WWI in Soissons, Henri Penotet and the Big Bomb

Henri Penotet, the father of my grandmother Suzanne Dulière of Jadotville fame, was around 44 when he was posted in Soissons, France during WWI. As a newly appointed police commissioner, his job was (probably) to secure the rear lines, as the city had been near the frontline or the frontline itself since 1915. 

He sent this picture after one of the regular heavy German shelling failed to hit the city station. After clearing the area, he posed with a dud 240mm shell. As you zoom into the picture, the dapper looking gentleman with an impish glint in his eye clashes with the rubble and littered shells, the bomb itself and the historical reality behind it. 

For him, the message was clear, and that is what he wants us to understand. The job is the clean-up. It is neither tiring nor boring, as he writes it. 

The family oral legend placed the shot in 1917. And it is confirmed by the chalk marks on the shell itself: 22 June 1917. It was a Friday. That date, that location, meant that my great-grandfather would have found himself at the epicentre of the French 1917 Army mutinies. For a few weeks, some French regiments, inspired by the Russian socialist revolution, refused to fight. It was swiftly dealt with. As a police commissioner, he would have been involved in the repression. And here he is, smiling into the camera. 

My great-grandfather sent two versions of this photo to the family back in Dijon, East of France. One to his parents, very formal and classically calligraphed – he is very much the school teacher he had been up until the war, and before becoming police commissioner. And a very different version to his daughter, Suzanne, my grandmother – the same basic story, but a more informal and personal note to his cherished daughter. 

As a side note, the French mutinies were solved by a mix of firing squads and empathy for the soldiers. Soissons ended taken by the Germans in May 1918. But in July 1918, a year after the picture was taken, the US Marine Corps breached the German lines at Soissons. And that is widely seen as the beginning of the end of the German army in WWI. 

There is a whole stack of these WWI letters to open. This is just a peek.

Stay Tuned

To his parents

“Dear daddy and mummy,

I send you a souvenir of Soissons. An amateur (it is visible) took a picture of me near an unexploded boche 240, but emptied. You cannot imagine the whistle of a piece of metal of that calibre, coming from 18 kilometres, or the noise it makes when it explodes. None ever hit the city itself in the last month, but only in the surrounding fields around the station. I am still marvellously well, and the job is neither tiring nor boring.

Good kisses to everyone, Henri”

To his daughter (reconstructed)

“[I am ] leaning on a 240 shell – secured natural [ly]. [it is] an unexploded boche shell and emptied. You see how […] [is] big. This is how they hamm[er] the station without being able to hit it. You sho[uld…] [hear it] roar by ! I was photographed by an …[am]ateur and very badly so. It does not matter. There was too much sun and the sun never [should face] the camera. And to add, the photographer did not place me as it should be. Oh well,

Big kisses”

Notes: 

Boche = French for Kraut (German)

240: 240 mm is the calibre of Heavy Mortars (240 Schweres Minenwerfer). Photos can be found in Bayerisches Armeemuseum, Inv. Nr. T 1481 f. One example of these guns is displayed in the Royal Military History museum in Brussels. 

Artillery range: 18 kilometres seems quite a range. According to Wikipedia, the maximum range of the biggest German guns (420, Big Bertha et alii) was half of that, 10 kilometres. Nevertheless, it is clear that Soissons was an early example of artillery siege during WWI. 

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