« C’EST LA MANILLE QU’ILS PRÉFÈRENT À TOUT ». Illustration taken from Charles Guyon, Nos poilus dans les tranchées, (Larousse (Paris), 1916).
« … surtout la manille qu’ils préfèrent à tout. Ils s’y appliquent si bien qu’une bombe ne les dérange pas. »
“…especially Manille, which they prefer above all else. They apply themselves to it so well that even a bomb doesn’t bother them.” Charles Guyon, Nos poilus dans les tranchées, p. 28.
Some things only permeate gradually into my mind and my awareness. That’s been the case with la Manille. Only when reading what’s now become perhaps the most celebrated poilu account of the war, Les carnets de guerre de Louis Barthas, tonnelier, did the pieces fall into place. Some checking of digital sources and internet searches confirmed the impression and, although some translations rendered une partie de Manille as “a game of cards”, it was clear that la Manille was actually a specific card game, and an incredibly popular one amongst French soldiers in the First World War.
« Les obus des Allemands ne viennent pas jusqu’à ce châteaufort. Artilleurs, fantassins, brancardiers au repos s’y promènent, ce dimanche, 29 novembre [1914], et en prennent des photos, pendant que d’autres font, dans les estaminets, l’éternelle et passionnante partie de manille. »
Raffin, Léonce, Les carnets de guerre d’un prêtre-soldat, 1914-1918.
« Les gourbis sont étroits, encombrés de munitions; l’eau y coule les jours de pluie, des claies pourries y recouvrent le sol, les rats y foisonnent, mais on y goûte un bonheur réel. Sans bruit, l’escouade s’y groupe et y joue d’interminables parties de manille, indifférente aux explosions qui secouent le sol. »
Gabriel-Tristan Franconi, Un Tel de l’Armée Française.
“That evening, despite our limbs being worn out with fatigue, my friend V… . and I went out to buy a couple of bottles of good Meuse beer, and we looked for a quiet corner in which to enjoy them in an interminable game of manille, of which we were fanatical players.”
“The most terrible accident had befallen my former section. Three of my old pals, fooled by either a moment of calm or their own bravado, decided to make up a game of manille, without finding a fourth hand. No sooner had the cards been dealt than a 105mm shell fell right in their midst, blasting them to bits.”
“It was a lousy shelter, a simple staircase with a dozen steps around which stretcher-bearers and orderlies were already crowded. At the bottom, a little square of ground where four crazy cardplayers were busy in a game of manille.”
Louis Barthas, Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914 – 1918
“Four poilus join in a game of manille that will last until night blacks out the cards.”
Henri Barbusse, Under Fire: The Story of a Squad
Frequently, in memoirs, diaries or more fictional accounts based on lived experience, like the ones quoted above, there are references to the game. And, as these references indicate, there’s often an almost obsessional dedication to the game by the players – under shot and shell, by roadsides or in shell holes, amidst carnage and disorder, from first light till last.
So, what is la manille, how is it played and why was it so popular?
What’s in a game?
La manille is a trick-taking game played with a 32-card piquet set. A piquet set of playing cards has suites of trèfles (clovers or clubs ♣), carreaux (tiles or diamonds ♦), cœurs (hearts ♥), and piques (pikes or spades ♠). A piquet pack is like a standard 52-card French pack with the Twos (or Deuces), Threes, Fours, Fives and Sixes removed. Here’s a lithograph from the period showing the cards. It’s of particular interest because it seems it was intended to be cut up to make a piquet pack.
Title : Le piquet des tranchées : jeu à découper : [jeu de cartes, estampe] Publication date : 1915 Publication : Imp. Eug. Verneau H. Chachoin succ.r 108, r. Folie-Méricourt, PARIS, [ca 1915] Imprimeur / Fabricant : Imprimerie H. Chachoin. Imprimeur
It’s also worth noting that the cards in this set have been ‘themed’ to represent aspects of the Entente and key Allied personalities.
Meanwhile, in the collection of the museum at Fort de la Pompelle, there’s this well-used set of cards in a storage pouch in horizon blue wool cloth with service button to fasten it. Time and trouble taken to create something portable and accessible – a real sign that the owner was an enthusiast of piquet card games.
Jeu de 32 cartes à jouer accompagné de leur pochette de rangement en drap de laine bleu horizon / Set of 32 playing cards accompanied by their storage pouch in horizon blue wool cloth. Musée du fort de la Pompelle(inv. P.SN.42) Manufacturer (cards): FERD. PIATNIK ET FILS S.A. (Vienna) Propriétaire / Owner: Ville de Reims
NOT the Rules of the Game
La manille can be played by 2 or more individuals depending on the variant, but playing as 2 teams each of two players seems most favoured and can add a particular dimension to the game, as we’ll see. The objective is to be the first player (or team) to win the most tricks at the end of each round. Points are then awarded for the hands won. Confusingly, the card values are defined in this order: 10, Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 9, 8, and 7!
The highest card, the 10, is called the manille. The second highest card, the Ace, is called the manillon. Thus, the deck consists of four manilles and four manillons. The game is also played with trumps (atout). This means that the suit of the cards is taken into account, depending on whether it is the trump or not.
It’s the kind of game you could quickly and easily start (or, indeed, stop) virtually anywhere. One reason, I think, for its popularity. It’s actually even quicker to start because the cards are generally dealt in two lots of four to each player, after an initial shuffle and cut.
In the collection of ecpad, there’s what I think is a good representation of the spirit of the game (sadly, a black and white photograph of an original artwork).
[Veuillez consulter la note sur la page Contact de ce site concernant l’utilisation des documents provenant des musées et archives français. Please see the note on my Contact page regarding use of material from museums and archives].
It’s the socialising aspect of the game that I think is captured so well here. The game is the means to draw a group of comrades together (notice there are others looking on with the main players as the centre of attention). To me, it feels like the focus is on the skill of the play, rather than how the cards fall. And that also connects with the aspect of the game that encourages ‘teamwork’.
In one version of the game at least, what’s asked by each player of their partner concerning the hand the latter may be holding is where the cunning of a player can mislead (or help) other players. Because that’s the idea. Questioning of one’s partner by the player who leads off each hand is allowed. There needs to be skill in eliciting clues as to your partner’s hand and not giving information to your opponents, and the interrogating needs to be done quickly.
As with most card games, you can read the rules of the game (many of which are arcane and, in some cases, dreadfully convoluted – as in many other games), but there’s really only one way to learn how to play and that’s by having a go. Watching a few hands of the game beforehand can help considerably. Even sets of rules for the game tell you that “you have to devote a few days to observation, and the skill of la manille will come naturally. You will then really like this game…”.1 The following advice from the same rule book is also relevant to getting a feel for what the game involves: “With questions and answers as short and dry as a drum roll, the calculation of probabilities, and the science of the game, the details and application of which will come to you quickly, you will make an excellent player of spoken manille, and you will be amazed when you remember the time when you threw down your cards almost at random.” The question of probability (of what cards each player is holding and likely to play) is important and gives the game some of the characteristics of Bridge.
What I’ve described is only one variant of the game: “Spoken manille” with four players. In other options (muette or ‘silent’, or with three players – manille à trois avec un mort, or even two players – manille à deux avec deux morts, etc), the game play is somewhat different. With the ‘silent’ version, the rules and advice on how to play Whist are almost all applicable and the player who leads has to try to indicate to his partner, by his attack, the strong and weak aspects of his hand. In manille à l’envers, as the name suggests, the aim is to win as few points and tricks as possible. There are lots of other variants.
