Happy Bastille Day, 2019 -- July 14, 2019

Memphis News-Scimitar, 14-July-1919

On Bastille Day in 1919, the French and their allies celebrated with a huge victory parade.  

TRIUMPHAL MARCH OF ALLIES

IN PARIS AROUSES CHEERS

PARIS, July 14. (By the Associated Press.) -- The triumphal march of allied and American troops through Paris began at 8 o'clock this morning. The weather was brilliant, being more like October than midsummer.

A thousand wounded soldiers with crutches or in wheel chairs and clad, for the most part, in civilian clothes, led the parade, being preceded by a drum corps.

Guns began firing at minute Intervals as President Poincare placed a wreath at the foot of the Cenotaph at the Arc de Triomphe this morning. The empty casket, placed there in memory of the allied dead, was also decorated by other wreaths, these being placed by Premier Clemenceau, a French soldier, a French sailor, an Alsatian girl, a girl from Lorraine and Col. Edmund Gros. This last wreath was in memory of 72 members of the Lafayette escadrille who lost their lives during the war.

Marshal Joffre, the victor of the first battle of the Marne, passed under the Arc de Triomphe at 8:45 o'clock. He rode alone. Behind him came Marshal Foch, the commander-in-chief of the allied forces during the final campaign of the conflict. A storm of applause arose from the vast throng as the two marshals passed the president's stand and moved down the brilliant avenue.

Gen. Pershing, with a number of American generals, came next in line and was received with equal enthusiasm. Forty American organizations, soldiers and marines, marching with wonderful precision, were greeted by a sea of waving handkerchiefs and flags and with deafening cheers. During the parade this morning the roof of a house on the Boulevard St. Martin collapsed. Eighteen persons were injured.

Washington Evening Star, 14-July-1919