Archive for first World War

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16 avril 1917

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags , , , , , on April 16, 2017 by xi'an

Today is the Centenary of the battle of Le Chemin des Dames (April 16-25, 2017) during WW I, which ended up as a slaughter (271,000 French casualties and 163,000 Germans casualties) and a complete military disaster. Which led to a significant rise in mutinies (pretty much disconnected from the starting Russian revolution) and to British divisions taking over this district. While there are many other examples of an insane disregard of infantry troops by the war commanders, this place stuck in the French collective memory. I remember as a kid listening to my neighbour telling me about this place as his worst experience during the war. (While never mentioning the mutinies, which remained somewhat shameful for most of the Century.)

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Verdun 1916, a hundred years ago

Posted in Kids, pictures with tags , , , on May 29, 2016 by xi'an

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Somme graves

Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , on April 9, 2016 by xi'an

As mentioned in a previous post, we ended up spending Easter break in the Somme, close to the part of the Western Front that opposed German and Franco-British armies  between 1914 and 1918, with horrendous human losses: the first day alone of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916 saw around 60,000 British casualties! For a final gain of less than 10 kilometres… And a total number of dead close to a million. Unsurprisingly, the area is speckled with war cemeteries and memorials. Including an Australian National Memorial which commemorates the 16,000 Australian dead during World War I, including 11,000 with unmarked graves.  As for the cemeteries near the D-day beaches, I am always deeply moved when visiting war cemeteries, uncomprehending the waste of innumerable live of young men by military stratèges unable to adapt to new forms of warfare and throwing waves of foot soldiers against impregnable machine gun nests.

When running this weekend in the quiet and green Somme countryside, surprising a young deer which fled across the immense plain, with only a few bare thickets here and there, I was also wondering at how hellish was the place a hundred years ago, at how unworldly it should have looked to the entrenched soldiers, and whether or not any of this region had kept anything in common with the pre-war era, since entire villages were more than flattened, as shown by the picture of Guillemont below…

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the 39 steps

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, Running, Travel with tags , , , , , , , on May 3, 2015 by xi'an

I had never read this classic that inspired Hitchcock’s 39 steps (which I neither watched before).  The setting of the book is slightly different from the film: it takes place in England and Scotland a few weeks before the First  World War. German spies are trying to kill a prominent Greek politician [no connection with the current Euro-crisis intended!] and learn about cooperative plans between France and Britain. The book involves no woman character (contrary to the film, where it adds a comical if artificial level). As in Rogue Male, most of the story is about an unlikely if athletic hero getting into the way of those spies and being pursued through the countryside by those spies. Even though the hunt has some intense moments, it lacks the psychological depth of Rogue Male, while the central notion that those spies are so good that they can play other persons’ roles without being recognised is implausible to the extreme, a feature reminding me of the Blake & Mortimer cartoons which may have been inspired by this type of books. Especially The Francis Blake Affair. (Trivia: John Buchan ended up Governor General of Canada.)

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A kitsch Monument aux Morts

Posted in pictures, Travel with tags , on April 23, 2011 by xi'an

Close to Argentan, there is a little village called Le Pin au Haras with a beautiful national stud and a rather kitsch war memorial: the soldier bust is indeed painted in the original colours of the first World War French uniform, the famous bleu horizon that, along with red pants, made soldiers such great targets… Even the medal (presumably the Croix de Guerre) , the fourragère and the helmet jugular are painted in the right (?) colours… This may have been the original version of the bust, only recently restored to its original colors, as google shows there exist other painted war memorials in France.

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