Communities under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914-1918 0198856113, 9780198856115

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Communities under Fire

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Communities under Fire Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918 ALEX DOWDALL

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Alex Dowdall 2020 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2020 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2019954842 ISBN 978–0–19–885611–5 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Acknowledgements This book arose from my work as a graduate student and post-doctoral researcher at Trinity College Dublin. I would like to thank all those in the college community who provided intellectual, and social, support over the years. I have incurred numerous debts among staff, friends, and colleagues. I would like to express particular thanks to Séan Brady, Stephen Carroll, Sarah Frank, Tomás Irish, Scott Kamen, Mahon Murphy, Léan Ní Chléirigh, and Fergus Robson. For much of the research period, the Trinity College Long Room Hub served as a warm, sociable, and intellectually stimulating home. Friends and colleagues in the Hub, particularly Jerome Devitt, Richard Gow, Mary Hatfield, Sarah Hunter, Jonny Johnston, Ben Mitchell, Tim Murtagh, Fionnuala Walsh, and Olivia Wilkinson all contributed directly and indirectly to making this book what it is. I am also especially grateful to Alan Kramer for his encouraging commentary on my work and support over the years. One of my biggest debts is, however, to my supervisor, John Horne. Without his unfailing support and guidance this book could never have taken its final form. Since leaving Trinity College Dublin I have been privileged to find homes at the College of Europe, Natolin, Warsaw, and, more recently, the University of Manchester. In Warsaw, Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski and Quincy R. Cloet provided enlivening discussions and helped me think through how my topic fits into a broader European story. At Manchester numerous colleagues, especially those affiliated with the Centre for the Cultural History of War, have provided advice, support, and discussion. I particularly want to mention Ana Carden Coyne, James E. Connolly, Laure Humbert, and Katarzyna Nowak. Special thanks are reserved for Peter Gatrell, who not only read and provided expert comments on sections of the manuscript, but also opened up new research horizons into the history of forced displacement in twentieth-century France. Many others have contributed to this work through conversations at seminars, conferences, events, and collaborations. I would like to thank Peter Hession (UCD), Heather Jones (UCL), Mercedes Peñalba-Sotorrío (Manchester Metropolitan), Catriona Pennell (Exeter), Pierre Purseigle (Warwick), Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses (Maynooth), Jason Robinson (Oxford), Sophie de Schaepdrijver (Penn State), and Jay Winter (Yale). This research was enabled through various financial supports, but especially those of the Irish Research Council, which funded my doctoral work and a postdoctoral research fellowship. I gratefully acknowledge their generous support. Trinity College Dublin provided a Postgraduate Studentship for the final year of my doctoral work, while the Centre Internationale de Recherche de l’Historial de

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la Grande Guerre, Péronne, and the German History Society both provided bursaries, which facilitated research trips to French, British, and German archives. I would like to thank my family—my brothers, Eric, Ian, and Colin, and my parents, Annette and Fred. Their constant love and support was vital to completing this project. Finally, a simple thank you does not suffice for my wife, Leah Dowdall. Ever since our days together as graduate students at the Trinity College Long Room Hub she has been a constant advocate, and a tireless editor. Her love, intellectual support, confidence, and belief gave me the strength and conviction to finish this project.

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Contents List of Figures Abbreviations

Introduction

ix xi

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1. From Towns into Battlefields: Urban Space at the Western Front

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2. Civilian Identities under Fire

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3. Occupation Regimes and Civil–Military Encounters at the Western Front

93

4. The Social Impacts of Militarization: Work, Wages, and Welfare at the Front

125

5. Feeding the Front-Line Towns

152

6. Communities in Exile: Refugees from the Front

180

Epilogue: Towards Reconstruction, 1914–1920

203

Conclusion

225

Sources and Bibliography Index

231 249

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List of Figures Every effort has been made to contact the relevant copyright holders. 1.1. The Urban Battlefield: Reims as Part of the Front, December 1917 [Service Historique de la Défense, Vincennes, 19 N 874]

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1.2. Protection against Bombardment: Civilians outside a Shelter in Noeux-les-Mines, 1918 [Collection La Contemporaine, Nanterre, VAL 305/077]

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1.3. The Internal Geography of Destruction: Reims, 1916 [Service Historique de la Défense, Vincennes, 5 N 345]

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1.4. Normal Life Underground 1: Henri Abelé’s Office [Sous les obus à Reims, trois années de vie passées en cave par M. H.A. et sa famille en appartement souterrain (Reims, ND), Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, RBP 422]

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1.5. Normal Life Underground 2: Henri Abelé’s sitting-room [Sous les obus à Reims, trois années de vie passées en cave par M. H.A. et sa famille en appartement souterrain (Reims, ND), Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, RBP 422]

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2.1. Images of Civilian Heroism: ‘Députés, préfets et maires héroïques’, Le Miroir, 22 Nov 1914 [Bibliothèque Nationale de France]

61

2.2. Local Identity under Fire 1: Gustave Fraipont, Cathédrale de Reims incendiée par les Allemands le 19 septembre 1914 [Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, BMR55-188]

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2.3. Local Identity under Fire 2: The Destruction of the Hôtel de Ville of Arras, Albert Robida, Les Villes martyres (Paris, 1914) [Bibliothèque Nationale de France]

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5.1. Supplying the Community at the Front: ‘La bravoure de la population civile de Reims’, Le Miroir, 26 Sep 1915 [Bibliothèque Nationale de France]

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7.1. From Urban Battlefield to Site of Memory: Geo Dorival, ‘Arras’, Poster for the Compagnie de Chemin de Fer du Nord [SARDO - Centre National des Archives Historiques (CNAH) du Groupe SNCF; © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2019]

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7.2. From Urban Battlefield to Site of Memory: Julien Lacaze, ‘Lens’, Poster for the Compagnie de Chemin de Fer du Nord [SARDO - Centre National des Archives Historiques (CNAH) du Groupe SNCF]

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7.3. From Urban Battlefield to Site of Memory: Geo Dorival, ‘Reims’, Poster for the Compagnie de Chemin de Fer de l’Est [SARDO - Centre National

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   des Archives Historiques (CNAH) du Groupe SNCF; © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2019]

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7.4. Arras War Memorial [Mémoires de pierre en Pas-de-Calais, ‘Arras’, http://memoiresdepierre.pagesperso-orange.fr/alphabetnew/a/arras.html. Accessed 27 Aug 2019]

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7.5. Liévin War Memorial [Mémoires de pierre en Pas-de-Calais, ‘Liévin’, http://memoiresdepierre.pagesperso-orange.fr/alphabetnew/l/lievin.html. Accessed 27 Aug 2019]

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7.6. Lens War Memorial [Mémoires de pierre en Pas-de-Calais, ‘Lens,’ http://memoiresdepierre.pagesperso-orange.fr/alphabetnew/l/lens.html. Accessed 27 Aug 2019]

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Abbreviations B.E.F. C.F. C.N. C.R.B. G.Q.G. M.M.F. S.R.A.C. S.F.U. Z.A.B.

British Expeditionary Force Comité d’alimentation du nord de la France Comité national de secours et d’alimentation Commission for Relief in Belgium Grand Quartier général Mission militaire française près de l’armée britannique Service des relations avec les autorités civiles Société française d’urbanistes Zivil-Arbeiter-Bataillone

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Ypres

Belgium Armentières Pas-de-Calais

Béthune Lens Arras

Nord

Somme German Withdrawal to the siegfried Line, Spring 1917

Amiens

Luxembourg Aisne

Laon

Ardennes

Oise Front Lines after the German Spring Offensive, June 1918

The Front Lines, November 1914

Soissons

Reims Epernay

Pont-à-Mousson Meuse

Other towns and cities at the Front

N 0

Marne

Châlons-sur-Marne

Paris

Main Case Studies

25

50

Map 1. Towns at the Western Front, 1914–18. Source: map created by author

Germany

Verdun

France

100 Miles

Nancy Meurthe-et-moselle

October 1914

Béthune

La Bassée Beuvry

Auchy

Noyelles

Carvin

December 1914 September 1915

Vendin-le-Viel

Pont-à-Vendin

Mazingarbe

Bruay

Loos-en-Gohelle

Courrières

Grenay Lens Hénin-Liètard Bully-Grenay

Billy-Montigny Avion Lièven Sallaumines

N May 1917

0

4

8

16 Kilometers

Vimy

Map 2. The Front Lines in the Coal-Mining Region of the Pas-de-Calais, 1914–18. Source: map created by author

Drocourt

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Noeux-les-Mines

Vermelles

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Introduction The First World War had a devastating physical impact on urban centres and populations, in France and elsewhere in Europe. New aerial bombing technologies brought destruction to cities far from the armies in the field while, closer to the lines, towns and villages along the Western, Italian, and Eastern Fronts were consumed by artillery fire. Urban destruction had been an established feature of the history of warfare prior to 1914. The quintessential form of urban combat— the siege—had always had profound effects on European towns and their inhabitants, from the sieges of Strasbourg and Paris during the Franco–Prussian War, to the wars of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, early modern and medieval siege warfare, and the Siege of Troy at the heart of the founding epic of Western literature, Homer’s Iliad. But the events of 1914–18 marked a major development in the scale of siege warfare, as both sides were now simultaneously besieging each other, by attacking and defending across an entire continent. Europe was, in effect, besieging itself.¹ Furthermore, the power of modern weaponry, especially highexplosive artillery, now allowed armies to reduce whole towns to rubble. By November 1918, the destruction done to numerous large French towns, such as Reims and Lens, was vast, and served as a harbinger of what would befall towns and cities in subsequent conflicts, from Hamburg and Stalingrad during the Second World War to, more recently, Sarajevo, Donetsk, and Aleppo. Between 1914 and 1918, the effects of warfare on urban spaces and communities entered a transformative period. This book explores how war impacted urban communities through an examination of towns on either side of the Western Front. In late 1914, the fighting stabilized in some of France’s most heavily populated and industrialized regions. Large towns including Nancy, Reims, Arras, and Lens came under fire as they found themselves at the centre of the most destructive war the world had yet seen. In 1914 and again in 1918 the armies fought over these towns during the war of movement. During the period of static warfare they were embedded in the opposing defensive systems. Their civilian inhabitants risked death and injury from artillery bombardment, endured military occupations, and suffered from acute supply shortages. Many stubbornly remained in the face of these pressures

¹ Alex Dowdall and John Horne, ‘Introduction’, in Civilians under Siege from Sarajevo to Troy, ed. Alex Dowdall and John Horne (Basingstoke, 2018), 1–13. Communities under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918. Alex Dowdall, Oxford University Press (2020). © Alex Dowdall. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198856115.001.0001

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until forcibly displaced late in the war. Their continued presence in their home towns ensured the Western Front was not inhabited only by soldiers. Rather, it was a space where the civilian and the military worlds collided. By examining these civilians’ experiences, this book engages with one of the earliest and most important examples of a dominant theme of twentieth-century history—how urban dwellers respond to military assaults. In recent years, the urban history of the First World War has benefitted from a rich historiography. We now have a clear idea of how wartime conditions affected urban life on the home fronts and how urban communities intersected with national and international war efforts. The history of urban warfare, or the direct impact of combat on urban communities, has received less attention. Historians have explored the symbolic importance of aerial attacks against towns and cities far from the lines, from London to Paris and the Ruhr. They have also analysed the ways this prefigured the more radical bombing campaigns of the Second World War.² Studies of German atrocities during the invasion of France and Belgium in 1914, and forced population displacement and military occupations in Eastern and Western Europe, have also expanded our knowledge of the direct effects of the war on civilians.³ But these studies have failed to account for the fact that for much of the war urban life continued at the heart of the combat zones. Marcus Funck and Roger Chickering have argued that during the twentieth century towns and

² The literature on bombing during the First World War has grown considerably in recent years. See in particular Andrew Barros, ‘Strategic Bombing and Restraint in Total War, 1915–1918’, The Historical Journal 52, no. 2 (2009): 413–31; Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas About Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 (Princeton, 2004); Christian Geinitz, ‘The First Air War Against Noncombattants: Strategic Bombing of German Cities in World War 1’, in Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918, ed. Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (Cambridge, 2000); Susan R. Grayzel, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge, 2012); Susan R. Grayzel, ‘ “The Souls of Soldiers”: Civilians Under Fire in First World War France’, Journal of Modern History 78, no. 3 (2006): 588–622. For a comparative examination of aerial and artillery bombardment over the course of the two world wars, see Danièle Voldman, ‘Les Populations civiles, enjeux du bombardement des villes (1914–1945)’, in La Violence de guerre 1914–1945: approches comparées des deux conflits mondiaux, ed. Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Annette Becker, Christian Ingrao and Henry Rousso (Brussels, 2002), 151–74. ³ John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (London, 2001). The literature on military occupations and forced displacement during the First World War is a large and expanding field. The most important recent works include Annette Becker, Les Cicatrices rouges, 1914–1918: France et Belgique occupées (Paris, 2010); Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War 1 (Cambridge, 2000); Helen McPhail, The Long Silence: Civilian Life under the German Occupation of Northern France, 1914–1918 (London, 2001); Philippe Nivet, La France occupée, 1914–1918 (Paris, 2011); James E. Connolly, The Experience of Occupation in the Nord, 1914–18: Living with the Enemy in First World War France (Manchester, 2018). On refugees see Philippe Nivet, Les Réfugiés français de la Grande Guerre: les ‘Boches du Nord’ (Paris, 2004); Michaël Amara, Des Belges à l’épreuve de l’exil: les réfugiés de la Première Guerre Mondiale, France, Grande-Bretagne, Pays-Bas (Bruxelles, 2008); Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War 1 (Bloomington, IN, 1999).

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cities were ‘transformed into the pivots of military violence in Europe’.⁴ As this book demonstrates, this process began with urban warfare at the Western Front. Three key dimensions of this topic mark it out as particularly worthy of study. First, the urban history of the Western Front informs debates surrounding the targeting of civilians by militaries between 1914 and 1918. This issue has received significant attention since the pioneering work of John Horne, Alan Kramer, and Isabel Hull, who showed that the German army accepted acts of extreme violence committed by its troops against enemy civilians.⁵ Since then, some have argued that instances of violence against civilians during the First World War, in particular Germany’s occupations of France and Eastern Europe, were indicative of a radicalization of warfare leading to the ethnic, racially motivated bloodshed of the Second World War.⁶ Others, such as Jonathan Gumz in his study of Habsburg violence in occupied Serbia, have identified more traditional patterns, drawing on established norms and practices from the nineteenth century.⁷ The forms of violence against civilians during the conflict—ranging from aerial bombing to military occupation, forced expulsions, deportations, internments, and, in the case of Armenia, genocide—were, however, so varied that it may be impossible to place them within a single framework. In this respect, Heather Jones has argued that the First World War was ‘a hybrid conflict that straddled the extremes of the deliberate, violent ethnic cleansing of civilians seen during the Balkan Wars and the more limited military violence targeting civilians seen during the Franco–Prussian War.’⁸ Urban warfare at the Western Front forces us to revisit these debates, and consider whether the bombardment of towns was indicative of a radicalization of violence, motivated by desires to target enemy society, or rather an acceptance by commanders that civilians would be the inevitable and necessary victims of military actions, as had been the case during previous conflicts. Second, the history of urban life at the Western Front contributes to the comparative history of military occupation. Artillery bombardment was not the only form of military violence experienced by front-line communities, as towns on both sides of the lines were subject to military control. As such, this book

⁴ Marcus Funck and Roger Chickering, ‘Introduction: Endangered Cities’, in Endangered Cities: Military Power and Urban Societies in the Era of the World Wars, ed. Marcus Funck and Roger Chickering (Leiden, 2004), 3. ⁵ Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities; Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY, 2005), 197–262. ⁶ Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 12–14; Liulevicius, War Land, 9; Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford, 2008), 48–9. ⁷ Jonathan E. Gumz, The Resurrection and Collapse of Empire in Habsburg Serbia, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 2009). ⁸ Heather Jones, ‘The Great War: How 1914–1918 Changed the Relationship between War and Civilians’, The RUSI Journal 159, no.4 (2014): 87.

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examines urban communities on the Allied side of the lines alongside their counterparts in German-occupied France. To date, historians have examined Franco–British or Franco–German encounters at the Western Front separately.⁹ This book, however, adopts a comparative approach and explores how French civilians interacted with the French, British, and German forces that occupied their towns. This allows it to examine both the similarities and the differences between how armies controlled civilian populations in their areas of operation. To date, most historians of the German occupation have contended that it was a means of continuing war against a defeated civilian population, and a ‘regime of terror’ which further demonstrated the exceptional violence of Germany’s war effort.¹⁰ Yet such interpretations have not been sufficiently tested by comparative analyses of the treatment of civilians by other armies, either at the Western Front or elsewhere. This book aims to do so, by questioning whether the German occupation of France was truly exceptional or whether, alongside the Allied ‘friendly occupations’, it was merely a concentrated manifestation of a broader trend towards the control of civilians by military authorities in wartime. Third, the urban history of the Western Front generates a fresh perspective on the history of forced displacement. This book is concerned with civilians both at and from the towns along the Western Front. It discusses their experiences as they remained under fire and under occupation, but also follows them into the French interior as they joined the country’s ever-growing wartime refugee population. Their experiences of displacement, and especially the relationships they maintained with their home communities, are an important part of the history of urban life at the Western Front. To date, most historians of French refugees during the First World War have focused on the hostile receptions they received from the state and host communities in the interior.¹¹ This book, in contrast, interrogates the experiences, attitudes, and actions of refugees themselves. Drawing heavily on refugees’ own writings, in letters, diaries, and newspapers, it charts their evolving attitudes towards the state, the national community, and, most importantly, the towns they left. In doing so, it questions whether, after they left their bombarded communities, they were capable of maintaining meaningful social, emotional, and imaginative bonds with their abandoned homes. The book explores how three of the principle civilian experiences of war— violence, occupation, and displacement—shaped urban life at the Western Front.

⁹ Craig Gibson, Behind the Front: British Soldiers and French Civilians, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 2014). For the historiography of occupation, see note 3. ¹⁰ Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 13–14; Nivet, La France occupée, 373–4. ¹¹ Nivet, Les Réfugiés français; Pierre Purseigle, ‘ “A Wave on to Our Shores”: The Exile and Settlement of Refugees from the Western Front, 1914–1918’, Contemporary European History 16, no. 4 (2007): 427–44.

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In doing so, it moves beyond the nature, causes, and representations of violence against civilians, to interrogate the experiences of urban dwellers themselves. This book is, therefore, primarily a history from below, which examines how urban communities adapted or succumbed to large-scale military violence. It is both a social and a cultural history, attempting to capture and analyse the changes brought to material conditions of life by war, and civilians’ responses to these changes. The book thus provides a social history of material life under fire, and charts the effects of bombardment and military occupation on urban spaces, population levels, food supplies, working conditions, and living standards. At the same time, it examines ‘war cultures’, or the systems of representations that civilians on both sides of the lines forged to structure and understand wartime experiences.¹² A central objective is to assess how direct experiences of war affected notions of collective identity. As Antoine Prost has argued, ‘all history is at once inseparably social and cultural’. This book aims to undertake what Prost described as a ‘social history of representations’, and explore how, in the face of extreme violence, occupation, and displacement, civilians at the Western Front defined themselves as distinct ‘communities under fire’, often in opposition to other social groups in France.¹³ Yet what exactly was the Western Front? How expansive was it, and which towns did it envelop? Popular uses of the term suggest a coherent and stable geographical space, defined by immobility and military deadlock. Yet this elides much complexity in the military situation. Transitions between periods of mobile and static warfare ensured the front varied chronologically and geographically. Over the course of 51 months of conflict, static war characterized just over 40 months, from November 1914 to late March 1918. However, even during this period, the front maintained a degree of elasticity. Major offensives, such as the Battle of Arras in spring 1917, had minor impacts on the overall geography of the Western Front, but could send whole towns into or out of the fighting. Furthermore, between August and October 1914, and March and November 1918, the armies were on the move. Mobile warfare brought larger areas of northern and eastern France within range of the fighting, and towns that were otherwise relatively sheltered came under attack. Militarily, therefore, the Western Front was far more than two opposing lines of trenches, separated by a ‘no man’s land’, running from the North Sea to the Swiss border. It was a wide and changeable geographic space.

¹² On ‘war cultures’ see Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, ‘Violence et consentement: la “culture de guerre” du première conflit mondial’, in Pour une histoire culturelle, ed. Jean-Pierre Rioux and Jean-François Sirinelli (Paris, 1997); Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge, 2005), 164–5. ¹³ Antoine Prost, ‘Sociale et culturelle indissociablement’, in Rioux and Sirinelli, Pour une histoire culturelle, 146 and 134.

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But it was also constructed by those who experienced it, both literally and as a cultural product in collective and individual representations. In the first instance, this meant the soldiers—the front’s principal inhabitants. Civilians in the French interior and on the British home front only encountered the front indirectly in letters, the press, the cinema, and through men on leave.¹⁴ But the Western Front was directly experienced and constructed by the civilian populations who lived near it and felt its presence in their lives. From their perspective, it existed in a legal-administrative sense, as the operational zones—the Etappengebiet on the German side and the zone des armées on the Allied—which gave military authorities control over their lives. But it was also a physical presence, in the form of reserve and support trenches, artillery parks, supply depots, and other defensive positions that extended for kilometres back from the front-line trenches, as well as intense aerial and artillery bombardment. The combatants’ aerial bombing capabilities expanded considerably as the war progressed. What began as individual grenades dropped by hand evolved into large, dedicated squadrons of purposebuilt bombers—by 1918, the French aerial division had more than 700 fighters and bombers stationed on the Western Front. Towns and cities near the lines suffered heavily from tactical raids aimed at military infrastructure, and strategic raids targeting the civilian economy and morale.¹⁵ In this respect, civilians at the Western Front shared a common wartime experience with their counterparts in the French interior, and on the British and German home fronts, as all combatant nations increasingly resorted to aerial bombing raids against civilians targets behind the lines.¹⁶ But it was artillery bombardment, and in particular shelling from field artillery, that was the most defining feature of the Western Front for civilians. From field guns to howitzers and heavy railway guns, artillery fire defined an area extending more than 20 km on either side of the front-line trenches.¹⁷ The intensity of fire fluctuated, normally reaching peaks during large offensives. But even between offensives civilians in this area lived with the constant threat and reality of low-intensity shelling. Artillery bombardment was perhaps the most characteristic feature of combat during the First World War, and caused between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of soldiers’ war wounds.¹⁸ There was a clear qualitative difference between the impact of this form of military weaponry, and the intermittent aerial bombing raids experienced by urban centres ¹⁴ John Horne, ‘Le Front’, in Vue du front: représenter la Grande Guerre, ed. Sarah Houssin-Dreyfuss (Paris, 2014), 17–28. ¹⁵ John H. Morrow Jr, ‘The War in the Air’, in A Companion to World War 1, ed. John Horne (Chichester, 2010), 156–69. ¹⁶ On aerial bombing, see note 2. ¹⁷ Field guns could typically reach 6–9 km, howitzers 15 km, and most railway artillery 30 km. The outlier was the German ‘Paris Gun’, which, in March 1918, hit the French capital with a 114 kg shell from 120 km. See Ian V. Hogg, Allied Artillery of World War One (Ramsbury, 1998) and Herbert Jäger, German Artillery of World War One (Ramsbury, 2001). ¹⁸ Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, ‘Combat’, in A Companion to World War 1, ed. John Horne (Chichester, 2010), 177.

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in the interior. More than anything else, artillery bombardment drew urban spaces into the military world of the Western Front. This book, therefore, adopts a spatial approach to the Western Front as a zone demarcated by a variable yet distinct set of wartime experiences, the most important of which was exposure to intense fire from field artillery. This area contained numerous urban spaces, from among which this book chooses four representative case studies—Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-deCalais, an extensive industrial conurbation centred on Lens and Béthune (Map 1). Nancy is the largest of the towns studied, with a pre-war population of 119,949. The self-styled capital of the east of France had a strong sense of civic identity in 1914. Following the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, Nancy became the capital of the newly created department of the Meurthe-et-Moselle and assumed many of the functions of the ‘lost’ towns of Metz and Strasbourg.¹⁹ Many of Nancy’s most important businesses, including the steelworks in its industrial suburbs, also transferred from annexed Alsace-Lorraine after 1871.²⁰ Politically, Nancy lay to the right. It elected Maurice Barrès to the National Assembly as a boulangiste candidate in 1889, while the Ligue de la Patrie Française was prominent locally during the Dreyfus Affair.²¹ In 1914, the town’s deputies included the conservative republican Louis Marin and the populist, catholic republican Emile Driant, a retired army officer who had gained fame as an author of militarist adventure novels under the pseudonym Colonel Danrit.²² The right controlled the municipal council until 1912, when moderate republicans took control under Joseph Laurent, who remained mayor until he was mobilized in August 1914.²³ Although it is difficult to say whether the local political climate fostered a ‘frontier mentality’ in Nancy prior to 1914, proximity to the Franco–German border dominated local life.²⁴ Following the Franco–Prussian War, German forces had occupied the Meurthe-et-Moselle until August 1873, while war scares and panics were common up to 1914. In November 1912, for instance, reservists in 11 surrounding communes mobilized and marched towards Nancy after an official mistakenly sent out a mobilization order.²⁵ The following year, a scare was sparked

¹⁹ Françoise Boquillon, Catherine Guyon and François Roth, Nancy: du bourg castral à la communauté urbaine, 1000 ans d’histoire (Nancy, 2007), 200–1. ²⁰ Ibid., 202. ²¹ Ibid., 207. ²² Ibid. During the war Driant was one of a number of high-profile French deputies to serve in the army. He was killed during the Battle of Verdun in February 1916. See Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, ‘Driant au bois des Caures’, in 14–18, La Très Grande Guerre, ed. Centre de Recherche de l’Historial de la Grande Guerre (Paris, 1994), 121–7. ²³ Boquillon, Guyon and Roth, Nancy, 207. ²⁴ Didier Francfort, ‘From the Other Side of the Mirror: The French-German Border in Landscape and Memory: Lorraine, 1871–1914’, in At the Border: Margins and Peripheries in Modern France, ed. Henrice Altink and Sharif Gemie (Cardiff, 2008), 79–95. ²⁵ The order was quickly withdrawn, but the government thanked the men for their ‘devotion’ and ‘patriotism’. See Archives départementales de la Meurthe-et-Moselle, Nancy (ADMM), 8 R 172, ‘Menaces de Guerre, Alerte du 27 Nov 1912’.

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when a German airship—operated by a civilian company but with uniformed military officers on-board—made a forced landing near Lunéville, south-east of Nancy.²⁶ Thanks to such incidents, war was not an abstract threat in Nancy in 1914. Two hundred kilometres northwest of Nancy, Reims was also an important regional centre. The prefecture of the Marne was located at the smaller town of Châlons-sur-Marne, but Reims was the department’s most important commercial and industrial centre.²⁷ Although further from the frontier than Nancy, it too was occupied during the Franco–Prussian war, and benefitted from an influx of refugees following the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Between 1872 and 1911, its population increased from 70,000 to over 115,000.²⁸ Traditionally a textile town, this industry was in decline in 1914 but remained an important source of local employment; as did the luxury Champagne industry, which produced 35 million bottles in 1911.²⁹ Politically, Reims occupied a complex space. The historic role of the town’s cathedral as the site of the coronation of the French kings ensured that nationally Reims was an important symbol for Catholicism and monarchism.³⁰ In the years prior to 1914, however, radicals and radical-socialists dominated local politics. The town elected Léon Mirman, who would later serve as prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle during the war, as an independent socialist in 1893. The municipal council pursued an anti-clerical agenda up to 1906. After this its politics moderated somewhat, and the town elected its future wartime mayor, Dr Jean-Baptiste Langlet, in 1908. Although an anti-clerical radical, Langlet was inclined towards compromise, and took it upon himself to maintain the union sacrée on a local level after August 1914.³¹ On the eve of war, Arras presented quite a different picture of urban development than Nancy and Reims. Although it was the prefecture of the Pas-de-Calais, a highly populated and industrialized department, economic backwardness characterized Arras itself. The traditional industries of textiles, sugar refining, and metallurgy were declining by the end of the nineteenth century, while the town’s once-important market had also suffered.³² While surrounding towns such as the Lille-Tourcoing-Roubaix conurbation, Douai, and Calais were expanding, Arras stagnated and its population declined from 26,216 in 1856 to 25,814 in 1901.³³ Although moderate republicans controlled the municipal council for much of the ²⁶ ADMM, 4 M 219, sub-prefect Lunéville to interior ministry, 4 Apr 1913. See also François Roth, ‘La Frontière Franco-Allemande, 1871–1918’, in Grenzen und Grenzregionen: Frontières et régions frontalières: Borders and Border Regions, ed. Wolfgang Haubrichs and Reinhard Schneider (Saarbrucken, 1993), 135–44. ²⁷ Châlons-sur-Marne was renamed Châlons-en-Champagne in 1995. Throughout this book it will be referred to as Châlons-sur-Marne. ²⁸ Pierre Desportes, ed., Histoire de Reims (Toulouse, 1983), 311. ²⁹ Ibid., 314–22; Gilles Baillat, et al., Reims (Paris, 1990), 111. ³⁰ Jacques Le Goff, ‘Reims, City of Coronation’, in Symbols, vol. 3 of Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, ed. Pierre Nora, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York, 1998). ³¹ Desportes, Histoire de Reims, 334–6. ³² Yves-Marie Hilaire, ed., Histoire d’Arras (Dunkerque, 1988), 225–33. ³³ Ibid., 218.

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period prior to 1914, they avoided open confrontation with the strong local Catholic Church and right-wing opposition.³⁴ This has led Yves-Marie Hilaire to describe Arras in 1914 as a ‘witness of the past’, populated by administrators, lawyers, artisans, shopkeepers, and a declining number of traders.³⁵ Its reputation was based on its historic rather than contemporary importance. During the middle-ages, it had been a European capital of cloth trading and tapestry making. Its former wealth had allowed the construction of some of the region’s most admired architecture, including the Petite and Grande Places, with their rows of seventeenth-century Flemish-style merchants’ houses, and the gothic belfry of the Hôtel de Ville.³⁶ This architectural heritage came into renewed focus when shelled by German artillery in 1914. The fourth case study, the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais, lies 20 km north of Arras. The entire coalfield of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais extends from west to east for almost 100 km, from Auchel, in the Pas-de-Calais, to Crespin in the Nord. In 1914, this was one of France’s primary industrial regions, but it cannot not be considered as ‘urban’ in quite the same sense as the other three case studies. This was a borderland or hybrid zone, between the urban, the peri-urban, and the rural, where life also extended underground. It was a conurbation of towns and villages, connected by a thick network of mining and industrial infrastructure, but also interspersed by farms, agricultural buildings, and the wastelands and slagheaps created by modern industry. Mining had begun in the Nord in the eighteenth century, but only spread to the neighbouring Pas-de-Calais from the mid-1800s. Industrialization and urbanization occurred rapidly in the late nineteenth century. Lens expanded from 5,700 inhabitants in 1866 to 31,000 in 1911, while the total population of the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais reached 270,000.³⁷ In 1914, miners lived in tight-knit communities, often in company houses, or corons, and frequently on the outskirts of the major towns or in villages clustered around the pit heads. They were also subject to strong doses of employers’ paternalism by the mining companies.³⁸ These conditions have prompted some to argue that a distinct ‘coron mentality’ emerged within the mining communities, characterized by social and cultural cohesion and insularity.³⁹ This was perhaps furthered by the danger of work in the mines, where accidents were common. Individual fatalities and injuries were frequent, and on the rise in the pre-war years.⁴⁰ But sometimes accidents were catastrophic. On 11 March 1906, an explosion at the Courrières mine killed 1,100 men and boys from ³⁴ Ibid., 267. ³⁵ Ibid., 242. ³⁶ Yves-Marie Hilaire, ed., Histoire du Nord-Pas-de-Calais de 1900 à nos jours (Toulouse, 1982), 92–4. ³⁷ Hilaire, Histoire du Nord-Pas-de-Calais, 98. ³⁸ Maurice Agulhon, et al., Histoire de la France urbaine. Tome 4: La ville de l’âge industriel: le cycle haussmannien (Paris, 1998), 306 and 410. ³⁹ Rolande Trempé, ‘Le réformisme des mineurs français à la fin du XIXe siècle’, Le Mouvement social 65 (1968): 101–3. ⁴⁰ Hilaire, Histoire du Nord-Pas-de-Calais, 122.

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Méricourt, Sallaumines, and Billy-Montigny. At the time, it was the worst mining disaster in history.⁴¹ By 1914, control over local politics had largely been wrested from the employers, and an atypical blend of reformist syndicalism and independent socialism emerged, dominated by the figure of Émile Basly, a former miner known as the ‘Tsar of Lens’. Basly combined the roles of municipal councillor, mayor of Lens, parliamentary deputy, and president of the mining syndicate of the Pas-de-Calais. He was instrumental in promoting reformist syndicalism among the miners of the Pas-de-Calais and helped keep the fédération nationale des mineurs out of the revolutionary confédération générale du travail until 1908.⁴² He accompanied his reformist syndicalism with reformist parliamentary socialism. Basly’s electoral appeal was broad. He won votes from workers by turning the mining syndicate into an electoral machine, but also gained the tacit support of the company owners.⁴³ In 1914, this was a region that was strongly socialist and syndicalist, but also committed to the state. After war broke out in August 1914, fighting affected each of these case studies to different degrees. During the period of static warfare, Nancy was furthest from the lines—approximately 12 km from the trenches in the French zone of the Allied side. It lay in a relatively quiet sector and German long-range artillery bombarded it intermittently, although it was more exposed during the periods of mobile warfare. Reims and Arras, also on the Allied side, were significantly closer to the front-line trenches during the period of static warfare, and experienced more intense, sustained bombardment. Both were originally occupied by the French army until, in March 1916, Arras came under British control. The coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais, for its part, was bisected by the front. The front-line trenches ran through it from north to south, separating the Allied, mainly Britishheld west from the German-held east. Bombardment was most intense near the centre, in Allied-held Noeux-les-Mines and Béthune, and German-held Lens, Liévin, Loos-en-Gohelle, Billy-Montigny, Courrières, and Sallaumines. Bruay, in the west, and Hénin-Liétard, in the east, marked the outer limits of the bombarded area, and were shelled intermittently (Map 2). Yet despite these variable conditions, in each case wartime experiences, from bombardment to occupation and displacement, had wide-ranging effects on civilians, impacting individual and collective identities. Direct encounters with war shaped notions of belonging among the inhabitants of these bombarded towns, as well as the attachments they felt towards their local communities. These developments are the primary focus of this book, which adopts a dual-pronged approach. ⁴¹ Robert G. Neville, ‘The Courrières Colliery Disaster, 1906’, Journal of Contemporary History 13, no. 1 (1978): 33. ⁴² Joël Michel, ‘Syndicalisme minier et politique dans le Nord-Pas-de-Calais: le cas Basly (18801914)’, Le Mouvement social 87 (1974): 9–33. ⁴³ Ibid., 19 and 28.

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It explores how, on the one hand, war militarized civilians’ identities and how, on the other, it shaped their attitudes towards their bombarded home towns and the wider national community.

