Tuesday September 9, 1930

The morning saw the pilgrims off to visit Versailles. (1) They would be there for about 1½ hours. En route to Versailles, the pilgrims passed the Trianon Palace Hotel, where President Wilson lived during the peace negotiations of 1919.

In 1930, Versailles was a town with about 65,000 inhabitants. It is located not very far from the center of Paris.

Louis XIV transformed his father’s hunting lodge into the monumental Chateau de Versailles in the middle of the 17th century, and it remains France’s most famous and grand palace. Situated in the leafy, bourgeois suburb of Versailles, the baroque chateau was the kingdom’s political capital and the seat of the royal court from 1682 until the fateful events of 1789 when revolutionaries massacre the palace guard. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were ultimately dragged back to Paris, where they were ingloriously guillotined.
The most famous places in the palace are the Hall of Mirrors (2), the King’s ornate private chapel, the Grand Apartments of the King and of the Queen, the King’s Bedchamber and apartments of the Dauphin (the crown prince). Versailles features 700 rooms, 67 staircases, and countless pieces of priceless art, including paintings and sculptures.

A major highlight of the tour of Versailles for Josephine and the pilgrims was seeing the room where the peace treaty that ended the war was signed on June 28, 1919 – the Hall of Mirrors. The table used for that signing was kept in the room where the king ate with the queen – when he did eat with her.

The pilgrims had very limited time in the courtyards of Versailles before beginning the return trip to Paris. On the return trip, the bus drove through the Bois des Fausses Reposes, one of the many forests surrounding Versailles.

Lunch was a little later today, at 12:45 at the hotel. The afternoon was free.

Some in the Missouri delegation had an interesting afternoon. They went to the American embassy to present the Missouri service flag to General Joffre. The general had asked for it because soldiers from Missouri had carried it down the streets of Paris when the armistice was signed.

After dinner at the hotel at 7 pm, Josephine returned to her room to pack her luggage and tag it so that it could be transferred to the railway station.

Did Josephine have any treasured souvenirs that she carefully packed? Did she have any pressed flowers, grass, stones, soil, or flags from Buddy’s grave site? Was she able to purchase any packets of postcards from the places she had seen? (In Paris she could have purchased a souvenir dough boy tin hat that said “Souvenir of the Gold Star Visit”).

This was Josephine’s last day in Paris. What were her thoughts and emotions about all that she had experienced since her arrival in Paris twelve days ago?




Source: written by Carolyn Ourso