At 44 avenue Marechal Foch in Saint Cloud, on the left pillar entering the children's playground.
A stone plaque dedicating the square to Staff Sergeant Lawrence R. Kelly. SSG Kelly served with the 82nd Airborne Division but served with the 1193 Engineer Base Depot Group when he was wounded.
From his letters to the French woman, Marcelle Thomas:
Lawrence Russell Kelly (1902-1946) lived and died in Altoona, Pennsylvania. At 15 in 1917, he lied about his age and fought for eight months in France during WWI. Re-enlisting at 40 in 1943, Kelly was wounded jumping into France on D-Day with the 82nd Airborne Division. Kelly was subsequently transferred to field artillery and was in an advanced position on August 25, 1944 with the 1193 Engineer Group. That day Major Morel-Deville's column was to enter Paris over the Pont Saint-Cloud. Determined to be the first American to enter Paris, Kelly commandeered a jeep and headed over the bridge ahead of all others. A Frenchman at the other end of the bridge, made nervous by the rapidly approaching vehicle and certain it contained German soldiers, emptied his newly acquired German Mauser at the jeep – hitting Kelly six times. He fell from the jeep just fifty yards from the entry to Paris. Carried to the store of the young Marcelle Thomas, whose family owned the building in which she worked as a pharmacist, Kelly impressed her and all others by not crying out in his suffering. By report, he emptied his pack of cigarettes to those around him and instructed them not to blame the unfortunate Frenchman who had shot him. Transported between several hospitals in France and England, Kelly eventually went home to Altoona, Pennsylvania, where he continued to undergo surgery after surgery to address his 36 wounds. Kelly and Thomas exchanged over twenty letters in the interim between his return to Altoona and his death. Thomas set out to assemble these albums as a tribute to the event, and a letter from her in the album reads:
"On this radiant summer day, at the head of the American troops, you rush to greet Paris. Five dreadful shots: you drop down. The splendid warrior who arose from out of the sea on D-Day came to his journey's end on the pavement of Saint-Cloud. You are carried to the nearest pharmacy: mine. You suffer terribly but not a cry, not a moan. It is the gratefulness and tender love of a whole corner of France which is throbbing in this book: Royal Princesses and poor old people in the asylum, artists, writers and workmen, shopkeepers and clerks, officers and soldiers ... little children ... famous men and women, all of them, want to send you a token of their love and remembrance."
The American Ambassador in Paris received the albums in August 1946 and sent them by ship to Washington. On the eve of the ceremonial presentation of the albums to Kelly, he succumbed to his injuries. Much weakened from his many surgeries, Kelly suffered a heart attack and died that night, a full two years after sustaining the injuries in Saint-Cloud. The Purple Heart awarded to Kelly for his valor in service is offered with the albums. Kelly was memorialized in Saint-Cloud by a plaque on the Pont Saint-Cloud and a park named in his honor.
Source: From the Kislak Collection.
VILLE DE SAINT CLOUD
SQUARE
LAWRENCE R. KELLY
--------------
CE SQUARE
EST DÉDIÉ AU SERGENT CHEF
LAWRENCE R. KELLY
D'ALTOONA (PENNSYLVANIE)
QUI FUT
MORTELLEMENT BLESSÉ
LE 25 AOUT 1944
LORS DE SON ENTRÉE DANS SAINT CLOUD
EN AVANT GARDE
DE L'ARMÉE LIBÉRATRICE
DU GÉNÉRAL PATTON
English translation:
City of Saint Cloud. This plaque is dedicated to
Staff Sergeant Lawrence R. Kelly of Altoona, Pennsylvania, who was mortally
wounded on 25 August 1944 while entering Saint Cloud in the advanced party of
General Patton's liberating Army.
