weapons but combined with

ancient forms of transportation,

like the horse, or the mule.

For pulling artillery, carts, ambulances.

Just to the left is a guy riding a horse.

-He's wearing a campaign hat. -Exactly.

Yankee division soldiers paid tribute to these animals

in their carvings.

This one is also going to touch your heart.

Corporal George Louis Currier.

Company G, 103 U.S. Infantry.

February 14th, 1918.

It's a cross.

Don't we know his ancestors? His son's still live?

Yeah.

And he talks about his father,

he had a horse that he was taking care of.

And men developed a very, very, very personal connection

with their animals.

My dad saw that the gas was...

they were having a gas attack,

and his thing was to get to the horse,

and to get that gas mask on the horse before anything.

And he'd take care of himself afterwards.

And I'm sure that's where he got gassed,

it was doing that.

Over the years, physically

and medically he suffered for taking care of the horse

and it shortened his lifespan in the end.

Jeff Gusky leads his team to a section of the quarry

that has always intrigued yet baffled him.

There's a mystery in this place,

I've never been able to figure it out why

here do you have Indian carvings,

and I think I can find some of them above,

let's see.

Wait here, look at this.

It's a canoe.

Yeah, that's your typical birch bark canoe.

Do you have any idea why you'd have Indians here?

What this could be a symbol of is there

are the nine Passamaquoddy in Company I.

And they all came from Pleasant Point, Maine

which is where the nation exists now.

There are, yeah.

There were Indians in Company I.

Initially skeptical about the story himself,

Jonathan Bratten digs deep into the Maine military records.

When I got down to examining the actual roster,

lo and behold it's true, there were nine of these guys,

including the Chief's son, Moses Neptune.

And these guys served in Company I

throughout the war.

More astonishing still is that these Native Americans

would volunteer to fight in the first place.

When we entered World War 1 in 1917,

Passamaquoddy's didn't have the right to vote.

They didn't have the right to own land individually.

A lot of rights that people take for granted.

Citizenship to the American Indians

in the United States didn't come about until 1924.

For Jeff, this poses a new challenge.

Are these carvings the work of Native Americans?

Holy cow.

That's a whole relief of a headdress and everything.

That's incredible.

But none of the carvings has a name,

and without a name, Jeff Gusky's team has no definitive proof

connecting the Passamaquoddy to these intriguing symbols.

In his final days at Chemin Des Dames,

Ralph Moan engages in a bloody night fight

with a German patrol.

Second platoon got wise.

We jumped up and put hand grenades and machine guns

to them.

One man had his head blown off and it made a ghastly sight

suspended in the barbed wire.

The snipers got about...

He ends his diary in March and says,

"I'm going to cut this diary out right now.

"No one wants to remember what we've been through.

From now on, all we see is HELL."

The "hell" is capitalized.

It hits you right here.

March 18th, 1918.

Yankee division leaves the front,

but when the German Spring Offensive

smashes through allied lines,

Yankee division will be called upon to fight

a crucial battle.

German forces are within striking distance of Paris.

Wow.

That's right.

Explorer Jeff Gusky and his time discover

an American Eagle carved by an unknown soldier

from Yankee division.

But in 1918, the quarry they recently occupied

falls back into enemy hands.

In late June, the Germans storm south as far as the Marne river.

In the center of the hastily assembled Allied defense line,

barring their way to Paris,

German forces once again find Yankee division.

They meet in a picturesque sounding place:

Belleau Wood.

The woods were so battle scarred

that they could barely dig in because

there were so many dead bodies.

Military historians Len Kondratiuk

and Jonathan Bratten make their way to

Yankee division's front line,

while Jeff Gusky meets up with historian Rob Dalessandro.

The truth of the matter is that Yankee division

spent thousands of lives

casualties killed in action or wounded

-to take this piece of ground. -Right here.

Right here, right where we're standing.

And this hill was almost impossible to take

because of the effects of artillery.

[explosions]

So this is the devil.

A German field artillery piece.

And it all comes down to this little part right here.

This is called the recoil mechanism.

And it allows artillery to be used over and over again

very quickly in a pin-point fashion.

They were under fire the whole time.

I mean, this could either be a fighting position

or a big shell hole.

Rob, I've seen hundreds and hundreds of American names

in darkness on the walls of underground cities.

Is this what drove them there?

Exactly.

If you're out in the open and these guns are raining down

on you, you're finished.

That barrel was a killer of thousands

and thousand of soldiers.

And artillery really reaches its primacy

during the first world war.

After two weeks of hard fighting,

Yankee division and the Allied forces prevail at Bellau wood,

and begin pushing the Germans back.

They must have been exhausted because they advanced

I think about nine miles during the offensive.

15 kilometers in heaving machine gun fire.

Artillery, gas, not eating,

and if you're advancing into gas,

you've got your gas mask on.