The Militarization of Civilian Life at the Western Front Civilians were an established feature of Europe’s battlefields long before the First World War, as towns and cities had been consistently prone to military assault.⁴⁴ Between the seventeenth and the early nineteenth centuries, non-combatants were ‘constantly involved with, and exposed to, the exigencies of war’.⁴⁵ Practices such as bombardment during sieges and pillage and hostage-taking during irregular warfare had serious effects on civilian populations. Even the large, set-piece battles between land armies of the Napoleonic period brought bombardment, occupation, and disease to towns, as at Leipzig in October 1813.⁴⁶ Later, during the Franco–Prussian War, civilian populations were again exposed to military violence. French partisan units, or francs-tireurs, attacked the German army, blurring the lines between combatant and non-combatant. This prompted harsh reprisals, and the francs-tireurs became a source of deep and long-lasting institutional fears within the German army that would re-emerge in August 1914.⁴⁷ Civilian populations came under sustained attack during the sieges and bombardments of Paris and Strasbourg, while in Paris German citizens were represented as the ‘enemy within’, and almost 40,000 were expelled.⁴⁸ Following the war, and until 1873, an occupying German army controlled much of northern and eastern France, including areas that would be occupied again between 1914 and 1918.⁴⁹ During the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, civilians experienced military force on an even greater scale. The five-month siege and bombardment of Ottoman-controlled Edirne (Adrianople) by Bulgarian forces during the First Balkan War demonstrated the destructive effects of modern warfare on urban spaces and populations.⁵⁰ The ⁴⁴ Dowdall and Horne, Civilians under Siege. ⁴⁵ Erica Charters, Eve Rosenhaft and Hannah Smith, ‘Introduction’, in Civilians and War in Europe, 1618–1815, ed. Erica Charters, Eve Rosenhaft and Hannah Smith (Liverpool, 2012), 2. ⁴⁶ Karen Hagemann, ‘ “Unimaginable Horror and Misery”: The Battle of Leipzig in October 1813 in Civilian Experience and Perception’, in Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790–1820, ed. Alan Forrest, Karen Hagemann, and Jane Rendall (Basingstoke, 2009), 157–78. ⁴⁷ Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 87–225. ⁴⁸ Rachel Chrastil, The Siege of Strasbourg (Cambridge, MA, 2014); Daniela L. Caglioti, ‘Waging War on Civilians: The Expulsion of Aliens in the Franco-Prussian War’, Past and Present 221 (2013): 161–95. ⁴⁹ Rachel Chrastil, Organising for War: France, 1870–1914 (Baton Rouge, LA, 2010), 50–70. ⁵⁰ Eyal Ginio, ‘Constructing a Symbol of Defeat and National Rejuvenation: Edirne (Adrianople) in Ottoman Propaganda and Writing during the Balkan Wars’, in Cities into Battlefields: Metropolitan Scenarios, Experiences and Commemorations of Total War, ed. Stefan Goebel and Derek Keene (Farnham, 2011); Syed Tanvir Wasti, ‘The 1912–13 Balkan Wars and the Siege of Edirne’, Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 4 (2004): 59–78.

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Second Balkan War was even more brutal, as civilians suffered pillage, atrocities, rape, and forced displacement. The report into the wars conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace described it as ‘a war of religion, of reprisals, of race, a war of one people against another, of man against man and brother against brother.’⁵¹ It bore the hallmarks of what was to come later in the century. The conflicts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries therefore ensured that violence against civilians remained part of European warfare. During the same period, however, some world powers aimed to limit the effects of war on civilians. The Hague Conventions of 1907 were their most developed effort.⁵² Alongside the protections they offered to combatants, the wounded, and prisoners of war, the Conventions aspired to establish rules regarding the occupation of enemy territory and the bombardment of towns. Their success in this regard was, however, limited, as they struggled to reach a compromise between military necessity and desires to protect civilians. The Conventions’ provisions on the bombardment of towns are particularly revealing. Article 25 of Hague Convention IV prohibited the bombardment of undefended towns ‘by whatever means’, thereby anticipating the nascent threat posed to civilian populations by aerial bombing.⁵³ Military commanders would not, however, give up their right to bombard towns entirely, and the shelling of places, whether defended or not, that served military functions was permitted.⁵⁴ In such cases, officers were to make efforts to spare ‘buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected’, but only ‘as far as possible’, and only if they were not being used at the time for military purposes.⁵⁵ The Hague Conventions attempted to limit the bombardment of urban centres, while at the same time accepting that such tactics would be an inevitable part of future wars. Their treatment of the question of military occupation displayed similar tensions. Articles 44–6 guaranteed respect for the ‘family honour’, lives, private property, and religious convictions of those under occupation, while also guaranteeing they would not be required to give oaths of allegiance or information about their own country’s defences to occupiers.⁵⁶ The German representative at The Hague, however, maintained that these restrictions should not ‘fetter the ⁵¹ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Report of the International Commission to Report into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars (Washington DC, 1914), 16. ⁵² Geofrey Best, Humanity in Warfare: The Modern History of the International Law of Armed Conflicts (London, 1983), 128–215. ⁵³ James Brown Scott, ed., The Hague Conventions and Declarations of 1899 and 1907, accompanied by Tables of Signatures, Ratifications and Adhesions of the Various Powers, and Texts and Reservations (New York, 1915), 117; Aircraft were first used in combat for reconnaissance and bombardment four years after the Hague Conference, during the Italian–Turkish War of 1911–12. See Michael Paris, ‘The First Air Wars: North Africa and the Balkans, 1911–13’, Journal of Contemporary History 26, no. 1 (1991): 97–109. ⁵⁴ Best, Humanity in Warfare, 205. ⁵⁵ Scott, Hague Conventions, 118. ⁵⁶ Ibid., 123.

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belligerent’s freedom of action in certain extreme situations which might constitute legitimate defence’.⁵⁷ Such reservations demonstrate that while the Conventions articulated the general principle that during future wars civilians should be offered some protections from violence, and while popularly held opinions increasingly felt that such protections would be accorded, many military commanders and politicians had not internalized this principle prior to 1914.⁵⁸ It was not, therefore, a novel or wholly unexpected development when civilians experienced military violence during the First World War. What was new was the nature and extent of this exposure, as well as the disconnect that arose between the expectation that civilians would be protected by the evolving laws of war, and the ultimate reality of military practice.⁵⁹ During the First World War, civilians experienced greater levels of violence than ever before, and historians have examined notable examples in the form of military occupations, atrocities, aerial bombing, and forced displacement.⁶⁰ However, during the First World War, civilians were not merely passive victims of military violence. They also actively participated in national war efforts to a degree that dwarfed previous wars. This development had not been envisaged prior to August 1914. Historians have long recognized the key role that civilians played in wartime industrial mobilizations.⁶¹ Civilians also served as auxiliaries to the armed forces, in medical services, and as technical advisors and experts.⁶² Even more important was the broader social and cultural mobilization of the home front for war. Communities across France, and other belligerent nations, fundamentally accepted the war effort, and engaged with it in a voluntarist manner. Support for the war was not imposed from above, through propaganda and coercion, but was largely self-generated from below.⁶³ Civilian communities on the home front were deeply implicated in the war. They were also keenly aware of the realities of combat thanks to the relatively uncensored illustrated press, encounters with soldiers on leave, and their own correspondence with family and friends serving in the army.⁶⁴ The increased exposure of civilians to military violence, and the central role they played in national war efforts, have been the focus of an important ⁵⁷ Isabel V. Hull, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War (Ithaca, NY, 2014), 96–7. ⁵⁸ Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 25–6. ⁵⁹ Hull, Scrap of Paper, 2. ⁶⁰ See notes 2, 3, and 5. ⁶¹ For the French case see Patrick Fridenson, ed., The French Home Front (Oxford, 1992). ⁶² Tammy M. Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, 1914–1918 (New York, 2010); Tomás Irish, The University at War: Britain, France and the United States, 1914–25 (Basingstoke, 2015). ⁶³ John Horne, ‘Introduction: Mobilizing for “Total War”, 1914–1918’, in State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War, ed. John Horne (Cambridge, 1997), 5–8. ⁶⁴ Joëlle Beurier, ‘Mapping Visual Violence in Germany, France and Britain, 1914–18’, in Liberal Democracies at War: Conflict and Representation, ed. Hilary Footitt and Andrew Knapp (London, 2013); Emmanuelle Cronier, Permissionnaires dans la Grande Guerre (Paris, 2013); Martha Hanna, Your Death Would be Mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War (Cambridge, MA, 2008).

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development in the historiography of the First World War. Earlier writing, such as the first detailed account of civilian life during the war written by Gabriel Perreux in 1966, emphasized the supposed divides between the civilians’ war and that of the soldiers. More recently, however, historians have argued for their deep interconnectedness.⁶⁵ We now know that the divides—cognitive, emotional, and physical—between the front and the home front, and between civilians and soldiers, were consistently blurred over the course of the war. In certain respects, civilian and military experiences of war converged. The war changed the very nature of civilian society, resulting in what historians have described as its ‘militarization’. Michael Geyer was one of the first to theorize this process, pointing to the multifaceted nature of Europe’s ‘militarization’ during the period of the two world wars. This ranged from ‘the incipient “socialization” of danger that no longer separated soldiers from civilians’ to the expansion of armies, and the refocusing of industries, economies, and societies for war.⁶⁶ Geyer’s definition of militarization is capacious, and describes phenomena potentially impacting all civilians in all belligerent societies. This expansive approach reflects broader usages of the term by historians of the First World War, which have tended towards generalization. In a recent survey of civilian life during the First World War, for instance, Tammy Proctor conflates support for the war on the home front with the direct exposure of civilians to military violence, and argues that nursing and work in factories are as indicative of the militarization of civilians as occupation and bombardment.⁶⁷ This book takes a different approach, and seeks to nuance the concept of militarization by understanding how it functioned variably, as well as its wide-ranging social impacts. It argues that since wartime pressures differed from time to time and from place to place, some civilians’ lives were militarized to a greater extent, and in a more concrete manner, than others. This, in turn, shaped how they understood their place within the national community at war. This was especially the case for the civilian inhabitants of towns at the Western Front. Like other communities across France, they actively participated in the nation’s social, cultural, and economic mobilizations for war. But they also faced prolonged, rather than merely intermittent, exposure to extreme violence and occupation. The experience of artillery bombardment was especially important since this, more than anything else, allowed front-line civilians to distinguish themselves from their counterparts in the interior. The militarization of their lives was, in other words, a more concentrated manifestation of a development felt by civilians throughout Europe. This book argues that civilians at the front were keenly aware of the erosion of the ⁶⁵ Gabriel Perreux, La Vie quotidienne des civils en France pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris, 1966); Winter and Prost, The Great War in History, 152–72. ⁶⁶ Michael Geyer, ‘The Militarization of Europe, 1914–1945’, in The Militarization of the Western World, ed. John R. Gillis (New Brunswick, NJ, 1989), 75. ⁶⁷ Proctor, Civilians in a World at War, 1–4.

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divide between their world and that of the military. It also argues that this process of militarization had profound social impacts on urban life at the front, shaping civilians’ collective identities, and defining their relationships with their local and national communities.

Local and National Communities under Fire In recent years there has been a drive among historians of the First World War to explore the local dynamics of the conflict. Some have studied regional war experiences.⁶⁸ Others have focused on the effects of war on towns and cities, either individually or in groups, and often in comparative or transnational perspectives.⁶⁹ These works have shared a concern to move away from the nation state as an exclusive category of analysis, and to examine the local dynamics of social and cultural mobilizations, and the relationships between local and national communities in wartime.⁷⁰ This aspect of the historiography of the First World War is related to a broader field of inquiry focused on the continued strength of local and regional identities in the face of the consolidation of nation states in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe.⁷¹ Historians of Germany have examined the interactions of locality, region, and nation after unification, and in particular the importance of the idea of the Heimat, or the local homeland.⁷² For their part, historians of France have reassessed the traditional image of the centralizing Jacobin state. They have revised Eugen Weber’s influential claim that after 1870 urban France effectively ‘colonized’ the provinces and transformed ‘peasants into

⁶⁸ Sean Brady, ‘From Peacetime to Wartime: The Sicilian Province of Catania and Italian intervention in the Great War, June 1914-September 1915’, in Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War, ed. Alisa Miller, Laura Rowe, and James Kitchen (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2010); Benjamin Ziemann, War Experiences in Rural Germany, 1914–1923 (Oxford, 2007); Michaël Bourlet, Yann Lagadec, and Erwan Le Gall, eds., Petites patries dans la Grande Guerre (Rennes, 2013). ⁶⁹ Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert, eds., Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin, 1914–1918, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1997–2007); Roger Chickering, The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 2007); Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War 1 (Cambridge, 2004); Pierre Purseigle, Mobilisation, sacrifice et citoyenneté, Angleterre-France 1900–1918 (Paris, 2013); Adam R. Seipp, The Ordeal of Peace: Demobilization and the Urban Experience in Britain and Germany, 1917–1921 (Farnham, 2009). ⁷⁰ The recent three-volume Cambridge History of the First World War has also eschewed the nationstate, opting instead for a transnational approach that goes above and below the nation. See Jay Winter, ‘General Introduction’ in Global War, vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of the First World War, ed. Jay Winter (Cambridge, 2014), 6–10. ⁷¹ Celia Applegate, ‘A Europe of Regions: Reflections on the Historiography of Sub-National Places in Modern Times’, The American Historical Review 104, no. 4 (1999): 1157–82. ⁷² Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, CA, 1990); Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Würtemburg, Imperial Germany and National Memory, 1871–1918 (London, 1997).

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Frenchmen’ using institutions such as the army and the primary school.⁷³ In fact, local politics and identities remained important throughout the Third Republic. On an administrative level, the Third Republic’s programmes of decentralization granted increased importance to local government. These reforms meant that municipal councils were elected by universal suffrage, could appoint mayors, and were granted powers over local policing, employment, and budgets.⁷⁴ These reforms aimed to ‘republicanize’ the communes and foster participative democracy on a local level. As Jean-Marie Mayeur has argued, the Third Republic transformed the town hall into ‘a centre of life and political education’ that contained ‘the reality of local political life’.⁷⁵ For those opposed to the state, local politics was also an important arena. Socialists identified the municipality as a shelter against the ravages of capitalism. In the town councils they controlled, they attempted to implement municipal socialism by providing social housing, municipal works programmes, and basic welfare and healthcare.⁷⁶ The French state did not feel threatened by local particularism in this period, and even co-existed relatively harmoniously with well-established, linguistically based regional identities such as Basque, Breton, and Flemish.⁷⁷ We now know that one of the Republic’s most quintessential institutions—the primary school— did not impose an educational version of Jacobin unity, but instead made concessions to local diversity.⁷⁸ A local sense of place was actively inculcated among citizens of the Third Republic. French people learned to identify with their locality, or their petite patrie, as the tangible, everyday manifestation of the broader national community of which they were also a part. Each petite patrie was a building block of a greater national whole, and France was represented as a

⁷³ Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, CA, 1976), 486. ⁷⁴ The notable exception here is Paris. The city was denied an elected mayor, and the prefect of the Seine retained the functions of mayor throughout the period. ⁷⁵ Jean-Marie Mayeur, La Vie politique sous la Troisième République, 1870–1940 (Paris, 1984), 81. On the expansion of local government during the Third Republic see Vivien A. Schmidt, Democratizing France: the Political and Administrative History of Decentralisation (Cambridge, 1990) and William B. Cohen, Urban Government and the Rise of the French City: Five Municipalities in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1998). ⁷⁶ Joan W. Scott, ‘Social History and the History of Socialism: French Socialist Municipalities in the 1890s’, Le Mouvement Social 111 (1980): 145–53; Joan W. Scott, ‘Mayors versus Police Chiefs: Socialist Municipalities Confront the French State’, in French Cities in the Nineteenth Century, ed. John M. Merriman (London, 1982); Aude Chamouard, ‘Le Maire socialiste, matrice du réformisme (1900–1939)’, Vingtième siècle, revue d’histoire 96 (2007): 23–33. ⁷⁷ Maurice Agulhon, ‘Le Centre et la périphérie’, in Les Frances, tome 3 of Les Lieux de mémoire, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris, 1997), 2889–98. Timothy Baycroft argues that Flemish regional identity and French national identity were ‘compatible on a cultural level, [but resulted in] conflict on a political level’. See Timothy Baycroft, Culture, Identity and Nationalism: French Flanders in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 2004), 20. Others have continued to present more confrontational pictures of the interaction between regional and national identities in the period. See, for instance, Robert Gildea, Children of the Revolution: The French 1799–1914 (London, 2009), 289–311 and Sandra Ott, War, Judgment and Memory in the Basque Borderlands, 1914–1945 (Reno, NV, 2008). ⁷⁸ Jean-François Chanet, L’Ecole républicaine et les petites patries (Paris, 1996), 20.

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diverse, yet unified nation. Stéphane Gerson has described how, in this way, the petite patrie became ‘a keystone of civil participation and national identification’.⁷⁹ Centralizing nation states did not dominate Europeans in 1914. Instead, individuals expressed a variety of overlapping and often complementary identities as members of local, regional, and national communities. The social pressures generated by the First World War placed a renewed emphasis on local communities, as support for the war effort was generated, or eroded, on a local level. The processes of social and cultural mobilization were worked out locally, in streets and town squares across the belligerent nations. Local elites played an important role here, especially as regards the articulation of the symbols, languages, and discourses that structured engagement with the war.⁸⁰ In addition, local governments accumulated extra competencies, and played increasingly prominent roles in managing material conditions of life. Expanded municipal intervention in food supplies, welfare, and the economy were common developments across wartime Europe. Similar processes were evident in the towns at the Western Front, where individuals’ experiences in their local communities shaped their engagements with the national war effort. How this played out on either side of the lines is a central concern of this book. It will examine the role of municipal authorities in offsetting material hardships on both sides of the Western Front, as well as the impact of bombardment on civilians’ attitudes towards their local communities. How did civilians on the Allied side of the lines respond to the fact that the enemy was not merely attacking an ‘imagined’ national community, but also the real, tangible community that they experienced every day? Were these responses more complex on the German-occupied side of the lines, where the attack came from Allied artillery? How did civilians react to the destruction of their homes, and did this give renewed importance to a sense of local community? The book will, therefore, explore how war changed civilians’ relationships with their local communities. But it will also examine how it changed their attitudes towards the national community. The First World War profoundly reordered social relations in France. War generated a ‘social morality’ that privileged certain figures in public discourse—most notably the front-line soldier—and castigated others, including the hoarder, the speculator, and the profiteer. This also constructed the wartime national community around a moral hierarchy of suffering, at the pinnacle of which were the soldiers, whose physical suffering in the trenches

⁷⁹ Stéphane Gerson, ‘The Local’, in The French Republic: History, Values, Debates, ed. Edward Berenson, Vincent Duclert, and Christophe Prochasson (Ithaca, NY, 2011), 215–16. See also Stéphane Gerson, The Pride of Place: Local Memories and Political Culture in Nineteenth Century France (London, 2003). ⁸⁰ Purseigle, Mobilisation, sacrifice et citoyenneté, passim.

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set them above sheltered and less deserving civilians in the interior.⁸¹ The contributions of various social groups to the war effort were, in effect, judged by comparison to the ultimate sacrifices delivered by the soldiers at the front. But how did civilians at the front, who were militarized and shared many of the same experiences as the soldiers, perceive this ‘social morality’? Did civilians in towns at the front feel their communities suffered more than others in the interior and, if so, did they use this to claim a privileged position within a national hierarchy of suffering? How did these issues unfold on the occupied side, where civilians were cut off from the wartime national community and could make few demands on its social solidarity? In addressing these questions, this book will uncover how the processes of militarization shaped the relationships between front-line communities and the nation. Ultimately, this book seeks to examine how urban communities responded to the dramatic impact of industrialized war in the twentieth century. It is concerned with how direct experiences of war shaped both personal and collective identities, and whether civilians in towns at the Western Front felt their experiences of violence, occupation, and displacement marked them out as members of ‘communities under fire’ inhabiting distinct positions within wartime French society. Its six thematic chapters explore the topography of the urban battlefield, how life under fire shaped civilian identities, the dynamics of military occupation, the importance of work and food for survival at the front, and the relationships of refugees with the bombarded communities they left. Together, they aim to uncover the social and cultural history of urban life under fire, and explain the multiple ways by which urban residents responded to, were changed by, succumbed to, or survived the enormous pressures of life in a warzone.

⁸¹ John Horne, ‘Social Identity in War: France, 1914–1918’, in Men, Women and War, ed. T. G. Fraser and Keith Jeffrey (Dublin, 1993), 119–35.

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1 From Towns into Battlefields Urban Space at the Western Front

Urban Warfare and the Formation of the Western Front, August–October 1914 The French mobilization on 1 August 1914, and the subsequent German declaration of war, caused little overt enthusiasm in France’s north-eastern border towns. Instead, there was a mixture of resignation, apprehension, and calm acceptance. Léon Mirman, prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle, reported that Nancy was ‘perfectly calm’ when news of the mobilization arrived, and there was not ‘the least sign of panic’.¹ In the Pas-de-Calais coalfields, authorities noted that the overwhelmingly socialist population accepted war with little opposition, and that the government’s list of suspects to be arrested following the mobilization, the Carnet B, was by and large not applied. One of the few arrested was Benoît Broutchoux, an anarcho-syndicalist who had been instrumental in the strikes following the Courrières disaster of 1906. But even he assured authorities that he wished to do his ‘duty as a Frenchman in the ranks of the army’, and was soon released.² The police commissioner in HéninLiétard confirmed this general sentiment, noting that ‘those who were shouting the Internationale yesterday left today signing the Marseillaise.’³ In Reims, L’Éclaireur de l’Est described 2 August, the day local troops departed, as ‘emotional’. Throughout the town there was the ‘same smiling confidence in the outcome of the conflict. The Place Royal [the main square] was crowded, but an imposing silence reigned. It seemed that at such a serious moment, when the destiny of so many nations was being played out, people only thought about the destiny of the patrie’.⁴ At the same time, however, palpable tension underlay this quiet confidence. This found an outlet in hostility towards strangers and foreigners. On 2 August, a priest visiting Reims was accused of being a spy and manhandled for taking a map ¹ Archives Nationales, Paris (AN), F/7/12937, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to interior ministry, 2 Aug 1914. ² AN, F/7/12937, prefect Pas-de-Calais to interior ministry, 20 Aug 1914. ³ Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais, Arras (ADPdC), 1 Z 215, police commissioner Hénin-Liétard to sub-prefect Béthune, 2 Aug 1914. ⁴ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 2 Aug 1914. Communities under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918. Alex Dowdall, Oxford University Press (2020). © Alex Dowdall. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198856115.001.0001

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of the town from his pocket.⁵ In Nancy, German citizens and German-owned shops were attacked by angry crowds, while Léon Soloman, a Luxembourgish shopkeeper, placed a notice in a local newspaper expressing solidarity with the French, whom he described as his ‘dear fellow-citizens’, following an anti-German protest outside his store.⁶ The coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais, home to large numbers of German and Polish miners, witnessed extreme anti-German sentiment. In Sallaumines, 50 Germans had to shelter in the town hall from the ‘fury’ of a hostile crowd, while in Lens police intervened repeatedly on 5 August to stop those who wanted to ‘do serious damage to the Germans’ in the town.⁷ In many respects, these attitudes conformed to common European trends. Beginning with the work of Jean-Jacques Becker on France, historians have unravelled the myth of the ‘spirit of 1914’. European societies generally accepted war in August 1914, but not with the overt enthusiasm that was long assumed.⁸ Similarly, towns and cities across Europe witnessed hostility against foreigners, as local communities quickly redefined themselves within a new wartime context. ‘Outsiders’ were rejected and ‘xenophobic climate[s] undermined the essence of metropolitan life’.⁹ But, although the inhabitants of France’s north-eastern border towns initially responded to war similarly to their counterparts across Europe, they also confronted scenes that most other urban centres did not, since their locations meant that they served as staging posts for the initial military operations in eastern Belgium and Alsace. Convoys of Allied troops moving towards these battle zones were greeted with warmth and curiosity. In his diary, Paul Hess, a municipal administrator above the age of military service living in Reims, described crowds pressing against the railings of the train station to cheer the soldiers passing through, noting that the carriages were covered in ‘chalk inscriptions that testified to their great enthusiasm’.¹⁰ In the Pas-de-Calais, British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) soldiers received particularly warm welcomes. When British troops passed through Arras on 15 August large cheering crowds turned out with flowers and cigarettes. According to the prefect, the troops were ‘particularly touched by the

⁵ Ibid. ⁶ Archives municipales de Nancy (AMN), 4 H 370, ‘Avis’ of mayor, 3 Aug 1914; L’Est Républicain, 7 Aug 1914. ⁷ AN, F/7/12936, sub-prefect Béthune to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 3 Aug 1914; ADPdC, 1 Z 215, police commissioner Lens to sub-prefect Béthune, 5 Aug 1914. ⁸ Jean-Jacques Becker, 1914: Comment les français sont entrés dans la guerre (Paris, 1977); Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2014); Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge, 2000). ⁹ Stefan Goebel, ‘Cities’, in Winter, The State, vol. 2 of The Cambridge History of the First World War, 362; Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst: Germans in Britain during the First World War (New York, 1991); Becker, 1914, 497–513. ¹⁰ Paul Hess, La Vie à Reims pendant la Guerre de 1914–1918, notes et impressions d’un bombardé (Paris, 1998), 16.

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vibrant welcome they received, and responded with wild hurrahs’.¹¹ The passage of German prisoners of war towards the French interior had similar effects, and in Nancy on 8 August, and Reims on 12 August, locals lined the streets to observe them.¹² To most people, these were positive developments. The French army’s entry into Mulhouse was reported triumphantly in the local press, which proclaimed ‘Victory! The French army is in Alsace!’¹³ But others were not so confident, and feared the fighting was too close to home. On the night of 4 August, the 33rd Infantry Regiment left its barracks in Arras amid the usual scenes of popular acclamation. But this feeling was tempered the following day when a convoy of civilian evacuees from Maubeuge on the Belgian border arrived. The Abbé Foulon, a local priest and memoirist, remembered this as the population’s ‘first sorrowful vision of war . . . Already pessimistic news began to go around the town, and numerous families thought about leaving’.¹⁴ These feelings were compounded during the second week of August, when Allied military fortunes worsened. Joseph Joffre, French Commander-in-Chief, was convinced the main battle would occur in the Ardennes. While he launched a series of bloody, failed offensives in this region from 14 August, the main weight of the German army’s attack, undertaken by its strong right wing, fell on central and southern Belgium. Here, German forces were tasked with a relentless advance into northern France, encircling the French army through an enormous counterclockwise sweep. Joffre was slow to acknowledge the extent of Germany’s threat in Belgium, and only ordered his forces north on the evening of 15 August. Even when French troops joined the Belgian army and the B.E.F., they could do little to halt Germany’s advance. The Battles of Charleroi, on 21–3 August, and Mons, on 23 August, were bloody reversals for the Allies. By early September, German forces were moving through northern France. But this desperate situation gradually reversed. The French regrouped and moved large numbers of troops to the north-west. The German army, in contrast, was nearing exhaustion; its supply lines were stretched, and it had endured over a month of intense fighting and marching. The decisive moment came in the second week of September, during the Battle of the Marne, east of Paris. The Allies halted, then reversed the German advance, and by 9 September German forces were in retreat.¹⁵ These developments dragged the towns of north-eastern France further into war. Given its location in Lorraine, Nancy quickly felt the repercussions of the earliest fighting. Réné Mercier, editor of the town’s most important local ¹¹ AN, F/7/12937, prefect Pas-de-Calais to interior ministry, 15 Aug 1914. ¹² René Mercier, Journal d’un bourgeois de Nancy, Nancy sauvée (Paris, 1917), 8 Aug 1914, 67; Hess, La Vie à Reims, 12 Aug 1914, 18. ¹³ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 9 Aug 1914. ¹⁴ E. Foulon, Arras sous les obus (Paris, 1916), 8. ¹⁵ On the Battle of the Marne see Holger H. Herwig, The Marne 1914: The Opening of World War 1 and the Battle that Changed the World (London, 2011).

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newspaper L’Est Républicain, noted in his published diary that as early as 9 August some inhabitants were growing anxious at the sight of French troops moving through the town away from the frontier.¹⁶ Three days later, Pont-à-Mousson, 30 km north of Nancy, was the first large French town to be bombarded, with German shells killing five civilians.¹⁷ Many residents fled to Nancy, bringing news of the destruction.¹⁸ On 17 August, Nancy received refugees fleeing Badonviller, 60 km to the east, and the location of atrocities committed by German troops.¹⁹ On the morning of 21 August more refugees arrived, this time from Nomény, only 30 km away, bringing further stories of German rape, murder, and plunder. Mirman reported that Nancy was ‘violently agitated’ as a result. His attempts to calm tensions—amounting to strolling calmly and conspicuously around town with his wife—were not wholly successful, and many residents left for the interior.²⁰ Those who remained soon had their first direct encounter with military violence. In late August, German forces launched an offensive against Nancy’s system of outlying defences, the Grand Couronné.²¹ The assault was a failure, with the fighting in Lorraine degenerating into trench warfare. On the night of 9 September, the centre of Nancy was bombarded for the first time. Eighty shells hit the town, killing eight and wounding nine civilians.²² Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais followed somewhat different trajectories into war than Nancy, given they were located in the path of the main German advance. The first reports of German atrocities reached Reims on 12 August, when 80 refugees arrived from Affléville, 150 km to the east. L’Éclaireur de l’Est felt their ‘eyes were still full of the atrocious memory of the Germans ravaging their dear little village’.²³ Refugees started passing through the Pas-de-Calais around the same time. Arras hosted increasing numbers from Belgium throughout late August, while large groups passed through Lens laden down with clothing, furniture, and, according to the local priest, ‘visions of their lost homes and anxiety of the unknown’.²⁴ As in Nancy, the arrival of refugees sowed fear and worry. In Reims, the local press reported the case of Virginie Villain, an elderly woman who, after falling asleep while reading reports of German atrocities, had a nightmare. The ‘brave woman’, believing her house to be under attack from German soldiers, defended herself as best she could, until she ¹⁶ Mercier, Nancy sauvée, 9 Aug 1914, 74. ¹⁷ Service historique de la défense, Vincennes (SHD), 5 N 84, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to interior ministry, 13 Aug 1914; Charles Bernardin, Pont-à-Mousson sous les obus: journal de la vie locale pendant la guerre (Nancy, 1919), 36–41. ¹⁸ L’Est Républicain, 14–16 Aug 1914. ¹⁹ Ibid., 18 Aug 1914. ²⁰ AN, F/7/12937, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to interior ministry, 27 Aug 1914; Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 181. ²¹ Herwig, The Marne, 204–18. ²² Émile Badel, Les Bombardements de Nancy, ville ouverte, 1914–1918 (Nancy, 1919), 6–10. ²³ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 12 Aug 1914. ²⁴ AN, F/7/12937, prefect Pas-de-Calais to interior ministry, 23 Aug 1914; Chanoine Emile Occre, ‘Notes sur la prise de Lens en 1914’, Gauheria, 88 (2014), 32.

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fell out of bed and broke her arm.²⁵ Villain’s story was, perhaps, meant to symbolize the town’s collective nightmare, which was fast becoming reality. The arrival of a second, larger group of refugees in Reims on 23 August—600 people fleeing Châtelet in Belgium, which was burned by German forces—heightened tensions. They were greeted by a ‘kindly yet silently emotional crowd’ as they walked from the train station to the reception centre on the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, but amidst the outpouring of solidarity Paul Hess felt ‘overwhelmed with sadness by this terrible scene’.²⁶ The arrival of the wounded and a lack of reliable news compounded the situation; so did the sight of Allied troops moving towards the interior, as the French army, withdrawing in advance of the Battle of the Marne, opted not to defend Arras, the coal-mining region, or Reims. By the third week of August all three urban centres were extremely nervous. When a territorial battalion left Arras on 24 August, rumours spread that French forces had been routed and were in general retreat.²⁷ The next day Arras welcomed a group of refugees from Orchies, just 40 km away, who described the atrocities they had witnessed and claimed German forces had occupied nearby Lille.²⁸ In the face of these developments, the local press tried to remain positive. On 23 August, Le Petit Béthunois published an anonymous letter by a local soldier who expressed confidence that the Allies would reach Berlin and described ‘the enthusiasm and spirit displayed by our brave soldiers’.²⁹ On 3 September, the day after French forces evacuated Reims, L’Éclaireur de l’Est reassured people that although Allied forces were undertaking a strategic retreat, they had halted the German advance at Rethel, 40 km northeast of the town.³⁰ But despite such forced optimism, it was abundantly clear by early September that a German occupation of Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region was imminent. In the event, this initial occupation passed off relatively smoothly in Arras and the coal-mining region. Small groups of German soldiers entered Arras on 31 August, and requisitioned cars, fuel, bicycles, and cigars.³¹ The main contingent of 3,000 arrived on 6 September. According to the Abbé Foulon, beyond the sense of humiliation the population suffered little.³² German units in the coal-mining region were somewhat more aggressive. After the arrival of German troops in Hénin-Liétard, the mayor, priest, and director of the mining company were taken hostage and threatened with execution to ensure the population’s good behaviour.³³ ²⁵ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 18 Aug 1914. ²⁶ Ibid., 24 Aug 1914; Hess, La Vie à Reims, 23 Aug 1914, 23. ²⁷ AN, F/7/12937, prefect Pas-de-Calais to interior ministry, 25 Aug 1914. ²⁸ Foulon, Arras sous les obus, 29. ²⁹ Le Petit Béthunois, 23 Aug 1914. ³⁰ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 3 Sep 1914. ³¹ Madeleine Wartelle, ‘Arras’, in Les Champs de bataille, 1914–1915: les cités meurtries, ed. Octave Beauchamp (Paris, 1914–1916), 265. ³² Foulon, Arras sous les obus, 10. ³³ Collection La Contemporaine, Nanterre (CLC), Académie de Lille, F/Delta/1126/2, Dossier B.191.

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In Lens, occupying forces demanded a payment of 30,000 francs.³⁴ In general, however, this first occupation was relatively peaceable. Thanks to the still-mobile operations it felt temporary, and as Arras and the coal-mining region were not fought over and did not witness German atrocities, few civilians came to physical harm. Reims fared worse during its initial occupation. On the evening of 2 September, artillery fire was heard in the vicinity, while a German plane dropped several bombs.³⁵ The town council appealed for calm, and insisted that people remain ‘silent, dignified, and prudent’ should German troops arrive. Public gatherings were discouraged, and all weapons deposited at a local barracks.³⁶ The first German patrol entered Reims on the night of 3 September, with the main body arriving the next morning, 44 years to the day after German forces entered Reims during the Franco–Prussian War. Although the troops took the town without firing a shot, a communications breakdown had devastating consequences. After the Saxon XII Reserve Corps entered Reims, it failed to inform the 2nd Guard Division; the latter, believing it was still held by the French, bombarded the town centre for 45 minutes, killing 56 civilians, and wounding 50.³⁷ The military occupation that followed was respectful, if tense. German forces extracted heavy contributions, both monetary and in kind, but there were no atrocities. Soldiers camped outside the Hôtel de Ville and the cathedral but, by most accounts, remained distant from the population. Paul Hess, however, thought it ‘quite shocking’ to see some people ‘parked around the German camp, and chatting and joking with the soldiers who did not ask them for anything’. In a similar vein, another anonymous memoirist felt that ‘certain elements of the population, especially on the female side, don’t show in the slightest the desirable dignity or propriety’.³⁸ Although Reims was only occupied for slightly over a week, it witnessed the same tensions and suspicions that would plague other towns throughout the war. This first period of occupation came to an end in mid-September, when the French and British began their counterattack during the Battle of the Marne. Until this point most large French towns were relinquished without a fight by the retreating Allied armies, thus avoiding large-scale destruction, with the notable exceptions of Reims and Nancy. But when the German armies began establishing defensive positions between Verdun and Noyon, and a series of outflanking manoeuvres by each side extended a trench system from the Swiss border to the

³⁴ Émile Basly, Le Martyre de Lens, trois ans de captivité (Paris, 1918), 14–16. ³⁵ Albert Chatelle, Reims, ville des sacres: notes diplomatiques secrètes et récits inédits, 1914–1918 (Paris, 1951), 48–58; François Cochet, 1914–1918: Rémois en guerre, L’héroïsation au quotidien (Nancy, 1993), 25. ³⁶ Hess, La Vie à Reims, 3 Sep, 35–6. ³⁷ Herwig, The Marne, 233–4; AN, F/7/12730, report from prefect Marne, 30 Oct 1914. ³⁸ Hess, La Vie à Reims, 75; H. de C., Sous le canon des barbares (Paris, 1930), 57.