LES BONS MOMENTS. UNE PARTIE DE MANILLE. A GAME OF CARDS – 15FI784 – Lot 1 – Média 1 – Archives de la Somme
Final Thoughts.
The purpose of this post isn’t to teach anyone how to actually play the game. Having read the rules in various versions, I’ve still no better idea of how a game might look and the questioning element in ‘spoken manille‘ is absolutely opaque to me! I doubt, however, that in the war it was ever played on a cloth covered card table in an open trench in the manner illustrated by this carte postale from les Archives de la Somme. Rather than as something genteel, sources indicate this was a game played in any possible circumstance, at any and every possible opportunity. And one final observation: in all the references to the game I’ve found, it’s never been suggested the game was played for money. Of course, it may have been, but it doesn’t seem primarily to have been a gambling game. By all means, however, prove me wrong!
La Manille‘s still played to this day. So, if you’re a card buff and know how to play this game or one similar, do please share your thoughts in the comments section. Or, if you have anything else that comes to mind from reading this post or the blog generally, do get in touch.
And in my mind’s eye, somewhere (perhaps in a ruined village or a trench dugout or shelter) there’s a group of men watching the shuffle, cut and deal of the cards and listening to the back and forth of the question and answers of the lead player and partner, ignorant to the occasional earth-shattering explosion from a shell not so very far from where they are gathered. But all eyes and minds are occupied with THE GAME.
Renaudet, Benjamin, La manille : règles complètes et séparées de tous les jeux de manille avec le calcul des probabilités et l’étude des coups difficiles..(A. Michel (Paris), 1951) ↩︎
This is the second part of a two-parter on traces of la Grande Guerre in the cemeteries of Paris. In the first part, it was all about how those vestiges in Paris (but also, indeed, in any French community’s cemetery) have been shaped by people, by the Army and the State and by wealth, influence and status. Now, through real encounters in the cemeteries of Père-Lachaise, Montparnasse and Passy, what’s been shared so far helps explain the discoveries waiting for you.
Père-Lachaise
Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise is on the western edge of the eastern 20e arrondissement and we’ve got a useful guide waiting for us. With this blog, there seems little point in re-writing existing resources available online unless they need it because they contain errors of fact, obvious gaps or there’s no comparable resource available that can be drawn on. The usual criteria to go on is ‘English-language resource’ but, sometimes, the information is so readily available and intended as helpful that it’s wilful stupidity not to draw on it. Such is the case with le site des Amis et Passionnés du Père Lachaise (APPL) and its pages on la Grande Guerre 1914-1918, which is where many of the links in the next few paragraphs will lead you.
Père-Lachaise is reassuringly full of familiar names for the British and Americans. You can find all manner of celebrities you actually know (like Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison) are buried there and if anyone mentions other ‘famous names’, there’s a chance you’ve heard of them (Frédéric Chopin, Edith Piaf, Honoré de Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Bizet, Camille Pisarro, Georges Seurat, Marcel Proust, Olivia de Havilland and blah blah blah). Get the idea? It’s where you would want to be seen dead.
It’s the same for ‘celebs’ of la grande guerre. There’s Guillaume Apollinaire and Henri Barbusse and the politician Joseph Caillaux, whose attempts to find a peaceful way out of the war for France found him cast as “l’homme de la défaite” and tried and found guilty of treason. All this after his second wife, Henriette, had escaped the guillotine after shooting dead the editor of Le Figaro newspaper in what the jury decided was a crime passionel.
Barbusse’s grave carries a tribute « À la mémoire de notre camarade, pour nos années de combat commun » from fellow members of l’Association républicaine des anciens combattants (A.R.A.C.) (of which he was co-founder and president) – one of a number of French old comrade associations – in this case closely linked to the French Communist Party. The complicated array of associations des anciens combattants and their connections to the politics of the 1920s and 1930s deserve a whole blog post of its own.
Outside of writers and politicians, two of those who might be thought as ‘greats’ of the war buried in the cemetery are Gustave-Auguste Ferrié and Hyacinthe Jean Vincent. In both cases, their work had an impact that went far beyond their war work. Vincent features prominently in this blog post. In the slide show below, you can see his grave and the plaque that honours his memory and achievements. Ferrié’s grave features perhaps the most understated acknowledgement of his incredibly important work – the tribute from the lycée named in his honour: « en Hommage au Général et Savant ». Gustave-Auguste Ferrié’s contribution to France’s war effort through his work on wireless technologies and radiotelegraphy is another thing that deserves a blog post of its own – something for the future. An important engineer whose général rank came from his hugely important technological work.
There are other Great War generals here: Pierre Guignabaudet and Paul François Grossetti both died during the war – one of wounds received from a shell burst, the other from dysentery. Guignabaudet’s grave features a fine relief portrait of him in Adrian helmet. On the other hand, Joseph Louis Andlauer, Étienne André Bapst, Charles Théodore Brécard, Gustave Paul Lacapelle and Raymond Sabattier all survived the war and were buried in family plots. But Père-Lachaise is, as previously indicated, the last resting place of the great and the good and its diverse population reflects the breadth of experiences of the war. There are officers from well-to-do families, non-commissioned officers and ‘ordinary’ soldiers to support this.
Among them is Sergent Henri Ernest Sevalle, a reservist who rejoined the colours of the 37e Régiment d’infanterie on 12 August 1914 and who was killed on 11 or 12 October 1914 in the fighting at Foncquevillers (Somme) – a place many will know for associations with the British fighting on the Somme in 1916. Sevalle’s matricule militaire details that his remains were “buried in the garden behind the Gendarmerie 20 metres from the house at Foncquevillers”. His body’s here because, either during or after the war, his was one of the bereaved families that pressed the authorities to allow them to recover the remains of their loved one and bury them in the family vault.
The bodies of brothers Marcel and Maurice Dupont (Maréchal des Logis, 7e Dragons and Sergent, 154e Régiment d’infanterie respectively) lie beneath a headstone showing the two in Adrian helmets in profile. Marcel died in April 1917 from wounds received in an accident while taking part in a training course for bombers in the use of grenades. His younger brother had died almost two years previously (18 July 1915) in fighting at Bois de la Gruerie (known as « le Bois de la Tuerie » in 1915 a deadly location). Beside both names are croix de guerre – each with an étoile of worn and indeterminate colour. Maurice’s service record mentions the posthumous award of the médaille militaire, but no CdeG. In Marcel’s case, however, it’s clear his star is silver having received a citation à l’ordre de la division in July 1916 for taking charge of a group of men dispersed by an enemy bombardment and leading them to a support position, though under intense fire.
Henri Barbusse’s grave (Division 97, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise)
Barbusse’s grave has a tribute « À la mémoire de notre camarade, pour nos années de combat commun » from fellow members of l’Association républicaine des anciens combattants (A.R.A.C.)
The grave of Général de Division Paul François Grossetti (Division 94, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise)
Detail from the grave of le général Grossetti
More detail from Grossetti’s grave listing key battles he participated in – Marne, Champagne, Verdun, Orient.
The grave of Général de Division Pierre Amable Guignabaudet (Division 94, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise)
Detail from the grave of Général de Division Pierre Amable Guignabaudet (Division 94, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise)
“Ici repose Jean-Hyacinthe Vincent… ” – a board in Père-Lachaise recording detail of Vincent’s many achievements.
