A WWI postcard from the Western Front. Translated from French. (1)
Saturday, June 17, 1917
Ma mince chérie, I am writing in response to your letter dated Monday the 12th of this current month. Your letter made me very happy. Forgive me, my Chérie, for not writing you a letter today, but today we are deprived of light. There is no lamp or candle. We are required to go to sleep. I am in good health. I am very happy about your letter which tells me a lot about our loved ones. Embrace them a million times for me – and mother too. I am waiting for the package you said you sent. See you soon, my pretty one, and my most tender kisses – I’m sending them all to you, your little husband who loves you, Albert
Albert addressed his wife as "ma jolie" [my pretty one]; he sent "a million" hugs to the family, and he ended the message with, "mes plus tendres baisers tout à toi, ton petit mari qui l'aime" [my most tender kisses to you, your little husband who loves you]. We have only to imagine a wartime environment where Albert had no lamp or candle, and we know Albert was quite far from home.
Albert's rank is unknown, as is his level of schooling but after the education reforms of the 1880s French children, both boys and girls, were provided with free secular education. They were taught in school that in times of family separation one should correspond regularly with detailed, honest, and intimate reports of daily life. The exchange of correspondence between French soldiers and their families during WWI was particularly vibrant with emotional expression.
The Card: The card that Albert chose to send home is titled "The Artisans of the Victory." It's a commercially published postcard with a hand-tinted photographic print that illustrates five components of the anticipated (and hoped for) French victory of World War I and the artwork is signed "Gloria." The card was likely purchased by Albert in a small shop or railroad station in a village near the front.
The Five Artisans
1. Upper left, "Nos As" [Our Aces]: The illustration portrays the most modern and daring weapons of war––the airplanes and the pilots who flew them. French aviation pioneers like Louis Blériot, Henri Farman, and Gabriel Voisin built and piloted some of the most advanced aircraft of the time. The French aces, pilots who shot down five or more of the enemy planes, included Georges Guynemer, Charles Nungesser, Paul Augustin Barbreau, René Fonck, and many, many others. The skill and daring of the French pilots in the skies over war-torn France established them forever as aviation legends.
Sous-Lieutenant Georges Guynemer.One of a series of WWI postcards published in 1916 to honor French aviators. Second Lieutenant Georges Guynemer achieved national fame and honor with 53 victories before his death in aerial combat in 1917.
2. Upper right, "Nos 75" [Our 75]:The French recoilless 75 mm artillery piece was revolutionary in its incorporation of a pneumatic mechanism to absorb recoil. The reduced movement of the cannon after firing and a unique screw breech mechanism made the gun capable of firing 15 to 20 rounds per minute, and the 75 proved to be a formidable weapon. At the First Battle of the Marne in 1914, the French 75 artillery crews were dubbed "black butchers" by the Germans. After the Americans entered the war, they too adopted the gun, and it continued to be used into WWII and beyond. The French people came to honor the 75 as a symbol of victory, and its image was often reproduced on patriotic postcards. Our younger friends today may know the French 75 as a cocktail (2) named in honor of this powerful weapon.
Le 75. Circa 1915 postcard of the 75 in action with insets of two of its primary designer/inventors, Joseph-Albert Deport and Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville.
Gloire au 75. Circa 1915 postcard.Partout ou passé les Lauriers ont pousse.[Wherever it goes the Laurels have grown.]
3. Lower left "LesMunitions" [Our Munitions]:While the title of the image is "Our Munitions," the illustration honors the French women, known as munitionettes, who worked in the munitions factories during WWI while their husbands were away at the front. Before the war the women of France were generally relegated to domestic work in their own homes or the houses of the more affluent. Jobs outside of the house were primarily in the textile industry or agriculture. As the men were called up for the war, women were brought into factories to produce weapons, ammunition, and military kit and equipment. By the end of the war, nearly a million French women were employed in the factories working at dangerous and demanding jobs as well as struggling for equal rights and equal pay and continuing to take care of their families.
French Women making munitions for the trenches. Circa 1917 postcard produced for English-speaking market.