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Belgian coast, the urban spaces of north-eastern France became strategic points of defence and attack.³⁹ In Reims, this happened from 13 September, when the town was retaken by the French Fifth Army. The French advance halted just outside the town, and the opposing armies dug into positions skirting the north-eastern suburbs that would remain more or less unchanged until summer 1918. Some German shells fell on Reims’ suburbs that evening. The next day, the bombardment began in earnest, and 40 civilians were killed or injured. The bombardment reached a height on 19 September, with one shell hitting the city centre every five seconds. Scaffolding on the cathedral caught fire and spread to the roof, destroying it and much of the medieval statuary and stained glass.⁴⁰ When the prefect of the Marne visited the next day he was forced to leave his car ‘almost at the entrance to the town because of the shattered glass, roof tiles, and stones that littered the streets’.⁴¹ German artillery continued to shell Reims unrelentingly, and by the end of October at least 303 civilians had died and 114 had been injured.⁴² During the last two weeks of September the opposing forces gradually pushed north as they attempted to outflank each other, and towns including Soissons, Péronne, and Albert were all heavily shelled. By early October, the fighting reached the Pas-de-Calais. German troops abandoned Arras on 18 September, but the French did not solidify control of the town until later in the month, when the opposing armies dug-in approximately 3 km east of the town centre. German artillery first shelled Arras on the evening of 6 October, in what the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais described as a ‘furious bombardment’.⁴³ The sub-prefect reported that the extensive damage, including to the Hôtel de Ville, gave the town ‘a lamentable physiognomy’.⁴⁴ Fourteen civilians died.⁴⁵ At the same time, the armies passed through the heart of the coal-mining region. Bloody street fighting took place in Lens on 4 October, with at least four civilians killed in the crossfire. French units originally moved in and held the centre of the town, but were gradually pushed back by German artillery. The front stabilized just west of Liévin, splitting the coal-mining region in two and leaving Lens and the areas to the east under German occupation.⁴⁶ After the stabilization of the front, both sides began shelling towns and villages. The first German shells fell on Allied-held Noeux-les-Mines on 5 October, killing one civilian, while

³⁹ Herwig, The Marne, 295–306; Robert A. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War (London, 2005), 97–103. ⁴⁰ AN, F/7/12730, report from prefect Marne, 30 Oct 1914. ⁴¹ SHD, 5 N 84, prefect Marne to interior ministry, 20 Sep 1914. ⁴² AN, F/7/12730, report from prefect Marne, 30 Oct 1914. ⁴³ SHD, 5 N 84, prefect Pas-de-Calais to interior ministry, 7 Jan 1914. ⁴⁴ Ibid., sub-prefect Béthune to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 8 Oct 14. ⁴⁵ ADPdC, M 5593/2, ‘Ville d’Arras: Liste des personnes de la population civile tuées . . . jusqu’à août 1915’. ⁴⁶ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois.

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French shells hit German-occupied Liévin the following day.⁴⁷ After this, the fighting continued northwards, and before mobile warfare finally ground to a halt on the Belgian coast in early November, several more urban centres came under fire. Lille was bombarded by German artillery between 10 and 12 October.⁴⁸ Forty-five civilians were killed and 903 houses destroyed before the town fell to the Germans and the front stabilized to the west, leaving it under occupation but outside the range of Allied artillery.⁴⁹ Armentières, north-west of Lille, was fought over in mid-October, before German troops abandoned it to the B.E.F. on 17 October. German shells began falling three days later, and by the end of the month 25 civilians had died.⁵⁰ Ypres, in Belgian Flanders, was the last major town to come under fire during the formation of the Western Front, when it suffered heavy German bombardment after being retaken by the Allies.⁵¹ For the urban inhabitants of northern France, the period from August to October 1914 was confusing and disorientating. In quick succession, they faced the mobilization, the arrival of refugees, the German invasion, and the fighting that accompanied the Allied counter-offensive that ended in the stabilization of the front lines. Civilians’ perspectives on the war, like those of the soldiers, were highly localized, and few had a clear understanding of the military events happening around them. But once the front formed in October, civilians quickly realized that their towns were becoming militarized spaces. On 6 October, Jules Cronfalt, a municipal functionary in Arras, recorded in his diary that the first bombardment of the town signalled ‘the beginning of the siege of Arras’.⁵² In Noeux-les-Mines, the parish priest reported that large numbers of French troops dug trenches near the town on 11 October, creating ‘a bad impression’ among civilians.⁵³ By the end of October, the director of the mining company noted there was ‘no change’ in the local military situation. He recognized the war of movement had stopped, and that the armies were now engaging in ‘a sort of siege warfare’. Four days later he observed that ‘the numerous trenches that surround us are almost finished’, and that heaters were installed in them ‘with a view to a

⁴⁷ Hélène Carré, ‘Cahiers d’occupation, 4 oct 1914–4 mars 1916’, Gauheria, 6 (1985), 12; Archives nationales du monde du travail, Roubaix (ANMT), Mines de Noeux, 1994 051 1356, ‘Compagnie des Mines de Vicoigne et de Noeux: Bombardements subis . . . , 5 Oct 1914–31 Dec 1916’. ⁴⁸ SHD, 7 N 1973, report of Lieutenant-Colonel de Pardieu, 14 Oct 1914. ⁴⁹ Archives départementales du Nord, Lille (ADN), 9 R 521, list of civilians killed, Lille, 10–12 Oct 1914. ⁵⁰ Léon Gobert, La Guerre dans le Nord: l’agonie d’Armentières, août 1914-octobre 1918 (Paris, 1919), 70–1. ⁵¹ Delphine Lauwers, ‘Le Saillant d’Ypres entre reconstruction et construction d’un lieu de mémoire: un long processus de négociations mémorielles, de 1914 à nos jours’, (PhD Thesis: EUI Florence 2013), 45–7. ⁵² Bibliothèque municipale d’Arras, (BMA), Ms 1443–9, diary of Jules Cronfalt, 28 Sep 1914, 6 Oct 1914; emphasis in original. ⁵³ Archives diocésaines d’Arras, Arras (ADA), 4 Z 84/3 A, parish register, Noeux-les-Mines, 11 Oct 1914.

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lengthy stay’.⁵⁴ By late October 1914, Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais had become urban battlefields embedded in the Western Front.

Urban Spaces and the Stabilized Front After the stabilization of the front, the topographies of these towns underwent radical alterations, and Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region became highly militarized spaces. These towns were integral features of the battlefield and incorporated into defensive planning. In the case of Arras, the town was not merely close to French lines, but part of them. A January 1915 report made this point clearly, describing the town as an ‘advanced bastion’ between the army’s first and second lines.⁵⁵ Figure 1.1 demonstrates that, from the military’s point of view, Reims occupied a similar space. In December 1917 it was a component of the French front-line defences, which had barely moved from the north-eastern suburbs since September 1914, while successive defensive positions extended far to the rear. The integration of these towns into the armies’ defensive planning caused their progressive fortification. Urban space was transformed, as weaponry and defences proliferated. On the Allied side, civilians noted the quick and radical alteration in the physiognomy of their home towns. One resident of Arras described how French soldiers dug trenches in the middle of town, and ‘raised barricades out of planks and stones, complete with loopholes. The boulevards and streets were soon covered with barbed wire entanglements’.⁵⁶ In April 1916, Paul Hess noted that close to the front lines in the north-eastern suburbs of Reims, houses had been converted into shelters for machineguns, the streets were covered in barbed wire, and soldiers were making firing slots in the walls of buildings.⁵⁷ One of the town’s police officers, Alfred Wolff, described a similar scene around the train station: There are no streets, gardens, patches of land, or roads that are not covered in barbed wire, the entire town is defended . . . everything is filled-up and fitted-out for defence, there are thousands of crenulations, reinforced-concrete machinegun nests, everything.⁵⁸

The fortification of urban space was not as complete in Nancy, but military equipment was still a common sight. As in Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining

⁵⁴ ⁵⁵ ⁵⁶ ⁵⁸

ANMT, Mines de Noeux, 1994 051 1355, reports to ‘Administrateur’, 26 and 30 Oct 1914. SHD, 16 N 1966, Report on French Tenth Army defences in Arras sector, Jan 1915. Wartelle, ‘Arras’, 283. ⁵⁷ Hess, La Vie à Reims, 19 Apr 1916, 363. Archives municipales de Reims (AMR), 32 S 1, diary of Alfred Wolff, 15 Aug 1916.

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Figure 1.1. The Urban Battlefield: Reims as Part of the Front, December 1917. Source: Service Historique de la Défense, Vincennes, 19 N 874.

region, Allied authorities placed artillery pieces and anti-aircraft guns throughout the town, particularly around the railway station and town centre.⁵⁹ Weaponry and defensive works drew German aerial and artillery bombardment and, as such, placed remaining civilians in harm’s way. But Allied military ⁵⁹ SHD, 19 N 1513, monthly reports on operation of anti-aircraft defences in Nancy.

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authorities also implemented further changes to urban space to protect civilians. Strict blackouts were imposed, and residents caught in contravention faced fines. Specific regulations varied from town to town—in Nancy, for instance, windows and doors were to be tightly sealed, but porch lights could be left on provided they were covered in blue glass.⁶⁰ But in all cases blackouts drastically altered the appearance of towns. In Reims, night-time navigation was difficult except, according to Le Petit Rémois, when ‘a boche projector puts you back on the right path’. That newspaper described the anticipation with which locals greeted bright, moonlit nights. These were ‘gala nights . . . when all the moles emerged from their holes’.⁶¹ Such ‘holes’ included the civilian bomb shelters installed in most towns along the front. Municipalities helped homeowners reinforce the basements of private dwellings, and expected they then be opened to the public during bombardments, while prefects were empowered to compel those who refused.⁶² These measures were complemented by high-capacity, purpose-built, communal bomb shelters, such as that shown in Figure 1.2. By March 1918, Nancy’s public bomb shelters could hold 20,000 people, while protections in the coal-mining region were just as comprehensive—90 per cent of the houses in Béthune had basement shelters; there were also 35 reinforced public shelters capable of holding 2,665 people; and 12 more, each holding 5–600 people, were under construction.⁶³ The interpenetration of urban and military landscapes was just as developed on the German-occupied side. In Lens and Liévin German trenches and barbed wire entanglements spread back from the front lines, criss-crossing housing estates and mining infrastructure. This radically altered the urban landscape. One woman from German-occupied Lens remembered the town was ‘surrounded by trenches and networks of barbed wire’, with ‘the trenches depart[ing] from the Rue Émile Zola’ in the centre.⁶⁴ Léon Tacquet, a lawyer living in Lens, kept a detailed record of the transformation of his town into a battlefield in his wartime diary, noting that the Germans ‘have turned the gendarmerie into a real fort, with space inside for cannons’, and that ‘the town is completely undermined by the trenches and underground works that the Germans have undertaken to link the basements of buildings together so that they can cross the entire town without emerging onto the street.’⁶⁵ Although Tacquet’s social status ensured German forces did not requisition and fortify his property, others were not so lucky. One young

⁶⁰ SHD, 16 N 1653, note from G.Q.G., 12 Nov 1916; ADMM, 8 R 177, ‘Arrêté Relatif à la Restriction de l’Éclairage . . . ’, 8 Oct 1917. ⁶¹ Le Petit Rémois, 15 Dec 1915. ⁶² SHD, 16 N 1654, Président du Conseil to Général Commandant en Chef, 15 Dec 1917; ADPdC, M 4810, ‘Arrêté concernant l’établissement de caves de refuge’, 10 Jan 1918. ⁶³ G. Simon, Ville de Nancy: La protection de la cité pendant la Guerre (Nancy, 1919), 33–4; SHD, 16 N 1649, report of Lieutenant-Colonel Reynaud, 13 Jan 1918. ⁶⁴ ADPdC, 11 R 857, repatriation report of Mme. Carpentier, 28 Mar 1917. ⁶⁵ Léon Tacquet, Dans la fournaise de Lens, 1915–1917: journal du notaire Léon Tacquet (Lens, 2004), 11 Jun 1915 and 2 Feb 1916.

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Figure 1.2. Protection against Bombardment: Civilians outside a Shelter in Noeux-les-Mines, 1918. Source: Collection La Contemporaine, Nanterre, VAL 305/077.

woman, Hélène Carré, lived in an exposed area between Lens and Liévin, bombarded by Allied artillery from early in the war. Her situation worsened in December 1915 when German troops dug a reserve trench through her neighbour’s garden. She recorded in her diary that after this ‘not a day has gone by without a shell exploding near us’.⁶⁶ Unlike their Allied counterparts, German forces were reluctant to protect civilians from such dangers. Some units may have taken individual initiative to help civilians reinforce their basements, such as the 31st Bavarian Infantry Regiment when it was stationed in Liévin.⁶⁷ But there was no official policy of protecting civilians under fire, no purpose-built shelters, and some civilians even accused German troops of requisitioning houses with the most secure basements for their own use, or forcing the inhabitants to occupy more exposed west-facing rooms.⁶⁸ On both sides of the lines, the fortification of urban space was both a response to and a cause of artillery and aerial bombardment. Indeed, bombardment, ⁶⁶ Carré, ‘Cahiers d’occupation’, 20 Dec 1915, 29. ⁶⁷ Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abt. IV, Kriegsarchiv, Munich (BHA), Auflösungsstäbe (WK), Heeresfriedenskommission, 368, Dossier Arthur Fievet, statement of Medizenmajors I.R. 33 Dr. Stoess, 25 Dec 1921. ⁶⁸ Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 11 Nov 1915.

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especially from field artillery, was one of the most defining features of combat during the period of static warfare, and its rhythms shaped the urban battlefields as much as the trenches. Yet bombardment was highly localized, with variations between active and calm sectors, and between major offensives and quiet periods. However, unlike the picture of ‘routinized’ bombardment painted by Tony Ashworth, where mutually understood, regular patterns of shelling allowed soldiers to minimize the violence of trench warfare through the ‘live and let live’ system, there was nothing regular or predictable about bombardments on the urban battlefields of northern France.⁶⁹ The case of Nancy illustrates this well. Situated 15 km from the front in a quiet sector, where there were no major offensives over the period of trench warfare, there was little strategic value to be gained from bombarding it. Indeed, following the original bombardment of 9–10 September 1914, the town was not shelled for a lengthy period. There were 40 German aerial raids during 1915, killing 18 civilians, but no artillery bombardments until, suddenly and without warning, the town was shelled for two hours on the morning of 1 January 1916. This, and two more attacks on 2 and 4 January, killed five civilians. The town experienced 14 more irregular bombardments throughout 1916 and early 1917, with an average of 10 shells landing during each attack. The final artillery bombardment of the war occurred on 16 February 1917, killing three. In addition, German planes carried out a further 71 aerial raids between January 1916 and November 1918.⁷⁰ Although Nancy suffered from a relatively small number of highly destructive bombardments, their unpredictability ensured the threat remained ever-present. In Reims and Arras—urban centres closer to the lines in more active areas— bombardment was both heavier and more frequent, but still highly unpredictable. Nancy could only be reached by long-range cannons that took time to reload, but Reims and Arras were located within range of quick-firing field artillery, and subject to regular, low-intensity fire. In Reims, municipal police kept meticulous records of these bombardments, and endeavoured to report daily on where and when each shell landed. These reports show little consistency and few patterns. Between 20 December 1915 and 31 March 1917, Reims was bombarded on 263 out of 467 days. Sometimes the town was quiet, and no shells would land for days at a time, with the longest period without shelling being nearly three weeks (28 December 1915 to 19 January 1916).⁷¹ When it occurred, bombardment was short and sharp, with up to 100 shells landing in quick succession. A fairly typical day was 8 January 1915, when 50 shells fell on the town in the evening, and a ⁶⁹ Tony Ashworth, Trench Warfare, 1914–1918: The Live and Let Live System (London, 2000), 123–8. ⁷⁰ Badel, Bombardements de Nancy, 19–28. ⁷¹ These figures have been extracted from daily bombardment reports compiled by the Reims police, contained in Archives départementales de la Marne, Châlons-en-Champagne (ADM), 203 M 15 and 48 M ter 171–3.

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further 10 that night.⁷² Periodically, Reims also experienced much more intense bombardments—such as 2 April 1916, when German artillery fired 517 shells into the town, or 27 October 1916, when police estimated 687 shells landed.⁷³ Although authorities in Arras did not keep such detailed records, personal testimonies agree that up to mid-1917 bombardment was irregular, with quiet days interspersed with intense periods—one of the worst attacks was on 30 October 1914, when shells hit the town’s municipal elderly care home, killing 42.⁷⁴ In both Reims and Arras, periods of intermittent and intense bombardment were interspersed with moments of prolonged destruction, when large-scale offensives took place in their vicinity. For Arras, one of the most important came in September 1915, when the French army launched the Third Battle of Artois, 10 km north of Arras. Allied gains were negligible, but nonetheless Arras drew heavy German fire. On 23 September, two days before the main French assault began, the Abbé Foulon described the effects of German bombardment on the town: More and more it seems as though we are living in the middle of a battle . . . The artillery fire is incessant, horrifying, terrifying. The sound of the cannons is so intense that one is left dumbfounded. We cannot even make out the sound of the shells whistling anymore. And yet the Germans keep firing more and more . . . The Germans seem to want to wipe the town out.⁷⁵

The Battle of Arras in spring 1917 was even more significant for the town. Although the battle did not change the overall geography of the Western Front, a relatively minor Allied advance placed Arras out of range of most artillery, prompting the town’s wartime newspaper, Le Lion d’Arras, to triumphantly declare that ‘after 30 months and three days of battle at our gates, the war is moving away. Arras is no longer at the front; Arras is already in the rear.’⁷⁶ These assertions proved overly optimistic, as the town remained within range of large siege cannons, but bombardments were less frequent than before, and Arras remained relatively unharmed until the German Spring Offensive of 1918. However, what for Arras was a moment of reprieve, was for Reims a moment of crisis. The Battle of Arras was a supporting operation for the larger Nivelle Offensive, on the Chemin des Dames, near Reims. This French offensive was inconclusive, and not only failed to make its promised breakthrough but deeply impacted civilians in Reims by drawing heavy German fire.⁷⁷ Municipal police ⁷² ADM, 203 M 14, bombardment report 8 Jan 1915. ⁷³ ADM, 203 M 15, bombardment report 2 Apr 1916; ADM, 48 M ter 171–3, bombardment report 27 Oct 1916. ⁷⁴ ADPdC, M 5593/2, ‘Ville d’Arras: Liste des personnes de la population civile tuées . . . ’. ⁷⁵ Foulon, Arras sous les obus, 49. ⁷⁶ Le Lion d’Arras, 20 Apr 1917. ⁷⁷ Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, 125–6 and 349–54.

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estimated that between 1 and 7 April over 18,500 German shells hit the town. From 8 April police lost track of the scale of the bombardment, and merely reported that each day an ‘incalculable number’ of shells landed.⁷⁸ The Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region further demonstrates the widespread destruction of urban space through massive artillery bombardment, which characterized the period of static warfare. On the Allied side, the communes nearest the lines experienced similar conditions to Reims and Arras. In Bully-Grenay, 2 km from the front, German shelling was so intense that at times the mines could only operate at night.⁷⁹ In Noeux-les-Mines, slightly further back, the local mining company estimated that over 19,000 shells hit its property during the war. Once again, however, there were few consistencies in the German attacks. In Noeux, there were no bombardments in March 1915; on 30 October 1917 only one shell hit the town, whereas on 6 May 1917, 250 shells landed.⁸⁰ Further from the front lines, conditions in Béthune resembled Nancy, and highly destructive attacks occurred intermittently throughout the war. On 7 August 1916, for instance, shells landed in the courtyard of the Collège Saint-Vaast, which housed a hospital and a school, killing almost 57 civilians and soldiers.⁸¹ The case of the coal-mining region is even more important as it demonstrates that urban destruction at the Western Front was not the preserve of the German army, and the Allies were far from restrained when it came to shelling occupied towns. As with German bombardments, there was little regularity to Allied fire. Allied artillery was heaviest in Liévin from early in the war. There, the local protestant pastor described how the ‘last days of 1914 were abominable’, with a particularly horrible incident when an entire family was buried under their collapsed house.⁸² Lens was only shelled intermittently before the summer of 1915. After this, however, bombardments grew heavier. Following his repatriation to unoccupied France, Charles Bourgeois, the town’s chief of police, singled out 15 January 1915, 16 February 1916, 25 March 1917, and 6 April 1917 as ‘the most terrible days’, and asserted that before the town’s complete evacuation in April 1917 Allied gunners fired almost daily.⁸³ Furthermore, as was the case with Arras and Reims, the occupied coal-mining region suffered heavily during major offensives. In September 1915, British forces attacked Loos-en-Gohelle, a small village 4 km north-west of Lens. The civilian population had not been evacuated and witnessed bloody street

⁷⁸ ADM, 48 M ter 171–3, bombardment reports, 1–8 Apr 1917. ⁷⁹ ANMT, 1994 051 0191, ‘Rapport à l’assemblée générale’. ⁸⁰ ANMT, 1994 051 1356, ‘Compagnie des Mines de Vicoigne et de Noeux: Bombardements subis . . . ’. ⁸¹ P. Petit-Didier, Deux ans dans les Flandres: visions de guerre, 1916–1918 (Paris, 1931), 44; François Gaquère, Sous le feu: au petit séminaire de Béthune, 1914–1918 (Paris, 1919), 103–4. ⁸² A. Lemaître, Un An près des champs de bataille de l’Artois (Paris, 1916), 17. ⁸³ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois.

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fighting first-hand. The local Catholic priest recounted after his return to unoccupied France how: our poor village became a veritable hell! The night of 25 September, we asked ourselves whether it was actually the end of the world! Everything trembled all around us, the sound was horrendous: shells, machine guns, grenades, and on top of it all a vile smell that caught at your throat and brought tears to your eyes . . . we hid ourselves in a nook in the bottom of the cellar and prepared ourselves for death.⁸⁴

The next major offensive in the region occurred in April 1917, when Canadian troops captured Vimy Ridge, to the south of Lens and with commanding views over the coal-mining region. The German-occupied portions suffered from increasingly intense Allied fire, and shells struck towns as far from the lines as Hénin-Liétard for the first time.⁸⁵ Developments in Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pasde-Calais formed part of a wider pattern of urban warfare during the period of the static Western Front, as numerous other towns, from Pont-à-Mousson, to Soissons, Verdun, Armentières, Ypres, and Dunkerque on the Allied side, to Laon, Cambrai, and Douai in German-occupied France, were transformed into battlefields. Indeed, the transformation of the Western Front’s urban centres by the war can be seen as part of a broader process of militarization, impacting towns and cities across wartime Europe, including many far from the front lines. Between 1914 and 1918, war entered urban spaces through men on leave, the wounded, prisoners of war (P.O.W.s), and recruitment and fundraising posters.⁸⁶ Numerous towns and cities in the British, French, and German interiors, including Paris and London, also suffered intermittently from aerial bombing raids, were subject to blackouts, and saw the proliferation of anti-aircraft defences. Prior to the German Spring Offensive of 1918, Paris was, for instance, bombed by planes and Zeppelins 15 times, resulting in 34 fatalities.⁸⁷ These developments brought the war to towns and cities on the home front in a very tangible sense. But it is the scale of the transformation of the towns at the Western Front that sets them apart. Here, the process of militarization was far more developed, and war altered the built environment in fundamental ways. Streetscapes became unrecognisable as military architecture proliferated, while regular artillery bombardment, far more than intermittent aerial bombing, caused massive destruction. But if war changed the

⁸⁴ ADPdC, 11 R 857, ‘L’année tragique de Loos-en-Gohelle’. ⁸⁵ CLC, Académie de Lille, F/Delta/1126/2, Dossier B.266. ⁸⁶ Emmanuelle Cronier, ‘The Street’, in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, vol. 2, 80–7. ⁸⁷ Jules Poirier, Les Bombardements de Paris (1914–1918), avions, gothas, zeppelins, berthas (Paris, 1930), 307–10.

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nature of urban space in such radical ways, how did it change the rhythms of urban life?

Life on the Urban Battlefield Given the extent to which war altered urban landscapes, civilians were compelled to change how they engaged with the spaces they inhabited. The transformation of towns into battlefields, and especially the constant threat and reality of intense artillery bombardment, shaped the trajectories of urban life. On a basic level, war disrupted how civilians lived in and moved around their towns, generating micro-geographies as certain areas suffered from artillery bombardment more than others. In Nancy, for instance, most artillery shells struck the town centre and the areas surrounding the train station, whereas aerial bombs landed more indiscriminately.⁸⁸ In other towns closer to the lines on the Allied side, the easternmost suburbs were the first to experience heavy German shelling, until destruction became more widespread later in the war. Figure 1.3, a sketch map of Reims created by the municipal council in 1916, clearly displays the effects of bombardment on the town’s internal geography at the war’s mid-point. Destroyed and damaged buildings—the shaded areas—were concentrated in the town centre, around the cathedral, and in the north-eastern suburbs, while the north-western and south-eastern suburbs were relatively unscathed. By mid-1917, however, Paul Hess had been forced to leave these north-western neighbourhoods when they were ‘massacred’ by German artillery.⁸⁹ Patterns of destruction on the German side mirrored those on the Allied, and the western areas closest to the front suffered most. Throughout 1915, Liévin experienced the most extensive damage. When Léon Tacquet visited from Lens in September 1915 he was astonished by conditions, and described how ‘all the houses . . . have been pierced by shells, demolished and dismantled, there is not a pane of glass anywhere, everyone lives in their basements!’⁹⁰ Gradually, the destruction spread from the northwest, and by summer 1916 most parts of Lens experienced bombardment on the same scale as Liévin. In his repatriation report, the town’s police chief reported that eventually there ‘was no security anywhere in the town’.⁹¹ As a result of these localized geographies of bombardment, the focal points of urban life shifted. The heavily bombarded areas became empty, abandoned spaces. In June 1917, Paul Hess visited a friend who still lived in the north-eastern suburbs of Reims, ‘next to the tunnels through which the Poilus, amongst whom he lives ⁸⁸ AMN, 4 H 279, map plotting locations of bombardments. ⁸⁹ Hess, La Vie à Reims, 25 Jun 1917, 454. ⁹⁰ Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 2 Sep 1915. ⁹¹ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois.

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Figure 1.3. The Internal Geography of Destruction: Reims, 1916. Source: Service Historique de la Défense, Vincennes, 5 N 345.

after returning home from work, depart for the line’. To find the house he had to pass ‘a long series of ruins, burnt-out buildings one after the other’ and, needless to say, ‘there were hardly any civilians’.⁹² A similar situation existed on the ⁹² Hess, La Vie à Reims, 30 Jun 1917, 455–6; See also Cochet, Rémois en guerre, 97–8.

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western outskirts of Lens and Liévin where, reportedly, the only remaining people were several elderly women who hung on in houses so close to the lines that they could make out the French troops from their windows.⁹³ The corollary was that less exposed areas became more desirable. Indeed, rather than leaving town altogether, many abandoned the heavily bombarded areas and became internal migrants. In Arras, residents of Saint-Sauveur, one of the most exposed neighbourhoods, were forced out in November 1914 because of the fighting and became, according to the local bishop, ‘refugees within the town’.⁹⁴ In Reims, the south-western Port de Paris neighbourhood welcomed many internal migrants.⁹⁵ One man, remembering his arrival there following the first bombardment of September 1914, described it as like ‘entering another town. No more ruins and the streets were so animated that, if it was not for the sound of the cannons, it would give the impression of normal life’.⁹⁶ The towns’ hinterlands also grew in importance for the same reasons, and during particularly heavy shelling civilians sought temporary shelter in the surrounding countryside, returning to their homes after the bombardment had died down. Authorities estimated that in January 1916 as many as 30,000 people temporarily dispersed from Nancy when it came under German fire.⁹⁷ Such practices prefigured the ‘trekking’ undertaken by British urban dwellers during Second World War bombing raids.⁹⁸ Many front-line civilians responded to bombardment by searching for safe zones within their towns. But since artillery bombardment rarely conformed to any sort of pattern, there were no guarantees as to what constituted safe and dangerous areas. After Nancy was shelled in January 1916, for instance, Réné Mercier concluded that all shelling was confined to a single, restricted area. He found this a ‘comforting certainty’ until, on 26 February, German guns fired six shells into the town, which landed ‘all over the place, without respecting the line of fire’.⁹⁹ Areas that once appeared safe could quickly become deadly, while seemingly minor issues—like the military changing the location of an artillery piece— could bring catastrophe to previously sheltered locations. When the military placed an anti-aircraft battery in the Haut de Lièvre quarter of Nancy in November 1917, locals complained that it prompted heavy German fire and posed a ‘great danger’.¹⁰⁰ In German-occupied Liévin, according to the town’s pastor locals could originally define and avoid the dangerous areas, normally next to German artillery pieces. But later, ‘as the batteries moved and ⁹³ Basly, Martyre de Lens, 60–4. ⁹⁴ M. Lobbedey, La Guerre en Artois: paroles épiscopales, documents, récits (Paris, 1916), 288. ⁹⁵ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 11 Oct 1914. ⁹⁶ H. de C., Sous le canon, 30 Sep 1914, 98. ⁹⁷ SHD, 5 N 136, war ministry to G.Q.G., 8 Jan 1916. Civilians in Reims acted similarly. See Cochet, Rémois en guerre, 67. ⁹⁸ Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 (London, 2013), 142–4. ⁹⁹ René Mercier, Journal d’un bourgeois de Nancy, Nancy bombardée (Paris, 1918), 59–89. ¹⁰⁰ AMN, 4 H 271, letter from group of residents to mayor, 2 Nov 1917.

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multiplied . . . [and] the French also aimed for munitions depots and transport routes, this demarcation became increasingly difficult to make.’¹⁰¹ The seeming arbitrariness of artillery fire ensured there were no guarantees of safety. What was certain was that bombardment made wide streets and open spaces particularly hazardous, and that public gatherings could result in tragedy. On 7 August 1916, for instance, a German shell struck the busy market square in Béthune, killing almost 30 civilians.¹⁰² Elsewhere in the coal-mining region, the mayor of Noeuxles-Mines banned all ‘spectacles’ and large gatherings to avoid such ‘terrible accidents’.¹⁰³ The micro-geographies created by bombardment forced civilians to devise new ways of navigating urban space, and strategies for minimizing the dangers of life on the urban battlefield. One local journalist claimed the effects of shellfire in urban spaces were quite different from the countryside, as ‘in built-up areas . . . due to the limited width of the streets, the great majority of shells explode against a vertical surface’, and proposed that readers could minimize their exposure in narrow streets by remaining standing, rather than falling to the ground.¹⁰⁴ Other approaches were less analytic, such as in the German-occupied coal-mining region, where clairvoyants became increasingly popular as locals sought to predict, and avoid, Allied fire.¹⁰⁵ All this meant that ground level signified danger, and for civilians, as for soldiers, the most effective means of protection was to move underground. Where the soldiers dug trenches, civilians moved into basements and bomb shelters. On both sides of the lines underground shelters gained importance. Houses with sturdy basements were particularly sought after. In Arras, Gabriel Aymé described ‘sensually savouring the joy of having three stories above my head’ when he descended into his house’s deep basement during the bombardments of October 1914; while in Reims, Paul Hess praised his brother-in-law’s ‘fine vaulted cellar with two exits’ in which he sheltered throughout late 1914.¹⁰⁶ Le Petit Béthunois described how war radically changed people’s attitudes towards their cellars: basements have been talked about here in ways they have never been talked about before; everyone boasts about the merits and advantages of their own and their neighbours’. But now they focus on the strength and thickness of the vaults. When the first bombs fell on our town people went around visiting them, as connoisseurs . . . But when the bombardments continued, there was a general

¹⁰¹ ¹⁰³ ¹⁰⁵ ¹⁰⁶

Lemaître, Un An près des champs de bataille, 19. ¹⁰² Gaquère, Sous le feu, 106–8. ADPdC, M 7860, arrêté 12 May 1917. ¹⁰⁴ Le Lion d’Arras, 5 Oct 1916. Lemaître, Un An près des champs de bataille, 29–30. Le Lion d’Arras, 16 Feb 1916; Hess, La Vie à Reims, 25 Dec 1914, 228–9.

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descent underground, and an intense interest in improving them and making them more comfortable.¹⁰⁷

Basements became semi-permanent, lived-in spaces. One woman in Arras showed hers with considerable pride to a visiting Parisian journalist, who noted she had installed ‘a large table covered with an oilskin cloth and a host of objects, along with several chairs; a wooden armchair; a huge walnut wardrobe . . . and a cage where a silent canary tilts its head and seems to pensively watch the big black cat sleeping on an upholstered cushion’.¹⁰⁸ On the German side, Léon Tacquet observed similar developments: One only sees people gone to ground in their basements; the nozzles of stoves come out of all the basement windows of the inhabited houses, without doors or windows, and all the basements are protected by ceramics, bricks, stones, scrapiron and manure.¹⁰⁹

The revised urban trajectories of wartime, and especially the collective descent underground, generated contrasts that many found striking. Public spaces became emptier and quieter, especially after bombardments. In Reims, Alice Martin was struck by the glaring contrast between ‘the deafening sounds of the bombs and the absolute silence of the street along which cars and pedestrians no longer pass’; while in Nancy, René Mercier felt that passing someone on the quiet streets felt ‘as if you found yourself in front of a living person in the kingdom of shadows’.¹¹⁰ Another resident of Reims, Clotilde-Jehane Rémy, described the same phenomenon, where ‘sometimes entire streets are empty, spider webs clinging to the corners of doors. Some of those who have stayed are almost masters of entire neighbourhoods, Robinsons on their islands’.¹¹¹ But even as streetscapes began to appear strange, civilians struggled to preserve a sense of normality. Individuals maintained routines, even if this risked significant danger. In Reims, Paul Hess rarely missed his daily lunchtime walk, while Le Petit Parisien highlighted the case of several elderly men in Soissons who frequented their favourite café despite German shelling.¹¹² For priests and communicants of the major churches, religious rituals offered further normality and routine, especially in towns such as Reims where religious observance formed an important part of the town’s social and cultural world. Clotilde-Jehanne Rémy described how ‘marvellous’ it was when, the day after the Church of Saint-Jacques ¹⁰⁷ Le Petit Béthunois, 24 Feb 1916. ¹⁰⁸ Le Lion d’Arras, 5 Oct 1916. ¹⁰⁹ Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 16 Dec 1915. ¹¹⁰ Alice Martin, ‘Sous les obus et dans les caves, notes d’une bombardée de Reims, SeptembreOctobre 1914’, Le Correspondant 221, no. 2 (25 Oct 1914), 223–4; Mercier, Nancy bombardée, 214. ¹¹¹ Cl.-J. Remy, Reims 1914–1916, sous les bombes, vol. 2 (Paris, 1916), 74. ¹¹² Le Petit Parisien, 28 Jun 1916.

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was damaged by shellfire, it reopened and, ‘at the same alter, at the same time, assisted by the same little choirboy, the same venerable priest said the mass’.¹¹³ Even in the socialist strongholds of the coal-mining region, religious rituals offered some sense of normality and solace. The parish priest of Noeux-lesMines recorded an increase in communions delivered in late 1914, and noted that the church was often full for major religious feasts.¹¹⁴ In these cases, the continuity of pre-war practices provided reassurance and solace. But those who moved into seemingly new and strange spaces underground also made deliberate efforts to recreate normality, as the aforementioned examples illustrate. Some efforts to recreate normality were more elaborate. In Reims, the Chauvet Champagne company opened a ‘bombardment chapel’ in its cellars, to ensure that religious services could continue even under the heaviest shelling; while Henri Abelé, owner of one of the town’s largest Champagne companies, moved his entire operation into his company’s deep cellars, including his personal office (Figure 1.4) and sitting room (Figure 1.5), complete with furniture, carpets, and artworks.¹¹⁵ Local officials also insisted normal public services continue. In Arras, postal services were only briefly interrupted early in the war, and were never interrupted by bombardments despite shells hitting the service’s offices on two occasions.¹¹⁶ In the same town, Jules Cronfalt—a municipal tax official—successfully collected the octroi, the local tax on consumables, throughout the war.¹¹⁷ Schools also remained open despite the conditions, notably in Reims, where 18 public schools operated, four of which moved into the town’s Champagne cellars.¹¹⁸ The town’s municipal council also sought to maintain normal operations by moving its offices underground when, in May 1917, shellfire severely damaged the Hôtel de Ville.¹¹⁹ This focus on normality was an important part of life under fire. Maintaining normality was represented as a powerful public act of defiance, especially on the Allied side, where authorities insisted it was a means of resisting the brutal German invasion, akin to the soldiers’ resistance in the trenches. Léon Bourgeois, local senator for Reims, claimed, for instance, that by working under fire, the town’s teachers and schoolchildren ‘also wanted, like our great soldiers, to hold on’.¹²⁰ But efforts to preserve normality also had more personal meanings beyond the official focus on resistance. Simple acts like maintaining daily routines allowed a psychological response to the intense abnormality of war.¹²¹ The same ¹¹³ Remy, Reims 1914–1916, vol. 2, 121–3. ¹¹⁴ ADA, 6V, histoire locale de la guerre, report on parish of Noeux-les-Mines (St. Martin). ¹¹⁵ Ibid., 149–52. ¹¹⁶ Foulon, Arras sous les obus, 111. ¹¹⁷ Ibid. See also BMA, Ms 1443–9, diary of Jules Cronfalt. ¹¹⁸ Octave Forsant, L’École sous les obus: pages vécues du martyre de Reims (Paris, 1918). ¹¹⁹ Chatelle, Reims, 209–12. ¹²⁰ Forsant, L’École sous les obus, vi. ¹²¹ Social anthropologists have examined similar desires for ‘normality’ in besieged Sarajevo in the early 1990s. See Stef Jansen, ‘Hope for/against the State: Gridding in a Besieged Sarajevo Suburb’, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 79, no. 2 (2014): 238–60 and Ivana Maček, ‘ “Imitation of Life”:

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Figure 1.4. Normal Life Underground 1: Henri Abelé’s Office. Source: Sous les obus à Reims, trois années de vie passées en cave par M. H.A. et sa famille en appartement souterrain (Reims, ND), Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, RBP 422]

instincts may be seen in the emphasis urban dwellers placed on community and neighbourhood networks during bombardments. In Reims, Paul Hess found solace in the fact that he could shelter from the heaviest bombardments alongside five other households in the basement of the largest house on his street.¹²² Émile Basly, the mayor of Lens, also felt the preservation of normal community relations was a key to surviving bombardments. In Lens, neighbours would knock holes between their basement walls so they could communicate during prolonged attacks because, according to Basly, ‘when you are threatened by terrible dangers . . . you feel the need for communal life, to draw near to others of your own kind; one feels less miserable, almost reassured, alongside a human

Negotiating Normality in Sarajevo under Siege’ in The New Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, Moralities and Moral Claims in a Post-War Society, ed. Xavier Bougarel and Ger Duijzings (London, 2007), 39–58. ¹²² Hess, La Vie à Reims, 238.