« en Hommage au Général et Savant » The grave of Gustave Ferrié
The tomb that holds the remains of Sergent Henri Ernest Sevalle
The tomb with profile portraits of the brothers Marcel and Maurice Dupont
The memorial to the victims of a German artillery shell that caused the church roof to collapse on Vendredi-Saint (Good Friday), 29 March 1918 in l’Église de Saint-Gervais Saint-Protais in the Marais in Paris.
Civilian Casualties of War
All the cemeteries featured in this post are primarily non-military in nature. So far, regarding Père-Lachaise, the focus has been on those who served in the military who are buried and remembered there. However, Père-Lachaise also has reminders that the war produced many civilian casualties. On Good Friday (« le Vendredi Saint »), 1918 (29 March), the church of Saint-Gervais Saint-Protais in the rue des Barres in the 4ème Arrondissement (the Marais) was struck by a German long-range artillery shell whilst a Mass was in progress. There were 91 dead and 68 injured among the congregation. Many were women. Among those victims of this incident buried at Père-Lachaise are Héloïse Strehler, Marie Thérèse Brisset de Morcour, Claudine Martin, Julie Marie Sophie Mouchet and her husband, Léonce. In this case, most are family tombs.
Also, in Division 89 of the cemetery are the graves provided by the City of Paris for the victims of two further catastrophes of war involving civilian casualties – the explosion of the grenade factory on rue de Tolbiac (October 20, 1915) in which 46 dead and 97 injured (again there were many women among the casualties), and victims of the attack by a German Zeppelin on the quartier de Ménilmontant on the night of January 29, 1916, resulting in an estimated 64 victims: 26 dead and 32 to 38 injured.
Montparnasse Cemetery – something tangible?
At this point, let’s switch attention to Montparnasse in the south of the city. Montparnasse, too, has its share of ‘names’: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Man Ray, Samuel Beckett, Jacques Chirac, the composer Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles Baudelaire, Susan Sontag, Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg, Guy de Maupassant … (I’m trying to score hits across the board here). Here, there’s another guide we can draw upon waiting to help us in the form of « Héros de la Grande Guerre au cimetière du Montparnasse » available as a PDF from the website of the author, Philippe Landru. Landru has also produced a similar guide for Père-Lachaise. Having one of these guides with you is useful, but don’t just follow them. You’ll deny yourself the opportunity of making your own discoveries.
For example, one of the most significant individuals buried at Montparnasse, and a veteran of the Great War, Alfred Dreyfus isn’t mentioned in this guide. The man at the centre of the political scandal that divided the French Third Republic between 1894 and 1906: « L’Affaire Dreyfus ». A man arrested for crimes he didn’t commit and degraded as an army officer in front of his former comrades. A man who many in the army insisted was guilty and who denied the possibility of his innocence – in many cases because he was a Jew. A man who spent over four years imprisoned on l’île du Diable in French Guiana and, ultimately, survived to have his innocence proved and to recover his honour and position and continue his career. The same Alfred Dreyfus who, in the First World War, was a reservist artillery officer and saw action on the Chemin des Dames in Spring 1917.
While my photographs fail to do justice to the monument to Adolphe Pégoud, the first French ‘ace’ of the war who’d brought down six aircraft before he was shot down himself on the last day of August 1915 by one of his former pupils, Unteroffizier Walter Kandulski, I’ve included the ones I did take because they give me a reason to post a picture of his (seemingly not-lucky-enough) mascot1 now on display in the musée de l’Armée. His monument also tells us he completed « le premier looping de l’histoire de l’aviation ».
The grave of one of the most significant individuals buried at Montparnasse, and a veteran of the Great War, Alfred Dreyfus – buried with other members of his family and his descendants.
A not very good photograph of the memorial to Adolphe Pégoud
An even worse photo of the same monument to Adolphe Pégoud
« L’aviateur qui le premier osa faire une looping, Pégoud a sa part posthume dans toutes nos victoires aériennes ». Detail from Pégoud’s memorial in Montparnasse cemetery
The penguin mascot of Adolphe Pégoud now in musée de l’Armée, Paris. An innocent witness to a tragedy?
Memorial including a photograph to Geneviève Hennet de Goutel
Geneviève Hennet de Goutel memorial plaque and photograph
The grave of Louis Verlhac, aspirant of 162e RI, mort pour la France (mplf) in March 1918
Photograph of the deceased on the grave of l’aspirant Louis Verlhac.
Representations of the médaille militaire (left) and croix de guerre avec étoile en vermeil et palme. They are discoloured and have leached verdigris.
A cemetery visitor might not be drawn to the memorial plaque and, therefore, the story of Geneviève Hennet de Goutel without Landru’s guide. Describing her as « Une infirmière de talent… », we learn details that are on her grave marker, but more too. Infirmière-major (Staff Nurse) at la Société de Secours aux Blessés Militaires (the Relief Society for Wounded Soldiers), hers is a story of France’s involvement in the war in the Balkans against the Central Powers. She was awarded the French croix de guerre and the Romanian Crucea Regina Maria (Queen Mary’s Cross, which rewarded those who contributed to the care of the wounded and the sick and those who distinguished themselves through their sanitary activity and service in time of war or epidemic), as well as the médaille d’honneur des épidémies – a French distinction for service in the fight against disease and epidemics. She herself fell victim to typhus in March 1917 while at Jassy in Romania, where she had established a hospital. There’s a good deal more in the guide.
The grave of (Fernand) Louis Verlhac, aspirant of 162e RI, MPLF in March 1918 represents one of the sadder aspects of an already-sad situation. As you can see from the photographs I’ve posted, his grave has his portrait photograph and representations of his médaille militaire and croix de guerre (notice the latter has a star and palm – a citation at corps level (« une étoile vermeille » according to his matricule militaire) and an army citation (the palm). But there’s clearly no one now taking care of this grave. Verlhac’s body was exhumed from a grave in what may be “Minorville”^ (I’d originally thought Lironville) – presumably at the request of his family. A dreadful irony then that in a nécropole nationale near the old front line his grave would be maintained by the state. Now, it seems there’s no one who cares enough to tend it.
Equally sad is the shattered stone recording the death of Jean Rambach « sous Verdun »* on 8 May 1916. The upper half of the stone is (perhaps irreparably) damaged but an enamel plaque bearing Jean’s name and dates of birth and death survives. And from this we learn that maréchal des logis Jean (Isaac Edmond) Rambach of 12e Régiment d’artillerie died a day short of his 20th birthday.
Shattered stone recording the death of Jean Rambach « sous Verdun » 8 May 1916. The upper half of the stone is broken in pieces but an enamel plaque bearing Jean’s name and dates of birth and death survives. Jean Rambach died a day short of his 20th birthday.
The tomb ‘Lazare – Lion – Famille Alfred Cahen’ with lifelike marble bust of Armand Cahen.
Red stained-glass illuminates the incredibly detailed and lifelike marble bust of le sous-lieutenant Armand Cahen
The entrance to the family vault of la famille Olchanski
A stained-glass image shows le capitaine Jacques Olchanski killed as he leads his unit against a trench full of Germans
Small portrait of Jacques Olchanski in the corner of the larger image
Slate (?) inscribed with details of Olchanski’s war service and with one of his citations.
Individual tomb dedicated to le sous-lieutenant (Jacob) Marcel Suss – a former pupil of the elite school for engineers, the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures de Paris. MPLF 9 September 1914.
vitraux patriotiques features as part of the individual tomb dedicated to le sous-lieutenant (Jacob) Marcel Suss
The grave of le général Augustin Dubail – veteran of the War of 1870, former chief of staff of the Army, army and then army group commander and military governor of Paris
The grave of le général Ridoux at Montparnasse.
