Edouard (portrait photo below, early 1917) had joined the French Army, and was killed near a small village in Champagne, France, in 1917.
When Jean-Joseph found his son’s body in 1919, he raised the cross in the photo below, and placed upon it the helmet Edouard was wearing at the moment he was killed (possibly even the same one in Edouard’s photo). It still remains in place today, a rusting tribute to its final owner.
The grieving father also left a memorial to his son, which says
To the memory of
IVALDI, Edouard Marius
of Pavillons-sous-Bois
Corporal of the
7th Infantry Regiment,
9th Company
Died for France
30 April 1917
Erected by Jean Ivaldi, his father,
out of objects found in this place
that had belonged to him.Today the location of Edouard Ivaldi’s grave is kept hidden away from tourists, guarded jealously by the locals for whom he died.
And this grave is especially distinctive and sacred, because more than a century later, Corporal Edouard Ivaldi still rests upon the actual spot where he fell in battle, in a grave marked and memorialized by his own grieving father.
Pour tous les soldats de la
Premiรจre Guerre mondiale. #HistoryLand (Photo credit: Charles Platiau.)