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Figure 1.5. Normal Life Underground 2: Henri Abelé’s sitting-room. [Sous les obus à Reims, trois années de vie passées en cave par M. H.A. et sa famille en appartement souterrain (Reims, ND), Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, RBP 422.

presence’.¹²³ On both sides of the lines, the pursuit of normality was a coping mechanism that made the abnormality of war more bearable.

The Civilian Population of the Western Front Urban life therefore continued at the Western Front, while adapting to the threats posed by wartime conditions. There was, however, a further threat to the existence of civilian communities at the front—evacuation. Extreme conditions ensured that as war progressed many of those civilians still in their homes following the stabilization of the front in 1914 left for the interior. Others were compelled to leave by the authorities—both Allied and German. Chapter 6 will examine their experiences as refugees. But for the moment we must explore how and when they left, as well as wartime debates as to whether civilians should have been allowed to ¹²³ Basly, Martyre de Lens, 165.

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remain. These debates pitted advocates of evacuation on the grounds of public safety or military necessity against those who feared it would eradicate the community, leaving nothing but an empty, ruined shell. This was, ultimately, a question of whether civilians, predominantly women and children, should be accorded a legitimate place at the Western Front.¹²⁴ The German invasion of 1914 displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians, including many residents of Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region. As Tables 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 demonstrate, populations had reduced considerably by the time the front formed. Still, the numbers remaining were not negligible. Arras had a population of 3,654, over 14 per cent of its pre-war population, in midNovember 1914. Reims, with a pre-war population of 115,000, was still home to 35,524 in February 1915. Accurate population figures do not exist for Nancy for

Table 1.1. Population of Arras, 1911–1921. 1911

Nov 1914

Feb 1915

Sep 1915

Sep 1917

Apr 1918

1921

26,080

3,654

3,572

1,212

984

0 (evacuation)

24,835

Source: Foulon, Arras sous les obus, 110; ADPdC, R 593, mayor Arras to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 7 Sep 1917.

Table 1.2. Population of Reims, 1911–1919. 1911

Feb 1915

Oct 1915

Apr 1916

Feb 1917

Jun 1917

Mar 1918

May 1919

115,178

35,524

21,813

21,700

17,248

5,312

0 (evacuation)

24,130

Source: ADM, 48 M ter 253, ‘Reims recensements,’ 1915–1918.

Table 1.3. Population of Nancy, 1911–1921. 1911

Mar 1917

Apr 1918

1921

119,949

68,500

46,592

113,226

Source: Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle, 25 Mar 1917; ADMM, 6 M 674, ‘Renseignements pour l’établissement de la carte individuelle d’alimentation’, Nancy, 18 Apr 1918.

¹²⁴ For a broader discussion of evacuations see Alex Dowdall, ‘Civilians in the Combat Zone: Allied and German Evacuation Policies at the Western Front, 1914–1918’, First World War Studies 6, no. 3 (2015): 239–55.

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Table 1.4. Population of Lens, 1911–1921. 1911

Oct 1914

Apr 1916

Mar 1917

Apr 1917

1921

31,812

16,000 (approx.)

11,933

10,000 (approx.)

0 (evacuation)

14,259

Source: BHA, Etappenformationen (WK), Etappen-Inspektion der 6 Armee, 159, note from Ortskommandantur Lens, 27 Apr 1916; ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois.

the early part of the war, although it does not appear that departures were on the same scale as Arras and Reims. Furthermore, while it lost part of its population, Nancy also hosted as many as 20,000 refugees from other areas after August 1914.¹²⁵ The coalfield remained an important population centre throughout the war. The populations of the westernmost Allied-held communes actually increased, as they welcomed migrants from the German-occupied communes and those nearer the front on the Allied side.¹²⁶ In German-occupied France roughly half the pre-war population of Lens, or 16,000, remained in October 1914. Thanks to wartime conditions, and especially the mobilization of adult men into the army, these were, furthermore, populations made up predominantly of women and children. In February 1915, for instance, 51 per cent of civilians remaining in Arras were women and 19 per cent children, while in Reims the proportions were 43 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively. The minority of remaining men were mostly above the age of military service.¹²⁷ The number remaining at the front continued to fall throughout the war, as civilians fled to the safety of the French interior. But up to mid-1917, the decline was gradual rather than precipitous, largely thanks to official attitudes on either side of the lines. Both the Allies and the Germans, albeit for markedly different reasons, were slow to forcibly evacuate entire civilian populations. Indeed, on the Allied side many military commanders would have preferred to remove civilians from the front, given the potential logistical difficulties they could pose in the event of a German advance, and the lack of clear military or strategic reasons for maintaining them in place—with the notable exception of the coal miners’ contribution to the industrial mobilization. But the French army originally had limited powers to remove civilians. The commanders of places fortes such as Verdun, Toul, and Belfort could forcibly evacuate ‘bouches inutiles’, or ‘useless mouths’; senior officers could remove ‘suspect individuals’ from the zone des armées on a case by case basis, while the French army could order evacuations

¹²⁵ Armand-Paul Vogt, Nancy pendant la guerre, 1914–1918 (Nancy, 1920), 79–80. ¹²⁶ The population of Bruay increased from 18,000 to almost 45,000 by June 1917. See ADPdC, 11 R 859, sub-prefect Béthune to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 13 Jun 1917. ¹²⁷ Foulon, Arras sous les obus, 110; ADM, 48 M ter 253, ‘Reims recensement, 1915’.

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of civilians from heavily bombarded communes in cases of extreme urgency.¹²⁸ But in less pressing circumstances, it could only advise the local prefect to issue evacuation orders.¹²⁹ In general, however, military authorities avoided this approach, and instead permitted civilian populations to remain at the front, while attempting to persuade the most vulnerable to leave. This is not to say Allied commanders were wholly successful in their attempts. In fact, the efforts of the military to facilitate departures often ran into opposition from local civilian representatives, who insisted local populations had the right and the duty to remain in their towns resisting the enemy, just like soldiers. The mayor of Reims, Jean-Baptiste Langlet, remained an opponent of evacuation throughout the war, and senior French officers felt he actively hindered the military’s efforts to evacuate.¹³⁰ He set out his stall early, and in October 1914 told the town council that although he had discussed evacuation with the military, he had not considered it seriously, ‘even for an instant’, and encouraged the townspeople to ‘remain upright at our post’.¹³¹ Such calls to defiance defined Allied approaches to the question of evacuation during the first years of the war, and were directed towards both the male and female populations of the front. The fact that women were encouraged to stoically endure military violence like soldiers is a point developed in detail in Chapter 2. But for the moment, it is important to note that Allied authorities were also slow to evacuate children, the sick, and elderly people, many of whom were only removed from harm’s way after considerable delays. At the end of September 1915, there were still 175 children in Arras, while in the coal-mining region the Béthune hospice was not evacuated until May 1917.¹³² In Reims, bomb shelters were installed in some schools, while others were moved underground, into the town’s deep Champagne cellars.¹³³ The result was that significant numbers of children remained in the town throughout the period of static warfare—as of February 1917, there were 2,869.¹³⁴ Some within the front-line communities criticized this unwillingness to evacuate, but in general the opinion that civilians, including children, should remain under fire prevailed. When a group of

¹²⁸ AN, F/7/14606; Jean-Claude Farcy, Les Camps de concentration français de la Première Guerre Mondiale (Paris, 1995), 5–129; Jean-Yves Le Naour, Misères et tourments de la chair durant la Grande Guerre: les moeurs sexuelles des Français 1914–1918 (Paris, 2002), 175–6. ¹²⁹ SHD, 16 N 1661, ‘Mesures administratives à prendre au moment de la réoccupation’, G.Q.G., 26 Jun 1916 and ‘Note’, G.Q.G, 2 Apr 1917; SHD, 16 N 1653, S.R.A.C. to Louis Marin, Sep 1917. ¹³⁰ SHD, 16 N 1661, report of Lt.-Colonel Toutain, 11 May 1916. ¹³¹ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 16 Oct 1914. ¹³² Foulon, Arras sous les obus, 110; ADPdC, 1 Z 349, Béthune hospice to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 16 May 1917. ¹³³ On the transformation of educational spaces at the front see Alex Dowdall, ‘War in the Classroom: The Materiality of Educational Spaces in the French Front-line Towns, 1914–1920’, Cultural and Social History, published online 11 Oct 2019, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14780038.2019.1676595. ¹³⁴ ADM, 48 M ter 253, ‘recensement Reims’, 1 Feb 1917.

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schoolchildren, who had spent the summer at vacation camps in the interior, returned to Reims in autumn 1915, for instance, one local newspaper wrote that it was ‘painful’ to see ‘kids so full of life and health return to the martyred town where so many innocents of their age have been massacred’. But the municipality permitted their return, and the local school inspector insisted they were ‘joyful to get back to their family, their neighbourhood, and their town, all the dearer to them as it is more wounded’.¹³⁵ On the Allied side, therefore, the military facilitated the departure of individuals and small groups, but a reluctance to force evacuations, and the insistence of local civilian authorities that the towns’ populations should resist the enemy, meant that throughout the period of static warfare significant numbers of civilians, predominantly women but also many children, were permitted to remain. In late 1917, there were still almost 1,000 civilians in Arras; over 17,000 remained in Reims in February 1917; and Nancy was home to 68,500 in March 1917.¹³⁶ The Allied-controlled coal-mining region also remained an important population centre, thanks in part to the needs of the industrial mobilization. In mid-1917, over 4,000 miners worked in the mines closest to the front experiencing nearconstant shelling. In most cases their families accompanied them.¹³⁷ This reluctance to force evacuations continued even in the face of major offensives and intense bombardments. Prior to the Battle of Arras in April 1917, for instance, the town’s remaining inhabitants were ‘invited to evacuate’ by the military, and those choosing to stay merely had to sign a form stating: ‘I refuse to evacuate my children from Arras and I personally assume all liabilities arising from my decision’.¹³⁸ In Armentières, which came under intense gas shelling from late June 1917, British military doctors urged the evacuation of the town’s children in view of the ‘tics and nervous tremors which will certainly result later on from the frequent bombardments that they have been exposed to’.¹³⁹ Yet the French army requested, rather than ordered, that children under age 13 be evacuated, and offered transports for this purpose.¹⁴⁰ The mayor and the sub-prefect were reluctant to accept the offer, however, and only did so on 4 August, by which point the town’s population had dropped to 800.¹⁴¹ In Reims—subject to intense shelling during the April 1917 Chemin des Dames offensive—attitudes moderated somewhat, and as German fire grew in intensity the town council provided transports and placed a notice in the press appealing to ‘the absolute duty of the heads of families’ to evacuate their wives and children.¹⁴² But it was still assumed ¹³⁵ Le Courrier de la Champagne, 1 Nov 1915; Forsant, L’École sous les obus, 25. ¹³⁶ ADPdC, R 593, mayor Arras to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 7 Sep 1917; ADM, 48 M ter 253, Reims censuses; Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle, 25 Mar 1917. ¹³⁷ ANMT, Mines de Béthune, 1994 026 602, personnel figures, 1914–21. ¹³⁸ ADPdC, M 5575, commissaire central Arras to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 2 Apr 1917. ¹³⁹ ADN, 9 R 1161, letter to mayor Armentières, July 1917. ¹⁴⁰ Ibid., prefect to interior ministry, 31 July 1917. ¹⁴¹ Ibid., prefect to M.M.F., 4 August 1917. ¹⁴² L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 5 Apr 1917.

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that part of the population should remain. Evacuation was voluntary, and the municipality insisted it would only be temporary.¹⁴³ Almost 12,000 out of 17,000 departed.¹⁴⁴ The 5,000 who stayed included municipal employees and workers in the town’s Champagne industry, but also women, elderly people, and 629 children.¹⁴⁵ In this case, the willingness to allow urban life to continue under fire won out over public safety. The failure to organize timely and mandatory evacuations resulted in 80 civilian deaths from German fire in April 1917, the highest monthly total since September 1914.¹⁴⁶ On the German side, the military also accorded civilians a legitimate place on the urban battlefields of the Western Front, albeit for different reasons. Unlike the Allies, the German army began the war by seeking to compel civilians to remain in the warzone. One reason for this was to satisfy its need for labour.¹⁴⁷ But occupied French civilians identified a further, more sinister reason. In 1920 Mme. Bezelin, a schoolteacher in Liévin, recalled a group of German soldiers requisitioning her cellar. As she no longer had anywhere to shelter from bombardment, she asked to be evacuated to her sister’s house outside Lille. Her request was refused, and she claimed the local German commander told her: ‘you cannot leave; you act as a shield for us; if the population left the English would know and we would not be able to stay’.¹⁴⁸ As far as she was concerned, the German army used French civilians as human shields to limit Allied bombardment. This was, in fact, German policy. In early December 1914, the commander of the 5th Infantry Division, near Saint-Mihiel, asked his superiors not to evacuate local civilians, citing his division’s labour requirements, but also the fact that the presence of civilians protected his troops’ billets from bombardment. He was convinced that two villages, Buxerulles and Buxières, ‘are bombarded every day, but are only saved from complete destruction by the presence of the inhabitants’.¹⁴⁹ It is unclear whether his request was granted. But the following year, the principle was laid down in orders governing the repatriation of children, sick, and elderly civilians to unoccupied France via Switzerland. By the end of the war almost 500,000 people had returned from occupied France and Belgium on these convoys, including many from the front-line regions.¹⁵⁰ Humanitarian impulses did not motivate this repatriation programme, however, which instead aimed to place an extra burden on the French war economy by returning unproductive civilians.¹⁵¹ Those obliged to remain included people capable of working for the ¹⁴³ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 3 Apr 1917. ¹⁴⁴ Chatelle, Reims, 152. ¹⁴⁵ ADM, 48 M ter 253, Reims census, 10 Jun 1917. ¹⁴⁶ AMR 3 W 58–9, death and sickness statistics, 1914–1918. ¹⁴⁷ BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2517, ‘Besondere Anordnungen’, 24 Sep 1916. On Germany’s use of forced labour see Chapter 5. ¹⁴⁸ CLC, Académie de Lille, F/Delta/1126/2, Dossier B.156, report of E. Bezelin. ¹⁴⁹ BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2160, 5 Inf. Div to Gen. Kdo. III Arm., 8 Dec 1914. ¹⁵⁰ Michel Huber, La Population de la France pendant la guerre (Paris, 1931), 173. ¹⁵¹ Nivet, France occupée, 303 and Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 76.

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German army, and ‘a limited number of residents in the places near the front lines, to guard against a systematic bombardment of locations used by our troops as billets’.¹⁵² Such blatant disregard for civilian safety was not universal, however, and evacuation and repatriation programmes still allowed many vulnerable—or in the eyes of the German army unproductive—civilians to leave voluntarily. The population of Lens shrank from 16,000 in October 1914, to 10,000 in early 1917, largely due to small-scale evacuations of families with children to areas further back in occupied France or Belgium, or on repatriation convoys.¹⁵³ Some individual units also questioned the general policy of keeping civilians at the front, such as when, in late 1916, the German commander in Liévin insisted that the remaining 2,400 inhabitants be evacuated, despite Sixth Army command believing that this would result in ‘much heavier bombardment’.¹⁵⁴ He felt that since civilians were killed and wounded almost weekly, and ‘people, including the sick and elderly, are forced to live in the cellars’, evacuation ‘should take place as an act of humanity’.¹⁵⁵ In this instance, Sixth Army conceded and the last civilians left Liévin on Christmas Day 1916.¹⁵⁶ In early 1917, there was an abrupt shift in German policy, which went from obliging civilians to remain at the front, to forcible mass evacuations. This did not occur for humanitarian reasons, however. Rather, it emerged from what Isabel Hull has described as the occupiers’ ‘quest for perfect security’.¹⁵⁷ When the benefits of removing civilians began to outweigh the benefits of keeping them in place, the military did not hesitate to forcibly evacuate entire communities. This first occurred on a large scale in spring 1917, during Operation Alberich, Germany’s strategic withdrawal to the heavily fortified Siegfried Line. In January and February, the German army forcibly removed civilians from the areas to be abandoned, mainly in the Somme. Those fit for work were moved further back in occupied France or to Belgium, while many elderly and sick people were repatriated.¹⁵⁸ This was an enormous undertaking, and by the start of March over 126,000 people had been uprooted. Germany later asserted this was a humanitarian operation, and that efforts were made not to separate families, to send towndwellers to towns and farmers to the countryside, and, where possible, to remove

¹⁵² BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2160, instruction from Oberkommando der ArmeeAbteilung, 7 Mar 1915. ¹⁵³ BHA, Etappenformationen, Etappen-Inspektion der 6 Armee, 159, A.O.K. 6 to EtappenInspektion 6 Armee, 15 Apr 1916; ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ¹⁵⁴ BHA, Etappenformationen, Etappen-Inspektion der 6 Armee, 161, correspondence between Gen. Kdo. VI Res. Korps and A.O.K. 6, 16–18 Nov 1916. ¹⁵⁵ Ibid., 6 Bay. Res. Div. to Gen. Kdo. VI Res. Korps, 1 Dec 1916. ¹⁵⁶ Ibid., Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee to Gen. Kdo. VI Res. Korps, 5 Dec 1916. ¹⁵⁷ Hull, Absolute Destruction, 249. ¹⁵⁸ Reichsarchiv, Die Kriegsführung im Früjahr 1917, vol. 12 of Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918 (Berlin, 1939), 124.

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communities together.¹⁵⁹ But contemporary documents show the evacuations were planned ‘for military reasons’ and were to happen quickly and without consideration for the ‘comfort’ of the population.¹⁶⁰ Departures were often abrupt, and families separated. As Michael Geyer has shown, these civilian evacuations were inextricably linked to Operation Alberich’s deliberate and systematic destruction of the territory to be abandoned to the Allies. As such they proceeded primarily on the basis of military necessity, and further transformed civilians into the objects of military operations.¹⁶¹ Soon after this, in April 1917, similar measures were applied further north in the coal-mining region. In response to the Allied offensive at nearby Arras, the German army evacuated all civilians from the area. The population was not warned, and one resident of Lens later complained they were given only two hours’ notice before soldiers escorted them from the town at bayonet point.¹⁶² The Lens chief of police, Charles Bourgeois, described the departure of groups carrying their possessions on their backs, ‘without knowing their destination’. The weather was terrible and ‘shells rained down on all sides’, creating an ‘extraordinary chaos’ on the crowded roads leading from the town. The last civilians left on 13 April 1917, walking 15 km before being placed in ‘disgustingly dirty’ cattle wagons on a train bound for Belgium.¹⁶³ The civilian residents of the Somme and the coalfields of the Pas-de-Calais were eventually removed from the militarized world of the front. But this only happened after they had lived under fire in the warzone for two and a half years. For the last year and a half of war, Lens and the rest of the occupied coal-mining region became what the residents of Reims, Arras, and the other towns on the Allied side had thus far struggled to avoid—a ruined urban space devoid of life. But in late 1917 and early 1918, Allied authorities, and especially the military, stepped up efforts to remove civilians from their side of the lines, having recognized that leaving them in place could cause serious problems in the event of a German offensive. In late 1917 and early 1918, the French army, in conjunction with the national government, challenged local advocates of maintaining civilians in place, and moved from a policy of small-scale voluntary evacuations to planning large-scale, pre-emptive evacuations. The government eventually granted the military the power to order compulsory evacuations of any area within the zone des armées in March 1918.¹⁶⁴ But in most cases, military commanders opted to ¹⁵⁹ Ibid., 125. ¹⁶⁰ BHA, Etappenformationen, Etappen-Inspektion der 6 Armee, 161, Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee to ‘alle eingesetzten Et.-Kommandanturen’, 23 Feb 1917. ¹⁶¹ Michael Geyer, ‘Rückzug und Zerstörung’, in Die Deutschen an der Somme, 1914–1918, Krieg, Besatzung, Verbrannte Erde, ed. Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich, and Irina Renz (Essen, 2006), 177–8. ¹⁶² SHD, 16 N 1557, report on evacuation of Lens, 3 Dec 1917. ¹⁶³ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ¹⁶⁴ SHD, 17 N 441, G.Q.G. to Général Commandant Supérieur du Nord, 23 March 1918.

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collaborate with local authorities to develop detailed plans for rapid evacuations in the event of a German advance. These plans still made concessions to the claims of local civilian authorities that populations had a duty to remain. Full evacuations were to happen at the last moment, and where possible economic and administrative cores should remain. In the British-occupied coalfields, local authorities, mining companies, and military commanders drew up a plan to move 200,000 people in the event of a German offensive, but also agreed there was an ‘absolute necessity not to slow or stop extraction until the last moment’, which meant allowing not only the miners but also their families to remain.¹⁶⁵ In Reims, Bertrand de Mun, a local deputy, protested against a total evacuation, insisting it would be a ‘catastrophe’ for the town’s final 5,000 inhabitants, who knew ‘the life and the privations of the trenches’.¹⁶⁶ A compromise agreed in mid-February 1918 removed 3,000 people, leaving 2,000 to supervise the town’s factories.¹⁶⁷ After a rocky start, most of the remaining children, elderly people, and sick, had gone by the middle of March.¹⁶⁸ Arras witnessed something of a renaissance following the Allied advance of April 1917, and 600 civilians were permitted to return and begin reconstruction.¹⁶⁹ Permission to return was strictly controlled, however, ensuring that evacuation, if necessary, could be carried out quickly and efficiently.¹⁷⁰ As for Nancy, the largest remaining population centre at the front, the national government and military authorities sought to trim its population throughout 1917 and 1918 by removing children, residents of care institutes, and those not contributing to the local economy.¹⁷¹ Although the local prefect disapproved of the evacuation, resenting it as a ‘thankless and painful task’, he complied, organizing transports for those unable to pay their way and helping the municipality establish school camps for the children of families who could not leave.¹⁷² Between 28 January and 24 February 1918, almost 30,000 people left.¹⁷³ On the eve of the German Spring Offensive of 1918 there were, therefore, detailed plans in place to remove the remaining civilians from the Allied side. Most were implemented soon after the offensive began 21 March 1918. Although Nancy was spared total evacuation, as the main German thrust came further

¹⁶⁵ SHD, 16 N 1661, minutes of meeting between sub-prefect Béthune, directors of mining companies, and military authorities, 5 Mar 1918 and ‘plan d’évacuation des populations de la région minière’. ¹⁶⁶ Ibid., Bertrand de Mun to prefect Marne, 5 Jan 1918. ¹⁶⁷ Ibid., report of Général Mordacq and Fifth Army order to evacuate Reims, 20 Feb 1918. ¹⁶⁸ SHD, 5 N 84, prefect Marne to ministry interior, 26 Feb 1918; Chatelle, Reims, 232–8. ¹⁶⁹ Le Lion d’Arras, 5 Sep 1917. ¹⁷⁰ SHD, 16 N 1664, Lt. Col. Toutain to war ministry, 19 Feb 1918. ¹⁷¹ SHD, 16 N 1661, commander Eighth Army to commander G.A.E., 22 Jan 1918. ¹⁷² SHD, 16 N 1661, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to commander Eighth Army, 21 Jan 1918; Ville de Nancy, Rapport relatif aux évacuations présenté par M. G. Simon, maire de Nancy (Nancy, 1918), 23–37. ¹⁷³ SHD, 16 N 1661, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to commander Eighth Army, 26 Feb 1918.

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north, the remaining 2,000 adult males in Reims were evacuated on 24 March 1918.¹⁷⁴ Approximately 100,000 were evacuated from the coal-mining region after 12 April 1918, while Arras was evacuated around the same time.¹⁷⁵ These evacuations were, furthermore, part of a much broader undertaking, and by July 1918 over 300,000 civilians had left the Allied-controlled regions in a relatively orderly manner, with most passing through a network of temporary evacuation centres created in late 1917.¹⁷⁶ The German Spring Offensive, therefore, signalled the end of most urban life at the Western Front. Needless to say, these evacuations were difficult for civilians who had remained in their homes under fire for so long. Although they were preplanned, many feared a repeat of the hardships of those forced out in 1914. J. Mathon, in Arras, described the scene in almost apocalyptic terms: ‘what misery along the roads for three days! What scenes! What ordeals! How monstrous is the indifference of the rear towards these poor evacuees; some of them crawl along dismally, crying, pushing wheelbarrows, dragging carts loaded with rags. Worse than Dante’s Inferno!’¹⁷⁷ Given the prevalence of such fears, it is perhaps understandable that some sought to resist. Paul Hess reported that during the final evacuation of Reims several ‘recalcitrants’ ignored the order, and that the local gendarmerie was obliged to take them from their homes and escort them to the transports.¹⁷⁸ The significance of these evacuations for the urban residents of the Western Front was clearly expressed by Louis Marin, deputy for Nancy, in July 1918. At a parliamentary hearing into the evacuations he stated that ‘for four years these people have lived under the shells. Telling them “you are going to leave your home and go wherever” is a serious matter, especially when they were told for four years “you are giving a good example, your duty is to hold on”.’¹⁷⁹ The idea that civilians had a ‘duty’ to remain under fire, resisting the enemy like soldiers, was an important component of urban identity in towns on the Allied side. Evacuation, therefore, not only undermined this perceived ‘duty’, but signalled the end of urban life itself. In the absence of an urban population all that was left, many feared, was ruin. The extent to which these fears were warranted will be discussed in Chapter 6, in relation to refugees from the front-line towns. The Spring Offensive was a key moment in the urban history of the Western Front. Breaking the deadlock of the trenches, it signalled the end of urban life in ¹⁷⁴ Ibid., evacuation order for Reims, 24 Mar 1918. ¹⁷⁵ Ibid., report on evacuations in British zone, Mar-Apr 1918; SHD 17 N 441, General Laguiche to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 24 Mar 1918. ¹⁷⁶ AN, C/7561, Commission du Budget, dossier 2292, report of Commandant Welter on civilian evacuations, 18 Jul 1918. ¹⁷⁷ SHD, 16 N 1453, postal control report, 8–14 Apr 1918. ¹⁷⁸ Hess, La Vie à Reims, 26 Feb 1918, 499. ¹⁷⁹ AN, C/7561, Commission du Budget, dossier 2292, report of Commandant Welter on civilian evacuations, 18 Jul 1918.

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the coal-mining region, Arras, Reims, and, to a lesser extent, Nancy. But it also enlarged the area of urban destruction significantly, and towns that had been sheltered for much of the war now became battlefields, including Amiens, Laon, Châlons-sur-Marne, Épernay, and, perhaps most significantly, Paris.¹⁸⁰ Planes and Zeppelins had attacked the French capital several times prior to 1918. But the attacks of 1918 were much more destructive, and helped replicate something of the violence of the urban battlefields of the Western Front in the capital. From late January to September 1918, Paris was bombarded 75 times, both in aerial raids and with a specially designed long-range siege canon, known as the ‘Paris gun’. Five hundred and four people died in these attacks, including 91 when a shell landed on the crowded church of Saint-Gervais during Good Friday mass.¹⁸¹ The ‘Paris gun’ was, however, exceptional, and in the end the German advance halted, and reversed, before Paris came within range of field artillery. The final phase of the war saw the Allied armies advance and liberate the former urban battlefields of the Western Front in the late summer and autumn of 1918. In many instances they retook empty spaces, forcibly evacuated by a retreating German army, which was implementing a scorched earth policy. But in other towns civilian populations remained and were caught in the fighting. In some cases, such as at Lille, Allied commanders sought to spare civilian lives and property.¹⁸² But others were less scrupulous. Laon suffered heavily from shelling before it was retaken in mid-October 1918, while British artillery and bombers targeted Cambrai throughout late summer 1918.¹⁸³ The German army evacuated that town’s civilian population on 6 September 1918 before the arrival of the Allies, but at least 27 civilians had died before that point.¹⁸⁴ The mayor asserted that after one British bombing raid certain streets ‘presented a spectacle of carnage like a battlefield’.¹⁸⁵ Elsewhere, British gas shells killed 10 civilians in October in Le Cateau, while the British also gassed Saint-Amand on the evening of 22 October, with several casualties among the remaining civilians.¹⁸⁶ British troops retook Valenciennes on the morning of 3 November. When they arrived, 5,000 civilians

¹⁸⁰ G. Leroy-Héracle, Le Bombardement d’Amiens en 1918 (Amiens, 1919); Jean Marquiset, Les Allemandes à Laon, (2 Septembre 1914–13 Octobre 1918) (Paris, 1918), 260–2; ADM, 48 M bis 6, report of Châlons-sur-Marne police commissioner, 23 Apr 1919 and report on bombardment of Épernay, 21 Feb 1922. ¹⁸¹ Poirier, Les Bombardements de Paris (1914–1918), 307–10; Annette Becker, ‘La “Grosse Bertha” frappe Saint-Gervais’, in Centre de recherche de l’historial de la Grande Guerre, 14–18, La Très Grande Guerre, 209–13. ¹⁸² SHD, 16 N 1663, ‘Rapport sur l’aide apportée par les troupes Britanniques . . . ’. ¹⁸³ SHD, 16 N 1557, civilian postal control report Laon, 20 Oct 1918; Marquiset, Les Allemandes à Laon, 262–78. ¹⁸⁴ Archives départementales de la Haute-Savoie, Annecy (ADHS), 4 M 519, report on convoy from Cambrai, 5 Oct 1918. ¹⁸⁵ J. Demolon, On vous demande à la Commandanture! Heures vécues à la mairie de Cambrai pendant l’occupation allemande (1914–1918) (Paris, 1922), 120–4. ¹⁸⁶ SHD, 16 N 1663, telegram reporting recapture of Le Cateau, 24 Oct 1918 and ‘Rapport sur l’aide apportée’.

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remained, and many of its suburbs had been ‘annihilated’.¹⁸⁷ Until the very last days of the war, urban destruction remained a feature of combat, and civilians were present on the battlefield.

Urban Destruction and Civilian Death In wartime, the towns at the Western Front transformed into battlefields. Like all battlefields, they were dominated by destruction and death. The urban landscape was damaged on an unprecedented scale. In early 1919, French authorities estimated that in total 4,303 communes suffered from war-related damage. Six hundred and twenty were completely destroyed, 1,334 suffered more than 50 per cent damage, and 2,349 were damaged to a lesser extent.¹⁸⁸ The case studies examined here are an important part of this broader pattern. In Nancy, 30 per cent of buildings suffered some war damage—almost 3,000 were partially damaged, while 150 were totally destroyed.¹⁸⁹ In Reims, the destruction was far greater. Only 7 per cent of buildings were deemed ‘habitable’ in June 1919. In total 8,600 were destroyed and 4,256 badly damaged. Thirty-five public buildings, including the Hôtel de Ville, the theatre, the archaeological museum, eight schools, three churches, and four public libraries were completely destroyed. In addition, 34 factories and industrial buildings were destroyed, and 115 badly damaged.¹⁹⁰ The scale of destruction was similar in Arras, Soissons, Armentières, and the communes nearest the front in the Allied-held coal-mining region.¹⁹¹ In the former occupied coal-mining region, Allied shelling was compounded by deliberate destruction by the German army. One post-war report from the directors of the Lens company simply stated that ‘the Lens Mines have suffered complete destruction . . . The entire concession is a wasteland’.¹⁹² There were also large numbers of civilian dead and wounded. Given the disparate nature of the documentation, estimating precise numbers is difficult. But Table 1.5 presents estimates for the numbers of civilians killed by artillery bombardment and aerial bombing in selected towns during the war.

¹⁸⁷ Ibid., Général de Laguiche to Général Commandant en Chef, 8 Nov 1918. ¹⁸⁸ Hugh Clout, ‘The Great Reconstruction of Towns and Cities in France 1918–35’, Planning Perspectives 20, no. 1 (2005), 3. ¹⁸⁹ ADMM, 8 R 205, ‘Etat des immeubles détruits ou partiellement détruit, Nancy’, Feb 1920. ¹⁹⁰ ADM, 48 M ter 253, directeur administrative de la police municipale to sub-prefect, Reims, 23 Jun 1919. ¹⁹¹ In Arras 83 per cent of buildings were damaged. See Jean Christophe Bourgeois, ‘La Reconstruction d’Arras au lendemain de la Première Guerre Mondiale’, Revue du Nord 72, no. 288 (1990), 946; See also Clout, ‘The Great Reconstruction’, 1–6. ¹⁹² ANMT, Mines de Lens, 1994 055 0075, ‘Note sur les faits systématiques de destruction et d’enlèvement par l’ennemi’, Mar 1919.

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   Table 1.5. Estimated Numbers of Civilians Killed by Artillery Bombardment and Aerial Bombing in Selected Towns, 1914–1918. Reims Paris Armentières Dunkerque Amiens Nancy Lille Châlons-sur-Marne Épernay Total

800 538 382 262 163 120 85 63 50 2,463

Source: See notes 193–96.

A definite total is available for Nancy, where 120 civilians died from aerial and artillery bombardment.¹⁹³ A close estimate is available for Reims. One post-war police report put the number of wartime civilian dead at 708, with 874 wounded, although this did not include those injured in Reims but who died of wounds elsewhere.¹⁹⁴ Another report placed the total number of civilians killed closer to 800.¹⁹⁵ When added to the number of civilians killed in Paris, Dunkerque, Armentières, Amiens, Lille, Châlons-sur-Marne, and Épernay, we reach a total of 2,463 civilian deaths from artillery bombardment and aerial bombing.¹⁹⁶ This figure only applies to a selection of towns, however. In particular, it does not include the Pas-de-Calais, one of the most highly populated regions of the front, or the majority of the German-occupied regions. Figures for the number of civilians killed in individual communes in the Pas-de-Calais, including Arras and the occupied and unoccupied coal-mining region, are unclear.¹⁹⁷ A reliable total is available for the entire department, however, and after the war the prefect reported that 1,363 civilians were killed and 1,703 injured.¹⁹⁸ In addition, the Gazette des Ardennes listed 1,365 civilians killed by Allied fire throughout

¹⁹³ Badel, Bombardements de Nancy, 87–93. ¹⁹⁴ ADM, 48 M bis 6, report from Reims municipal police, 22 Feb 1922. ¹⁹⁵ AMR, 173 W 91, ‘Renseignements statistiques sur les destructions de la ville’. ¹⁹⁶ Paris: Poirier, Les Bombardements de Paris, 307–10; Dunkerque: Albert Chatelle, Dunkerque pendant la Guerre, 1914–1918 (Paris, 1925), 35; Armentières: Clout, ‘The Great Reconstruction’, 12; Amiens: Albert Chatelle, Amiens Pendant la Guerre, 1914–1918 (Amiens, 1929), 291–2; Lille: ADN, 9 R 521, list of civilians killed in Lille during October 1914; Châlons-sur-Marne: ADM, 48 M bis 6, list of civilians killed and wounded in Châlons-sur-Marne, 19 Dec 1918; Épernay: ADM, 48 M bis 6, list of civilians killed in Épernay, 21 Feb 1922. ¹⁹⁷ In Arras, for instance, there are 124 civilian names on the town’s war memorial, but this is certainly below the actual figure, and a list drawn up for the prefect in August 1915 counted 161 civilians killed by that point. See ADPdC, M 5593/2, ‘Ville d’Arras: Liste des personnes de la population civile tuées . . . jusqu’à août 1915’. ¹⁹⁸ ADPdC, 11 R 784, prefect Pas-de-Calais to interior ministry, 9 May 1921.