4. Lower right, "L'Emprunt" [The Loan]:
As was the case in other countries, France raised funds for the war effort through a series of national defense loans. Despite their increasing impoverishment, the French citizens continued to subscribe to these bonds as a patriotic duty. This illustration shows a woman and child buying war bonds. The boy is carrying his "tire lire" [money box] and his toy sword while wearing a soldier's helmet which may represent a father who is away at the front. The fashionably dressed woman and child with their small dog appear to belong to the upper classes and would be better able to contribute to the war effort.
L'Emprunt des "Derniéres Cartouches."
This is the postcard version of a 1915 L'Emprunt poster meant to solicit funds for the conflict. The card urges participation in the purchase of war loan subscriptions. A grandfather and granddaughter are seen providing the embattled poilu [see below for "poilu"] with ammunition as a visual representation of funds from home providing supplies to the front. At the time this poster/postcard was printed, the feeling was that the war was almost over, and this was a "last push, thus the last cartridges;" unfortunately, the war's end was still very far away in 1915.
5. Center, "Nos Poilus" [The Poilus, literally, "the hairy ones" or “the unshaven"]:The French infantrymen of WWI were affectionately given the name "Poilu" in reference to their customary beards and large mustaches, as well as to their rustic, agrarian backgrounds. The term may date back to Napoleonic era soldiers when whiskers were a mark of virility. In 1914, the men of France were suddenly conscripted from the vineyards and farm fields and thrust into the slaughterhouse that was WWI. They became skilled and courageous soldiers in the trenches of the Western Front, but poor leadership in the early years and the superior firepower of the German army soon decimated their ranks. At the Battle of Verdun, which raged for almost the entire year of 1916, their losses were approximately 500,000. Seventy percent of the French infantrymen became casualties by war's end, with well over a million dead and wounded.
"La Grande Guerre 1914-15 en Champagne" [The Great War 1914-15, in the Champagne region of France].
French infantryman Georges Delbez poses for his photograph in postcard dated December 18, 1914, which he sent to his wife Jeanne in a commune north of Paris. He is wearing the early French uniform of red trousers and a dark blue long coat, which was changed to a dusty, horizon-blue uniform in 1915. Georges and our postcard writer Albert, the writer of the "Artisans of Victory" postcard above, likely had much in common. In Georges' message to Jeanette, he called her his "little wolf" and he sent, "many kisses to my beloved." Georges told Jeanne that it was "going well in the trenches," but, from later correspondence of Jeanette's we know that Georges did not return home.
The original postcard above, written in 1917, offered honor and admiration for five different support roles in the anticipated victory for France and the Allies. It was an optimistic viewpoint in a war that had been raging for three years and would continue to destroy lives and landscapes for another year and a half.
Thousands of postcards like these exist in collections all over the world. Unfortunately, in most cases, they have floated free from ties to specific personal histories. Many wartime postcards were written hastily, censored for content, and sometimes mailed in envelopes along with a longer letter. Thus, many details of names, dates, and places are now missing.
We don't know what became of Albert and his "mince chérie," nor how many hands this card passed through to arrive in my hands for this blog entry; however, such handwritten messages, and the cards that were chosen to carry them, give us small openings through which we can almost touch the lives of ordinary people caught up in the "War to End All Wars."
2. French 75 Cocktail: https://www.liquor.com/recipes/french-75-2/
I particularly recommend:
Barbusse, Henri. Under Fire. Translated by Robin Buss and Jay Winter. London: Penguin Books, 2003. First published in French as Le Feu, 1916.
Barthas, Louis. Poilu: The World War I Notebook of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918. Translated by Edward M. Strauss, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2014.
Hanna, Martha. Your Death Would be Mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Jünger, Ernst, Storm of Steel, New York: Penguin Group, 2004. In Stahlgewittern first published in German in 1920.
Wharton, Edith. Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort, Editor, Alice Kelly, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.
I also invite you to take a look at my website: ken-wilson.com and my new book, Snapshots and Short Notes: Images and Messages of Early Twentieth-Century Photo Postcards, Published by the University of North Texas.