The war wasn't over at that point by any means.

But it was absolutely a crucial turning point.

The Germans never are able to make another

large scale impact on the frontlines.

The Americans begin to chip away and eventually

break through pretty spectacularly

in the fall of 1918.

Among the 3000 Yankee division soldiers killed and wounded

in July 1918 are several whose names Jeff Gusky and his team

have come to know from the Chemin Des Dames quarry.

Oh, yes, this is a guy from Maine.

Leroy Hoskins.

Oh my gosh.

What's so important about Hoskins?

So you know how we talk about family connections?

There were three Haskins in Company F 103, all from Milo.

Two of them were brothers.

Leroy was their nephew.

And Leroy was wounded in action severely.

It's strange but in a small town,

he had two uncles named Hoskins also

who were also enlisted at approximately the same time.

One of which was killed in the war.

And of course, one of them, my grandfather, was wounded.

So two out of three in one family is quite a number

when you look at the town of Milo which only had

2000 people at the time.

Harold Lombard with the automatic rifle squad

is one of the lucky ones.

He made it through the war unscathed,

returned home and started a family.

On a quiet street in Springfield, Vermont,

Jeff Gusky manages to track down two of this three sons,

David and Harold Lombard Jr.

-Hello. -Well, Jeff Gusky.

At last we meet.

-Pleasure. -Hurray.

-It's a pleasure. -Dave Lombard.

-Good to meet you. -It's a pleasure.

Harold, Dave, I have something to show you

that you probably never knew existed.

A photograph of an inscription that your dad wrote in 1918.

And this came from where?

This is an underground city. It was a quarry

prior to World War 1.

Going back to the middle ages.

How does it make you feel?

It... I'm... it makes me feel

I'm with my father right there.

That means a lot.

No, it really means a lot.

And it's wonderful of you to bring these pictures.

It's an honor.

That's the brothers, right next to each other

on the wall there.

Besides his brother Francis,

Harold had with him another constant companion.

A New Testament, a pocket version that he carried

in his pocket all through the war.

On the leading flyleafs,

he's listed right there

are all the battles that they fought in, I believe.

And on here...

Today's been a day I will never forget.

I held a Bible that was in the pocket

of this gentleman's father when he wrote his inscription

almost 100 years ago.

I was there last Thursday underground

in France in front of the inscription

just where he would have been.

The only inscription with an exclamation point afterwards

is the one that says, "Home!"

And I can imagine what a wonderful scene

that must have been

and how grateful his parents were

and how glad they were to see Harold

and his brother Francis finally come home

from the awful, awful war.

-Jeff, welcome to Maine! -Jonathan.

-Great to see you again, man. -Good to see you again.

Come on in.

At the Military Historical Society Museum

in Augusta Main, with the help of Lieutenant Jonathan Bratten,

past and present are about to converge again.

I've got something for you.

Great.

This was left by your grandfather

almost 100 years ago underground

beneath a farm field in France

where he was for about six week during World War 1.

Corporal Leroy Hoskins, Company F.

Can you picture him with his bayonet carving into the stone.

He was a pretty detailed guy, so yes I can.

[laughing]

He'd want to make sure everything was just right

so people would know he was there.

Yeah.

There's no question about that.

This is a photo of my grandfather

right after the war.

He was smart enough to marry this lady right here

who was my grandmother.

I found out personal stories

that are so human.

For example, one young man

signed his name in a very particular way.

February 14th, 1918.

George Louis Currier.

Yeah, that's his writing.

[laughing]

-You recognize it? -Yes, it is.

Because I can tell by the Gs in his name.

As a matter of fact, it's really funny because

when I print, I print just like that.

It's like a shipwrecked person who wants someone

to know that they once lived,

and so they put a note in a bottle,

and decades after that shipwrecked person is gone

from this earth, it washes up on shore

and someone finds it.

But one set of inscriptions is still unaccounted for.

Those mysterious American Indian carvings.

Are they from the Passamaquoddy?

Or someone else?

North of Verdun in France,

Jeff Gusky follows a trench line

where Yankee division fought its final bloody campaign

of World War 1.

In the Meuse Argonne region,

1.2 million American troops, the largest number of the war,

attack as the allies push the German to surrender.

The Meuse Argonne offensive October, November 1918

is the deadliest or costliest military campaign

in American history.

The casualties are just enormous.

We lost to both combat and disease

over 125,000 men.

Jeff's drawn here by one unit:

the Passamaquoddy Indian squad.

He's looking for evidence that might connect them

to elusive symbols carved in the cavern walls.

In the final days of the war, the squad is attacking

German strongpoints like this.

I feel like I'm walking on almost sacred ground.

The last full day of the war, November 10th, 1918,

the American Yankee division were in the midst of

a violent battle, right here.

Pushing the Germans back.

Among them is the Passamaquoddy chief's son,

Moses Neptune.