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occupied France between September 1915 and 31 January 1918.¹⁹⁹ Although this number may include some of those on the post-war list provided by the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais, it is, nonetheless, an underestimate, as it does not include those killed before September 1915 or after January 1918. If these two figures are accepted as indications of the number of civilians killed in the Pas-de-Calais and in German-occupied France, then when they are added to the figures provided in Table 1.5 we reach a total of at least 5,189 civilians killed by artillery bombardment and aerial bombing in selected areas on both sides of the lines. This is broadly corroborated by the French demographer Michel Huber, writing in the 1930s. Huber calculated that in January 1928, 33,000 people benefitted from the June 1919 law granting pension entitlements to the ‘civilian victims’ of the conflict.²⁰⁰ This included 17,000 who were wounded and incapable of work, but also 16,000 widows, orphans, and older relatives of civilians killed.²⁰¹ If, on average, each civilian killed left three dependents, then this supports a figure of over 5,000 civilian deaths. All this suggests that the total number of French civilians killed at the Western Front was in the thousands—above 5,000, and perhaps as high as 10,000. The spectacles of urban destruction and civilian death became commonplace in Arras, Reims, Nancy, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais and were, perhaps, the most striking results of the transformation of these towns into urban battlefields. * *

*

*

In recent years, historians have described the many ways by which the war changed the functions of urban spaces.²⁰² The war entered cities and towns on the home fronts through railway stations, sites of entertainment, and hospitals.²⁰³ Public spaces in all belligerent societies were militarized to a greater or lesser degree, as wounded soldiers and those on leave colonized streets, and war-related posters and imagery proliferated.²⁰⁴ Blackouts made towns and cities darker and colder, and changed peoples’ routines, particularly on long winter nights.²⁰⁵ As this chapter has demonstrated, the war also entered towns at the Western Front, but in a far more concrete manner than elsewhere, thanks to military fortifications and regular artillery bombardment. Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais were integrated into the military world of the Western

¹⁹⁹ Gazette des Ardennes, Édition Illustré no. 60, 1 Mar 1918. These lists are reliable, as they were based on figures supplied by German units. See BHA, Gen. Kdo I Bay. Arm. Korps, No. 575, lists of civilians killed for publication in Gazette des Ardennes. ²⁰⁰ For a full discussion of this law see Chapter 4. ²⁰¹ Huber, La Population de la France, 310. ²⁰² Jay Winter, ‘The Practices of Metropolitan Life in Wartime’, in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, vol. 2, 6; Stefan Goebel and Derek Keene, ‘Towards a Metropolitan History of Total War: An Introduction’, in Goebel and Keene, Cities into Battlefields, 1–4. ²⁰³ Adrian Gregory, ‘Railway Stations: Gateways and Termini’; Jan Rüger, ‘Entertainments’; Jay Winter, ‘Hospitals’, in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, vol. 2. ²⁰⁴ Cronier, ‘The Street’, 80–7. ²⁰⁵ Chickering, The Great War and Urban Life, 299–302.

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Front in a very real sense, with trenches, defensive architecture, weaponry, and, most importantly, bombardment changing the nature of urban space. These towns became highly militarized spaces—urban battlefields at the heart of the Western Front. Those civilians who, thanks to Allied and German evacuation policies, were permitted, encouraged, or compelled to remain in their home towns adapted to life on these urban battlefields, developing new routines while also trying to ensure that, as much as possible, ‘normal’ life continued. But despite their efforts to preserve normality, the scale of death and destruction ensured that life at the front would be transformative. Just as war militarized urban space, it also militarized civilians’ identities. It is to this transformation that this book now turns and, in particular, to civilians’ cultural, emotional, and psychological responses to artillery bombardment. How did civilians at the front respond to the gradual destruction of their home towns? What coping mechanisms did they develop in response to the traumatic experience of bombardment? And how did these developments shape their relationships with their local communities and the French national community?

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2 Civilian Identities under Fire Paul Hess described the mixture of fear and confusion his family and neighbours felt on 4 September 1914 as they sheltered in their basement from the first German bombardment of Reims: We had no idea what war was, but soon realized in the face of this outburst of brutal force and built-up hatred . . . The shells whistled and fell so close by that, through the basement window, I saw a large cloud of smoke filling the courtyard. We were shaken by the arrival of the shells and the horrendous noise of their explosions, followed immediately by the roar of broken windows and houses collapsing . . . Despite it all, I still had to joke around to reassure the children, especially André, the youngest, who keeps repeating ‘Papa, I’m scared!’¹

For the town’s civilian population, bombardment was a shocking encounter with modern military violence. Many fled their homes for the French interior as a result. Hess sent his wife and children away soon after bombardment began. But for those who remained, bombardment was transformative. At the end of October 1914, only two months after Hess’s first encounter with shelling, the prefect of the Marne provided quite a different picture, reporting on the remarkable adaptability of the population of Reims. He noted that ‘all those who were afraid left at the start of the bombardment’, and that others followed subsequently as they became ‘overwrought’ by German fire. He felt, however, that those who had remained had grown used to bombardment. He admired ‘the composure and prudence of the inhabitants who make use of the breaks in the bombardment to go about their daily business . . . Once a neighbourhood is hit the streets are deserted, and when the barrage has finished, movement slowly picks up again in the streets that seem to offer the greatest security’.² Chapter 1 explored how war transformed towns into battlefields, and shaped how civilians engaged with urban space. This chapter, in turn, discusses how the experience of bombardment transformed civilians’ identities, and shaped their relationships with their local and national communities. It explores representations of front-line civilians on a national level, and the collective, discursive responses to artillery fire that developed within the towns at the Western Front. ¹ Hess, La Vie à Reims, 4 Sep 1914, 40–1. ² AN, F/7/12730, prefect Marne to interior ministry, 30 Oct 1914. Communities under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918. Alex Dowdall, Oxford University Press (2020). © Alex Dowdall. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198856115.001.0001

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These differed considerably from one side of the lines to the other, for although civilians on the Allied side faced enemy fire, their counterparts living under German occupation faced the troubling fact that they were being attacked by French and Allied troops. In both cases, however, bombardment elicited complex feelings among urban dwellers, which went far beyond the initial fear described by Hess. It was a transformative experience that shaped civilians’ attitudes towards their local ‘communities under fire’, and the French nation as a whole.

The Militarization of Civilian Life on the Allied side of the Lines In October 1914, L’Illustration’s Gaston Chérau reported from Arras, where he described the effects of German shelling on a French hospital. Several civilian patients were wounded, and a nun working as a nurse was killed. According to Chérau, her dying words were ‘I offer my life for my country!’³ Accounts like this recurred throughout the war, as French and Allied journalists foregrounded the duty and courage shown by the inhabitants of the front-line towns under German shells. As a result, images and narratives of urban life at the Western Front quickly became part of national discourse on the Allied side. The media presented civilians who remained under fire as heroes resisting enemy attacks, almost the equivalents of the soldiers in the trenches. Such accounts are representative of an important subgenre of war journalism emphasizing the tenacity and stoicism of civilians within the front-line towns. According to Le Petit Parisien, for instance, in Reims ‘confidence and forgetfulness of danger have become commonplace. People wait for victory, while peacefully attending to their tasks’.⁴ Paul Ginisty, one of France’s most high-profile journalists, provided a further example of this style of reporting when he reported from the ‘bombarded towns’ in summer 1916, including Albert, Soissons, and Arras. He described ‘conditions of life in the regions where it seems there should no longer be any place for life’, but also pointed to the ‘strong loyalty’ of the front-line population, which, ‘in the middle of all this misery, this immense scene of destruction . . . pursues the task to which it is devoted’.⁵ In some ways, this national press reporting acknowledged the new gender profiles of the front-line towns where, with men of military age serving in the army, women predominated. Articles foregrounded women’s heroism, such as one in Le Matin on ‘the tranquil heroism of the women of Reims’. This presented calm resilience as a characteristic attitude, describing one woman sitting at a table selling postcards ‘when a shell landed one hundred metres from her. The resulting ³ L’Illustration, 31 Oct 1914. ⁵ Le Petit Parisien, 3 Jul 1916.

⁴ Le Petit Parisien, 17 Nov 1915.

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gust of air sent all the cards flying. The good woman, indefatigable, gathered them up, murmuring resignedly: “It is astonishing all the same. Is that all they have to do? It is a year now this has gone on!” ’ Another young sales girl was reportedly more obstinate in her resistance when, after she was injured by a shell, her employer suggested they leave town: ‘ “What!?” Responded the little sales girl, who had just miraculously escaped death; “We have held on for a year and we will close now? Not on my life! We must hold on, and hold on to the end.” ’⁶ As Susan Grayzel has shown in relation to German air raids on Paris and the French interior, in this type of reporting ‘stoic heroism under fire’ became a ‘nongender-specific civic virtue’ expected of women as much as men.⁷ But this focus on female heroism threatened normative gender roles and, as a result, was often balanced by traditional representations of femininity. In the interior, as Grayzel has shown, representations of female heroism were tempered by regular assertions of the innocence of French women and children, and the emasculation of German pilots.⁸ At the front, the insistence that ‘normal life’ continued under fire ensured female heroism could be balanced by more traditional gender roles. In early 1915, for instance, Le Petit Parisien described the attitudes of the women left in Arras, who, it claimed: consider themselves soldiers. The cellar is their trench. When the Prussian cannons are tired of vomiting metal and when the debris from the shells covers the ground, the basements open. The women come out, listening . . . They come out, wielding brooms. They are relentless, making bayonet charges. ‘What are you going to do? . . . ’ ‘We are going to clean up this mess! . . . ’ Such are the women of Arras.⁹

In this instance, domesticity is militarized and emerges as a form of resistance, and heroism amounts to the continuation of household tasks under fire. Representations of civilian heroism at the front were not, however, exclusively feminine, and in many cases the media avoided potentially troubling images of women under fire by focusing on prominent male members of the front-line communities. Local elites, including mayors and prefects—often able-bodied men beyond the age of military service—could easily be attributed heroic, soldier-like qualities. They were expected to act as the embodiments of civilian resistance—the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais, for instance, told the mayors of his department that they were ‘soldiers . . . who remain at a post of honour and danger’.¹⁰ They were regularly presented as such by the national press. In August 1916, Le Petit Parisien profiled mayor Chas of Armentières, praising his devotion to duty under fire.¹¹ ⁶ Le Matin, 26 Sep 1915. ⁷ Grayzel, ‘The Souls of Soldiers’, 614. ⁸ Ibid., 614–20. ⁹ Le Petit Parisien, 28 Jan 1915. ¹⁰ ADPdC, M 1727, ‘Le Pas-de-Calais pendant la guerre’. ¹¹ Le Petit Parisien, 8 Aug 1916.

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Heroic images of local officials from the front regions featured in the illustrated press, such as a photospread of ‘heroic deputies, mayors and prefects’ in November 1914, which included the mayor of Lens, Émile Basly, and the prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle, Léon Mirman (Figure 2.1). Numerous public representatives were also presented with the légion d’honneur and medals for their services in high-profile ceremonies. One such was Jean-Baptiste Langlet, the mayor of Reims, for ‘heroic conduct in the face of the enemy’.¹² Images of civilian heroism therefore featured prominently in public discourse in wartime France. These images played an important function as models of appropriate behaviour to be emulated by civilians in the interior. They entered the systems of representation that regulated what has been termed France’s wartime ‘social morality’—the perceptions of what was felt to be fair and unjust, acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. As John Horne has demonstrated, the figure of the front-line soldier lay at the centre of this language of wartime social morality. Civilians in the interior were expected to adhere to an ideal social behaviour characterized by ‘duty, sacrifice and solidarity’, defined in relation to the ‘demotic figure of the poilu’.¹³ The ultimate sacrifices of the soldiers in the trenches were used, in other words, to make the ‘lesser’ sacrifices required of civilians in the interior, such as longer working hours and reduced consumption, appear more acceptable. The image of the front-line soldier occupied the pinnacle of the hierarchy of wartime social morality and, as Horne has argued, the ‘ideal civilian comportment was subordinated to the supreme measure of combat experience, and was cast in a less heroic mode’.¹⁴ But the national media’s focus on front-line civilians meant that images of soldiers’ heroism and sacrifices were not the only ones to emerge from the front. This is not to say that depictions of civilian heroism under fire either usurped or existed independently of those of the front-line soldier. Instead, the heroism of the inhabitants of the bombarded towns was defined and legitimized by its similarities to the still-dominant sacrifices of the soldiers. Comparisons with the soldiers gave greater weight to civilian heroism at the front. In July 1917, for instance, Lectures pour tous described the similarities between the soldiers in the trenches and miners in the bombarded coalfields, who were conscious that: the mine where they struggle is a field of honour: they constantly display courage equal to the soldiers . . . We were told that during one bombardment a shell landed in the machine-room—not for the first time—and killed the boilerman, who was literally cut in two. Calmly, his comrade came to take his place.¹⁵

¹² Le Temps, 30 Nov 1914. ¹³ Horne, ‘Social Identity in War’, 120–1. ¹⁵ ‘Le Pays noir sous les obus’, Lectures pour Tous, 15 Jul 1917.

¹⁴ Ibid.

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Figure 2.1. Images of Civilian Heroism: ‘Députés, préfets et maires héroïques’, Le Miroir, 22 Nov 1914. Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

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Such stories asserted that it was not just the French army that could resist the enemy, but the nation as a whole, including elderly men, women, and children. Although they remained subordinate to the overarching figure of the front-line soldier, the inhabitants of the bombarded towns were nonetheless portrayed in a similar light, and provided clear examples of civilian resilience to be followed in the interior. The comparison of civilians to soldiers was, indeed, a commonly used rhetorical device during the war, in France and elsewhere. Minister for Munitions Albert Thomas regularly described munitions workers as the soldiers of the home front, given their role in the industrial war effort; similar rhetoric was deployed in the Ruhr.¹⁶ When applied to civilians in the interior, such comparisons aimed to foster social peace in the face of industrial mobilization—the soldiers were suffering in the trenches so, the message went, civilians should emulate them and accept longer working days. But when applied to areas where civilians endured similar experiences to soldiers, and in particular intense artillery bombardment, this common wartime rhetoric gained added layers of meaning. This was particularly true given that representations of civilian resistance at the Western Front, especially purported similarities between the inhabitants of the bombarded towns and the soldiers, were not just produced and consumed nationally but also within the bombarded towns. As outlined in the general introduction, historians have examined the ways in which images and narratives that structured the engagement of societies in the war were generated locally. The processes of social and cultural mobilization were not exclusively national, but emerged independently within local communities, through the actions of elites and civil society. Within the communities at the Western Front, as elsewhere in France and Europe, local civil society, media, and politicians helped form the public discourses that generated support for the war. These local discourses had much to say about how civilian identities changed in response to German bombardment. The attitudes and experiences of the soldiers were constant reference points within the towns under fire. The local press insisted the experience of artillery fire directly linked civilians and soldiers, and presented both groups as having similar capacities for resistance. Le Petit Béthunois, for instance, praised six female textile workers who came under artillery fire on their way to work in an unnamed town near the lines. One was killed and two injured but they carried on as, it claimed, ‘here the worker defends her factory like the soldier his trench’.¹⁷ When the last remaining civilians left Reims in March 1918 they were described as ‘true soldiers who remained to face the enemy until the painful withdrawal was forced on

¹⁶ Stefan Goebel, ‘Forging the Industrial Home Front: Iron-Nail Memorials in the Ruhr’, in Uncovered Fields: Perspectives in First World War Studies, ed. Jenny Macleod and Pierre Purseigle (Leiden, 2004), 162–4 and 184; Horne, ‘Social Identity in War’, 121. ¹⁷ Le Petit Béthunois, 15 Aug 1915.

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them’.¹⁸ Such language was also deployed by local representatives, who repeatedly told their constituents that by remaining in their homes under fire they emulated the soldiers in the trenches nearby. The mayor of Reims described Dr Jacquin, a municipal councillor killed during the bombardment of 19 September 1914, as ‘having fallen on the field of honour’, while the following year, at the town’s 14 July celebrations, one councillor spoke of Reims as ‘a town that for more than 10 months has mixed the blood of its inhabitants with that of its soldiers for the defence and independence of the country’.¹⁹ The mayor of Nancy also gave equal status to that town’s military and civilian dead in his speech at the 1917 All Souls Day ceremony: ‘soldiers who have fallen on the battlefield, unfortunate people whose bloody remains we have recovered from the ruins of destroyed houses, civilian or military, we join you all in a single thought. One like the other you have been killed by the enemy.’²⁰ Such statements affirmed that the deaths of both civilians and soldiers were acts of noble self-sacrifice made in defence of the patrie. By comparing civilians at the front to soldiers, local representatives and the press sought to stimulate the type of stoic resistance they described. When the prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle, Léon Mirman, was instructed to begin evacuating Nancy in January 1918, he complained it would be a significant change of approach, given that up to then he had repeatedly urged the population to remain in their homes to provide an example of resistance to the nation, assuring them that their ‘departure would cause profound emotion in the rear . . . as if the 20th Corps [the local unit] broke’.²¹ After six women were killed by German shells in Béthune in May 1917, the mayor of that town also exhorted the population to continue resisting by emulating the soldiers: After each test that confronts us, let us pull together, and draw from the thought of our brave soldiers the strength and courage that motivates them in the face of the vile enemy we must fight in the name of humanity, and let us be able to offer all the sacrifices the patrie demands of us.²²

Repeated references to the example of the soldiers thus had a practical function. Deployed by local officials who opposed evacuation, these tropes sought to encourage civilians to remain at the front, resisting the enemy. But they also amounted to the public articulation of a new form of civilian identity, characterized by courage, self-sacrifice, and the capacity to endure military violence. Local

¹⁸ Reims à Paris, 30 Mar 1918. ¹⁹ AMR, 1 D 65, municipal council deliberations, 13 Oct 1914; Reims à Paris, 21 Jul 1915. See also L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 16 Jul 1916. ²⁰ Vogt, Nancy pendant la guerre, 244. ²¹ SHD, 16 N 1661, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to commander Eighth Army, 21 Jan 1918. ²² Le Petit Béthunois, 13 May 1917.

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public discourse at the front consistently described the soldier-like resilience of the civilian population, which could and would remain at the front despite enemy attacks. In its opening editorial, Le Lion d’Arras outlined the spirit of resistance it felt motivated the town’s inhabitants: For fourteen months they have known the fever of danger; they have seen parents, children, brothers, friends fall next to them . . . Without electricity or gas, sometimes without coal, petrol, water, bread, suffering at night from the cold, from solitude also, living in houses without windows frozen by the wind, sleeping an agitated sleep between two bursts of artillery fire, they mount the civilian guard on our abandoned ramparts.²³

In practical terms, mounting this ‘civilian guard’ meant ensuring ‘normal’ life continued. Examples of civilians going about their business unperturbed by artillery fire regularly featured in the local press. Le Petit Béthunois praised ‘the civilians of the front’ who ‘see to their work . . . [and] make the maximum effort to ensure the same results as during normal periods’, while Le Lion d’Arras celebrated one local postman, M. Delobel, who, although injured by shellfire at work, still finished his deliveries.²⁴ The school teachers of Reims were collectively cited for having ‘regularly assured school services in the town that is constantly bombarded, giving a fine example of civic courage’, while the local senator, Léon Bourgeois, praised their ‘regular and daily heroism’.²⁵ A language of civil–military equivalence thus dominated public discourse at the front. The work of local elites and the press in creating this discourse should not, however, be dismissed as mere ‘propaganda’ manipulating reality. Indeed, historians have come to see wartime propaganda not as something that obscures ‘truth’ or ‘reality’, but instead as an ‘integral part of the imagined and lived worlds of the conflict’.²⁶ It both shaped and was shaped by prevailing attitudes. Those who produced it were not separate from the social world or experiences they described. Journalists writing for the local press who promoted images of civilians’ soldierlike heroism faced extreme violence themselves, such as Victor Ledunc, an employee of L’Éclaireur de l’Est in Reims killed when the newspaper’s offices were shelled in December 1914.²⁷ Throughout the war, this newspaper’s editors felt that continuing publication was their duty, and a form of resistance. After the heavy bombardment of April 1917, which destroyed the newspaper’s original

²³ Le Lion d’Arras, 1 Jan 1916. ²⁴ Le Petit Béthunois, 9 Jan 1916; Le Lion d’Arras, 20 Apr 1917. ²⁵ ADM, 29 M 10, ‘Citation au Journal Officiel . . . ’, 5 May 1916; Forsant, L’École sous les obus, v. ²⁶ John Horne, ‘ “Propagande” et “Vérité” dans la Grande Guerre’, in Vrai et faux dans la Grande Guerre, ed. Christophe Prochasson and Anne Rasmussen, (Paris, 2004), 94. ²⁷ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 3 Dec 1914.

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buildings, it reappeared in an improvised, reduced format in order to, as the newspaper saw it, ‘save a small part of the collective soul of our town’.²⁸ Many civilians living under fire related to these publicly constructed forms of identity, which helped shape their responses to artillery bombardment. Some civilians self-identified in military terms, or equated their experiences to those of the soldiers by, for instance, using military language to describe wartime experiences, describing short trips to Paris and the interior as going ‘on leave’.²⁹ In Armentières, one school teacher wrote to a friend to say that much as she wanted to leave the bombarded town, ‘I am not keen to desert’.³⁰ In their personal writings, many civilians also expressed the opinion that their duty was to remain at home under fire out of solidarity with the soldiers. Postal censors reported that one woman from Reims wrote in September 1917 that she would not leave the town as ‘some people must stay to maintain the morale of the poilus and especially to share their suffering and have the same hatred of the Boche until death’, while in January 1918 postal censors reported that one civilian from Nancy wrote: ‘let us live as soldiers, because fate has placed us at the frontier we must hold on like our poilus’.³¹ In February 1918, a woman living in the coal-mining region insisted she would not evacuate unless ‘absolutely necessary’, even though she admitted ‘we could suffer from bombardment and airplanes’, since ‘the soldiers say that the boches won’t pass, they have all they need to stop them’.³² More strikingly, when Méaulte, an agricultural commune 4km from the front in the Somme, was threatened with evacuation in late 1915 the heads of all households petitioned the prefect, demanding to be allowed remain in their homes because ‘we have lived for sixteen months with the army . . . We have become soldiers and we demand the right and the honour to remain so.’³³ By comparing themselves to soldiers, front-line civilians sought to give meaning to their experiences of military violence. A publicly expressed form of civilian identity based on an image of soldier-like resistance provided, in other words, a viable model around which to structure both personal and collective responses to being under fire. This is not to say that front-line civilians simply repeated the hyperbolic tropes found in public discourse in their letters and diaries, selfidentifying in self-congratulatory terms as heroes. Rather, public representations of civilian heroism and resistance allowed, indeed encouraged, civilians at the front to think of themselves as distinct from the rest of the civilian population, as a result of their unique wartime experiences. The civilian inhabitants of the towns at

²⁸ Ibid., 22 Apr 1917. ²⁹ Reims à Paris, 20 Jan 1917. ³⁰ SHD, 16 N 1458, Dunkerque postal control, 7–13 Oct 1916. ³¹ SHD, 16 N 1455, Châlons-sur-Marne postal control, 22 Sep 1917; SHD, 16 N 1465, Nancy postal control, 10 Jan 1918. ³² SHD, 16 N 1453, Boulogne postal control, 2 Feb 1918. ³³ SHD, 17 N 441, petition from population of Méaulte to prefect Somme, Dec 1915. Emphasis in original.

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the Western Front not only claimed that the experience of bombardment linked them to the soldiers, but also that it set them apart from the rest of the civilian population. Bombardment thus elicited strong feelings of solidarity within the towns at the Western Front, and their inhabitants saw themselves as members of distinct communities under fire, a development that prompted them to question the nature of their relationship with other communities in the interior, and the French nation as a whole. A good example of such attitudes came at the funeral of two women killed by shellfire in Béthune in May 1917. In his eulogy, the mayor reminded locals that while making the common national sacrifice of giving ‘our sons and brothers’ to the ‘patrie’, they also had to ‘submit to the furious blows’ of the enemy. He reaffirmed the distinctiveness of local wartime experiences, and urged the population to accept ‘as good patriots the painful, but noble situation that falls to us in this region’.³⁴ The mayor of Nancy made similar claims when he received the Légion d’Honneur in 1916, pointing to the contrast between civilians at the front, who knew the ‘dull shudder of the armies’, and those in the interior.³⁵ Similarly, Le Petit Rémois drew a clear line between the calm attitudes of civilians facing regular bombardment at the front and the panic displayed by those in the interior on the rare occasions they were bombed by planes or Zeppelins. It told the ‘folks of the rear’ that ‘once an enemy plane or zeppelin has been announced, your arteries will beat as if about to explode . . . [but] the refugee from Reims will remain calm and will not even condescend to your panic with a smile’.³⁶ Local public discourse within the front-line towns thus used bombardment to define residents as members of distinct communities, distinguished from others in the interior by direct experiences of military violence. Once again, postal control and police reports reveal that such public statements reflected broadly held attitudes. In November 1917, police in Nancy reported that local civil servants ‘assimilate themselves somewhat with our soldiers, because they share the same risks of war with them’, while also drawing clear distinctions between ‘their situation at the front and that of their colleagues in the interior’.³⁷ Similarly, in 1918 postal censors reported that a woman in a village outside Reims thought ‘all the French of the interior should come and live the life of the populations of the front for a few days’, while another woman from Reims complained ironically of ‘the folks of the rear’ as ‘heroes who do not yet know the effects of cannon fire’. She placed them alongside other negative social figures, including ‘the war profiteers and the swindlers of our poor refugees’, before concluding that ‘it would not be too much to hope that they know a little of the sensations of bombardment . . . when

³⁴ Le Petit Béthunois, 20 May 1917. ³⁵ L’Est Républicain, 16 May 1916. ³⁶ Le Petit Rémois, 23 Aug 1917. ³⁷ SHD, 16 N 1540, Report on civilian morale, commissaire spécial Nancy to commander 20th Region, 30 Nov 1917.

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one knows that while some suffer and die, others take advantage of everything, it is a bit much to handle’.³⁸ Through letters such as these, we can see how artillery bombardment convinced the inhabitants of the towns at the Western Front that, as members of communities defined by suffering, they were morally superior to their counterparts in the interior. These attitudes were partly structured against an image of specifically Parisian weakness. Like many soldiers who went on leave to the capital, civilians from the front-line towns were offended by the supposed levity and comfort of life in the capital.³⁹ The harsh conditions at the front, where bombardment made fairs, public celebrations, and entertainments impossible, contrasted with the apparently quite different situation in the capital, where many believed popular entertainments flourished.⁴⁰ When one Mme. Robert travelled to Paris from her home outside Reims in November 1917, she commented on the ‘luxury’ and ‘floods of money’ she saw. She was envious that Parisians had central heating, ‘while we cannot even have a lump of coal’.⁴¹ Another women in Reims expressed outrage that ‘while we suffer so much, the Parisians cheer the Americans excessively and prepare the 14 July celebrations! . . . They could do better and liberate us’.⁴² Parisians were judged to be ‘soft’, and unaware of what war was ‘really’ like. Postal censors noted this sentiment in a letter written by a miner in Bully-Grenay, who was convinced that ‘if the Parisian had been at Bully the war would have finished long ago, they do not know what it is like, they should taste a bit of the cake’.⁴³ Negative images of Parisian society occupied an important place within the collective imaginations of the communities under fire, helping civilians at the front define themselves against what they were not—decadent and weak. But Paris was not, of course, entirely sheltered from combat; the French capital experienced intermittent aerial bombing raids and, in spring 1918, briefly came within range of heavy German artillery. But from the perspective of civilians living under fire at the Western Front, there was a deep chasm between the persistent artillery bombardment of their towns, and the irregular, and less destructive, aerial bombing of the capital. When German planes and Zeppelins bombed Paris prior to 1918, the inhabitants of the front-line towns expressed some sympathy, but mainly commented on the minimal damage caused compared to their homes. After a Zeppelin raid in March 1915, for instance, Reims à Paris wrote that ‘we sincerely sympathize with the small number of victims of this cowardly nocturnal raid. But what is this, compared to the ferocious attacks committed over the past ³⁸ SHD, 16 N 1455, Châlons-sur-Marne postal control, 27 Apr 1918 and 26 Jan 1918. ³⁹ Rüger, ‘Entertainments’, 113; Emmanuelle Cronier, Permissionnaires dans la Grande Guerre (Paris, 2013), 165–71. ⁴⁰ In Paris, popular entertainment, theatre, and the cinema did restart after a lull in 1914. See Rüger, ‘Entertainments’, 140. ⁴¹ SHD, 16 N 1455, Châlons-sur-Marne postal control, 17 Nov 1917. ⁴² Ibid., 14 Jul 1917. See also L’Éclaireur de L’Est, 16 Jul 1916, for a similar point. ⁴³ SHD, 16 N 1453, Boulogne postal control, 10–16 Jun 1918.

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six months by German cowardice against the unfortunate town of Reims?’⁴⁴ In November 1917, a woman in Nancy expressed similar opinions when she lightheartedly wrote to a friend in Paris that ‘you will see that one of these days they will give the Croix de Guerre to Paris because of its fears of planes and Zeppelins, and a wooden grave cross [croix de bois] to Nancy because it will have been destroyed’.⁴⁵ When, in early 1918, Paris came under more frequent fire from both planes and long-range artillery, civilians at the front originally reacted with similar derision. Postal censors found, for instance, that civilians in the Pas-de-Calais felt the ‘strong emotions’ expressed by Parisians after bombing raids in February 1918 were ‘exaggerated’.⁴⁶ Many were irritated that the bombing raids on Paris dominated national news, while their greater sufferings went unreported. In early February 1918, censors noted that ‘the bombardment of Paris . . . was the object of several unfortunate appraisals by the inhabitants of the towns of the Nord’, who resented that ‘the misfortunes of the Parisian, “whose turn it is anyway”, fill numerous newspaper columns’.⁴⁷ Le Petit Béthunois put forward similar ideas, albeit in a less unforgiving tone, when it argued that it was fine for Paris to be held up as an ‘example of bravery and swaggering in the face of danger’, once people did not forget that ‘other towns, far more exposed, have provided similar examples for almost four years . . . These towns hold on, not just under intermittent aerial raids and bombardments, but under a continual hail of projectiles’.⁴⁸ Some responses to the attacks on Paris were openly hostile. In April 1918, postal censors in the Marne reported that one woman declared: ‘as for Paris, [the bombardment] will teach them what war is . . . everyone gets their turn . . . in the capital they hardly think a war is going on.’⁴⁹ In Nancy, censors reported in lateMarch 1918 that locals were not overly concerned by attacks on the capital as they were ‘made self-centred by their previous suffering’,⁵⁰ while the next week they noted that: Several Nancéiens find a malign pleasure in criticizing the attitudes of the population of Paris, and point to the rapid, almost disorganized exodus from the city. In Nancy, a number of civilians are still persuaded that nobody in France sympathized with their sufferings when they were the victims of bombardments; those who think this way do not feel sorry for the capital at all.⁵¹

⁴⁴ ⁴⁶ ⁴⁷ ⁴⁸ ⁴⁹ ⁵⁰ ⁵¹

Reims à Paris, 24 Mar 1915. ⁴⁵ SHD, 16 N 1645, Nancy postal control, 2 Nov 1917. SHD, 16 N 1453, Boulogne postal control, 4–10 Feb 1918. SHD, 16 N 1540, civilian postal control report, 1–15 Feb 1918. Le Petit Béthunois, 7 Apr 1918. SHD, 16 N 1455, Châlons-sur-Marne postal control, 20 Apr 1918. SHD, 16 N 1465, Nancy postal control, 22–25 Mar 1918. Ibid., 29 Mar 1918–4 Apr 1918.

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These hostile statements assumed that a deep divide existed on the level of experience between civilians at the front, exposed to regular fire from field artillery, and their counterparts in Paris and the interior. Intermittent aerial bombing raids could not bridge this divide. But as the attacks on Paris gained intensity in late spring 1918, and as aerial bombing raids were interspersed with artillery bombardments, this gap appeared to diminish. Postal censors in Nancy reported that by late April 1918 the bombardments of Paris were ‘still commented on’, but that ‘people in the bombarded towns, being aware of the damages caused to Paris, no longer seem to be happy as they were during the first bombardments’.⁵² Another report noted that civilians at the front originally felt national press reporting on the bombardment of Paris was ‘an injustice, a lack of fairness as regards the towns, like Nancy, that put up with deadly bombardments for months without speaking of them’. The more recent bombardments by long-range cannon had, however, ‘provoked general amazement, and are the object of lively commentary’.⁵³ This was indicative of a wider change of attitude at the front. Reims à Paris claimed that ‘nobody listened’ when, in the past, they had written about towns such as Reims, Arras, and Nancy, which had served as ‘the impregnable rampart of Paris, suffering as a result the most awful devastation’. These towns were ‘torn apart’, but easily forgotten as ‘they were so far away’. Recent developments had, however, done away with this distance. The paper felt that now Paris was bombarded, ‘we will be heard more clearly . . . The monstrous wartime conduct of the Germans has all of a sudden drawn distances closer together, and revived sentiments of fraternity’. It concluded by hoping that the recent attacks would create a ‘community of suffering’ between Paris and the other bombarded towns.⁵⁴ Artillery bombardment had gone from being an experience that distinguished the urban residents of the Western Front from ‘weak’ Parisians, to an experience that unified these disparate groups. This change in attitudes towards Parisians demonstrates how important bombardment was for the formation of social identities among civilians at the front. It also further reveals how militarization operated as a variable phenomenon, producing different effects on different social groups. Exposure to regular bombardment from field artillery was a formative wartime experience for front-line civilians, shaping their attitudes towards the rest of the nation. Not only did artillery bombardment militarize urban space, it militarized civilians’ identities. This was an experience that placed front-line civilians alongside the soldiers, while simultaneously distinguishing them from other, more sheltered sections of the population. Furthermore, in the minds of front-line civilians, Paris originally

⁵² SHD, 16 N 1540, civilian postal control report, 5–20 Apr 1918. ⁵³ Ibid., Report on civilian morale, commissaire spécial Nancy to commander 20th Region, 25 Mar 1918. ⁵⁴ Reims à Paris, 3 Apr 1918.

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typified the weak civilian communities of the interior. Aerial bombing of Paris was dismissed as insignificant, until prolonged German bombardment brought the experiences of the front-line towns to the capital. From the perspective of the front-line civilians, therefore, a hierarchy of suffering structured civilian society in wartime France, and they occupied its pinnacle. Le Lion d’Arras articulated this vision clearly, when it argued that ‘towns which, like Arras, are the advanced citadels within the German lines, the shields behind which a portion of our army fights, the barriers against which the enemy flood breaks, these towns have a right to recognition by the nation . . . otherwise solidarity is nothing but an empty word’.⁵⁵ As later chapters will demonstrate, the sense of entitlement displayed in this article structured the attitudes of civilians at the front towards a whole range of social and economic issues, as well as the rest of the national community. But, as we shall now see, bombardment was also a key factor shaping their attitudes towards their own local communities.