The cross that marked the grave of général de division Eugène Bridoux with its metal rosette or cocarde in red, white and blue and the MPLF inscription below the general’s name.
The original grave marker of le lieutenant Léon Bernard of 102e Régiment d’infanterie, – in the family vault. portico
However, even more obvious connections to the war are what inevitably draw the eye, and there are two things Montparnasse has particular examples of: stained glass and wooden crosses.
The stained or coloured glass of the tomb ‘Lazare – Lion – Famille Alfred Cahen’ illuminates the incredibly detailed and lifelike marble bust of le sous-lieutenant Armand Cahen (as shown in the header image for this article), which shows his regiment’s number on his collar tabs, the étoile on the ribbon of his croix de guerre and the fourragère on his left shoulder. The latter was awarded to Armand’s unit, 59e Régiment d’artillerie de campagne, in December 1918. Armand Cahen died at Maule (78), south-west of Paris in 1920. He’s likely, then, shown in his uniform from that date. His likeness is an example of an aspect of the cemeteries that I also saw. The tribute to the héro sometimes dominates the family history of the tomb or vault. I think this says something of the significance attached to loss in the cataclysmic conflict that was the First World War.
It’s also evident with the Olchanski vault. Here a stained-glass window imagines the moment on 6 June 1918 when le capitaine Jacques Olchanski of the 99e RI was killed leading his unit in the attack (cleverly, the German defenders of the trench being attacked are almost devoid of colour, except grey). One corner of the image is a portrait of Olchanski. Inside the entrance is a sort of framed slate engraved with details of Olchanski’s service and one of his citations (he gained 5). I’ve never seen anything similar and wonder if anyone else has. A marble plaque (not posted) also provides more detail.
Another of these vitraux patriotiques features as part of the individual tomb dedicated to le sous-lieutenant (Jacob) Marcel Suss – a former pupil of the elite school for engineers and scientists, the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures de Paris. Suss (‘Süss’ in his matricule militaire) was an officer with 14e régiment d’artillerie during the First Battle of the Marne when he was killed on 9 September 1914.
There are generals buried in Montparnasse just as there are at Père-Lachaise. Augustin Dubail was a former Chief of Staff of the Army and, under Joffre, commander of le Groupe d’armées de l’Est, sacked as a consequence of the German attack on Verdun in February 1916, although he’d expressed repeated concerns over the state of the defences there. He was later Military Governor of le camp retranché de Paris. His status at Montparnasse as a general who held high office and who served during both the War of 1870 and the First World War is undermined by a général whose early death in the war and its circumstances and commemoration have a far greater visual impact. And it’s a cross that achieves this.
That general was (Marie Joseph) Eugène Bridoux, commander of the 5e division de cavalerie on the outbreak of war who, on 17 September 1914, was shot and killed by men of a German cyclist unit while reconnoitring by car in an area of fighting. His grave at Montparnasse remarkably still bears the remains of the cross that marked his original place of burial. It’s exposed to the elements and in a ragged condition – a remarkable survivor. For now.
However, Montparnasse can surpass even itself with another wooden cross – the original grave marker – in the family vault entrance (and, so, more protected from the elements) of le lieutenant Léon André Louis Bernard of the 7ème compagnie of the 102e Régiment d’infanterie, where one can still read, traced in black ink on the wood, his name and the number of the ambulance (6/4) where he died of his injuries at Verdun on 17 September 1916.
Finally, if you think these wooden crosses are a ‘Great War thing’, take time at Montparnasse to find the memorial to Aspirant Jean-Pierre Crémieux-Bach and Pierre Pupin.
The cemetery at Passy – Under the eye of la Tour Eiffel
But now time to move on to le Cimetière de Passy which is on a raised level behind the rather-ignored Monument à la Gloire des armées françaises designed by Paul Landowski (who’s buried in the cemetery) is in a district described as ‘chic’. It’s definitely a cemetery with cachet – although why anyone needs that when they are dead is something I don’t understand. The names are sometimes more obscure but include Bảo Đại, the last Emperor of Vietnam, Alexandre Millerand – ministre de la Guerre on the outbreak of the First World War and later Président du Conseil des ministres and, ultimately, Président de la République française, the painter Édouard Manet, the composers Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré, Marcel Renault (of the motor company), There are actresses (actors if you prefer) and anarchists, and socialites and socialists, industrialists and novelists. Regarding other Great War connections, this was where Maurice Genevoix was buried until he was panthéonisé in 2020. I missed the grave of Maurice Gamelin – probably better known for his role in the Second World War but a member of Joffre’s staff and, subsequently, a divisional commander in the Great War. Philippe Bunau-Varilla is also buried here, as is Henry Farman, the aviation pioneer. Le général Charles Huntziger, known as a Vichy general and the man who signed the 22 June 1940 Armistice with Nazi Germany in the name of France in the same railway carriage where the Armistice of 11 Novmber 1918 had been signed, is also buried here. In the 1914-1918 war he was chef du bureau d’opérations at the headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force on the Front d’Orient (the Salonika Front).
At Passy, the monument to the Wessbecher brothers, André and Henry is simple but demands a closer look. A cross with the date ‘1918’ and short inscription « Pour Toi France ». But, beneath it are the two deceased men’s ‘biographies’. In the case of André, there’s much more here than in his matricule militaire: the award of médaille militaire and croix de guerre, his service in the air service and even the manner of his death in June 1918 while flying low attacking enemy troops on the ground. In Henry’s case, death came in September 1918, although he’d previously been wounded and gassed. The monument records he was a chevalier de la légion d’honneur and had been awarded the croix de guerre. It seems from the cemetery records (digitised and available via the Geneanet website), that both brothers were originally buried elsewhere, before being re-buried in January 1921 at Passy.
Sometimes, the traces of les morts de la grande guerre are quite ephemeral. Digging deeper can reveal hidden histories. The family tomb inscription for bank employee and maréchal des logis Paul (Louis Fernand) Marcoux, tells us he was mort pour la France at Flaucourt on the Somme on 7 July 1916, but makes no mention of his brigade citation or the posthumous award of the médaille militaire in December 1920.
I photographed the headstone of (Georges) Robert Nivelle – the man who was généralissime and commandant en chef des armées françaises on the Western Front from December 1916 to May 1917 and the man most notably remembered for the military operation on the Chemin des Dames that began in April 1917 that’s usually given his name and that failed so badly to achieve its aims. Nivelle died in 1924. I should have realised, however, that Nivelle’s body was exhumed and re-interred at Les Invalides in 1931.
« Pour Toi France » – At Passy, the monument to the Wessbecher brothers, André and Henry
Biographies from the detail of the monument to the Wessbecher brothers, André and Henry
Page from Cimetière de Passy (Paris, France) – Registres journaliers d’inhumation | 13/01/1919 – 02/05/1921 featuring the names of the brothers, André Marcel and Henry Pierre Wessbecher. Link: https://www.geneanet.org/registres/view/214802/23
The Famille Guibaudet – Marcoux monument with factual and understated mention of Paul Marcoux MPLF 7 July 1916.
Page from the Registres journaliers d’inhumation Cimetière de Passy (Paris, France) | 04/09/1923 – 02/03/1926. This records both Nivelle’s burial and that his body was taken to Les Invalides in 1931. Documents conservés aux archives départementales de Paris. Link: https://www.geneanet.org/registres/view/214779/9
The Family Petit le Roy vault memorial that hints at the stories across two World Wars of two Lieutenants, both called Jacques Petit Le Roy.
The Bluzet Memorial – a father and son who died for France in la Grande Guerre
Detail from the Bluzet memorial concerning e colonel René Bluzet, Commandant, la 117e Brigade, Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, croix de guerre MPLF October 1915
Throughout these cemetery visits, I was often struck by stories that went across the years, wars and even centuries. At Passy, there’s an example in the stories of two Lieutenants, both called Jacques Petit Le Roy. One being the uncle of the other. The first, (Albert Marie) Jacques, was an officer in 155e RI, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and croix de guerre when, on 29 January 1915, he was killed by a bullet whilst in the front line « environ 500 m à droite de la route de Binarville à Vienne-le-Château » – another victim of « le Bois de la Tuerie ». His body was never recovered. His nephew, Jacques (Albert André Serge), was a 28-year-old member of the Forces Françaises de l’Interieur (FFI) – the combined military forces of various elements of the Second World War ‘French Resistance’ – who had fought in 1939-40. In August 1944, he was killed by a German patrol as he returned from delivering a message from le général Jacques Chaban-Delmas, responsible for military co-ordination between the FFI and Inter-Allied high command, to le général Philippe Leclerc, whose armoured columns were pushing into the suburbs of Paris while an armed uprising was struggling against the Germans occupying the city. There’s a road, Rue du Lieutenant Petit le Roy, named in his honour at Chevilly-Larue, where he was killed. It joins Rue de l’Adjudant-Chef Dericbourg, named after the member of Leclerc’s staff who was killed alongside Petit le Roy.
The last encounter with the dead of Passy Cemetery I want to mention is with Aspirant Jean (Ernest Claude) Bluzet of 232e RI, who was already the holder of the médaille militaire and the croix de guerre when he died of wounds at Ambulance 9/10, Villers-Marmery (51) at the age of 19 on 27 May 1917, and, more specifically, with his father, le colonel René(-Marie-Philippe) Bluzet, Commandant, la 117e Brigade, Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, croix de guerre, who pre-deceased Jean, dying of his wounds at Ambulance 1/59, Morville-sur-Seille (54) on 11 October 1915 at the age of 44.
I’d intended including the Bluzets as an example of father and son service and sacrifice, but also because of the attractive memorial with its Latin “Manibus Date Lauros Plenis” (“Give me armfuls of laurels”, perhaps). However, while putting together this post, I started reading Henry Morel-Journel’s Journal d’un officier de la 74e Division d’infanterie et de l’armée française d’Italie (1914-1918) and, by an amazing coincidence, after adding the Bluzets to the list of stories to cover, the next time I read Morel-Journel’s Journal, it was this I read:
Gelant dans la tranchée, nous nous retirons dans un abri souterrain en forme de tramway. Assis face à face sur des banquettes de terre, nous composons un groupe pittoresque ; dans le fond, deux de mes camarades qui ont passé une nuit blanche, sommeillent ; en face d’eux, le colonel de notre artillerie et un de ses chefs d’escadron, enveloppés dans leurs grands manteaux, semblent des figures hiératiques. Le général, lui, la bouche souriante, la cigarette à la main, est assis dans ce trou avec des attitudes de confortable élégance, comme dans un fauteuil de fumoir. Il écoute le lieutenant-colonel Bluzet, commandant notre 223e régiment — fin, blond, la figure d’un capitaine — nous raconter ses campagnes.
Morel-Journel, Henry. Journal d’un officier de la 74e Division d’infanterie et de l’armée française d’Italie (1914-1918) (French Edition) (p. 111). FeniXX réédition numérique. Kindle Edition.
« fin, blond, la figure d’un capitaine. » This was November 1914. Eagerly, I read on:
Le colonel Bluzet, au sortir de Saint-Cyr, a passé douze ans dans l’infanterie coloniale ; il faisait partie de la colonne Joffre qui a pris Tombouctou. Il nous parle des Touaregs, de leurs femmes aux traits purs qui ont le visage découvert tandis que les hommes sont voilés, parce qu’une fois les femmes d’une tribu repoussèrent un ennemi devant lequel les hommes avaient fui.
Reading back, I found this was the « fou » Bluzet (according to his divisional commander, général Louis Bigot), whose telegram had sent news of the German withdrawal from Lunéville on 12 September 1914 – a sure indicator of French victory in la Bataille du Grand-Couronné:
« Suis à Chauffontaine, dans une heure serai avec mon régiment dans Lunéville ».
Morel-Journel, Journal (p. 79).
And here he was, distracting those with him sheltering in an inadequate abri from a German bombardment with stories of his pre-war Saharan experiences. Memorialised in print and, after death, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
I hope these two blog posts (together with my recent post on « Nécropoles nationales», « Cimetières » and « carrés militaires ») will encourage anyone who reads them to explore the cemeteries of Paris and those of any French city or commune with a better understanding of what stories there are to discover there, and that I’ve done something to pay tribute to those who served and died for France in la Grande Guerre.
* Here I think with the meaning ‘in the shadow of’ rather than more literally ‘under’. Rambach died at Montzéville (55) in the Argonne and was originally buried at Dombasle-en-Argonne.
^ Thanks to @nbuchon.me on BlueSky for their help in trying to interpret the handwriting!
The subject, without foundation, of recent internet speculation. ↩︎
Or, how to give up romantic notions of Paris and move the focus to Death and Loss …
In September 2024, I had the opportunity for a stay of almost a week in Paris and, without the need to consider the interests and tastes of anyone else, a chance to take in a range of historical sites relating to the First World War, as well as the siege of Paris during the War of 1870 and the Paris Commune. In this and a follow-on post, I want to focus on my time during that visit spent in the cities of the dead: the traces of la Grande Guerre in some of the cemeteries of Paris.
I’ve posted on BlueSky about one aspect of this before. The incredible memorial now to be found on the walls of probably the best known of the Paris municipal cemeteries, Père Lachaise:
This is the Paris memorial to those from the city who died during the Great War. It was erected on the wall of Père Lachaise cemetery in 2018. A view from a bus travelling one stop can’t fail to make you ponder the loss in that conflict #1GM#fwwhist#WW1
What you’re seeing on the short video are panels like these.
These are the names of 94,415 dead and 8,000 missing Parisians from the Great War. The entire length of the memorial is 280 metres, and each panel is 1.30 metres high. It’s quite remarkable.
This is a recent commemorative response from the centenary period. Yet within the cemeteries of Paris, there’s evidence of France’s distinct approach to the scale of loss in the war and to the grief of families of the nation’s citizens in the immediate aftermath of the war. In the follow on to this post, we’ll look at what stories you can find in some of the Parisian cemeteries and the useful information that’s there to help and inspire you. First of all, however, a post to help with understanding why you may see what you see. How the French state and people’s responses to the enormity of the cost in terms of lives lost in the war bring us to where things are today.
A Rising and Inexorable Tide of Grief
From the outbreak of the war, bereaved families pressed the civil and military authorities to allow them to recover the remains of their loved ones and bury them closer to home. Responses to these requests fluctuated between authorization and refusal. In order to clear up the confusion, on 19 November 1914, Joffre formally prohibited any transfer of bodies from within the zone des armées (In a future blog post, I plan to share more detail on the significance of this division of the war front into zones). Only the bodies of deceased soldiers buried in the zone de l’intérieur could be returned, and there was a fee to be paid for doing so (as was the case in certain civilian circumstances).
