How Passamaquoddy Carvings Were Made in These Forgotten WWI Quarries in France

By NORA FLAHERTY • MAR 17, 2017

Think about the huge stone buildings of France — Notre Dame, or the huge medieval castles. That stone had to come from somewhere, right? In fact, it came from huge underground quarries, some under what would become the battlefields of World War I.

During that war, soldiers on both sides took advantage of those quarries, now abandoned, and in the largest of them they built what can only be called underground cities, with room for thousands of people inside and facilities that you probably wouldn’t associate with the front.

The quarries were an escape from the absolute horror of trench warfare, where a soldier could relax, go to church, maybe even visit a bakery. Many of them carved their names, or symbols or even sports scores, on the walls of the caverns.

In some places, the quarries are more or less intact — and more or less forgotten, except by the locals whose land is above them.

Photographer Jeff Gusky learned of the quarries while in France on another project, and discovered among other things that some of their most prolific decorators were the men of the 26th Yankee Division, many from Maine.

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