I found this letter written by Moses Neptune

talking about the war and how everybody's going to church

and how he's sending most of his money

to his parents.

School children and all who help.

I have sent $20 to you and hope you will get it.

I'm going to send $5 to my brother Joe.

All the boys have gone to hospital with the flu.

Only George Stevens and I stayed with the company.

Lots of love..."

The family received that letter

two weeks after they were notified by the military

that their son died.

He was destined to be the traditional chief,

and perhaps he joined the military

to go get some worldly experience.

I'm not sure.

On the last full day of that war,

he lost his life and we lost him.

As a family, and as a nation, Passamaquoddy nation.

Moses Neptune is among the last of the roughly

10 million soldiers killed before World War 1 finally ends

on November 11, 1918.

The gunfire stopped, the killing was over.

The terrible traumatic injuries would happen no more.

But the scars of 100 years ago are still with us.

Jeff Gusky knows the Passamaquoddy

fought valiantly among these ruins.

Look at this.

But did Moses Neptune and his brothers

carve these symbols?

It's a mystery that's been waiting to be solved

for 100 years.

I was able to go into the caves in France.

When you get down there, there's just carvings

all over the walls.

Military Historian Jonathan Bratten

has come to find out if Jeff's photos contain

details only a Passamaquoddy tribal member

can identify.

And is this type of headdress...

At the time period, this would be the type of headdress.

Our traditional headdress is shaped a little bit different,

but in the late 1800s, a lot of men

joined the Wild West show

and they came back with these Sioux head bonnets.

Wow.

You can see the profile.

To me it looks like one of the soldiers.

And then he's got the headdress sort of radiating out.

Yeah.

If I saw this earlier, I could've showed you

some paintings of the exact same thing.

We have lines radiating out of them

to show the spiritual connection.

But it's this image of a simple object

which turns out to conceal hidden meaning.

Can you see the outline?

Do you think it's a canoe?

Oh! Oh, yeah, yeah.

I was focusing on those symbols.

The crucial clue is invisible to anyone

who's not Passamaquoddy.

I don't know if you see that, but you can see

it's almost like a German swastika?

For us, it's been a cultural symbol

for 1000s and 1000s of years, and

it means peace and friendship.

The images of a culture

are important than an individual's initials or names.

Yeah.

Yeah, these are powerful.

Powerful symbols that they were there.

Finally, the connection Jeff Gusky and his team

have been searching for.

[drumming]

[chanting]

Thanks in part to Jeff Gusky's images,

the courage shown by the Passamaquoddy soldiers

who carved them is finally being recognized.

In July 2016 at the community hall,

some 300 tribal members gather for a special ceremony.

Many are veterans, proudly wearing their uniforms.

Passamaquoddy people have been involved

in wars since time immemorial protecting our homeland.

Today we will be honoring Samuel Dana, George Stevens Sr.,

Moses Neptune, Henry Sockbeson,

David Sopiel, and Charles Lola.

[chanting, drumming]

During World War 1, when the soldiers

were wounded or killed,

they didn't receive the recognition

that other soldiers received

because they weren't citizens.

Almost 100 years later,

that wrong is finally being put right.

Medals will be presented by Lieutenant Bratten

and Linda Allen.

The families of the six Passamaquoddy soldiers

wounded or killed in action

while fighting with Yankee division

are receiving the honors denied to them

during their lifetime.

On behalf of the Maine Army National Guard,

and the bureau of Veteran Services,

we present the gold star honorable service medal

to the family of Moses W. Neptune.

Moses was the son of the tribal chief William Neptune.

So let it not be said that the Passamaquoddy did not

send their best to war in defense of their nation,

and their country.

To come face to face with their family members

after seeing what they've done in France,

you can't put it into words the type of

feelings that you have.

-Thank you. -Thank you.

Your father, David T. Sopiel,

was wounded outside the woods of Ypres, France,

on July 22nd, 1918.

His actions were critical in winning the battle

of Chateau-Thierry.

I think when they carved their names and their

symbols of their culture and heritage

on the walls at the Chemin Des Dames,

it was asking to remember us.

And I think that's what we're doing now,

and it's what we must continue to do in the future.

For the tribe, it's completing the circle.

The circle that we know, things will be right eventually.

Even for the warriors of World War 1.

[drumming, chanting]

Far from the celebrations,

Jeff Gusky can still feel proud.

His photographs have helped bring

an ancient injustice to light.

It spurs him to continue.

These young men who wrote their names

on the walls of the Underground Cities

almost 100 years ago have family members

that are still alive.

And I realize now that the work is just beginning.

It's important to realize that

great historical events are not fought by masses.

They're fought by individuals.

And the stories of every individual is what

makes up that story.

This is so beautiful.

Looks like a guy from New Hampshire.

There are hundreds of stories left to be told.