Four Days

(Source)

Jacques Gaudry stopped for a moment, both to catch his breath (at 48 he was no longer a young man) and let his wife Madelaine catch up to him. Five years his junior, life had not been kind to her. She had borne him five sons, all good strong lads, only one of whom, they knew for certain, was still alive.

Jacques looked up the road, everything was different, yet somehow the same. The stand of trees near the old mill were shattered stumps, the mill itself had one wall remaining. He wondered what had become of Henri, the miller.

When they had had to flee their small village in the fall of 1914, they had just received word that their oldest boy, Robert, had gone missing in action. His unit had been decimated by the Boche, the survivors had no clue what had happened to their son, a newly minted sergeant. One man had told them that the artillery had started firing on them, while they maneuvered, in the open, entire platoons had gone missing.

Was Robert alive, perhaps a prisoner in Germany? Or was his body lost in the depths of the Ardennes. They had no idea.

After they had resettled with Madelaine's brother and his wife, the next two boys, the twins Louis and Pierre had been drafted into the army. In time to fall, both of them, at Verdun. Life with Paul, Madelaine's brother, had been rough, but between the two men working Paul's small farm, they survived. At least they had somewhere to go, many from their village had kept trudging south, with little idea of where they were going. But continue on they must, as they were constantly reminded, the roads had to be kept clear for the army.

Why, Jacques had asked himself, so they can retreat faster from les Boches?

As always Madelaine had shushed him, "Papa, you know nothing of the Army. Remember the letters from Robert? The Army is led by very smart men."

As they breasted the slight rise before their village, they could see that there wasn't much left. Ruined houses, debris in the street and foreign soldiers camped nearby. Jacques supposed that they were les Anglais (actually they were New Zealanders, but neither of the Gaudrys spoke any English) and he wondered where the French Army was.

The provincial authorities had given them passes to return to their village to collect anything which might remain of their property. Little did the Gaudrys know that the soil around the village was badly polluted. The wells and streams were as well. Some in the government thought it might be years before the villages could be rebuilt. (Many never were, only the scarred land remains in the Zone Rouge, the red zone, the portions of northern France which were so badly torn up by four years of trench warfare, artillery bombardments, and poison gas attacks.)

When they arrived, they found...

Nothing.

Not even their home remained, a shattered pile of torn earth with bits of masonry mixed in, their home was gone. As was most of the village. Madelaine sat down on the verge and began to cry. Earlier in the week they had learned that their next to youngest son had been killed somewhere in the Argonne Forest. Fighting alongside the Americans Jacques thought.

First Robert, missing somewhere in the north. The twins Louis and Pierre, lost somewhere in the east. Now Matthieu, dead as well. Only young Henri remained. He was seventeen and had wanted so badly to join the army. But he was still at home. Jacques was convinced that the war was nearly at an end. His friends all said that the Boches were finished, as Lafayette had saved America, so the Americans had saved France. So they said.

The New Zealand major told his sergeant major to send one of the lads over to "see those two Froggies off," as they were expecting the Germans to start shelling them again any minute. The sergeant major had sent Billy Thompson and Hank Arrington to escort the older French couple back to wherever they came from.

Hank knew a bit of French, he had been at university when the war started, so he did all the talking. After a lot of head shaking, hand waving (could the French talk without using their hands, Billy wondered), Hank had convinced the couple to turn back. The Germans were coming and there was nothing for them here.

"Rentre chez toi monsieur." Hank insisted.

The older woman turned away and began walking, then the old man said to him, "Ma maison était ici. Tout est perdu." Then he turned as well, walking after his wife, his shoulders stooped, the weight of the world upon him.

"What he say Hank?" Billy asked, not understanding a word of what had just transpired.

"Poor bastard, seems that this was his home. No help for it, come on then, let's grab a bite before the afternoon hate." The two returned to their unit as the French couple went back to where they had come from, not home. But a place to live.

How would France ever rebuild? Jacques wondered.

Out of a population of 39,600,000, France lost roughly 1,738,000 dead and 4,266,000 wounded, over fifteen percent of the prewar population. Not to mention the cost in livestock, farmland, forests, factories, towns, villages, and cities.

When you speak of the Western Front in World War One, what you're really talking about is most of northern France and a large swath of eastern France. France was the Western Front.

Considering what the French had suffered during the war, one can understand their reluctance to do it all again with the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. From the signing of the Armistice in November of 1918 to the Nazi invasion of Poland in September of 1939, was just under twenty-one years. The sons and grandsons of the men who stood against the Germans for four long years, stood scarcely two months in 1940. France was exhausted - mentally, physically, and morally by "The Great War."

But from 1914 to 1918, the stood their ground, and paid a horrible price.

Vive la France!