These pictures are dated, and in the first instance, very specifically: Eleven forty-five a.m. April 4th, 1916. The second is dated January 4th, 1917, an exact 10 month period. What is striking is the difference in his face. He carries a youthful and somewhat jaunty air in the first, although by the third year of the war its brutalities were by then well-known. It is clear, though, that ten months in the trenches of the Western Front have marked him. In the second his jaw is tight as if his teeth are clenched. His eyes are sad and intensely watchful. And he has a sleepless face, the line marked under his right eye, as if he had just been awakened in order to take the photo. And in the second too, he seems to be crouching down. All the better, in the world of trench warfare that he survived, to dodge a bullet that would be aimed at his head.
From the back of the first card:
"Dear sister just a line or two for the present time to let you know I am well hope you are improving. Now I must tell you Remie is gon away last night with the Bushmen Regiment 224th Overseas Batallion but they are not going where they Fighting he is going where where the fighting was going on the starting of the war 2 years ago i tried hard to go with him but the 159th wouldn't let me transfer with them Remie is coming back in 18 months Free he has all his papers to that afect good bye from Louis .."
I wonder what this son of the French would think of me posting his personal correspondence next to an entry about headless penises? 😆
My maternal ancestors arrived on the shores of New France sometime in the 1640s. And what is quite odd about Louis is that he was a royalist at a time when French Canadians were quite suspicious of their British keepers. This cultural rupture would worsen once Hitler had invaded Poland and the famous line "conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription" would be later touted by Mackenzie King.
On leave in London, Louis would meet May Wilson and they would be married during the course of the Great War. He would take her, this girl of the Empire, from her home in the most powerful city in the world at the time, to the wilds of northern Ontario. There she would bear him a girl, my mother, and die in childbirth.
All the hills and vales along
Earth is bursting into song,
And the singers are the chaps
Who are going to die perhaps.
Charles Hamilton Sorley
All the Hills and Vales Along
6 comments:
How I can relate :)
My mother’s father was a Spanish volunteer in the French Army during the Great War that as he said wasn’t so great. You see he was born in Spain, at one time the most powerful and richest country in Europe, by the time my grandfather was born in 1894 one of the poorest countries in Europe in great decline. Men like my grandfather had to go to another country to survive, many went to Argentina and France for a better life.
In 1912 my grandfather went to live in France and eventually got swept up in the Great War. Because he knew how to cook he ended up cooking foods on the front lines for his unit of foreign volunteers and learning to cook Italian, Irish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swiss, Russian, Polish, Greek, Armenian and various other cuisines. How they loved his Galician stew and other Spanish specialties along with their own foods!
Trench warfare was the worst and luckily my grandfather didn’t suffer from mustard gas exposure though he did suffer bullet wounds. Grandad didn’t say much about his experiences and was embittered by the fact that he and the other foreign volunteers in his unit never received medical care, pensions or even recognition or medals from the government of France when the Great War was won and ended. Another thing that upset him was the open and very hostile racism metted out to soldiers from the colonies of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean by their white superiors. A group of officers of color were denied the use of the officers club and so the unit my grandfather was in built them a nice officers club that was then destroyed by the racists. Because of all this in disgust he left France for the United States in 1920 and became a U.S. citizen. My war horse grandfather went on to fight in Spain against Franco and the Fascist Falange in the Spanish Civil War.
* What is going on now in the United States with the draft dodging and felon Trump, a man unworthy of the U.S. Presidency, who called war veterans losers and suckers, would make my grandfather physically sick !
-Rj
Holy Shit! Rj! Thank you for your comments. Fuck, Jesus, great story. Yes, indeed France was and still is quite a racist state (major riots in 2005 when those Arab boys were hurt and died at an electrical substation). At least here in Canada they are hiring minorities. All those WHITE Sûreté Nationale don't leave a good impression! Not to mention what the French did to Algeria when it tested atomic weapons! Still, I love the Frogs, they're part of me.
D.D. I must add- the insults and wounds inflicted on Canada by Trump and his administration of unfit acolytes and neophytes sickens all off us true Americans !
Canada and her brave and valiant men and women have been along side America in Ww1, Ww2, Korea and the Mid East wars and Canadian diplomats worked diligently to try and bring a resolution to the miserable Viet-Nam conflict.
Canada has always been a cherished and equal brother and nation to true Americans. Our grandfathers and the peoples of our countries did not fight tyranny for nothing, Trump is a miserable and infantile tyrant just like his mentor Putin. I mention Putin because I know there are some Canadians who are of Ukrainian decent and must be dismayed of the treatment of the land of their ancestors by Trump and the murderous savagery of Putin.
Trump and his malicious coven of seditionists and traitors will never live this down, true Americans will see to that !
I know of Canadians as my dad’s mom managed a motel in Palm Springs and some of our best and most pleasant guests were Canadian :) Ollie, a British veteran of Ww2 and his Canadian wife Viv hailed from Victoria B.C. and were frequent guests and a delight ! They got my grandmother hooked on Canadian VO whiskey for her whiskey cocktails and Ollie would regale us with stories of his Ww2 exploits in North Africa. You see he loved the desert because of that service, and his wife Viv who enjoyed gardening back at their home in Victoria, loved to see the wildflowers bloom after unseasonal rains in the desert around Palm Springs.
I know Ollie and Viv and all of our Canadian guests from back then would be proud of Canada standing firm against a dystopian and misled United States.
-Rj
I guess we must all be around same age. my paternal grandfather (1883-1962) fought in the Great War in Italy
Yes, T - we are contemporaries, but you are Big Daddy :)
Thank you Rj, Wow. I'm not sure if the average American realizes how insulted and angry we are up here by this new direction laid out by the president. Clearly you do and I appreciate it. It has really galvanized us. Ninety years of co-operation, hailing all the way back to FDR, has been fractured. We have always been (and will always be, barring some major calamity to befall the US) a junior partner, and we know our place. Call us spear carriers to the American Dream. But just last week the Prime Minister said very bluntly that Canada's old relationship with the US "is over". It's like a repeat of the 1930s.
Economic woes, the rise of authoritarianism, regional wars. What worries me is that the 30s ended with Adolf.
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