La Petite Patrie en Danger: Local Identities under Fire on the Allied Side of the Lines In January 1916, a new wartime newspaper appeared in Arras. Its name, Le Lion d’Arras, derived from the town’s heraldic symbol, and its stated mission was to preserve local community identity in the face of bombardment and forced displacement. It claimed to be born of ‘the religion of the petite patrie, a religion so noble that those who practice it only have more love for the grande patrie, our dear France’.⁵⁶ The newspaper’s masthead reiterated this message, and carried an instruction for the town’s remaining civilians: ‘for the city, for the patrie, hold on!’⁵⁷ In all belligerent societies, such expressions of local identity gained importance in wartime. Local cultural codes and symbols were mobilized within the context of national war efforts. These complemented the war’s widely understood transnational meanings, such as the assumption in Allied societies that the war was fought in defence of western ‘Civilization’ against its German opposite, ‘Kultur’.⁵⁸ Soldiers and civilians asserted that the defence of their primary social environments—the family home and the home community—motivated their continued support for the war.⁵⁹ Such forms of local identity were especially important when communities came under physical attack. For the civilian populations of the Western Front the war

⁵⁵ Le Lion d’Arras, 8 Mar 1916. ⁵⁶ Ibid., 23 Feb 1916. ⁵⁷ Ibid., 1 Jan 1916. ⁵⁸ Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14–18: Understanding the Great War (New York, 2003), 113–58. ⁵⁹ See Introduction, CI.P28-CI.P31.

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was fought for, and in, their towns in a very real sense. Bombardment threatened the integrity of the local community and the physical space it inhabited. But in response, public constructions of civilian identity emphasized resilience, and the urban residents of the Western Front asserted that bombardment strengthened rather than disrupted the ties holding their local communities together. These expressions of local identity paralleled the militarized civilian identities discussed earlier, and assumed that the source of civilians’ resilience lay in their attachment to their local communities, as much as their soldier-like mentalities. The threat war posed to the local community clearly emerged during the 1914 invasion, when two iconic architectural sites in Arras and Reims came under heavy German attack. German artillery bombarded Reims Cathedral on 19 September 1914, while shellfire gradually destroyed the Hôtel de Ville of Arras, and the surrounding Grand and Petite Places, during October 1914. Both events became common themes in Allied propaganda, and were presented as quintessential examples of German barbarism. When German artillery shelled Reims Cathedral on 19 September 1914, it started a fire in the scaffolding that was in place for restoration works. This destroyed the roof, much of the medieval statuary, and a portion of the stained glass. Prior to the war the cathedral already had an established position as a symbol of national identity, albeit with a Catholic inflection, as the site of the coronation of the French kings.⁶⁰ The burning of the cathedral was thus presented as an act of national martyrdom, and was roundly condemned as an attack on ‘an image of the French soul’.⁶¹ This was far from an exclusively Catholic issue, and even the socialist newspaper L’Humanité lamented that ‘humanity, art, and civilization have once more been violated by the leaders of the German army’.⁶² The French government issued an international protest ‘against this act of odious vandalism’.⁶³ Postcards and the illustrated press disseminated the image of the burning cathedral widely, reasserting that its destruction was an act of deliberate cultural vandalism.⁶⁴ A sketch of the burning cathedral by Belgian illustrator Gustave Fraipont, first published in L’Illustration in October 1914, became an iconic wartime image (see Figure 2.2). Art historians catalogued the building’s architectural beauty and contrasted it with the destruction wrought by German aggression.⁶⁵ Despite German protests and the unsubstantiated assertion that the French army had used the cathedral towers as observation posts, the event became internationally recognized, and was widely denounced in Allied and neutral societies.⁶⁶ ⁶⁰ Le Goff, ‘Reims, City of Coronation’. ⁶¹ Marcel Raymond, ‘La cathédrale de Reims’, La Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Nov 1914, 16. ⁶² L’Humanité, 21 Sep 1914. ⁶³ Le Petit Parisien, 21 Sep 1914. ⁶⁴ Emmanuelle Danchin, Le Temps des ruines, 1914–1921 (Rennes, 2015), 63–72. ⁶⁵ Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, La Cathédrale de Reims (Paris, 1915). ⁶⁶ Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 18–19; Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Reims on Fire: War and Reconciliation between France and Germany, trans. David Dollenmayer (Los Angeles, 2018), 35–107; Hubertus F. Jahn, Patriotic Culture in Russia during World War 1 (London, 1995), 165.

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Figure 2.2. Local Identity under Fire 1: Gustave Fraipont, Cathédrale de Reims incendiée par les Allemands le 19 septembre 1914. Source: Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, BMR55-188.

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The destruction of Arras’s Hôtel de Ville, for its part, gained national importance as a further example of German barbarism. German shells first hit the Hôtel de Ville, with its sixteenth-century belfry, and the surrounding Flemish-gothic squares on 7 October 1914, and gradually reduced them to ruins over the month.⁶⁷ Le Petit Parisien linked the bombardment to other German attacks on French and Belgian cultural heritage, reporting that ‘after Louvain, after Malines, after Reims, the Germans have bombarded Arras, an open town, with its admirable memories of the hispano-flemish epoch’.⁶⁸ Although not as instantly recognizable as Reims Cathedral, Arras’s ruined Hôtel de Ville, belfry and public squares nonetheless developed distinct positions within the visual imagery aimed at proving German barbarism.⁶⁹ Albert Robida’s lithograph of a menacing German eagle glorying in the destruction of the Hôtel de Ville is a typical example (see Figure 2.3), while as late as March 1918, L’Illustration published images of the town’s ruins as a reminder of Germany’s attack on French culture.⁷⁰ The shelling of Reims Cathedral and the Hôtel de Ville of Arras received widespread national and international attention and played important roles in the cultural mobilizations of Allied societies. At the same time, however, they remained local events that deeply impacted the civilian populations of both towns, eliciting shock, sadness, and anger. After the war, the director of the École Normale d’Institutrices d’Arras remembered the moment the town’s belfry collapsed on 21 October 1914, and being ‘dumbstruck when I no longer saw the high tower in profile against the grey sky’.⁷¹ In Reims, many civilians expressed similar sentiments of shock and sadness at the bombardment of the cathedral. After he watched it burn Paul Hess noted that ‘it is difficult to express the various emotions felt at this unexpected vision . . . Indignation and profound suffering are surpassed by an immeasurable sadness; tears came to my eyes’. As a Catholic, he lamented the destruction of ‘our beloved parish’, and felt the event was of such importance that he removed his sons from the safety and shelter of their basement so they could witness it.⁷² Elsewhere in the town Alfred Wolff, a municipal police officer, also observed the burning cathedral. Wolff ’s unpublished diary provides a privileged view of the strong emotions this collective tragedy provoked. A crowd gathered around the cathedral, which Wolff was charged with monitoring. He recorded how ‘we looked on astounded, even those without faith cried, the women cursed’, as they ‘powerlessly witnessed this disaster which will be known worldwide among the ranks of artists and art-lovers’. Shock and sadness gave way to anger, when word spread that wounded German prisoners of war (P.O.W.s) held in the cathedral were

⁶⁷ ⁶⁹ ⁷¹ ⁷²

Foulon, Arras sous les obus, 64. ⁶⁸ Le Petit Parisien, 17 Oct 1914. Danchin, Le Temps des ruines, 72–81. ⁷⁰ L’Illustration, 30 Mar 1918. CLC, Académie de Lille, F/Delta/1126/6, Dossier C. 147. Hess, La Vie à Reims, 19 Sep 1914, 116–17.

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Figure 2.3. Local Identity under Fire 2: The Destruction of the Hôtel de Ville of Arras, Albert Robida, Les Villes martyres (Paris, 1914). Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

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attempting to escape the blaze. Wolff believed French soldiers were stationed around the cathedral with orders to shoot any P.O.W.s attempting to leave, but that they understood ‘the pointlessness of shooting this heap of cripples who all have difficulty walking’. The crowd of civilians, on the other hand, ‘became heated and spiteful’, with some demanding the P.O.W.s be left in the cathedral to burn; but Wolff felt their anger was ‘justified by the events’. The atmosphere became particularly tense when a rumour spread that a German P.O.W. laughed while the cathedral burned. Eventually, most P.O.W.s were led out by local priests who protected them from the enraged crowd. Although the exact number is unclear, as many as five did not escape and burned to death.⁷³ This collective outrage resulted from the symbolic weight of Reims Cathedral as a site of local memory and identity. This event, alongside the destruction of numerous other churches across northern France and Belgium, held clear meanings for the religious within the front-line communities. The Bishop of Arras, for instance, told his congregation that their wartime sufferings, in particular the destruction of their churches, should be endured as divine chastisements that had an ‘expiatory virtue’. He presented the ruins as a reason for Catholics to remain at the front under fire, and argued that true Christian virtues lay in the ability to praise God from ‘the middle of the ruins of devastated homes’.⁷⁴ But architectural destruction also held powerful secular meanings. The Third Republic’s historically aware project of nation building had ensured that attachment to the petite patrie was an important constituent of French national identity.⁷⁵ Architecture was particularly important here, and important public buildings, such as town halls and churches, were seen as repositories of local memories and identities. As a result, attacks on these buildings were interpreted as attacks on communities themselves. Such thinking was particularly important during the 1914 invasion, when attacks on individual localities gained broader significance from the fact that ‘the path of the invader was marked out by “lieux de mémoire” that formed a link between the local and the national’.⁷⁶ The German invasion was partly represented as a violation of space, a series of attacks on local communities and identities and, through them, the nation itself. High-profile acts of destruction, such as at Reims and Arras, were presented as typical of a broader, systematic German campaign of cultural destruction, the combined weight of which resulted in the invasion being represented as a ‘violation of spaces whose symbolic identities linked the invaded population to the nation’.⁷⁷ Commentators noted that the bombardments of Reims Cathedral and the Arras Hôtel de Ville were not just attacks on national and international ⁷³ AMR, 32 S 1, Diary of Alfred Wolff, 19 Sep 1914. ⁷⁴ Lobbedey, La Guerre en Artois, xiii–xiv. ⁷⁵ See Introduction, CI.P25-CI.P27. ⁷⁶ John Horne, ‘Corps, lieux et nation: la France et l’invasion de 1914’, Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales 55, no. 1 (2000): 74. ⁷⁷ Ibid., 101–2.

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embodiments of culture, but also local memories and identities. The art historian Marius Vachon provided a clear example of this when he emphasized the memories encapsulated in Reims Cathedral, writing that even if ‘the old stones of Notre-Dame de Reims must be reduced to dust once and for all, their memory will never disappear. Even the ruins themselves contain the power to evoke the past. This can never be destroyed’.⁷⁸ As for Arras, Vachon claimed that the town was destroyed because it was: a great artistic, industrial and commercial city, the metropolis of the celebrated ‘arazzi’ . . . Its municipal palace was the symbol of its glory and its ancient prosperity, at the same time as being the superb jewel of the modern town. Destroying it meant attacking Arras in its past and its present.⁷⁹

Such interpretations were common within the front-line towns. Residents of Arras and Reims presented the destruction of the Hôtel de Ville and the Cathedral as first and foremost attacks on the local community and its identity. As Le Lion d’Arras put it in relation to the town’s belfry: ‘the language of its venerable stones, ancient witnesses of joyous festivities, cruel losses, and heroic epics, narrated the history of the petite patrie to all.’⁸⁰ In his account of life in war-torn Arras, the Abbé Foulon described the shelling of the Petite Place as an attack on a symbolic space of great historic and collective importance. He felt this was an attack on the space where the community had lived its history: It is there, on the petite place, that the crowd gathered in times of disturbances and revolutions; it is there that tournaments and shows were held during the time of Arras’s splendour . . . it is there that popular joy was expressed during festivals and noisy street parties. It is there that commercial life has long been concentrated.⁸¹

In her published diary of life in Reims, Alice Martin focused in a similar way on the historic importance of the cathedral to the community. She felt that: one must be from Reims to understand all the complex feelings that [the cathedral] evokes. For the tourist, the cathedral is a marvellous example of medieval art. But for us, Rémois, the cathedral is also the soul of our religious life, the summary of our entire local history. We are proud of its glorious memories, of the role it has played in the history of France.⁸²

⁷⁸ Marius Vachon, Les Villes martyres de France et de Belgique (Paris, 1915), 79. ⁸⁰ Le Lion d’Arras, 5 Nov 1916. ⁸¹ Foulon, Arras sous les obus, 64. ⁸² Martin, ‘Sous les obus et dans les caves’, 225–6.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 91.

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Attacks on symbolic manifestations of the community were lamented, but were also used to point to the resilience of local identities under fire. Some people insisted that although these buildings were badly damaged, they remained defining symbols of local identity, or that their destruction served to strengthen community ties. Cl.-J. Remy described the scene in Reims on 20 September, the day after the cathedral caught fire, in her published diary. Although she was horrified by the damage, she saw the ruined building as symbolic of the community’s strength: Under the compassionate light of a pale moon, yes, there it was, still upright as I had dreamed, white, regal, beautiful, beautiful enough to induce tears in spite of its wounds . . . It remains! It lives! . . . Nothing of Reims is dead.⁸³

Le Lion d’Arras presented much the same message in relation to the Hôtel de Ville when it claimed that although the building was damaged, the meaning it contained for the community was intact. It assured its readers that although ‘little by little, the ruin caves in, its last sculptures crumble, sections of its walls crack and fall down’, it was ‘still our poor Hôtel de Ville . . . we still recognize it; we still love it; we love it more’.⁸⁴ M. Chabé, the assistant to the town’s mayor, also claimed the damage inspired an upsurge in community sentiment, and that ‘during the moments of respite between the shells, a procession of Arrageois emerged who wanted, one last time, to pay tribute to their ancient belfry, the symbol of their independence and the object of their justifiable pride . . . Everyone took away a stone in memory of the fallen building.’⁸⁵ This powerful image—of townspeople patiently queuing to collect rubble from the fallen belfry—was one of a community intact and resilient despite the destruction of its core architectural symbol. The bombardments of Reims Cathedral and the Hôtel de Ville of Arras were high-profile examples of a broader pattern of urban destruction. The gradual destruction of more mundane architectural features—from parish churches and schools to houses—was also keenly felt within the front-line communities. One refugee forced from Béthune in spring 1918 was deeply affected by the bombardment of ‘our poor Béthune’, and especially ‘our beautiful church’, which held ‘so many memories’.⁸⁶ The local press claimed the sight of such destruction should renew the bonds linking people to their communities. One columnist in Le Lion d’Arras felt, for instance, that ‘before the war we did not know what the patrie was’. Because of the war, however, people realized that the patrie was ‘the belfry, the cathedral’, but also ‘the entire town, the heritage of all’. He suggested that the ruined urban landscape contained the very essence of the patrie, and should remind locals of the larger community of which they were also a part.⁸⁷ During ⁸³ Remy, Reims 1914–1916, vol. 1, 104. ⁸⁴ Le Lion d’Arras, 24 Jan 1916. ⁸⁵ L’Humanité, 26 Oct 1914. ⁸⁶ SHD, 16 N 1453, Boulogne postal control, 15–21 Jul 1918. ⁸⁷ Le Lion d’Arras, 5 Mar 1917.

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the final evacuation of Reims in February 1918, Le Petit Rémois made a similar point, stating that the Germans ‘are annihilating our petite patrie neighbourhood by neighbourhood, house by house, stone by stone’. It appealed to all those who had left: ‘despite the masses of ruins, despite the all-consuming fire, let us maintain in our hearts an ardent desire to return home’.⁸⁸ Such accounts insisted that community sentiment would not just survive, but emerge strengthened from the war’s destruction of the built environment. Postal control reports indicate that for many inhabitants of the bombarded towns, the ruins did indeed generate strong attachments to their local community. In April 1917, for instance, a report on Reims stated that while most letters ‘express the same sense of horror in face of the dangers run and the ruins amassed’, most displayed an ‘attachment to the martyred town’.⁸⁹ In the summer of 1917, one inhabitant of Reims described the town’s ruins as the embodiment of the community. They demanded loyalty, and were a constant reminder of the need to remain: Very often, I assure you, we ask ourselves what we are doing here and we regret not having left everything to enjoy a bit of calm. But other times, hope overcomes our worries and we begin to dream about better days again . . . And then it seems that our ruins are so many supplications pointing towards the sky! . . . And if you knew how much we love them, our ruins! They surely have a soul which is attached to our soul, without sounding overly poetic.⁹⁰

Attachments to the ruins remained strong among the civilian population of Reims throughout the war, and when the last inhabitants were evacuated in February 1918, one woman wrote that: ‘everyone is emotional, we have suffered so much amongst our ruins that we cannot resign ourselves to leaving them . . . We must expect to witness painful scenes in the coming days.’⁹¹ A sense of local community was, therefore, generated spatially at the front, focused on the collective meanings and symbolism of ruins. In the context of artillery bombardment and urban warfare, however, civilians’ collective identities were also informed by local historical narratives. The local community was defined as much by its shared history as by the space it inhabited. Public figures often insisted, for instance, that these frontier populations had long and glorious histories of resistance, and used this to discourage evacuation. The prefect of the Pas-de-Calais felt that local history had a concrete impact on civilian morale, and inspired those around Arras to continue resisting:

⁸⁸ Le Petit Rémois, 21 Apr 1918. ⁸⁹ SHD, 16 N 1455, Châlons-sur-Marne postal control, 21 Apr 1917. ⁹⁰ Ibid., 7 Jul 1917. ⁹¹ Ibid., 2 Mar 1918.

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This land of Artois, former march of the north of France, victim of so many invasions, watered by so much blood over the centuries, where so many modest villages carry the names of famous historical battles, which are also the names of victories, was, in such critical circumstances, bound to show itself to be a land of manly virtues. When it became clear that Belgian neutrality was an illusory protection, the massacres of Vermelles, Neuville-St-Vaast, the Labyrinthe and Hébuterne were not needed for the souls of the population to be raised to the tragedy of the situation and for a glorious atavism to inspire them to undertake the great duties that were demanded.⁹²

As this report suggests, local history provided a repository of ideas and images that could be used to encourage particular attitudes and actions. Given the position of these towns near France’s borders, there were numerous historical battles, conflicts, and sieges that served as reference points. Speaking in Nancy, for instance, General de Lardemelle praised the town’s willingness to commemorate ‘the memory of the military glories of Lorraine’, and listed the streets named after famous local generals, including Bassompierre, Oudinot, Molitor, and Duroc.⁹³ The local history of Arras provided a rich array of battles and sieges, which were used to interpret contemporary events. In January 1917, Le Lion d’Arras highlighted the Siege of 1640 as ‘in the time in which we live, one likes to recall, from time to time, several snippets of a glorious past’. It described the courage and heroism displayed in 1640 in an attempt to inspire resistance in 1917 and claimed that ‘it is our duty, we who “make” the present, to make it beautiful, noble, grand and worthy of this past’.⁹⁴ Local history thus provided models of appropriate action in the present. It also informed ideas about the resilience of the civilian communities of these repeatedly war-torn regions, and civilians were encouraged to place their experiences within longer historical trajectories.⁹⁵ In April 1916, for instance, Le Lion d’Arras reminded locals that Arras had suffered five previous wartime disasters— destruction by the Vandals and Huns in 406 ; the Norman siege of 890 ; the siege of 1477 by Louis XI; The siege of 1640; and the siege of 1654. After each, it claimed, ‘Arras re-emerged more valiant, more productive and more prosperous’. In case readers were still unsure of its message, the paper asserted that now, ‘for the sixth time, the proverbial tenacity of the Artesian race and its unfailing attachment to its native soil will ensure that the ancient city, currently buried

⁹² ADPdC, M 5569, prefect Pas-de-Calais to interior ministry, 14 Mar 1916. ⁹³ Général de Lardemelle, Nancy et la Guerre, Octobre 1917 (Nancy, 1917), 14. ⁹⁴ Le Lion d’Arras, 25 Jan 1917. ⁹⁵ Alex Dowdall, ‘ “Like Troy, Though About as Much Larger . . . as the Encyclopaedia Britannica is Larger than the Iliad”: Civilians and Siege Warfare during the First World War’, in Civilians under Siege from Sarajevo to Troy, ed. Alex Dowdall and John Horne (Basingstoke, 2018), 69–72.

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under ruins, will have a prompt and glorious regeneration’.⁹⁶ Articles such as this sought to use history to prove resistance was a ‘natural characteristic’ of these populations. Current events were inserted into longer chronologies of local warfare as a way of both controlling the prospect of total urban destruction generated by modern warfare, and presenting an image of a population made resilient by a long history of conflict.⁹⁷ The front-line communities thus possessed an array of locally inflected historical reference points, which paralleled the national reference points of the levée en masse and the revolutionary soldiers of l’An II, and which encouraged resistance and remaining under fire.⁹⁸ A spatially and historically aware sense of local community identity was, therefore, particularly important for civilians under fire on the Allied side. This coexisted with a set of militarized civilian identities that linked front-line civilians with the soldiers and separated them from civilians in the interior. These public discourses produced a composite picture of civilian resilience that many found appealing. Having identified the source of civilians’ publicly declared resilience, however, we must question how and whether this changed over the course of the war. In particular, was there a sense that civilian resilience in the face of bombardment suffered, alongside other indices of support for the war, in 1917, when France faced major civilian and military morale crises? In certain respects, attitudes in the civilian communities under fire reflected national patterns of commitment to the war. As elsewhere, authorities noted significant levels of war-weariness and pessimism from mid-1917.⁹⁹ Postal control reports provide numerous examples. One recorded in late summer 1917 that civilians in the zone des armées ‘are embittered by the length of the war and the privations’.¹⁰⁰ In June 1917, postal censors reported on war-weariness among civilians in the Pas-de-Calais, stating there were ‘very many recriminations against the high costs and low quality of food’. More worryingly, the censors noted that ‘numerous testimonies display . . . a deep sense of weariness and despondency’, and that there were many ‘calls for an immediate peace’.¹⁰¹ Yet, even as war-weariness and frustration at shortages were expressed, authorities noted that attitudes towards bombardment remained reassuringly positive. In its next report, for instance, the same postal control commission found that:

⁹⁶ Le Lion d’Arras, 12 Apr 1916. ⁹⁷ For similar comments on the links between the blood of historic battles and soil in Lorraine see A. de Pourville, Jusqu’au Rhin: Les Terres meurtries et les terres promises, (Nancy, 1916), x. ⁹⁸ Michael Moody, ‘ “Vive la Nation!” French Revolutionary Themes in the Posters and Prints of the First World War’, Imperial War Museum Review 3 (1988): 34–43. ⁹⁹ John Horne, ‘Remobilizing for “total war”: France and Britain, 1917–1918’, in Horne, State, Society and Mobilization, 195–8. ¹⁰⁰ SHD, 16 N 1540, civilian postal control report, 11–25 Aug 1917. ¹⁰¹ SHD, 16 N 1452, Boulogne postal control, 18–24 Jun 1917.

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In reading the accounts [of bombardments] one cannot but be struck by the calm and vigour that this population displays in the midst of the daily dangers to which it is exposed and the losses it suffers. ‘We must not despair’, one writes, ‘and our pilots are looking after giving the Germans their due’.

The report found that bombardment was not the major threat to civilian morale, and that, ‘on the other hand, it seems to be more affected by the difficulties in securing supplies, by their high price and poor quality, and especially by the lack of bread in certain localities’.¹⁰² Allied authorities feared the negative effects bombardment could have on civilian morale. They worried that bombardment could compound the other social tensions generated by the prolonged war. And yet, as postal control reports indicate, while civilians under fire displayed the common signs of war-weariness evident throughout France in 1917, bombardment never precipitated an outright crisis in civilian morale. In fact, authorities repeatedly noted the positive attitudes of civilians when faced with artillery attacks. This remained the case into the last year of the war. In March 1918, the sub-prefect of Béthune reported that while heavy bombardment towards the end of 1917 had generated ‘a certain amount of dejection’ within the mining communities, this was merely temporary and things had improved significantly. He praised the miners’ ‘composure and . . . excellent moral conduct’ in the face of the anticipated German offensive, and was sure that ‘if circumstances require they will once again show the full measure of their courage and tenacity’.¹⁰³ These reports demonstrate that the experience of artillery bombardment retained a clear meaning for civilians at the front into the final year of war. As a form of external threat, bombardment was more comprehensible than inequalities in the internal food supply system, and caused less social tension. It was a form of enemy attack to be endured. The discursive frameworks that have been outlined here encouraged such attitudes. Resistance to German bombardment was framed in military terms, and presented as an act of solidarity with the local community. Public discourse behind the Allied lines thus produced a coherent set of responses to artillery bombardment, which achieved widespread purchase within civilian communities, allowing many to attribute clear meanings to their experiences of military violence. For civilians on the occupied side of the lines, however, the situation was quite different.

Civilians under Fire in Occupied France Civilians living at the front in occupied France experienced the same forms of military violence, and on the same scale, as those on the Allied side. Two factors, ¹⁰² Ibid., 9–16 Jul 1917. The postal control commission drew similar conclusions in January 1918. See SHD, 16 N 1453, Boulogne postal control, 24 Jan 1818. ¹⁰³ ADPdC, M 5575, sub-prefect Béthune to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 1 Mar 1918.

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however, ensured that responses to bombardment differed markedly from one side of the lines to the other. First, occupied France lacked a developed public sphere. French newspapers could not appear, while political dialogue was severely curtailed. This ensured that collective responses to bombardment could not be generated in the same ways as on the Allied side. Second, occupied civilians were under attack from French and Allied forces, rather than a clearly defined enemy. These factors combined to make bombardment a confusing, disorientating, and difficult experience. German propaganda made use of the fact that French and Allied forces did not avoid shelling populated occupied towns. Emmanuelle Danchin has demonstrated that Germany responded to Allied accusations of ‘cultural barbarism’ with an international propaganda campaign highlighting notable architectural features destroyed by Allied artillery.¹⁰⁴ Within the occupied territories, too, German authorities publicized French and British bombardment, with the intention of demoralizing the occupied populations and setting them against the Allied war effort. The German-financed collaborationist newspaper La Gazette des Ardennes regularly reported on Allied shelling. The newspaper provided stark quantitative expositions of the scale of destruction. From 2 September 1915, it published a section entitled ‘victims of their compatriots’ containing the names and addresses of French and Belgian civilians killed and wounded by Allied fire.¹⁰⁵ By March 1918, the paper had published the names and addresses of 1,365 of those killed and over 2,600 wounded.¹⁰⁶ Evocative stories of Allied cruelty accompanied these lists, which highlighted the innocence of French civilian victims of bombardment, and the readiness of German soldiers to help. In April 1915, for instance, the Gazette published a letter from a German soldier narrating the deaths of several civilians following the Allied bombardment of an unidentified village. He and his comrades found four bodies in the bedroom of a house, three of whom were ‘disfigured to the point of being unrecognisable’. The fourth was the family’s eldest daughter, described as: an extremely pretty little girl. We all knew her, little Emilie with the black eyes and the heavy brown braids, who did not fear us ‘barbarians’. She bowed her head to everyone, and she always had a kind word of thanks for the numerous presents and sweets with which we spoiled her.

The account reiterated the merciless and uncompromising nature of the Allied attacks, which even destroyed the headstone the German soldiers made for the

¹⁰⁴ Danchin, Le Temps des ruines, 82–94. ¹⁰⁵ La Gazette des Ardennes, 2 Sep 1915. The names were supplied to the Gazette by German units. See BHA, 4 B. Inf. Div., 2561, Nachrichtenoffizier, A.O.K. 6 to Etappen-Inspektion 6, [no date]. ¹⁰⁶ La Gazette des Ardennes, Édition spéciale illustrée 60, 1 Mar 1918; Nivet, La France occupée, 200.

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family. They eventually made another, with an inscription stating that the family were ‘killed by French shells . . . buried by German soldiers.’¹⁰⁷ Editorials insisted on the senselessness of Allied bombardment, presenting it as an act of cruelty motivated by a cynical and misplaced concern with military logic. The newspaper claimed the destruction of urban space and civilian deaths were unnecessary from a military point of view. Alongside a photo spread entitled ‘the agony of Lens’, which focused on the town’s ruins, the editors wondered ‘against whom will the inhabitants of the unfortunate town feel a need for vengeance? Against those who for almost three years spared these houses and monuments? . . . or against those who frivolously decided to continue ravaging French soil and made it the victim of their “destructive science” ’?’¹⁰⁸ Another issue adopted a similar position, arguing that: Truly, this is a cynical type of war brought to the highest degree of cruelty: combatants killing and mutilating en masse their own compatriots, not through an unfortunate chance, but while pursuing a method of which they have long known the only lamentable result.¹⁰⁹

The Gazette rejected the idea that civilian deaths from Allied bombardment in occupied France had any meaning within the broader context of the war, and instead presented them as pointless, and as indicative of the fact that the French nation held little or no regard for the safety of its citizens. French civilians living under occupation had few opportunities to publicly counter such lines of argument, especially given that the clandestine press was less developed than in Belgium.¹¹⁰ Retrospective accounts, however, put forward alternative pictures, insisting that occupied civilians had continued to see the necessity of Allied bombardment. For instance, the mayor of Lens, Émile Basly, sought to legitimize and rationalize British shelling. In an interview with Le Matin following his repatriation, he insisted that the German army was actually responsible for the destruction by drawing British fire onto Lens, claiming, for instance, that by installing an artillery battery behind the town’s hospital their goal was ‘to force the British artillery to bombard the wounded.’ He was sure British artillery officers wanted to ‘spare us as much suffering as possible’, and maintained that they rarely shelled the town between 7 and 10am, when many people were outside stocking up on provisions.¹¹¹ Allied bombardment, he claimed, was a legitimate, proportionate, and appropriate response to German military activity.

¹⁰⁷ La Gazette des Ardennes, 2 Apr 1915. ¹⁰⁸ Ibid., Édition spéciale illustrée 41, 16 Aug 1917. ¹⁰⁹ Ibid., Édition spéciale illustrée 8, 1 Dec 1915. ¹¹⁰ Bernard Wilkin, ‘Isolation, Communication and Propaganda in the Occupied Territories of France, 1914–1918’, First World War Studies 7, no. 3 (2017): 229–42. ¹¹¹ Le Matin, 10 Aug 1917.

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In his book-length account of life in occupied Lens, published before the end of the war, Basly again insisted that occupied civilians accepted Allied bombardment. He couched his claims in the language of military duty so prevalent in unoccupied France, arguing that occupied civilians were motivated by the example of the French soldiers, and believed that as ‘they hold on, we will also hold on’.¹¹² Furthermore, Basly insisted that those who lived in occupied Lens experienced the war almost as soldiers, witnessing family and friends ‘cut up, torn apart by projectiles, just like the soldiers in the trenches. The town was a battlefield. All the horrors, all the tortures of war, we knew them, we suffered them’.¹¹³ Basly also went further, stating that, at the start of the war at least, bombardment was not merely endured, but welcomed as a precondition of liberation: ‘at the beginning, we almost came to wish for an infernal storm, and the endless crackling of guns, because we said to ourselves: “it is the British that are bombarding, their fire is getting closer, so they are advancing.” ’¹¹⁴ Other retrospective accounts repeated the idea that occupied civilians accepted Allied bombardment as legitimate and proportionate. One Catholic priest from Lens, for instance, wrote in his unpublished post-war memoir that the population was ‘ready for any sacrifices which were required for the joyful deliverance that seemed so close. The shells devastated the church, houses, and schools without a complaint being heard’.¹¹⁵ Similarly, a school teacher from Liévin writing in January 1919, rationalized the horrific death of an 11-year-old girl that he witnessed during a British bombardment. He described in graphic detail the child’s injuries, the grief of her father, and their attempts to hide the young girl’s corpse from her mother. He lamented the death, but did not blame it on the Allies. He stated that ‘such scenes were repeated almost every day’, but that the population faced them stoically and that ‘we were all prepared to die’. He equated civilian deaths with those of the soldiers, and felt that now they were returning to the ruined town, ‘the long line of little children, women, and old people who died for the patrie, just like our dear poilus, will come forward once more and say again the eternal phrase: “remember us!” ’¹¹⁶ Such retrospective accounts sought to insert the experiences of the occupied into the dominant wartime narratives of unoccupied France. Equating occupied civilians’ experiences of shelling with those of their compatriots on the Allied side was a means of avoiding the troubling fact that French civilians had been killed and injured by French and Allied troops. At the time, however, many civilians could not gloss over Allied bombardment in this way, and remained deeply disturbed that they were shelled by their own side. In an account of her congregation’s experiences in Lens, for instance, Soeur Émile-Joseph described the nuns’ ‘anguish at thinking it was French cannons, and ¹¹² Basly, Martyre de Lens, 213. ¹¹³ Ibid., 214. ¹¹⁴ Ibid., 120. ¹¹⁵ ADA, 4 Z 27/1, parish register, Cité St. Pierre, Lens. ¹¹⁶ CLC, Académie de Lille, F/Delta/1126/2, Dossier B.225.

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so the fraternal hands of our soldiers that launched deadly missiles onto the unfortunate town’.¹¹⁷ Many shared her discomfort. Contemporary diaries do not display the type of easy acceptance of bombardment described by Basly and others in retrospective accounts. Indeed, many of the most important sources on the German occupation are notably silent on the subject of Allied bombardment. The repatriation reports held in the Haute-Savoie departmental archives, which provide rich detail on civil–military relations, food supplies, and forced labour, give little insight into the effects of bombardment, perhaps because repatriated civilians were unwilling to express themselves freely on this difficult topic to inquisitorial French military intelligence officers. Two personal diaries do, however, provide valuable insights into civilians’ subjective responses to bombardment in the occupied coal-mining region. The school teacher Hélène Carré, in Liévin, and the wealthy lawyer Léon Tacquet, in Lens, both reflect at length on Allied shelling in their diaries. For many civilians living under German occupation, both in France and Belgium, keeping a personal diary was an important means of ordering and interpreting events, and a political act that situated the individual in relation to the collective events they lived through.¹¹⁸ Carré’s and Tacquet’s diaries fulfilled similar functions, and each text constitutes a personal dialogue with the self in an attempt to rationalize Allied attacks. From the beginning of the bombardment, Hélène Carré was worried and apprehensive. In December 1914, she recorded that the population of Liévin had reasons to ‘dread night-time’, because of intense Allied attacks during which ‘machine-guns and cannons are mixed together’. Nevertheless, she hoped Liévin would soon be liberated by ‘our brave young soldiers’.¹¹⁹ In the early stages of bombardment, Carré restricted herself to describing the devastating effects of shellfire, without critiquing or commenting on the motives of Allied gunners, such as when in late December 1914 she provided a vivid account of an attack: The English bombarded all around the no. 11 pit, all the glass in the windows was smashed. Shells exploded in our garden, the house opposite ours was destroyed, all the windows in the houses in the neighbourhood were smashed . . . The bombardment lasted the best part of an hour. Afterwards calm returned, and I could run home. All the houses in the Avenue des Écoles had suffered. Their inhabitants were at their doors, looking on, dismayed, their homes demolished.¹²⁰

¹¹⁷ Soeur Emile-Joseph, Les Soeurs de Lens: le joug allemand, sous les obus, la libération, extrait de ‘La Colombe’, bulletin trimestriel de la Congrégation des Filles du Saint-Esprit (Saint-Brieuc, 1916), 1. ¹¹⁸ Sophie de Schaepdrijver, ‘We Who are so Cosmopolitan’: The War Diary of Constance Graeffe, 1914–1918, (Brussels, 2008), 15–18. ¹¹⁹ Carré, ‘Cahiers d’occupation’, 2 Dec 1914, 17. ¹²⁰ Ibid., 21 Dec 1914, 19.