Meanwhile, the French authorities wanted to bring soldiers’ graves in the zone des armées (which moved as the war front moved eastwards or westwards) together in official cemeteries. In some ways, the reasons for this are still there to this day: ease, and reduced cost, of maintenance; a desire to return land to agricultural or other use as soon as possible; and reduced ‘friction’ with local populations – the graves of whose loved ones, if known, might be altogether elsewhere. This was to be an exercise in doomed ambition. Isolated individual graves were elusive and often inaccessible – there being no zone of ‘current’ conflict separate from sites of previous fighting. In some cases, this is why they survive to this day. In others, the site of the grave was the scene of the action in which the deceased had fought – their surviving comrades or family wishing to commemorate their courage and sacrifice on the spot. During and after the war, the state tried to deny access to the devastated areas to families seeking to retrieve the bodies of their kin from battlefield graves. An unseemly struggle between the Republic and grieving relatives developed.
This article (in French) opens with an account of one grieving mother’s response:
“It is my duty to bring to your attention the following case. There is a military cemetery in the commune of St-Gilles. On May 29, Ascension Day, Madame Descoutis, director of the school in Montluçon (Allier) had the body of her son exhumed in the said cemetery and after placing it in a leaded coffin transported it to Montluçon by car. All this was done naturally without any authorization, as the law does not allow for the exhumation or transfer of military bodies.” 1
Under sustained pressure, and on the advice of a commission established under the presidency of général Édouard de Castelnau (who himself had lost three sons – Gérald (1879-1914), Xavier (1893-1914) and Hugues (1895-1915) – to the war), the government backed down and the law of 31 July 1920 finally allowed for the transfer of bodies from the war-zone.
As mentioned in the previous blog post, this marked a significant difference from the British Empire and Dominion experience where the Imperial War Graves Commission lobbied largely successfully for the bodies of those who had died abroad not to be repatriated, and for bodies scattered in isolated graves and makeshift burial grounds to be exhumed and ‘concentrated’ into larger cemeteries.
In the case of France, to keep control of the operations and treat all families equally, the government organized and funded the transfer of soldiers’ bodies. A department responsible for returning bodies (the Service de restitution des corps) was created within what became the Ministry of Pensions, headed by the war veteran and very important (for more than one reason) André Maginot as Ministre des Pensions, Primes et Allocations de guerre. From 1922 onwards, 240,000 coffins were returned to family graves, which represented one-third of identified bodies: considerably more than in the case of other nations.
An organisation that walked a difficult path during the immediate post-war controversy over l’inhumation des « Mort pour la France » was le Souvenir Français, which had been in existence since 1877 and which, before the war had grown rapidly. The organisation created monuments, steles, and plaques paying homage to French combatants in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1870. By 1900, it had 80,000 members in 854 local committees and had designated an estimated 2,000 sites of memory. During five years of conflict, the Souvenir Français was unable to access the graves of combatants on the battlefields, instead organising ceremonies in municipal cemeteries around All Saints’ Day and trying to help bereaved families, as well as laying flowers on the graves of soldiers who died in hospitals behind the lines. The organisation had to be mindful that it was considered important in enforcing the Republican message, but that it also depended on the families of those who had fought to deliver its work.
Image: La cocarde du souvenir | fac-similé de la Cocarde aux couleurs françaises apposée sur les tombes des soldats français morts pour la France – AFF17788 – Lot 1 – Média 1 – L’Argonnaute – Bibliothèque numérique de La contemporaine
A pause here to add what I hope is thought-provoking additional information. The artillery of the war could and did blow men out of existence, such that no physical elements remained to be interred anywhere. Beyond these cases, nearly half of the dead were given no grave other than the ossuaires. The largest of these is at Douaumont and contains the remains of 130,000 French and German soldiers. This huge figure might lead to thoughts of exceptionalism if the nature of the fighting here (concentrated over a long period in a relatively small area and with the very real intention on the part of the Germans to inflict unsustainable losses on the French through attrition) is considered. However, in the largest cemetery on the Western Front at Notre-Dame de Lorette there are 20,058 bodies in graves and an estimated 20,000 in the ossuary. Almost equal numbers of unidentifiable fragments of men as bodies capable of being buried in a grave – a situation that can be found closely echoed in plenty of other places, large or small (examples chosen at random): Cerny-en-Laonnois : 5.150 bodies, of which 2.386 are en ossuaire; Dannemarie : 250 in individual graves and 139 ‘distributed’ in two ossuaires; Col de la Chipotte : 1,899 bodies, 1,006 buried in graves, 893 in an ossuary; Auberive : nearly 7,000 bodies, of which nearly 2,900 are buried in three ossuaries.2 Then, as noted in my post on war cemeteries, there are the individual ‘smaller’ (it’s all relative) ossuaires in many nécropoles with perhaps the remains of a hundred and sometimes as many as 3-4,000 bodies.
My posts on military graves and cemeteries and this one are intended to draw attention to how ‘hidden’ from understanding the true cost of the war to France in terms of lives really is. We don’t, by any means, have a true picture of the losses from the grave markers in a French nécropole. They only tell a part of the story. Although this is true of the British and German cemeteries as well, it’s especially so in the case of the French and Germans.
In summary, then, what anyone looking for traces of the First World War in the cemeteries of Paris (or indeed any French city, town or commune that was not under German control during the war) will encounter has been shaped by decisions made by the army and the state, and by communities and the bereaved families of dead soldiers – as well as by the level of wealth and influence and status of the individual or their family and networks. The influence of the zone des armées / zone de l’intérieur split can be seen and is often indirectly referenced as we’ll see and for which we’ll look at possible reasons. We’ll see the beauty and poignancy of tributes from families and others, and we’ll see endless opportunities to look deeper into aspects of the French military experience with connections to combat on land, sea and in the air. It’s a worthwhile experience for anyone interested in la Grande Guerre and a starting point to many other aspects of the huge subject of France and its people at war.
Note: This post has been influenced and shaped by the work of Professeure Béatrix Pau. a historian specialising in the First World War and particularly in death, the management of corpses and the ‘demobilisation of the dead’3.
Archives Départementales de la Marne, 2 R 212, letter from the mayor of Saint-Gilles to the préfet de la Marne, 14 June 1919 quoted in Béatrix Pau, « La violation des sépultures militaires, 1919-1920 », Revue Historique des armées [En ligne], 259 | 2010, mis en ligne le 06 mai 2010, consulté le 15 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rha/6980. ↩︎
There are exceptions such as Le Mont Frenet à La Cheppe – created in 1915 to bury those soldiers who died of wounds at ambulance 3/65, which operated from this site. A site, as a consequence, with no ossuary and most graves ‘known’. ↩︎
In addition to the work cited above, see Béatrix Pau-Heyriès. « Le marché des cercueils après-guerre, 1918-1924 », Revue Historique des Armées [En ligne], 224 | 2001. consulté 16 mars 2025. pp. 65-80., URL : www.persee.fr/doc/rharm_0035-3299_2001_num_224_3_5035 and Béatrix Pau, “Des familles divisées dans le deuil : laisser les corps dans les cimetières militaires ou demander leur restitution”. In Un siècle de sites funéraires de la Grande Guerre, edited by Annette Becker and Stéphane Tison. Nanterre: Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2018. URL : https://books.openedition.org/pupo/22662↩︎
It’s common to see the terms Nécropole nationale, Cimetièremilitaire and carré militaire used seemingly without any underpinning logic for what the French refer to as lieux de sépultures de militaires français – military burial sites. This post looks at the differences and some of the key characteristics of these places of memory and mourning.
