PR Log (Press Release) –
Feb 18, 2010 – Renowned Utah sculptor ready to cast statues of French W.W. II “common” heroes
By Christian Probasco
KEARNS, UTAH—celebrated sculptor Stan Watts is ready to cast the molds and pour the bronze for statues honoring some unsung French heroes of World War II and the little-known but highly effective fighting unit of which they were a part.
Watts, a man of deep faith who is perhaps best known for his work “To Lift a Nation”—three enormous statues of the firemen who raised the flag above the wreckage of the World Trade Center after 9/11--agreed to cast the statue soon after learning the story of the Free French, and he is selective about which projects he takes on.
“This is an important piece,” he says. “I wanted it done right.”
The piece consists of two statues which are one and a half times life size. On the left is a French national soldier modeled on Lieutenant Daniel Nevot, now a U.S. citizen residing in St. George, Utah, who fought for French General Phillippe Leclerc and his tiny but ferocious Free French Army from North Africa to Hitler’s mountain redoubt in Berchtesgaden.
Standing beside Nevot is an unknown African ‘tirailleur’ or rifleman, one of the native troops which made up the bulk of the French forces, without which, as Nevot says, “we could not have achieved anything.” Recruited from Senegal, Morocco and Algeria, the tirailleurs helped turn the tide against the Axis forces in Europe. Tens of thousands of them died fighting for the French.
Nevot had been intending for years to donate a work of art to the Chad Marine Infantry Regiment, formed from units which had fought in North Africa, but he hadn’t found an artist. A friend of his son-in-law mentioned the project to Watts in church one Sunday. The sculptor investigated the story and quickly decided he had found a worthy subject.
Watts and Nevot will officially present the statues to the regiment when it moves its headquarters to Colmar, France, in July of 2010.
Nevot was just a teenager when the Wehrmacht overran France in 1940. He was one of approximately 600 men who initially answered General de Gaulle’s famous call for his countrymen to continue the fight against the Axis powers. As a soldier in Leclerc’s desert army, he commanded an armored car in an engagement against the Italian stronghold of Koufra, in Libya. Outgunned and out-numbered, the French nevertheless captured the fortress and then won a series of battles which crippled Axis supply lines and contributed significantly to the ultimate defeat of German General Erwin Rommel’s army in North Africa.
Soon after that crucial early victory, which swelled his army with converts from the French army under the collaborationist Vichy government, Leclerc made his “serment de Koufra;” a pledge to cease fighting only “when our colors float over the Cathedral of Strasbourg.” Strasbourg was annexed by the Germans after the French capitulation. Having earlier liberated Paris, Leclerc’s forces captured the cathedral and fulfilled the pledge in November of 1944. Nevot, whom Leclerc called the “Corporal of Koufra,” accompanied the general the whole way.
Watts wanted to capture the spirit of the troops before the victory at Koufra, when the odds were clearly against them. His works often depict his subject’s uncertainty and vulnerability at the onset of a great task. A few years ago, he cast a bronze of General George Washington praying atop his horse at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
“Valley Forge was the low point in the war,” explains Watts, “The soldiers didn’t have warm clothing or food, they hadn’t been paid…they were dying. When their terms ran out, they were going to quit. Washington assembled them and offered them several months pay to stay on. He told them he didn’t know where he was going to find the money but that he would. He asked for that volunteers who would continue the fight step forward. Nobody stepped forward.”
Completely disheartened, Washington rode off into the woods.
“He was telling himself, ‘I’ve done everything I can do and it isn’t enough,’” says Watts, “I believe at that point he appealed to a force greater than himself.”
Washington returned from his cold sojourn an inspired man.
“He told his soldiers, ‘You don’t know where we are. You don’t realize the opportunity that’s in front of us. Let me tell you: when we triumph over our enemy, it will be the greatest victory in the history of civilization.’”
As even some British historians have conceded, Washington’s men went on to achieve great things.
Leclerc must surely have experienced similar doubts after the fall of France. If Watts were doing a sculpture of him he might have been able to carry the theme across to the new work. The added dimension was that Nevot wanted Watts to cast a sculpture of the enlisted men who did most of the actual fighting and won the war.
“There are too many statues of generals in France,” says Nevot, “and not enough statues of the common soldier.”
The common soldier could do worse for a spokesman. Soon after Koufra, Nevot and two comrades captured the Italian garrison of Gatroun and its 150 defenders by themselves, sneaking past the perimeter disguised as Arabs, taking the commander prisoner in his own office and ordering him to assemble his men in the courtyard where the Frenchmen could hold them at bay with the fort’s machine guns until reinforcements arrived. He killed several enemy soldiers in close combat, was strafed by a Stuka dive bomber, liberated his hometown of Couprey on a Harley Davidson motorbike and survived the German landmine which shredded the bike soon after. And he never backed down from a dangerous mission.
“I was young did whatever my commanders wanted,” he says, “I always raised my hand when they asked for volunteers.”
Watts is clearly content to be portraying an extraordinary common man. He doesn’t ask that Nevot’s faith match his own, preferring to let the unlikely historical outcome of Leclerc’s war speak for its divine purpose. What he does ask in his daily prayers is that he be able to accurately render the moment of transcendence over deep pessimism that any soldier, or human being for that matter, must experience before achieving greatness.
“Each of us,” says Watts “has a Valley Forge.”
For more information, please contact Stan Watts at Atlas Bronze Casting, (801) 967-0557 / atlasbronze@hotmail.com or Christian Probasco, press agent at (435) 851-6485 / eprobe2002@yahoo.com.
Captions for photographs
All photographs courtesy Pat Johnson
Watts working on clay model—Sculptor Stan Watts working on the tirailleur’s rifle. At the onset of the conflict, the Free French were equipped with weapons from the last war, or earlier, and whatever supplies they could scavenge. Leclerc’s column was often referred to as “Leclerc’s Homeless.”
Nevot statue close-up—The young Daniel Nevot commanded an armored car during the African campaign. When he wasn’t attacking enemy fortifications or being strafed by German planes, he would join with two or three other cars to reconnoiter for German or Italian encampments in what became known as ‘rat patrols.’
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