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As the war continued and Allied shells progressively reduced the town to ruins, her diary became a catalogue of urban destruction. In June 1915, she recorded that: ‘it is always the same things that I have to recount . . . Always fighting on all sides; shells explode every day in our neighbourhood, causing casualties too often, and causing a bit more devastation each day.’¹²¹ An entry the following month demonstrated the extent to which she was becoming inured to military violence. Even though a shell killed a woman and child nearby, Carré simply noted that it had been a ‘regular day’.¹²² From the middle of 1915, however, Carré began questioning the motives of Allied gunners. On 15 June 1915, she expressed a first note of frustration: Since this morning our troops have not stopped firing into the trenches, but unfortunately they are also still firing into the city; we wonder for what reasons. Firing at the Germans’ cannons can be easily understood, but they are destroying the entire city and, it must be admitted, up until now there have been more civilian victims than soldiers.¹²³

In the face of further bombardments that predominantly affected civilians and their property, her frustration became explicit. One morning, shells hit Liévin while the streets were busy with shoppers, and prompted her to wonder in exasperation: ‘what are the French thinking firing into the middle of the town like this at a time when everyone is out getting their bread?’¹²⁴ It gradually dawned on Carré that Allied shells were not only hitting military targets, and that they may, in fact, have been aimed indiscriminately. She recorded her growing despair when, one day, she was almost killed as ‘the French shells whistled non-stop while we were out on the street . . . Yesterday in Liévin many civilians were killed. It is so depressing. French artillery-men are firing on French people, sometimes on their own families!’¹²⁵ The situation was made even worse, she felt, when British troops moved into the line opposite Liévin. Since ‘the English do not have family here’, she believed they were more likely to fire indiscriminately.¹²⁶ Carré’s criticisms never developed into the explicit anti-Allied sentiment advocated by the Gazette des Ardennes. She still wished for a quick liberation and Allied victory. Nevertheless, her diary demonstrates that civilians in occupied France questioned the reasons for Allied shelling and, at times, expressed frustration at what they felt was their unnecessary suffering. Similarly complex attitudes are found in the diary of Tacquet, living in nearby Lens. Like Carré, Tacquet never developed strong anti-Allied sentiments as a result of bombardment. In fact, he regularly blamed the German army for the destruction of Lens, and criticized it for

¹²¹ Ibid., 12 Jun 1915, 36. ¹²⁴ Ibid., 23 Aug 1915, 48.

¹²² Ibid., 5 Jul 1915, 40. ¹²⁵ Ibid., 16 Jun 1915, 42.

¹²³ Ibid., 15 Jun 1915, 36–7. ¹²⁶ Ibid., 10 Jan 1916, 66.

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deliberately drawing fire by placing artillery pieces between civilian buildings. In February 1915, for instance, he decried this ‘atrocious war’ where ‘the civilian, although not a belligerent, is punished more than the combatant soldier. Will we ever be able to make these hideous enemies, who hide behind the houses of the inhabitants, that is to say women and children, pay for all these atrocities?’¹²⁷ It was, he felt, a deliberate tactic, and ‘barbaric to fight in this way, placing cannons in the houses and gardens of non-combatant civilians, hiding behind us, it is odious!’¹²⁸ Blaming Germany allowed Tacquet to rationalize Allied bombardment. When, for instance, shells landed in his father-in-law’s garden, he stated ‘we are not shocked that we are bombarded’ as German artillery pieces had recently been placed nearby.¹²⁹ Tacquet felt a pressing need to attribute logic to Allied shelling. He could not view it as random and indiscriminate, and many diary entries consist of speculations as to the targets of Allied gunners. After one particularly bad bombardment in late May 1915, which killed one civilian and injured six, he visited the wounded in hospital and felt ‘the vision of this tragic and horrible scene will remain with me for a long time’. He lamented that ‘it is our troops who ruin us’, but found comfort in the assumption that the French were aiming either for a divisional headquarters, or the Thellier Brasserie, which was often full of German soldiers.¹³⁰ In early December 1916, he surmised that another bombardment was aimed at the former gendarmerie building, where the German army had set up a projector.¹³¹ In his search for the logic behind Allied bombardments, Tacquet endeavoured to maintain a positive, patriotic attitude. In general, he supported the bombardment of Lens. Nevertheless, his attempts to rationalize Allied shelling faltered in the face of particularly destructive attacks. One such happened on 19 January 1916: I have not yet seen such a striking scene straight after a bombardment; what a disaster in our neighbourhood! The Rue Diderot is completely covered in rubble, bricks, stones, wood, metal etc., and the footpath next to the church is turned completely inside-out. The large shells are terrifying when they land on houses, nothing can withstand them, and everything collapses . . . And not a single boche killed or wounded. It is unbelievable! . . . We will keep painful memories of this day.¹³²

The same bombardment destroyed the German command post. This prompted the local commander to order Tacquet and other local notables to petition General Joffre, requesting that the French stop shelling the town. Tacquet saw this as a ¹²⁷ Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 8 Feb 1915. ¹²⁸ Ibid., 5 May 1916. ¹²⁹ Ibid. ¹³⁰ Ibid., 28 May 1915. ¹³¹ Ibid., 5 Dec 1916. ¹³² Ibid., 19 Jan 1916.

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cynical ploy by the Germans to limit the effects of Allied bombardment under the cover of saving civilian lives, and he insisted the letter they write ‘speaks of our patriotic population and the bombardments that we accept in silence and without complaint. I hope that in this way on the other side they will understand that we would never have sent this letter . . . if it had not been forced upon us’.¹³³ His patriotic feelings prevented him from fulfilling the spirit of the German demand and he could not bring himself to make a sincere request that the bombardments stop. Yet, while he remained supportive of the Allied cause in spite of unrelenting shelling, his immediate response to the attack of 19 January indicates that he also questioned Allied motives. He wrote that: ‘anyway, we ask ourselves what use such tactics serve, because not a single German was killed or wounded . . . and several buildings were completely destroyed, which makes the boches smile and gives them great joy.’¹³⁴ Tacquet’s support for bombardment was not unconditional, and when he felt attacks were particularly destructive or arbitrary, he expressed incomprehension, frustration, and anger. When, in April 1915, Allied artillery fired over 100 shells into Lens, killing some civilians but no Germans, he complained that ‘it is as if our troops want to wipe us out. For every one German, they kill ten civilians. And the Germans laugh at their achievements!’¹³⁵ In December 1915, 50 shells landed in the centre of Lens, killing one man who was ‘cut in two by a shell in his bed’. This prompted Tacquet to wonder ‘what use can such a bombardment be, which can only kill civilians and do a lot less harm to the Germans . . . What can all this mean?’¹³⁶ The glaring disparity between the effects of Allied bombardment on French civilians and German soldiers affected Tacquet considerably, and he found it particularly difficult to explain attacks that killed French civilians but had little effect on German troops. On 16 February 1916, for instance, he noted that: Yesterday’s three bombardments were so violent, and caused so many victims and so much damage that today there is general consternation in the town. People are asking where all this will bring us; everyone is terrified . . . The town is in an ever more pitiable state. The shells that we receive are so enormous that the houses that are hit cave in completely and often even the basements give way. Yesterday certainly more than 100 big shells landed. A number of houses were destroyed, four killed, and so many wounded! And what is most depressing, not a single German harmed!¹³⁷

Both Carré and Tacquet accepted Allied bombardment as necessary. But they did so with difficulty. Blaming the German army helped rationalize Allied attacks, but

¹³³ Ibid., 21 Jan 1916. ¹³⁶ Ibid., 9 Dec 1915.

¹³⁴ Ibid., 19 Jan 1916. ¹³⁷ Ibid., 15 Feb 1916.

¹³⁵ Ibid., 18 Apr 1915.

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when these attacks appeared disproportionate or indiscriminate, both diarists expressed anger and frustration towards the Allies. Given their quality and length, Carré’s and Tacquet’s diaries constitute privileged and rare sources and allow for a detailed analysis of how civilians’ responses to attacks by friendly troops varied over time.¹³⁸ Other sources do, however, suggest that frustration in the face of Allied shelling was more widespread. In August 1917, intelligence reports reached the French army that the population of Lille were ‘shocked’ when Allied planes bombed the town, causing casualties among the French, but none among the occupying German forces.¹³⁹ Civilians in Laon also expressed frustration and shock when it was heavily bombarded in summer 1918. One resident, Jean Marquiset, recorded in his published diary how, when the town learned of German advances in May, ‘despondency quickly took hold of the population, which was already so depressed by the lengthy bombardment and by this miserable existence’.¹⁴⁰ By the following August, when the German army was in retreat, Marquiset wrote that he hoped the town’s liberation would soon happen, but also noted that ‘the fear of bombardment and the apprehension of an evacuation has once again taken hold of spirits’.¹⁴¹ Aerial bombing raids also took their toll on the morale of occupied Belgian civilians. Originally, in 1915, British officials felt air raids on Belgium, as a show of Allied strength, had ‘a most inspiring effect on the population for some weeks afterwards’.¹⁴² But by the summer of 1918 increasingly destructive raids were generating the opposite results. After 125 Belgians were killed in British raids, the Belgian ambassador to the United Kingdom petitioned the government to strike German cities such as Aix-la-Chapelle instead, warning that the Germans were able to exploit ‘the sorrow and anger’ of the victims’ families for propaganda purposes.¹⁴³ In many respects, occupied civilians’ responses to Allied shelling during the First World War were similar to those of French civilians faced with Allied aerial bombing during the Second World War. Simon Kitson has demonstrated that before the summer of 1943 there was broad support among the French population for Allied raids, even within the most heavily bombed areas. During this period, the German army was blamed for the destruction, as ‘blaming the Germans allowed an outlet for any negative feelings about raids.’¹⁴⁴ After the summer of 1943, however, as the intensity and frequency of Allied raids increased, so did ¹³⁸ Tacquet’s diary is over 400 A4 pages long. ¹³⁹ SHD, 16 N 1306, interview with M. Leblan, 27 Aug 1917. ¹⁴⁰ Marquiset, Les Allemandes à Laon, 259. ¹⁴¹ Ibid., 269. ¹⁴² The National Archives, Kew Gardens, London (TNA), WO 32/5564, report from British Consulate General, Rotterdam to Foreign Secretary, 10 Dec 1915. ¹⁴³ TNA, WO 32/5565, note from Belgian Ambassador to UK, 22 Jun 1918. ¹⁴⁴ Simon Kitson, ‘Criminals or Liberators? French Public Opinion and the Allied Bombing of France, 1940–1945’ in Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940–1945, ed. Richard Overy, Claudia Baldoli and Andrew Knapp (London, 2011), 284.

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French civilians’ hostility.¹⁴⁵ Kitson describes the emergence of ‘variables of acceptance’ of specific raids. Those that were well-targeted and caused few casualties were accepted, while those that caused unnecessary suffering were criticized. Kitson concludes that ‘although air raids could cause very real anger, they did not ultimately undermine the public’s wish for an Allied victory’.¹⁴⁶ Similarly, during the First World War, bombardment did not fundamentally undermine the desires of civilians on the German-occupied side for Allied victory. But, nevertheless, occupied civilians did, at times, question the reasons for their suffering. When they did so, they found few answers. This was in stark contrast to the situation behind the Allied lines, where German attacks prompted the articulation of new, wartime civilian identities, which legitimized and gave meaning to civilian suffering. Whereas civilians on the Allied side developed clear, collective responses to the experience of military violence that defined their position within the wartime national community, civilians in German-occupied France were denied this opportunity, and struggled to rationalize the worst of the violence that Allied artillery inflicted on them.

Conclusion The discursive frameworks discussed in this chapter provided civilians, on the Allied side at least, with a range of responses to the experience of artillery bombardment. Reports from the organs of state security indicate that civilian identities constructed around images of soldier-like resilience and attachment to the local community helped maintain civilian morale on the Allied side, especially during the crisis year of 1917. The repeated public assertion that civilians were resilient and could withstand German attacks resonated with many. The experience of bombardment, therefore, allowed urban dwellers at the front to see themselves as members of distinct communities under fire, defined by wartime experiences of violence and suffering. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, this self-perception framed responses to a range of social issues, from food supplies, to wages, and welfare entitlements. In many respects, the experience of artillery bombardment brought people within front-line towns together, reaffirming their attachments to their local communities, and redefining their attitudes towards the nation. The rhetoric of militarization that compared civilians to soldiers thus had wide-ranging social impacts within the frontline towns. Yet, while acknowledging this, we should not overlook other, more marginal but perhaps more fraught responses to wartime conditions. On 23 July 1916, for

¹⁴⁵ Ibid., 285.

¹⁴⁶ Ibid., 291–3.

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instance, the prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle, Léon Mirman, reported to the Ministry of the Interior on attitudes among the population of Nancy. The town had recently been shelled but the population was, he stated, calm. Rather than being worried by the danger of bombardments, Mirman felt ‘the noise of the explosions has less of an effect on the nerves of the Nancéiens who have remained here than the silence of the press and the official communiqués. They well expect to receive the bombs of the planes and the 380 shells, but they are disappointed that they are not spoken of ’.¹⁴⁷ The day before Mirman sent this report, however, a domestic servant named Mme. B. came to the attention of the police. They felt she was ‘a bit unstable’ and recommended she be placed in a care home. The police report stated that ‘the mobilization and the bombardments have greatly affected her mental health, and she seems to be affected by a persecution complex’.¹⁴⁸ The gap that exists between the positive attitudes described by Mirman in his report, and the negative effects of bombardment on Mme. B. warns against making general trends universal. Furthermore, the case of Mme. B. indicates that for civilians, as for soldiers, bombardment was traumatic. In fact, some civilians who committed suicide explicitly mentioned the bombardments as a reason. In January 1916, Eugène M., a 42-year-old house painter from Reims, was found hanging in his room. Police reported that he had left a note stating that ‘he voluntarily killed himself. He had been sick for some time and had been wounded fairly badly by shrapnel two months ago during a bombardment. He seemed very affected by the state of his health, which was not improving’.¹⁴⁹ The importance of the collective feelings that arose under the bombs should not, therefore, mask the difficulties some individuals had in coming to terms with bombardment. Neither should we assume that the sense of common feeling generated by bombardment eradicated social tensions within the front-line communities. As we shall see in Chapters 4 and 5, the issues of food, work, and welfare remained highly contentious. Finally, the forms of wartime civilian identity that were so important in sustaining communities on the Allied side did not directly extend to the occupied side of the lines. Although the predictions of the Gazette des Ardennes did not come true, and widespread anti-Allied sentiment did not arise, Allied bombardment was still a difficult experience for occupied civilians to come to terms with, let alone endorse. But, nonetheless, all this demonstrates the extent to which artillery bombardment shaped life at the front for civilians. Inhabiting towns which were turned into battlefields, their collective identities were transformed and militarized through exposure to one of the most quintessential experiences of the soldiers’ war—artillery fire. As a result of the experience ¹⁴⁷ AN, F/7/12730, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to interior ministry, 23 Jul 1916. ¹⁴⁸ AMN, 1 I 220, report to commissaire central de police, 22 Jul 1916. ¹⁴⁹ ADM, 203 M 15, Reims police report, 1 Feb 1916.

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of artillery bombardment, the wartime processes of militarization, which impacted France as a whole, were felt more keenly at the front, and served to distinguish these civilians from the rest of the nation. There was, however, a further factor that militarized civilian life at the front, to which we must now turn—the occupation regimes which controlled civilians on both sides of the lines.

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3 Occupation Regimes and Civil–Military Encounters at the Western Front In January 1916, Lieutenant-Colonel W. Kirke lectured a group of British military policemen about to embark for France and Belgium on the role they would play in controlling local civilians. He compared the methods available to the British with those used by the Germans: The Germans can of course take almost any measures they like in occupied territory, however severe, regardless of the opinion of the inhabitants . . . We, on the contrary, have great difficulty in getting sanction for measures interfering with the liberty of the subject, and have to go very carefully . . . I think if one was to imagine the case of the French army in England the position will be appreciated.¹

Kirke’s lecture is revealing in a number of ways. A note of jealousy is unmistakable, particularly in his opinion that the German army had a ‘great advantage’ in the extent to which it could interfere with individual liberties. He not only understood, but agreed with its policies. While he did not go into detail regarding how the British army would administer an enemy population, he assured his audience that the ‘German plan of absolute ruthlessness is the surest means . . . We are keeping all their regulations in the hope of applying them in Germany’. As a military officer concerned with security, Kirke felt the strict control practised by the German army was an effective and acceptable response to the problem of administrating an enemy population. In France and Belgium, the British had to proceed more circumspectly, not because it was right or moral, but because it would be impolitic to treat a friendly population in an overly high-handed manner. Kirke’s lecture points to the differences between the treatment of friendly and enemy populations by the armies at the Western Front. But it also reveals similarities as, in all cases, the end goal was the same—civilian life was to be subordinated to military rules. In the eyes of Allied and German commanders, civilians were objects to be controlled and disciplined. This chapter explores the

¹ TNA, WO/158/982, ‘Control of the Civilian Population in France and Belgium’, Jan 1916. Communities under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918. Alex Dowdall, Oxford University Press (2020). © Alex Dowdall. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198856115.001.0001

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profound impacts that these attitudes had on civilian communities on both sides of the Western Front, where military regulations shaped almost all aspects of urban life. But since the military presence at the front was human, as much as it was administrative and bureaucratic, this chapter also explores the social impacts of the inter-personal encounters that occurred between soldiers and civilians every day. As we shall see, civilians’ interactions with the military—both in the shape of occupation regimes and individual soldiers—were rarely straightforward. Social conventions in occupied France demanded that French citizens adopt an attitude of patriotic resistance, while on both sides encounters between civilians, who were mainly women, and soldiers, who were exclusively men, were expected to conform to moral standards. Tensions resulted from perceived failures by some civilians to adhere to these patriotic and moral standards. But whether or not civilians successfully navigated these tensions, their encounters with military bureaucracies and individual soldiers still significantly furthered the militarization of urban life at the Western Front.

German Occupation Policies Immediately after the stabilization of the front in autumn 1914, the German army moved to impose control. Most accounts describe the beginning of the occupation of the coal-mining region as a brutal irruption of military authority into civilian life. Mme. Eloy, a schoolteacher in Hénin-Liétard, stated that ‘at the beginning, the uhlans seemed wild’, and were convinced French soldiers had remained behind, masquerading as civilians.² A resident of Liévin, M. Dagbert, presented a similar picture when he described how ‘during the first days of the invasion the inhabitants suffered many humiliations, insults and abuses of all kinds . . . Homes were searched from top to bottom by the Germans with fixed bayonets to ensure no French soldiers were hidden’. Eventually, after the German army established a permanent command post, ‘some excesses were suppressed, but conditions were no less harsh, humiliating and draconian’.³ The administrative structures of the German occupation regimes in France and Belgium have been described by several historians.⁴ A colonial-style civilian governor, answerable directly to the Kaiser, oversaw Belgium, while northern France was under the control of the German military. For most of the war, the Bavarian Sixth Army occupied the Pas-de-Calais coalfield. Like the other German armies, its rear-echelon areas were administered by an Etappen-Inspektion, tasked

² CLC, Académie de Lille, F/Delta/1126/2, Dossier B.156, report of Mme. Eloy. ³ Ibid., Dossier B.225, report of M. Dagbert. ⁴ Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 121–4; Nivet, La France occupée, 37–41; Georges Gromaire, L’Occupation Allemande en France (1914–1918) (Paris, 1925), 41–58.

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with overseeing civilian inhabitants, billeting, requisitioning, and economic exploitation. On a local level, Ortskommandanturen, run by middle-ranking officers, oversaw individual communes or groups of communes, while policing was conducted by German gendarmes, reserve soldiers of the Landsturm, and military police. Given the proximity of the coal-mining region to the front, particularly strict measures were implemented early on. One of the German army’s primary concerns was limiting civilians’ freedom of movement. In summer 1915, Sixth Army ordered all civilians aged 14 and over to carry a German-issued residency pass at all times, while passes allowing travel between locations were only issued in exceptional cases and were subject to a fee.⁵ The result was that travel was only open to the wealthy—such as Léon Tacquet, who travelled to Lille relatively frequently.⁶ Exceptions were made for those engaged in occupations requiring travel to work, such as miners, farmers, and those operating food supply convoys, but supervision of such workers remained strict.⁷ Movement was also constricted within the front-line communes themselves. Curfews were imposed, sometimes beginning as early as 2pm, while in Lens some areas of the town, notably the cemetery, were placed out of bounds entirely, and residents had to obtain passes to attend funerals of relatives.⁸ These measures meant there were few opportunities to travel either within or between towns and, in the occupied coalfield as elsewhere, civilians’ horizons contracted to the limits of their own town or village.⁹ During their lengthy confinements at home, civilians in the coal-mining region remained subject to military authority in other ways. German military police operated daytime and night-time patrols, and rarely respected privacy, requiring house doors to be unlocked, and conducting frequent searches of property at short or no notice.¹⁰ In November 1916, houses in Hénin-Liétard were searched weekly for items of military equipment that may have ended up in civilian hands.¹¹ These searches were greatly resented, and seen as arbitrary invasions of privacy. Those caught contravening regulations faced strict punishment through fines, prison sentences, or deportation to prison camps in Germany. Serious offences, such as

⁵ BHA, Gen. Kdo. I B. Arm. Korps, 1124, ‘Zusammenstellung der . . . Bestimmungen über Personenverkehr’, 10 Jun 1915; BHA, III B. Inf. Div., 1919, A.O.K. VI to Etappen-Inspektion VI, 11 Aug 1916. ⁶ See, for example, Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 26 Apr 1915, 27 May 1915, 30 Jun 1915, 23 Sep 1916. ⁷ BHA, Gen. Kdo. I B. Arm. Korps, 1124, ‘Zusammenstellung der . . . Bestimmungen über Personenverkehr’, 10 Jun 1915; BHA, IV B. Inf. Div., 2561, Ortskommandantur Libercourt, to IV Inf. Div., 31 Jan 1916. ⁸ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ⁹ Sophie de Schaepdrijver, La Belgique et la Première Guerre Mondiale (Brussels, 2006), 116; Nivet, La France occupée, 117–24. ¹⁰ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ¹¹ BHA, 6 B. Res. Div., Bund 100 Akt 1, Ortskommandantur Hénin-Liétard to VI B. Res. Div., 24 Nov 1916.

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espionage or possession of carrier pigeons, carried the death penalty.¹² Civilians’ good behaviour was further guaranteed through hostage taking, especially of local notables. When German units first arrived in Lens in 1914, they took Émile Basly hostage and warned that he would be shot if civilians attacked the occupying forces.¹³ Groups of the town’s notables were remanded as hostages at various points—during the second half of 1915, for instance, 20 were deported to Valenciennes. Additionally, all adult males aged between 18 and 55 had to register with the authorities, and military police conducted extensive house searches to ensure no one remained in hiding. Some of those registered were deported to prison camps in Germany, while others were conscripted into forced labour companies behind the lines.¹⁴ Some German commanders implemented these controls confrontationally. Orders could be summary and abrupt, and the threat of force in the event of non-compliance was explicit. In December 1914, residents of Lens and Liévin were warned that any men moving around town without a permit would be shot, while anyone caught contravening rules on curfews and blackouts would be ‘punished very severely’.¹⁵ Posters displaying such orders were common sights on the streets, furthering the repressive atmosphere. The restrictions were not, however, uniform in intensity, and differed from time to time and place to place. This was because local commanders had a certain amount of independence, with some displaying a limited willingness to make concessions to the needs of local communities.¹⁶ The French chief of police from Lens, Charles Bourgeois, reported there were at least five Ortskommandanturen in and around Lens, each of which issued its own orders.¹⁷ Certain commanders were relatively mild, and aimed to treat the population fairly, while others were more severe, a fact noted by Émile Basly, who claimed that when a particularly authoritarian commander arrived, he deliberately punished the town for its socialist sympathies, enforcing a 4.30pm curfew.¹⁸ Similarly, the much-reported and resented requirement that French civilians salute German officers was not imposed uniformly across the occupied territories. In December 1916, VI Bavarian Reserve Corps informed units that saluting was not mandatory given the difficulty of enforcement, but that individual units could maintain the requirement if they wished.¹⁹ Occupying forces in Liévin did enforce the rule, punishing those in contravention with a 5-franc fine.²⁰ ¹² Carré, ‘Cahiers d’occupation’, 19 Nov 1914, 13–15. ¹³ Basly, Martyre de Lens, 26–33. ¹⁴ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ¹⁵ Carré, ‘Cahiers d’occupation’, 19 Nov 1914, 13–15. ¹⁶ Larissa Wegner, ‘Occupation during the War (France and Belgium)’, 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, accessed 9 Aug 2019, https://encyclope dia.1914-1918-online.net/article/occupation_during_the_war_belgium_and_france/2014-10-08. ¹⁷ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ¹⁸ Basly, Martyre de Lens, 141–2. ¹⁹ BHA, 6 B. Res. Div., Bund 100 Akt 1, instruction from Generalkommando VI Reservekorps, 16 Dec 1916. ²⁰ Carré, ‘Cahiers d’occupation’, 11 Dec 1915, 63.

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The devolved nature of the regime, and the authority granted to local commanders, opened a space for negotiation between the occupiers and local French authorities. Indeed, French local government structures played an important role within the German system of control. Local government did not collapse under occupation— mayors and town councils often remained in office, even in some communes closest to the front. In the absence of central government their responsibilities increased significantly, as they interacted directly with the occupying military. Sophie de Schaepdrijver has described how in Belgium this created a ‘form of forced cohabitation and limited cooperation’ between local and occupying authorities.²¹ A similar situation developed nearer the front in France where local authorities, under threat of collective punishment, had to implement many aspects of the occupation regime. As we will see in Chapter 4, the recruitment of forced labourers often happened through local councils, while German commanders used French police when conducting searches and imposing fines. Charles Bourgeois, the Lens chief of police, reported following his repatriation that while his personnel ‘opposed the orders of the German authorities through inertia’, they still had to collect fines, conduct investigations and enforce German orders.²² This forced integration of local authorities into the occupation regime was a source of significant tension, as the implementation of German regulations appeared to detract from French civilians’ duty to resist the enemy. Active resistance, in the form of spy rings and support networks for downed Allied airmen, developed to a limited degree in occupied France and Belgium, most often in larger cities such as Lille and Brussels.²³ More common were diverse forms of passive resistance. As James E. Connolly has demonstrated, a distinct ‘occupied war culture’ emerged on the German side. This was structured by a moral-patriotic framework that defined how the occupied should interact with German forces. Individuals were expected to resist the occupiers by adopting a self-imposed distance, and refusing personal contact with soldiers. Local authorities, however, were expected to resist the occupation regime itself, and to actively or symbolically refuse cooperation in its implementation.²⁴ In many cases, this assumed the form of ‘respectable resistance’—a highly performative practice based on a sense of duty, but also with a view to potential post-war judgements.²⁵ In the coal-mining region, some local councils clearly engaged in this practice. The local councils of Billy-Montigny and Rouvroy, for instance, refused to pay indemnities ²¹ de Schaepdrijver, La Belgique, 106–7. ²² ADHS, 4 M 518, report of chief of police Bourgeois, 7 Aug 1917. ²³ Emmanuel Debruyne, ‘Combattre l’occupant en Belgique et dans les départements français occupés en 1914–1918. Une “résistance avant la lettre”?’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, no. 115 (2012): 15–30. ²⁴ James E. Connolly, ‘Mauvaise conduite: Complicity and Respectability in the Occupied Nord, 1914–1918’, First World War Studies 4, no. 1 (2013): 7–8. ²⁵ Idem., ‘Notable Protests: Respectable Resistance in Occupied Northern France, 1914–18’, Historical Research 88, no. 242 (2015): 693–715.

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demanded by German authorities in March 1916. Both councils asserted they could only do so with the authority of the absent prefect of the Pas-de-Calais, thereby opposing German demands, questioning the legitimacy of the occupation, and reasserting a symbolic allegiance with the French state.²⁶ Quite often, however, tensions arose from perceived failures of local authorities to resist. In Lens, Léon Tacquet was a forceful critic of Émile Basly, and complained in his diary that the mayor failed to stand up to the German occupiers. In June 1915, he claimed Basly had capitulated in the face of the new German commander: It seems our new commander kept our deputy-mayor in the hot-seat for two hours, that he gave him orders concerning the maintenance of the town’s streets, made observations, recommendations, reprimanded him and turned him around in all directions . . . Basly, whose obsequiousness and platitudes towards the Germans since the start of the war are well known to all, sat there and took all this without balking.²⁷

Many residents of Lens formed an opposite view, and came to Basly’s defence in their repatriation statements, while Basly’s own memoir constitutes an extended, retrospective defence of his ‘respectable resistance’.²⁸ Nonetheless, criticisms such as Tacquet’s reveal the vulnerability of public figures within the frontline communities who were co-opted into the occupation regime. French officials’ interactions with the German military were refracted through a moralpatriotic lens which demanded a level of ‘resistance’ not always attainable in practice. The tensions resulting from officials’ failure to resist sufficiently would only fully reveal themselves after the war. But even during the war itself, we can identify the negative impact of the occupation regime on community solidarity. Many civilians repatriated via Switzerland were quick to denounce local government officials for insufficient patriotism. One man from Hénin-Liétard accused the mayor of that town of ‘having committed “underhanded dealings” with the Germans’, while others denounced an interpreter working for the Lens municipal council for having been ‘on excellent terms with the officers and noncommissioned officers (N.C.O.s) of the kommandantur’.²⁹ For the mayor of Moyenneville in the Pas-de-Calais, the consequences of such denunciations were dire. He was accused of aiding the Germans in their round-ups of young French men, siphoning off food for his own gain, and directing the Germans towards a downed French aircraft. Upon his repatriation, the French officer ²⁶ BHA, 1 B. Inf. Div., 657, report from Ortskommandantur Fosse 2 Drocourt, 19 Mar 1916 and Ortskommandantur Rouvroy, 20 Mar 1916. ²⁷ Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 17 Jun 1915. ²⁸ See, for example, ADPdC, 11 R 857, statements of Mme. Duflot and Mme. Boulanger. ²⁹ ADHS, 4 M 518, report of M. de Rycke, 22 Sep 1917; ADHS, 4 M 519, report on Paul Tétard, 26 Nov 1917.

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interrogating him believed there was sufficient evidence to warrant sending him to a detention facility until the end of the war.³⁰

Allied ‘Friendly’ Occupations The German occupation regime structured the lives of occupied civilians in tangible ways, and generated a standard of patriotic resistance against which members of the front-line communities judged each other. In this respect, it was perhaps as important in shaping urban life at the front as artillery bombardment. But can the same be said of the occupation regime implemented by the Allies? Under the 1907 Hague Conventions, the term ‘occupation’ only concerned territories controlled by hostile armies.³¹ It cannot, therefore, be attributed to the Allied side of the Western Front in a legal sense. Yet here, as on the German side, military authorities had significant control over civilians’ lives. The wide-ranging nature and impact of the controls implemented ensures that this does warrant description as a form of military occupation, albeit of a ‘friendly’ population.³² This ‘friendly’ occupation began following the Allied advance after the Battle of the Marne, when numerous towns that had been occupied by the Germans, including Arras and Reims, were retaken. In this period, when the B.E.F. was relatively small, the French army took the lead in imposing military discipline on a confused situation. One of its first aims was to purge ‘suspect’ elements, especially those accused of acting inappropriately during the brief German occupation. The French high command requested that prefects launch enquiries into mayors who fled the enemy’s advance, as it felt they had lost ‘all moral authority vis-à-vis their fellow citizens’. Eventually, the mayors of Soissons and Château-Thierry were removed for having abandoned their towns.³³ Spy fears were also prevalent, and generated harsh repression.³⁴ Unit commanders were instructed to work with local police and gendarmes to ‘re-establish the most complete order’ when retaking towns, and monitor public places deemed to be ‘gathering points of all sorts of enemy agents, marauders and criminals’.³⁵ In the febrile atmosphere that characterized the period of mobile warfare, the French military took this antiespionage campaign seriously. Alfred Wolff felt the army saw Reims as ‘a town full

³⁰ ADPdC, M 2272, ‘Affaire Boudringhin.’ ³¹ Scott, Hague Conventions, 122. ³² Craig Gibson also uses the term ‘friendly occupation’ to describe relations between the B.E.F. and French civilians. See Gibson, Behind the Front, 8–9. ³³ SHD, 16 N 2528, Direction de l’Arrière to G.Q.G., 19 Sep 1914 and prefect Aisne to Général Commandant la 6e Région, 29 Oct 1914; 5 N 131, Général Commandant la 6e Région to Direction de l’Arrière, 28 Oct 1914. ³⁴ On spy fears in the B.E.F. see Gibson, Behind the Front, 54–7. ³⁵ ADPdC, M 5569, ‘Directives générales pour MM. les généraux commandant les subdivisions’, 23 Sep 1914.

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of spies’, and encouraged denunciations.³⁶ Two of those denounced were Camille Carillon and Marie Debouzy, a house painter and a domestic servant. Both were executed on 15 September 1914, after a crowd, noticing a light flickering in their house, accused them, in all likelihood unjustly, of communicating with the enemy.³⁷ Their case was not unique, and André Bach has recorded at least 13 civilians executed by the French army in September and October 1914.³⁸ Following the stabilization of the front, such summary actions were brought under control and the French government regularized the authority of the French and British armies over civilians. The state of siege implemented on 2 August 1914 granted the French army wide-ranging powers over the civilian inhabitants of its rear-echelon areas, known as the zone des armées. In this area, all police powers passed from civilian authorities to the military, unless the latter delegated them back, while the military could also search homes and prevent public gatherings.³⁹ The boundaries of the zone des armées altered several times, but at its height it extended back from the front as far as Beauvais, in the north, and Besançon, in the south. Within the zone des armées a further ligne de démarcation defined the operations area, within which even stricter controls applied. Each of the towns considered here was located within this ligne de démarcation. General policy regarding the treatment of civilians was worked out by the Ministry of War alongside the army’s Grand Quartier général (G.Q.G.), while individual French units were advised on issues ranging from the restrictions they could place on civilian movement, to billeting, requisitioning, and damage to property by the liaison officers of the army’s Service des relations avec les autorités civiles (S.R.A.C.). Matters were more complex in the gradually expanding British area of operations. In late 1914, the B.E.F. occupied the front south from Ypres, as far as the northern section of coal-mining region, but by March 1916 it had extended its share to include the whole of the coal-mining region and Arras. Within this area the B.E.F., unlike the French army, did not have powers under French law to control French civilians. As a result, the French created the Mission militaire française près de l’armée britannique (M.M.F.). Staffed by French officers, including military interpreters, it guaranteed a French presence within all British army units.⁴⁰ It played a key role in mediating between the British and the local French population, and allowed the Allies to overcome a legal obstacle by ensuring that the restrictions placed on French civilians in the British zone were, technically, implemented by French personnel.⁴¹

³⁶ AMR, 32 S 1, Diary of Alfred Wolff, 20 Sep 1914. ³⁷ Chatelle, Reims, 102–3. ³⁸ André Bach, Fusillés pour l’exemple, 1914–1915 (Paris, 2003), 314 and 374. ³⁹ ADMM, 4 M 1, ‘Des pouvoirs de police de l’autorité civile et de l’autorité militaire . . . ’. ⁴⁰ Franziska Heimburger, ‘Mésentente cordiale? Les langues dans la coalition alliée sur le front ouest de la Première Guerre Mondiale’, (PhD Thesis: EHESS, Paris 2015). ⁴¹ Gibson, Behind the Lines, 90–1.

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Both the French and British armies made extensive use of their powers to regulate civilian life. As was the case on the German side, restricting movement was a primary concern. Indeed, the regulations concerning civilian movement in the zone des armées laid out in February 1915 bore a striking resemblance to those introduced by the Germans—all journeys on foot, bicycle, and horse-drawn carriage required a pass issued by the local mayor or police commissioner, while car journeys could only be authorized by the military. Such passes were difficult to procure, with the M.M.F. only processing 100 a day in the British zone, while authorities also retained the right to ban all movement without warning. Beyond the ligne de démarcation, stricter rules applied. Only government officials could use bicycles, and a curfew was enforced between 7pm and 6am.⁴² As the war progressed restrictions tightened—in September 1915, the military removed the power to issue passes from local civilian authorities and, in 1917, required all civilians to carry an identity card at all times. Infractions could be punished by arrest and removal to the interior.⁴³ Such measures demonstrate that, although fears of spying died down after late 1914, Allied military commanders continued to view civilians near the front with suspicion.⁴⁴ In Arras patrols tasked with identifying houses signalling to the enemy functioned from December 1914 onwards, while at the same time military authorities in Pont-à-Mousson warned civilians not to leave their houses after 8pm, or light fires or gas lamps ‘that could be interpreted as illuminated signals’.⁴⁵ The French army, and the M.M.F. on behalf of the British, were also empowered to remove anyone classified as ‘suspect’ from the zone des armées to internment camps in the interior. This was intended to allow commanders to forcibly remove enemy aliens and those suspected of spying, but eventually it was used to remove far wider categories, from prostitutes, to those judged to be in the far looser category of ‘women of ill repute’, and merchants selling overpriced goods to troops.⁴⁶ The ‘friendly’ military occupations on the Allied side were, therefore, rigorous, and Allied commanders viewed civilians as potential security threats to be controlled, disciplined, and, if required, forcibly removed. Some Allied commanders were openly hostile towards local civilians. At the end of 1917, for instance, an artillery commander in Reims complained to his superiors that large numbers of

⁴² ADPdC, 11 R 1086, ‘Mission militaire française . . . ’, 21; SHD, 16 N 272, ‘Ministère de la Guerre: Réglementation sur la circulation . . . ’, 26 Feb 1915. ⁴³ SHD, 16 N 272, General Commandant en Chef to war ministry, 15 Sep 1915; SHD, 19 N 869, ‘Arrêté réglementant la circulation’, 15 Jul 1917. ⁴⁴ Gibson, Behind the Front, 157–67. ⁴⁵ ADPdC, M 5569, commissaire central Arras to mayor Arras, 3 Dec 1914; ADMM, 4 M 16, ‘Ville de Pont-à-Mousson, avis aux habitants’, 15 Dec 1914. ⁴⁶ SHD, 16 N 1657, Général Commandant en Chef to army commanders, 20 Oct 1914; In 1916, a French army report found many removals unwarranted. See SHD, 16 N 1657, G.Q.G. to army commanders, 2 Mar 1916.