Carré militaire – ‘military square’
Not, as the English translation would seem to imply, a parade ground, but definitely a space intended to evoke the discipline, structure and order of military formations. A carré militaire is a section of a civilian cemetery dedicated exclusively to grouping together the graves of military personnel to create a solemn space where their memory can be collectively honoured. While, in Paris within the cimetière de Vaugirard, a carré militaire was created in 1882 for the soldats pensionnaires of l’Hôtel des Invalides – as the name implies, originally intended as a hospital and hospice for army veterans (as well as, in reality, a barracks, convent, and factory) – there’s a more ‘everyday’ example in the Cimetière municipal de Fontenay-sous-Bois (see images below). Here the headstones are of a design I’ve not encountered before, whilst the grave of Charles Guillemont is an example of an exhumé – a subject touched on in a future blog post, but briefly here a deceased soldier whose body is recovered (almost always by the family) and brought to be re-buried in another location – usually closer to ‘home’.
A general view of the carré militaire in the municipal cemetery of Fontenay-sous-Bois (94 – Val-de-Marne (ex Seine et Seine-et-Oise))
Graves of three soldats of the First World War in the carré militaire at Fontenay-sous-Bois (94)
Grave of soldat de 2e classe Charles Ernest GUILLEMONT, 217e régiment d’infanterie, mplf 18 May 1917
To be buried in a carré militaire, generally, the deceased has to have served in the armed forces and died in service, or after a period of ‘honourable service’. There has to be a formal request made by the family. This is important as it can connect to the exhumation of the deceased from a battlefield burial site previously mentioned. Proof of military service is required. There is a cost for the burial (although sometimes this is met by a body such as a veteran’s association or a local authority). The maintenance of the site is often under the care of local government organisations, Le Souvenir français or associations de bénévoles or other specialist groups, but the ministère des Armées (Ministry of the Armed Forces) has overall responsibility for the conservation of all the burial sites of French military personnel.
Cimetièremilitaire or nécropole nationale
The definition between these two is much more blurred and the terms are used to an extent interchangeably. For example, the enormous cimetière de regroupement (concentration cemetery) at Sillery in the Marne is frequently referred to as the « Cimetière militaire de Sillery » but is officially la nécropole nationale de Sillery. A nécropole nationale is, after all, a cemetery, but the distinction is sometimes made between a cemetery as a grouping of graves still in use, in which the dead continue to be buried, whereas a nécropole is a grouping of graves from past historical events. The latter is also associated with something old, large, and architecturally notable, whereas a cemetery implies something more ordinary.
The clearest official clarification is that of the ministère des Armées which speaks of « les nécropoles nationales [et] les carrés militaires en France métropolitaine et les cimetières militaires à l’étranger». Cemeteries overseas, nécropoles and carrés in France. However, my impression is that often the ‘cemetery name’ is the ‘heritage name’ for a burial site – a name with some period of usage before the official nomenclature is applied, [possibly going as far back as wartime origins. That’s not to say that an ‘official’ name can’t have heritage as well, just that the intention to create a consistent official nomenclature for sights of burial and mourning is what visitors encounter on cemetery information panels – as well as in other situations (such as the IGN maps).
Planned Égalité ?
In layout, French war cemeteries (whether carrés militaires, cimetières or nécropoles françaises) may seem more uniform and plainer than those of other nations. In part, this is because no architects were involved to give individual character to their construction – a significant contrast to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission sites, for example. The entrances uniformly have laurel leaves and croix de guerre like this one at Cormicy.
Rules for their basic form mean rows (often of double graves) are separated by a central aisle leading to a pole where the French national flag flies. Individual decoration of graves is prohibited. Variations for religious reasons are what usually draw the eye – (although I intend to present, in a future post, evidence of just how much variety there actually is in the grave markers still present in French cemeteries). Large unit memorials may be present, and sometimes modern commemorations created during the Centenary. The most deceptive elements, however, are the seemingly innocuous mass grave markers for ossuaries like this.
The cemetery’s size can, therefore, be misleading as to how many casualties are actually buried there. It’s not always the case that an ossuary contains ‘unknown’ dead – as the previous photo and these of the 3 « ossuaires » at the Nécropole nationale de Friscati show. However, only a close look at the numbers actually buried beneath these markers really brings home their meaning. You may find similar markers in German war cemeteries. Don’t fail to look at each one and take a moment to absorb the scale of loss they represent.
Returning to the layout, regulations say the ground should be covered with grass – but a closer look shows there’s often a lot of variety. These tiny flowers at Cormicy in June 2022, for example, brought to mind those that grew on the graves of Theoden’s ancestors in The Lord of the Rings.
Sometimes, where issues of climate and location present specific issues, there are variations such as low hedges which are planted on each terraced level of the cemetery. as at Chêne Millet (68) – which features as the header image for this post – they’re probably intended to prevent erosion by snow or heavy rain.
Of course, all these elements add order to what was initially a much more varied arrangement of graves. I’ll end this post with a photograph from 1915 of a military burial site that has now ceased to exist. This was the ‘Upper Cemetery’ at Vieux-Thann in Alsace. The bodies of those buried in this cemetery were subsequently moved to the Nécropole Nationale de Cernay or the military cemetery at Colmar. There’s a good deal less uniformity about the graves and the markers and, obviously, the latter are wood and temporary. There’s a very republican approach to the uniformity of the modern lieux de sépultures de militaires français but, in that uniformity, something also of a European nation with a long history of loss and conflict. For someone French (or German, or indeed, from a host of other continental European nations) there’s an understanding of what such sites are and their characteristics. For me (and I suspect many others), inhabiting a small island off the coast of mainland Europe, somewhat insulated from the ravages of continental warfare until the 20th Century, there’s undoubtedly a moment of awe and horror when ‘among the crosses, row on row’ you encounter effectively the burial pits of the Napoleonic Wars and le Colonel Chabert – hundreds, if not thousands, of bodies mostly unable to be identified and flung into mass graves – an aspect of ‘the French experience of the First World War’ that perhaps we will never truly understand.
IWM (Q 80085): French war graves and monument in the Upper Cemetery at Vieux-Thann (Alsace), 30 October 1915.
On a long straight stretch of the D995 road that runs across the Marne département from Vitry-le-François along the valley of La Saulx river and the Canal de la Marne au Rhin, outside the rural commune of Le Buisson stands a memorial to the 11eme Compagnie du 72eme Régiment d’Infanterie (RI). It commemorates that unit’s actions in the fighting of 6 September 1914 – what we know as the First Battle of the Marne. But we’re over 100km from the area traditionally associated with ‘the miracle of the Marne’ and Gallieni’s Paris Taxis. This was the sector of Fernand Langle de Cary’s 4e Armée and, although elsewhere the Allied forces were turning on the German forces that had pursued and harassed them during their retreat after defeat in the Battle of the Frontiers and making tentative beginnings at offensive operations, here the story on that day and for some days after was still very much one of retreating French forces trying to stop, or at least delay, their German opponents.
This was the nature of the action which 72e RI was fighting and which the memorial to the 11e compagnie commemorates.
Memorial to the 11eme compagnie du 72e Régiment d’Infanterie. Combat du 6 Septembre 1914: le Buisson, Marne (51). (My own collection: June 2022).
It’s a sizeable memorial. When I first saw it, I was surprised to discover that it was a memorial to such a relatively small unit – one company of just 200 men. And looking into the background to it and the events of early September 1914, I’m still mulling over why these particular events at that particular time were the focus of subsequent memorialisation by the unit’s survivors.
