On the main road, the D-25, through Courville, which is 4.5 kms south of Fismes. The building is in the center of the Place Henry Russel.

Commemorative Object
A spring fed brick wash house and town water supply fountain. On the front of the structure is the fountain, now used as a decorative planter for flowers. The building was a center for women of the town to come and do their laundry. A stone plaque is mounted on the front facade, and is topped with a stone sculpture of an Eagle.

The memorial was funded by Henry Russel, the father of William Muir Russel.

LT William Muir Russel was assigned to the 95th Aero Squadron, First Pursuit Group of the American Air Service. According to “A Happy Warrior,” on the morning of Aug. 11, 1918, Russel was piloting a Spad XIII plane as a rear guard of a 13-plane patrol. It was a month after Quentin Roosevelt, son of former President Theodore Roosevelt, had been killed in aerial combat.

Russel was cut off by a German patrol that “ came out of the sun upon him.” His companions rushed to his defense, but he got separated in the dogfight, “and they never saw him again.”

Accounts describe how Russel had just performed a tricky double “renverse” maneuver but was hit, and “very soon the plane, as if without control, glided and crashed to the earth.”

Locals pulled Russel’s body out of the wreckage, dug a grave and buried him in the Courville cemetery. They put up a cross, and someone wrote on it the particulars: Russel’s name and this distinction: “Aviateur Americain.”

Henry Russel died of pnuemonia in February 1920, enroute to France to recover the body of his son. He modified his will before passing away to include an important donation to the town of Courville, where his son's body had been buried. The town council decided to build a wash house and fountain in the center of town, fed by a spring on the plateau de la Bonne Maison, approximately 1 km away.

A la memoire de William Muir Russel 1ere Lieutenant Aviateur Americain Mort glorieusement pour la France le 11 aout 1918

Translation: 

In memory of William Muir Russel, 1st Lieutenant American Aviator, who fell gloriously for France on 11 August 1918.