"The Battle of Craone" Topic

"Yves Gibeau shook his grey head and made an outward sweeping gesture with both arms. ‘All this,' he said, taking in the whole area of his view, ‘All this now peaceful landscape was changed beyond belief in just a few weeks only a year after I was born in 1916.' His eyes filled with tears and his hands dropped to his side: ‘what men will do for some strange notions of honour, glory, power and personal gain? The old man wiped his eyes and pulled himself up straight, ‘Waste and stupidity is what made me become a pacifist, and I will remain a pacifist as long as breath remains in my body-curse all wars!'

The landscape which Gibeau was referring to lay in the area surrounding the highway of the Chemin des Dames (Ladies Way), situated in the Department de l'Aisne, northern France, where he lived from 1954 until his death in 1994. Its fields and woods had been unlucky enough to be struck by the lightning bolts of battle twice in just over one hundred years, first in 1814 and again, with devastating effect, in 1917. Giberau loved this quite rural countryside and spent many hours each week cycling or walking its hills and valleys. He was born a bastard, his mother having had a tumble in the hay with a French soldier who soon left her and was probably killed in the bloodbath that was the First World War. She later married another soldier, Sergeant Alexander Gibeau, who gave the boy his name. After receiving an education at a series of military schools and taking many officer training courses, at which he did not do well, being ridiculed and maligned by students and teachers alike for reading too many novels, he finally saw active service at the outbreak of the Second World War, being captured by the Germans in 1940 and sent to a prisoner of war camp in East Prussia where he suffered similar humiliation at the hands of his captors as he had received from his fellow countrymen back in France. After being liberated he spent the rest of his life opposing the imbecility of war and the (then) inhuman conditions of military education and training for war. He began writing and in 1952 published his most famous work, Allons z'enfants (Arise, Children), the title taken from the first line of La Marseillaise, in which he describes the stupidity and futility of disciplinarian dogmatism. At his own request he was buried in the old ruined cemetery of Craonne near the eastern edge of the Chemin des Dames.

The irony in the title of Gibeau's book will not be lost on the readers of this article…"
Full article here

link

Armand

He seems to have overlooked 1914…

It is an amazing piece of prominent countryside and I'm still at a loss to understand why you would attack anyone way up there!
For those who don't know it, an exceptionally prominent hill with steep sides in parts- a bit like our NZ 'mountains' -meaning worn down volcanic cones, heaving uphill like One Tree Hill, with a similar vast kind of view…
dave

Thanks!.

Armand

CRAONNE avec 2 "N"!
Bernard

Adieu la vie, adieu l'amour,
Adieu toutes les femmes
C'est pas fini, c'est pour toujours
De cette guerre infâme

C'est à Craonne, sur le plateau,
Qu'on doit laisser sa peau.
Car nous sommes tous condamnés.
C'est nous les sacrifiés !

'Chanson de Craonne'

Merci mon ami!.

Armand