But the memorial doesn’t stand on its own. Enclosed by a hedge of shrubs, the memorial has an individual soldier memorial to keep it company. Hippolyte Honoré François Joseph BROSSE was a member of the same regiment and the same company. His name appears on the main memorial. But he has his own monument as well. The obvious question again and again is ‘Why?’
Memorial at le Buisson, Marne (51) to soldat de 2e classe Hippolyte Honoré François Joseph BROSSE of Taverny, Seine-et-Oise (now in the Val d’Oise (95) département). (My own collection: June 2022).
Why this particular soldier (after all, Hippolyte was ‘just’ an ordinary private)? Well, we know from the stone that this is where he was killed in action (actually his Mort pour La France index card states he died as a result of injury « suite de blessure »). But why him? The 72e RI was involved in fighting from September 6 to 11, 1914, defending an area covering the villages and hamlets of Le Buisson to Pargny-sur-Saulx and then further south, around Maurupt-le-Montois. The regiment lost nearly 1,800 soldiers (killed, wounded, prisoners, missing) during this fighting. Here’s one man commemorated with his own stone and dedication.
Also, there’s that dedication in Latin: Cecedit miles fortis in proellio – ‘A strong soldier dies in battle’. It suggests Hippolyte Brosse deserved, in the eyes of his comrades or (more probably) his family, some recognition for his actions in battle. Perhaps, of course, not just, or specifically, in this battle. This was where he died. He may have seen fighting elsewhere, but the 72e RI had seen relatively little action in the advance to, and the retreat from, the Belgian frontier after the defeat and appalling casualties inflicted on French forces elsewhere and, although the 11eme compagnie of the regiment gets a few mentions in this period in the regiment’s Journal des marches et opérations (JMO) – the equivalent of a British Army unit’s War Diary – there’s nothing detailing significant fighting. So, it seems reasonable to assume that, if the commemoration is for actions in combat, it was here. Exceptional soldierly conduct during the very long retreat the regiment had endured can’t, of course, be entirely ruled out.
All we can learn from the regimental JMO of the fighting of 6 September 1914 – the day soldat de 2e classe Hippolyte Brosse died – is that in the morning the 3e Bataillon (of which the 11e Compagnie was a part) was ordered to move forward to relieve the outposts (les avant-postes) of the Corps Colonial and this brought the company to Le Buisson. Around 9.00am, a strong German attack began that forced the battalion to retire. Two unsuccessful counter-attacks by the 10e and 12ecompagnies took place in the afternoon and in the night the battalion regrouped on the Moulin de Maurupt.
The defence around Pargny-sur-Saulx and Maurupt-le-Montois by the regiment continued until 11 September with considerable losses to both sides. However, the regimental JMO then describes how the 72e, on 12 September, having been reinforced with 295 men, advanced in pursuit of the Germans who had begun retreating towards the North. The end of their battle of the Marne.
I’ve found no subsequent citation or mention for Hippolyte Brosse in the JMO and there’s no official recognition for his actions recorded on his service record in the registres d’incorporation militaire held in the Archives départementales des Yvelines et de l’ancienne Seine-et-Oise. In fact, it’s very sparse … and sadder for that. You can see for yourself here.
Searches to establish something about his family background (such as whether his parents were wealthy, influential or both) have yielded no clues. The family seems the more likely of the two most obvious options for the memorial stone and dedication given the date of Hippolyte’s death and the very slim life chances for « ceux de ’14 » to have survived the war.
The purpose of this blog post wasn’t to provide answers. Further research (perhaps looking at the post-war regional press to find an account of the unveiling and dedication ceremony (or ceremonies for the two memorials)) might give useful information on what was a relatively exceptional tribute for one of the approximately 1,357,800 French dead in the war. What can be said is that each of the French private memorials on the Western Front (and there are undoubtedly more French private memorials than say, British or American*) has its own story attached to it. Each merits a study of the individual and what the memorial is commemorating – the deeds of the soldier and his death in battle, or simply the man, perhaps as a loved and cherished family member whose life was cut short in the tragedy of war.
The circumstances of each man’s death can provide a wealth of insights into the conduct of the war and the realities of the individual soldier’s experience. Hippolyte Brosse’s war was a very short one. He was « 19 ans, 10 mois et 13 jours » (as the Mémoire des Hommes web site tells us) when he died. From these two facts alone we’re reminded that wars are usually fought by the young (sometimes the very young – still a teenager in this case) and that, as a modern industrial war, la Grande Guerre was already ravenously devouring the lives of the men of the French nation from the earliest days. It would continue to do so for more than another four years.
* The situation with German memorials is complicated by Alsace and Lorraine being, effectively, a part of Germany until the Treaty of Versailles officially handed them over to France and by the years when German troops occupied areas of North East France).
« Le Système D en Action » Carte postale de ma collection.
In Life, it’s necessary to know how to sort things out, to unravel the knotty problem, to untangle complicated affairs, to de…mystify, declutter, deconstruct the problem. Le système D is all about resourcefulness.
In this carte postale humoristique, we see how a soldier makes use of these skills in a ‘non-military context’. The postcard was produced by A.H. Katz and was typical of the company’s output. Another example, A quoi elles rêvent : la midinette, la nourrice, la mondaine, la bourgeoise can be found here.
I was surprised to find that the term ‘système D‘ was more elusive in origin than I’d expected. It’s identified as a military term, and supposedly one from the Great War, la Grande Guerre, World War One, the First World War (take your pick). One or two websites place its origins ‘Vers 1916‘. It makes sense that it was military slang, along the lines of “improvise, adapt, overcome” but I’ve yet to find the circumstances in which it came into common usage.
What I did find, on the very interesting web site, MENUSTORY.COM : L’Histoire des menus, les menus de l’Histoire created and developed by M. Yves Françoise and based on his collection, was this item (reproduced by kind permission of M Françoise):
In this menu from the 19e Régiment Territorial d’Infanterie for ‘Réveillon 1914’ – Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve – there are puns and references to events, places or people in the First World War. Examples are ‘Le Pudding Général French’ and ‘Le Potage à la Joffre’. Also featured is ‘Le Filet Système D’.
A reference to this term in a military context by a Territorial regiment at the end of 1914. It’s also reasonable to conclude from the context here that this was not by any means the first occasion of the use of the term. For the joke to be understood, système D needed to have been in common usage among those who sat down to enjoy this fine meal.
So, two (three?) mysteries remain: When and why was the term système D first used, and what was the origin of the meat in ‘le Filet Système D’ that gave this dish its name?! It may be best not to speculate too much.
A final note on ‘Do-Do’ and ‘Do-Due’. « Aller faire dodo » is to go to beddy-byes, « dodue » means plump, or chubby. Maybe they also had military connotations (although I doubt it)!
I hope you’ve found this interesting. If you have information to share on all this, or want to comment on this blog post, do feel free to get in touch using the ‘Contact’ form on the site.
The fourth resource using Google Maps – a visual reference resource to make some of the ‘core information’ on the French Army in the First World War easily accessible.
Les Régiments d’Infanterie Territoriale shows the location of the Territorial* Infantry Regiments by their Base HQs. It also includes the Régiment d’Infanterie Territoriale (RIT) and Battalions Territorial de Chasseurs à Pied [BTCP or BTCA (they were all Chasseurs Alpin units)].
(* NB NOT the equivalent of the British Territorials! (The differences will be explained in a blog post).
As with previous maps, this map is embedded as a link and immediately available ‘on click’ in a new tab:
Les Régiments d’Infanterie Territoriale by Home HQ, 1914
Feedback on the value and accuracy of these is always welcome so do send a comment.
Debout les Morts! 