Pilgrimage to my Grandfather's War
Over the past 20 years, I have been involved in exploring various aspects of the paternal side of the Cole family. I started with my grandfather, Major Edward B. Cole, because he was a highly decorated hero in the First World War. After my father died in 1987, my mother, Mary Cole, wrote A Bridge of Remembrance telling the story of his life together interwoven with letters he wrote home to his wife in 1918.
To commemorate the Centennial of the First World War, my sister Diana Cole and I
edited our mother’s for publication with blurb.com.
Major Cole led the sixth machine gun battalion of Marines and received several medals from both France the United States for his leadership in the battle of Belleau Wood. It was the conflict that stopped the German march to Paris. In June 1918 he was mortally wounded in that battle, and is buried in Aisne-Marne American Cemetery.
As the centennial approached I sent my mother’s book to Gilles Lagin, tour guide for WWI descendants seeking information about their ancestors’ participation in the war.
As the result in 2016 a French documentary film studio brought Diana and me to France to trace grandfather’s footsteps in France with Gilles. We were one of three families featured in the film Devil Dogs: Heroes of WWI, which can be viewed with the link below:
At the grave of Major Edward B. Cole, Aisne-Marne Cemetery, Belleau Wood, France
Interview with Carolyn Kingston and Toni Tasker
In the fall of 2018 I created a power point presentation about my journey of discovery about my grandfather. My story was paired with a very different one about the grandfather of my friend Toni Tasker, who served as a private in the Army. Her search was for the French family who cared for her grandfather after he contracted the Spanish flu in 1919. The link to view this is at:
