1914-1918
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Belfort, France – 27th September 1915
War Memorials that list in every village strings of similar names, as if entire families were decimated in one event. They were. Signs for cemeteries and ossuary’s of every nation pointing in every direction at every crossroad. Barren fields still peppered with ammunition, squelching mud still spitting out the occasional corpse … World War 1 will never really leave France, Belgium, Europe.
Red Poppies, Blue Bluets on lapels in the UK and France… living memories visible in every European landscape.
A couple of years back, my son’s American school in Delhi tasked me with an essay to write something about us, Europeans. As an introduction to his nationality, I started off by something I never saw anywhere else: the WW1 War memorials in every village, every town. There are 130,000 unidentified dead at Verdun ossuary alone. The Stalingrad memorial at Mamayev Kurgan, honours 34,505 dead. The Vietnam War memorial in DC lists 58,318 dead.
The industrial scale and scope of this collective suicide, and its constant looming presence seemed to me as appropriate an introduction to Europe as any.
Many much better writers than me, Ernst Jünger, Roland Dorgelès, Erich-Maria Remarque, have written about it from direct personal experience. The Lords of the Rings has been directly inspired by it. They all spoke of the bone chilling fear, the demented chaos, the random destruction, the utter annihilation. To me, it always felt like the morning chill of the humidity crawling up from standing with sodden boots in a brown water pool. You stamp your feet, but not too much to not splash what it could be. The bleak sun of Picardie never really rises over the horizon. It just glows, corpse-grey, over the squelching mud. You never know what you are standing on. Or against. Your foot may, will, fall through a thorax. A corpse, corpses, likely. You wait. Your heroic duty being enduring it all.
The Great War, the last war. The Last of the Last. That’s what it was called in France: “La Der des Ders“.
I grew up with pictures of that war everywhere around me. The victorious France of 1918 and its heroic soldiers. Pictures that my maternal grandmother lugged around. Or our paternal ancestors at the front, photos that my cousin Fanny shared with me a few years back. The stout Savoyards, the mountain people, prime soldiers of WW1, WW2. One day, I will dig in all of that. How much it meant to all these people you got to know a little better through these pages.
But today is about them, not me. So let’s take a pause and look and listen to what they have to say.
The postcard
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Belfort, France – 27th September 1915
“My dear Louise,
I send you a picture of my combat section when we went to Belfort. I am not [looking] good on it as I was looking at the fire engines the firemen were using very near [to us]. You will see that I am doing well. That is the most important. I am doing very well, health is good. I think you are as well. Kiss the kiddies often for me until I come and do it myself. A thousand good thoughts to Laiten and Pierre and his family. I think I will go to Monthoux in the month of January. What a good furlough I am contemplating.
If the uncle has not gone to Yenne, he must wait until I go home. I would rather buy than inherit, it will be cheaper. I think that my little Louisette is in very good health. If only the weather would be nice during my furlough, I could help a little.
Goodbye much loved little one. Get my best kisses for all of you.
Your husband that does not forget you and loves you very much.
Jean.”
Jean-Louis Dupraz
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My great-grandfather from my father’ side. On the first picture – the front of the postcard – you can see him too: 3rd from the right, 3 row from the front, looking left.
Savoy, France
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