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‘marauders, receivers of stolen goods, all types of malcontents, girls and even spies prowl around our batteries’, and demanded that surveillance and expulsions be stepped up.⁴⁷ His complaints were acted upon, with military police ordered to conduct ‘a very close surveillance’ in Reims, and to make greater efforts to remove ‘all elements that are questionable or prejudicial to the discipline or morale of the troops’.⁴⁸ Despite such suspicion, however, military authorities were generally aware of the need to minimize tensions and address civilian grievances. In the French zone, joint civil–military commissions adjudicated on claims for damages resulting from billeting, while liaison officers mediated disputes between the army and local authorities.⁴⁹ The French army could also ask civilians to patiently endure the restrictions placed on them in the national interest, such as when General Maud’huy refused to reduce requisitions among the front-line communities because ‘more than others, the inhabitants of the localities situated immediately next to the front support the weight of war’s necessities. This is a fact that they must accept patriotically’.⁵⁰ The B.E.F. could make no such claims, and both the French and British were keenly aware that the subjection of French civilians to a foreign, albeit Allied army on French soil was potentially highly volatile. The French-staffed M.M.F. was thus tasked with managing interactions between British units and locals, and, according to its official history, giving ‘the inhabitants the assurance that their rights and interests would be protected to the fullest extent possible’.⁵¹ The M.M.F.’s military interpreters, working with British M.P.s, local police, and gendarmes, sought to ‘iron out difficulties that can arise between the French population and the British troops, most often due to reciprocal ignorance of customs and language’.⁵² This was an important task, and they were the primary point of interaction between civilians and British units for billeting, requisitioning, house searches, and the enforcement of regulations.⁵³ The British clearly saw the benefits of this arrangement. In his lecture to military police officers departing for France, Kirke urged them to ‘wherever possible . . . work through the French, and so avoid friction.’⁵⁴ This was, however, easier said than done. Major McKechnie, for instance, was the British military police chief stationed in Arras in early 1918. He admitted in his memoir that he ⁴⁷ SHD, 19 N 868, G.Q.G. to Fifth Army, 27 Nov 1917. ⁴⁸ Ibid., French Fifth Army order, 7 Dec 1915. ⁴⁹ SHD, 16 N 2520, war ministry to prefects, 9 Sep 1915. ⁵⁰ SHD, 16 N 2517, Général Maud’huy to Général en Chef, Direction de l’Arrière, 5 Feb 1915. ⁵¹ ADPdC, 11 R 1086, ‘Mission militaire française . . . ’, 6. ⁵² Ibid., ‘Note de service: M.M.F.’, 16 Dec 1916. See also Kenneth Craig Gibson, ‘ “My Chief Source of Worry”: An Assistant Provost Marshal’s View of Relations between 2nd Canadian Division and Local Inhabitants on the Western Front, 1915–1917’, War in History 7, no. 4 (2000): 413–41 and Gibson, Behind the Front, 101–7. ⁵³ SHD, 17 N 394, ‘How to deal with French civilians and local authorities’ 20 May 1916. ⁵⁴ TNA, WO/158/982, ‘Control of the Civilian Population in France and Belgium’, Jan 1916.

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lacked the ‘tact and discrimination’ needed to balance the competing interests in the town, and came to dislike the French greatly because, he felt, ‘they were simply out to do the English as much as possible, for as much as possible’.⁵⁵ Four years of static warfare and a constant military presence grated on inhabitants of the front, while tight surveillance, curfews, and other restrictions generated a repressive atmosphere many resented. A man living just outside Reims was particularly discouraged by the French army’s repressive tendencies. He complained in a letter that after three years of war: we only see soldiers . . . people cannot leave their homes without being stopped, either by gendarmes or sentries . . . We could almost consider ourselves to be prisoners, we can hardly believe we are French, living in France, because the civilians are seen by the army as so many spies. This makes the population very bitter, and you hardly ever see a smiling face.⁵⁶

In Noeux-les-Mines, the parish priest noted that his parishioners felt it thoroughly ‘disheartening’ that they needed ‘a host of good reasons to be authorized to travel. Most prefer to stay home as a result’, while in late 1915 he complained that the British troops, who had recently taken over that sector of the front, ‘are becoming very arrogant, and we are asking ourselves how we will get through the winter without there being serious strains’.⁵⁷ In Armentières, in summer 1916, the mayor repeatedly wrote to the M.M.F., the prefect, and the President of the Council of Ministers to ‘energetically’ complain about a 19-year-old corporal who was overly scrupulous in issuing travel passes. He had denied several local food suppliers passes to travel to collect provisions, and had insinuated that the mayor, who had made a trip to Paris, may also be worthy of suspicion.⁵⁸ Despite the efforts of Allied military authorities, therefore, conflicts arose from this ‘friendly occupation’. Unlike on the German side, however, these conflicts were not shaped by patriotism and did not question the legitimacy of the occupation. In November 1916, L’Est Républicain asserted that civilians in the Meurthe-et-Moselle accepted ‘without complaint the heavy weight of the occupation’. But it also pointed out that the French army did not pay for requisitions and billeting on time and caused unnecessary damage to civilian property, ensuring ‘our citizens need . . . all their patriotism, and all their willpower’.⁵⁹ The prefect of the Pas-de-Calais presented a similar picture in March 1916, when he reported that the region had witnessed ‘frequent incidents between military commanders and municipalities’. Despite this, he was confident the civilian population had, in ⁵⁵ ⁵⁶ ⁵⁷ ⁵⁸ ⁵⁹

IWM, Private Papers of Major E.A. McKechnie MC. SHD, 16 N 1455, Châlons-sur-Marne postal control, 3 Nov 1917. ADA, 4 Z 84/3 A, parish register, Noeux-les-Mines, 15 Jan and 19 Oct 1915. ADN, 9 R 954, ‘Permis de circulation . . . correspondance’, Jun–Jul 1916. L’Est Républicain, 12 Nov 1916.

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general, welcomed both the French and British armies and shown clear ‘moral discipline’. Furthermore, complaints that did arise were a result of the actions of officers that he judged to be ‘inexperienced and negligent’.⁶⁰ The improper attitudes of those implementing the regulations, rather than the regulations themselves, were the source of tensions. On both sides of the Western Front, therefore, civilian freedoms were curtailed by armies, through curfews, restrictions on movement, house searches, and summary arrest and deportation. Communities, in turn, resented these impositions, and challenged military authorities. This is not to equate the situations directly, as important differences remained. The German army enforced its repressive regime with greater harshness. In German-occupied France, restrictions on movement were stricter, curfews longer, and the authorities inflicted punishments more frequently, while the Allies did not practice measures such as hostage taking to ensure good behaviour. The German army also exploited the economic potential of the occupied regions, including forced labour, in ways the Allies did not.⁶¹ Furthermore, the conflicts that arose between French civilians and the German military were, unlike those on the Allied side, driven by a patriotic imperative of resistance. Both the similarities and differences between the German and Allied treatment of civilians at the Western Front formed part of a variable geography of civil– military encounters across Europe during the First World War. Armies in the field encountered civilians in various situations. The most developed experiments in military rule were in German-held Eastern Europe. Here, as Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius has demonstrated, the German army sought to construct a militarized utopian state in Latvia, Lithuania, and north-eastern Poland, an area known as Ober Ost. This was to be characterized by a ‘modern kind of rule, bureaucratic, technocratic, rationalized, and ideological’. A colonial mind-set drove policy, as the German army sought, but failed, to reshape these confused and disorganized ‘lands and people, making them over for permanent possession’.⁶² This was, in other words, a ‘transformative occupation’, by which the German army attempted to permanently reshape the politics, economics, and culture of occupied society.⁶³ Nothing similar was attempted by the German forces occupying northern France. Here, the objective was short term—to closely control civilians, thereby neutralizing the implicit threat they posed to military security. In this respect, there may have been some similarities to Ober Ost where, as Liulevicius has also shown, German officers sought to ‘place a severe grid of control over the territory and its native populations’.⁶⁴ But there were also similarities with the Allied side of the ⁶⁰ ADPdC, M 5569, prefect Pas-de-Calais to interior ministry, 14 Mar 1916. ⁶¹ For a discussion of forced labour see Chapter 4. ⁶² Liulevicius, War Land, 8–9. ⁶³ Klaus Richter, ‘ “Go with the Hare’s Ticket”: Mobility and Territorial Policies in Ober Ost (1915–1918)’, First World War Studies 6, no. 2 (2015): 151–70. ⁶⁴ Liulevicius, War Land, 9.

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Western Front, where military authorities subordinated civilian freedoms to military concerns. Even if the military regimes at the Western Front were not ‘transformative occupations’, therefore, they still profoundly altered, and militarized, urban life.

Civilians and Soldiers For all the bureaucratic constraints that have just been highlighted, the military presence was also human. During the war, soldiers acquired unparalleled visibility across France. The wounded and men on leave were a common sight in Paris and other towns and cities, while the Channel and Atlantic ports welcomed large numbers of foreign troops. These soldiers brought first-hand experiences of war to civilians in the interior, while wartime propaganda encouraged civilians to draw lessons about the conduct of the war from their encounters with men on leave. As Emmanuelle Cronier has argued, ‘in Parisian representations, men on leave showed civilians what the war was really like. Their physiognomy and attitude were seen by everyone as evidence of morale at the front’.⁶⁵ In the towns at the front, however, interactions between civilians and soldiers were of a different nature. Here, the military presence was inescapable, as troop concentrations were significantly higher than the interior. Cronier has estimated that there were between 5,000 and 50,000 men on leave in Paris at any point between July 1915 and November 1918, a relatively low number in proportion to the capital’s population.⁶⁶ According to the parish priest of Noeux-les-Mines, in contrast, that town, with a pre-war population of 8,649, became ‘almost a capital city’ when it served as the headquarters of two French army corps in May 1915.⁶⁷ The presence of so many soldiers radically altered urban dynamics. One observer described Béthune as having ‘the physiognomy of a militarily-occupied town . . . the coming and going of troops, and the quick movement of cars and ambulances alongside the daily commercial traffic created a constant bustle’.⁶⁸ In towns at the front, civilians encountered soldiers in a variety of public and private settings. Billeting in private homes—common on both sides—brought soldiers and civilians into close, often intimate contact.⁶⁹ On the street, the constant military presence created a direct, tangible link with the fighting in the nearby trenches. Soldiers flooded local bars, cafés, and estaminets in search of

⁶⁵ Cronier, ‘The Street’, 85. ⁶⁶ Ibid., 83. ⁶⁷ ADA, 4 Z 84/3 A, Noeux-les-Mines parish register, 25 May 1915. ⁶⁸ Petit-Didier, Deux ans dans les Flandres, 23. ⁶⁹ Peter Simkins, ‘Soldiers and Civilians: Billeting in Britain and France’, in A Nation in Arms: A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War, ed. Ian F. W. Beckett and Keith Simpson (Manchester, 1985); Gibson, Behind the Front, 109–46.

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food, refreshments, and entertainment—an important part of soldiers’ routines.⁷⁰ The official history of the Ninth Northumberland Fusiliers claimed it was ‘soldiering de luxe’ to be stationed in Armentières where, less than 3 km from the trenches, there were estaminets, cafés, and cinemas.⁷¹ In Reims, French soldiers were pleased to find a cinema and restaurants serving both civilians and military personnel, although one soldier was disgusted at the prices charged at the Maison Historique, where a ham omelette, a pork chop with mashed potatoes, salad, camembert, bread, white wine, and ‘a coffee that smelled vaguely like grounds’ cost 9frs. This caused him to complain that the civilians of ‘the martyred town’ did not appreciate ‘what we are doing for them’.⁷² Following the arrival of British troops in Béthune, homeowners simply placed notices in their windows advertising ‘eggs and schips [sic]’, thereby transforming private spaces into sites of civil– military interaction.⁷³ On the German-occupied side, civilians also operated bars and cafés to cater to the military, despite the risk of denunciation such business practices entailed. In his repatriation statement, Charles Bourgeois identified the owners of four cafés and cinemas frequented by German troops, some of which may have doubled as brothels.⁷⁴ Language may have originally been a barrier to interaction, but the Western Front quickly became a polyglot space, with civilians and soldiers gaining rudimentary knowledge of each other’s languages. Personal encounters allowed basic language acquisition, while the British and German armies distributed French phrasebooks. On the occupied side, language was mobilized for repression, with dictionaries including useful phrases such as ‘si vous mentez vous serez fusillé—if you lie you will be shot’.⁷⁵ Many civilians resented the intrusion of German into the ‘soundscapes’ of their towns. But despite this, language learning still facilitated cultural encounters and emotional survival for soldiers and civilians on both sides. Even in occupied France a number of civilians learned German in order to better understand their occupiers.⁷⁶ The military presence at the front was inescapable, and encounters between soldiers and civilians occurred in a variety of public and private settings. For some civilians, encounters with soldiers, either friendly or enemy, were overwhelmingly ⁷⁰ Gibson, ‘My Chief Source of Worry’, 424; Krista Cowman, ‘Touring Behind the Lines: British Soldiers in French Towns and Cities during the Great War’, Urban History 41, no. 1 (2014): 105–23. ⁷¹ C. H. Cooke, Historical Records of the 9th (Service) Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers, (Newcastle, 1928), 31. ⁷² SHD, 16 N 1413, Fifth Army postal control, GD 58 and 1er Groupe/248 RAC, 13 Oct 1917. ⁷³ Petit-Didier, Deux ans dans les Flandres, 22. ⁷⁴ ADHS, 4 M 518, report of chief of police Bourgeois, 7 Aug 1917. ⁷⁵ Franziska Heimburger and John Horne, Si vous mentez vous serez fusillé! Manuel de conversation à l’usage du soldat allemand (Paris, 2013). ⁷⁶ Krista Cowman, ‘ “The . . . ‘parlez’ is not going on very well ‘avec moi’ ”: Learning and using “Trench French” on the Western Front’ and Gavin Bowd, ‘From Hatred to Hybridization: The German Language in Occupied France, 1914–1918’, in Languages and the First World War: Communicating in a Transnational War, ed. Julian Walker and Christophe Declercq (Basingstoke, 2016).

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negative. Others, however, had more positive interactions and formed meaningful, lasting relationships. Three types of encounter between civilians and soldiers had particularly strong impacts on the social dynamics of urban communities on both sides of the Western Front. They arose from military indiscipline, platonic relationships, and sexual encounters.

Military Indiscipline On the Allied side, the actions of some troops ensured that, at times, supposedly ‘friendly’ forces appeared distinctly hostile. Drunkenness among men on leave was common, despite strict controls on alcohol. Sometimes incidents of drunkenness were relatively minor. In April 1917, for instance, one woman reported that her father in Reims had been ‘attacked in his house by drunk soldiers who wanted to get more drink’, but the incident was peacefully resolved when neighbours intervened.⁷⁷ But because soldiers remained armed when on leave, drunkenness was sometimes much more serious. In February 1915, a drunken soldier shot and killed the owner of the café Au Zouave in Reims, Louis Erhart, when he refused to serve alcohol after closing time.⁷⁸ An extreme incident occurred in Pont-àMousson in August 1917, when two French soldiers deserted their posts in the nearby trenches and made their way to the town’s brothel, before embarking on a drunken shooting spree. They shot at a young girl in the street, fired at passing traffic, shot up a café that refused to serve them, before engaging in a gun battle with the soldiers sent to apprehend them. Although no civilians died, one of the soldiers was killed, and the other arrested.⁷⁹ Alongside drunkenness, pillage was also common. Soldiers stole and damaged civilian property, especially abandoned property, with relative impunity, often searching for provisions and fuel. Wilfred Cook, a private stationed in Arras in early 1917, remembered burning a large mahogany table in his billets, and justified the act by claiming ‘it would probably have fallen later to enemy action in any case’.⁸⁰ Pillage was most common after heavy bombardments, and when troop concentrations increased in advance of major offensives. After the intense bombardment of Reims in April 1917, the mayor noted numerous reports of pillage, including one instance where 10 soldiers broke into a house and threatened to shoot a civilian who tried to intervene.⁸¹ In Arras, pillage was common in spring

⁷⁷ SHD, 16 N 1455, Châlons-sur Marne postal control, 28 Apr 1917. ⁷⁸ Hess, La Vie à Reims, 14 Feb 1915, 255; Le Courrier de la Champagne, 16 Feb 1915. ⁷⁹ ADMM, 8 R 174, commissaire de police Pont-à-Mousson to prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle, 14 Aug 1917. ⁸⁰ IWM, Private Papers of W. Cook. ⁸¹ ADM, 203 M 16, mayor Reims to Commandant d’Armes Reims, 23 May 1917.

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1917, when British troops flooded the town ahead of the March 1917 offensive. At the end of January, postal censors reported that: Relations with the British troops seem worse in Arras than anywhere else . . . British soldiers deliberately burn doors and furniture to heat themselves, and they have little respect for people’s cellars. One priest tasked with watching over a house stated that the 2,000 bottles of wine kept in the cellar was gradually reduced to 650, and then 68.⁸²

Complaints of this nature emanated from Arras throughout spring 1917. One woman felt that ‘when the English pass through they do no good . . . I think if the Germans had occupied the town they would not have done worse.’⁸³ As in Reims, civilians risked confrontation when attempting to prevent pillage. One man thought better than to intervene: Pillage, which is occurring a lot more frequently, is causing me a lot of worry . . . I caught one of the culprits red-handed, but he was not at all put-out by my intervention. He even adopted a rather menacing attitude, and as I had no means of defending myself I felt it was prudent not to insist . . . These burglars conduct their misdeeds with incredible audacity, and absolutely like professionals.⁸⁴

Others were not so cautious, and some violent altercations between soldiers and civilians occurred. In Arras, Félix Binet was seriously injured in April 1917 when a British soldier pillaging his house threw a grenade at him.⁸⁵ The following month in Reims, Jean Becker shot and injured two French soldiers breaking into his house.⁸⁶ Allied authorities attempted to limit the effects of individual soldiers’ indiscipline on civilians. As with their attempts to resolve grievances resulting from the imposition of military rule, however, they had limited success. Ministerial instructions to combat pillage were only introduced in May 1918,⁸⁷ while efforts by British military police to prosecute soldiers were obstructed by unit commanders unwilling to send their men to trial.⁸⁸ Between August 1914 and September 1920 only five British officers and 1,757 men were tried for ‘offences against the inhabitant’ across all army units in all theatres of operation.⁸⁹ Nevertheless, despite the limited successes of Allied authorities in preventing pillage and crime, support for Allied troops remained relatively intact. Attitudes ⁸² SHD, 16 N 1452, Boulogne postal control, 22–8 Jan 1917. ⁸³ Ibid., 16–22 Apr 1917. ⁸⁴ Ibid. ⁸⁵ ADPdC, M 5575, police report, Arras, 5 Apr 1917. ⁸⁶ L’Eclaireur de l’Est, 20 May 1917. ⁸⁷ SHD, 17 N 394, Ministry for blockade and liberated regions to Président du Conseil, 2 May 1918. ⁸⁸ Gibson, ‘My Chief Source of Worry’, 434–8. ⁸⁹ TNA, WO/93/51, Table XI, summary of Courts-Martial abroad 1914–1920.

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were sometimes ambivalent, as civilians acknowledged the troops’ sacrifices, but also complained about indiscipline. In summer 1917, postal censors in the Pas-deCalais reported that ‘as for the English, most correspondents still express the same admiration for their preparations, the same confidence in their bravery, and the same complaints against the depredations of which some are guilty.’⁹⁰ Similarly, in August 1918 the municipal council of Béthune issued two declarations to local British units, the first thanking them for their ‘heroic efforts’ in pushing the enemy back, the second calling for a government enquiry into the damage they caused to the town.⁹¹ The fact that ‘friendly’ troops were conducting themselves aggressively prompted necessarily ambiguous responses on the Allied side. On the occupied side, however, matters were more straightforward, as military indiscipline was perpetrated by a clearly defined enemy. As on the Allied side, pillage and looting by soldiers was common, especially during the 1914 invasion.⁹² In a post-war account, a primary-school teacher from Liévin described the lawless atmosphere in the town at this time: Houses were burned, and several civilians shot for the most superficial reasons. The abandoned houses, left by those who had fled before the invading flood, were given over to pillage and were damaged . . . Soldiers, with drawn weapons, demanded food, stole wine, liquor, poultry and livestock, got drunk and some indecently assaulted women.⁹³

German military authorities eventually brought widespread, uncontrolled looting under control, but did not eradicate it completely. After his repatriation, Charles Bourgeois reported that in Lens officers and troops looted houses throughout the war, especially during the evacuations of spring 1917. Soldiers reportedly removed furniture from houses, blew open shops with grenades, and plundered them ‘under the watchful eye of military police’.⁹⁴ Like other contemporaries, Bourgeois believed the German military condoned pillage and looting. Subsequent generations of historians have supported this interpretation.⁹⁵ There are, indeed, numerous cases of crime, sometimes violent, against civilians going unpunished. In Lens, a notorious incident occurred when a female primary-school teacher was drowned in a barrel of water in an abandoned butcher’s shop. Although the German soldier who committed the murder was

⁹⁰ ⁹¹ ⁹² ⁹³ ⁹⁴ ⁹⁵

SHD, 16 N 1452, Boulogne postal control, 14–20 May 1917. Archives Municipales de Béthune (AMB), 1 D 18, municipal council deliberations, 31 Aug 1918. Philippe Salson, L’Aisne occupée: les civils dans la Grande Guerre, (Rennes, 2015), 65. CLC, F/Delta/1126/2, Dossier B. 225, report of M. Dagbert. ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. Gromaire, L’Occupation allemande, 86–8; Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 161–2.

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identified he was apparently never prosecuted.⁹⁶ On the issue of looting, however, the situation was not so clear cut. The German army systematically expropriated local resources, sometimes including household items. But it also issued orders aimed at limiting unorganized looting. In September 1914, the Bavarian Sixth Army informed soldiers that the ‘wanton destruction of any kind of property belonging to foreign civilians is unworthy of a German soldier’, and laid down penalties for those convicted of looting ranging from three years of imprisonment to death.⁹⁷ In January 1916, Sixth Army command again stated that it ‘deplored’ arbitrary requisitions, and ordered that requisitions were only allowed for ‘official purposes and needs’; that requisitioned goods always had to match requirements; and that luxury goods were excluded.⁹⁸ Such orders, however, remained ineffective and unenforced and despite, rather than because of, the efforts of some commanders, looting was common. After the war, the Bavarian army’s Heeres-Friedens Kommission handled the claims of French civilians seeking repayment for requisitioned and looted property. In its investigations, the Commission interviewed several German officers stationed in the coal-mining region. Their responses demonstrate that in occupied France looting occurred for much the same reasons as on the Allied side—large groups of men moving through populated areas with numerous abandoned buildings were difficult to monitor. Ebmaier Coesfeld, the Ortskommandant of Lens between May and September 1916, summarized these problems, noting that ‘although the Kommandantur always tried to maintain order, there were certainly many opportunities for theft or unauthorized requisitions, especially at night’, by troops passing through the town on their way to the Battle of the Somme.⁹⁹ On both sides of the lines, and despite the efforts of some commanders to control indiscipline, the civilian population provided soldiers with a ready source of food, drink, and fuel, to be taken by force if necessary. For many civilians, in turn, the military amounted to little more than a large, undisciplined group of men that posed a significant threat to personal security and private property.

Platonic Relationships Hostility did not, however, characterize all encounters between civilians and soldiers, as some identified with each other and formed meaningful, lasting relationships. In the French army’s zone, many soldiers empathized with the ⁹⁶ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois; Basly, Martyre de Lens, 186–8; Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 28 Mar 1915. ⁹⁷ BHA, Armee Oberkommando 6, Bund 28, A.O.K. 6, Besonderer-Erlass, Dieuze, 9 Sep 1914. ⁹⁸ BHA, 1 B. Inf. Div., 657, order from Oberkommando 6 Armee, 19 Jan 1916. ⁹⁹ BHA, Auflösungsstäbe (WK), Heeresfriedenskommission, 361/0, Aeusserung des Ortskommandanten von Lens aus der Zeit Mai-September 16, 9 Oct 1922.

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plight of the civilians, and saw the German army’s shelling of towns as a reason to continue fighting. One soldier stationed in Reims wrote that ‘the Boches continue to bombard more and more, there is nothing left, there are still some civilians who will surely end up dead, yesterday some were crushed by the shells, it is revolting to see such savagery in the twentieth century’.¹⁰⁰ Others commented on the bravery of civilians remaining under fire, such as one medical officer in Reims who felt it was ‘marvellous to see civilians still walk around the town as if nothing was happening’.¹⁰¹ Another soldier wrote from Nancy that he admired the local civilians who ‘all live under bombs and shells, they all do their duty very simply, in a very French manner, and every day hatred of the Boche grows in their soul. They all have great confidence that we will be victorious and they tolerate the privations of war marvellously. What brave people!’¹⁰² Although Robert Graves felt that ‘troops serving in the Pas-de-Calais loathed the French and found it difficult to sympathize with their misfortunes’, evidence suggests that British and Dominion troops were also deeply affected by the experiences of local civilians.¹⁰³ Many British soldiers stationed in the Pas-deCalais were troubled by the civilian suffering they encountered, and found the sight of civilians in the warzone incongruous. One British medical officer, Captain F. G. Chandler, treated wounded civilians on several occasions, and wrote home that ‘the thing that upsets me most of all is the plight of the civilians and hearing the kiddies crying with fear. It is a strange and awful state of things’.¹⁰⁴ Major Richardson, who was stationed in the coal-mining region in August 1915, wrote home describing the ‘rather pathetic sight’ of ‘a little girl of about 10 years [who] tried during the bombardment to carry two little brothers about four and five respectively across a zone of fire into safety! She was struggling bravely when one of my men saw her and rushed out and caught hold of them and ran with them all into a shell proof cellar’.¹⁰⁵ Sergeant Collins of the London Regiment recorded in his diary how ‘pitiful’ it was to see the women in the coalfields ‘crouch and look terrified when a shell bursts close by’.¹⁰⁶ The sight of civilian suffering did, therefore, impact soldiers. Indeed, Alexander Watson and Patrick Porter have demonstrated that civilian suffering was an important motivational factor for British troops, and contributed to the persistence of ‘sacrificial ideologies’ within the British army.¹⁰⁷ But the inverse was also true and, on both sides of the lines, the sight of soldiers’ suffering provided ¹⁰⁰ SHD, 16 N 1411, Fifth Army postal control, 281 RI, 17 Aug 1917. ¹⁰¹ Ibid., Ambulances I/58-2/66, 10 Sep 1917. ¹⁰² SHD, 16 N 1465, Nancy postal control, 10 Jan 1918. ¹⁰³ Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That, (London, 1960), 140. ¹⁰⁴ IWM, Private Papers of F. G. Chandler, letter dated 17 Dec 1914. ¹⁰⁵ Ibid., Private Papers of S.O.B. Richardson, letter dated 23 Aug 1915. ¹⁰⁶ Ibid., Private Papers of F. E. Collins, diary entry 15 Oct 1915. ¹⁰⁷ Alexander Watson and Patrick Porter, ‘Bereaved and Aggrieved: Combat Motivation and the Ideology of Sacrifice in the First World War’, Historical Research 83, no. 219 (2010), 156.

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civilians with reminders of the battles raging nearby. Wounded soldiers were an inescapable presence, as towns on both sides housed aid-posts, casualty clearing stations, and field hospitals. In Béthune, the Collège Saint-Vaast continued operating as a school even after the 33rd British Casualty Clearing Station partly occupied its buildings. During the Artois offensive of September 1915, ‘the wounded arrived in their thousands before being evacuated to the interior’.¹⁰⁸ One teacher remembered how ‘in the evening, while our students slept in the basement, they heard heart-rending screams and delirious cries’ coming from the ward where the badly wounded were housed.¹⁰⁹ During the same battle, Hélène Carré witnessed similar scenes in German-occupied Liévin. She noted on the morning of 7 October 1915 that ‘soldiers can be seen passing carrying the dead on stretchers, it is dreadful! We saw one carried by in a piece of cloth, like a package’.¹¹⁰ Soldiers and civilians did not inhabit separate worlds at the front, but empathized with each other’s suffering. This formed the basis of strong personal relationships, which, in many cases, allowed both groups to maintain some sense of normality in the face of the disruptions of war. The personal relationships that formed ensured that even at the very heart of the combat zone, the divides between the civilian and the military worlds were bridged. On the Allied side, many soldiers, separated from their families, sought replacements in the civilians they stayed with. In particular, they exhibited paternal attitudes towards local children, sometimes seeing themselves as their protectors. Many had their ‘favourites’, such as Captain Chandler, who described the instinctive reaction he and several comrades had when the children living at the farm next to their dressing station were caught in a bombardment: I and Gillespie made for it: we called to the kiddies to come out but they wouldn’t: then another; then another shell knocked the roof off their barn so we seized the kiddies and made for our farm. We found them all wounded and I thought little Clemence, my favourite, a sweet little darling of 13, had got her leg broken as I carried her. As we were getting along the road a shell came right at us. I jumped into the ditch with Clemence in my arms . . . They were cold, frightened, wounded but very brave. I dressed them all by the ditch side as well as one could.

Continuing in a paternal tone, he chided the children for having ‘got very careless . . . I knew perfectly well [that when the bombardment began] they wouldn’t go into their cellar and they didn’t’.¹¹¹

¹⁰⁸ Gaquère, Sous le feu, 91–2. ¹⁰⁹ Ibid., 240–1. ¹¹⁰ Carré, ‘Cahiers d’occupation’, 24 Sep 1915, 53. ¹¹¹ IWM, Private Papers of Captain F. G. Chandler, letter dated 28 May 1915.

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Most interactions between Allied soldiers and local children were more mundane, but nonetheless allowed British soldiers and local children to establish transient bonds that served as substitutes for the familial relationships the war disrupted. Evidence of this emerges clearly from reports sent to the Académie de Lille by the school teachers of northern France in the post-war years. One teacher in a girls’ school in Béthune reported that ‘the soldiers that were far away from their homes and deprived of familial affection got great satisfaction from the visits of local children’, while numerous reports spoke of how the soldiers spoiled local children, and that the children, in turn, held the soldiers in high regard.¹¹² One teacher in Béthune reported that: The British troops loved the children. They showered treats, sweets and cigarettes on them and included them in their games of football. At Christmas time the soldiers held a collection to organize a small party for the schoolchildren. There was a cinema screening, and toys and clothes were distributed. The children were also very attached to ‘their friends the English’ and gladly followed them on their marches.¹¹³

Such attitudes were not confined to the Allied side, and in German-occupied France fathers separated from their families also sought to care for and spoil local children as a way of maintaining links with the domestic sphere. German propaganda focused heavily on such friendly interactions, and numerous images of soldiers feeding or playing with local French children were published. The Allies countered by claiming that such scenes were staged or coerced.¹¹⁴ However, the Académie de Lille’s post-war enquiry also covered the former occupied communes, and makes clear that German soldiers in the coal-mining region genuinely did exhibit paternal attitudes. Some teachers asserted that despite the advances of the German soldiers, many children maintained appropriate attitudes of patriotic distance. One teacher from Hénin-Liétard claimed, for instance, that: The soldiers repeatedly tried to get to know the children, by offering them cigarettes, bread and soup . . . [but] once the schools opened again, our students adopted the only suitable attitude towards the enemy; they were no longer seen

¹¹² CLC, Académie de Lille, F/Delta/1126/2, Dossier B.124, École Michelet, Dossier B.189, report of Mme. Dehaye, and Dossier B.214, École Pasteur. ¹¹³ Ibid., Dossier B.146, report of Céline Poillon. ¹¹⁴ Emmanuelle Danchin, ‘Destruction du patrimoine et figure du soldat allemand dans les cartes postales de la Grande Guerre’, Amnis: Revue de civilisation contemporaine Europes/Amérique, 10 (2011).

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hanging around the German canteens, or carrying bags or guns. Rather, they maintained a fine gaiety, and a truly French audacity.¹¹⁵

Other reports, however, provided less convincing pictures of children’s’ ‘resistance’. One teacher from Liévin acknowledged the friendly interactions that developed between soldiers and children, and recognized that they resulted from the paternal instincts of Germans separated from their own families: ‘the attitudes of the soldiers towards the children were not, in general, reprehensible. As many of them were fathers themselves, they played with them, and even gave them sweets. As a result of the crowded nature of daily life the children, in turn, approached these enemies familiarly, but always cheekily’. Despite this manifest closeness, he claimed that the children ‘kept their little hearts truly French’ by singing the Marseillaise behind the backs of the Germans.¹¹⁶ Miranda Sachs has identified similar tensions in children’s own accounts of the occupation in their schoolwork. Although most, influenced by parents and school teachers, portrayed themselves as good French citizens, some allowed other emotions through, such as one child who described how some German soldiers invaded houses ‘with smiles on their faces . . . talking about their wives, their children with regret’.¹¹⁷ Other reports, however, provided no mention of any resistance, and were quite open about the mutual fondness between local children and German soldiers. One teacher in Avion wrote that: The German soldiers billeted in our town were quite generous towards our children to whom they gave hard sweets, cakes, chocolate and other treats. A young commander who was only stationed in our town for a few months willingly distributed chocolate to children accompanying adults to the Kommandantur. The children and especially the boys were very attracted to the soldiers.¹¹⁸

It was not only French children who developed cordial relations with German soldiers. Although most adults rankled under the harsh restrictions, some could not help but identify with individual German soldiers. Despite the violence that accompanied the invasion of the coal-mining region in October 1914, Léon Morin, the Director of the Liévin mining company, could still adopt a sympathetic attitude towards some troops. He and several employees were arrested one

¹¹⁵ CLC, Académie de Lille, F/Delta/1126/2, Dossier B.156, report of Mme. Hottin. ¹¹⁶ Ibid., Dossier B.225, report of M. Dagbert. ¹¹⁷ Miranda Sachs, ‘War through the Eyes of the Child: Children Remember the German Occupation of Northern France, 1914–1918’, in France in an Era of Global War, 1914–1945: Occupation, Politics, Empire and Entanglements, ed. Ludivine Broch and Alison Carrol (Basingstoke, 2014), 25. ¹¹⁸ CLC, Académie de Lille, F/Delta/1126/2, Dossier B.226, report of Lucien Legrand.

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evening, and placed under the watch of tired, young soldiers by a supercilious officer. He recorded in his diary that during the night ‘the young sentries . . . were tired, and fell asleep amongst us. Mme. Ansart woke them up every time the sound of footsteps signalled the arrival of an N.C.O. Despite this, sleep took over again several times, even in the presence of the commanders. We laughed’.¹¹⁹ As the invasion gave way to the prolonged period of static warfare, some felt the German soldiers became less aggressive. One school teacher reported after the war that while ‘the Germans seemed hard and cruel at first . . . they mellowed when they had to stay a long time and they did not take long to show they intended to live on good terms with the population’.¹²⁰ Many civilians found it difficult to maintain an attitude of patriotic resistance towards individual soldiers, particularly when they shared living spaces over prolonged periods. In Liévin, Hélène Carré clearly sympathized with the German soldiers billeted in her home. In June 1915, she described them as ‘very peaceful people, and very polite’, and concluded that ‘whatever the French newspapers say, we have never had to complain about a German. For them, as for us, this is all a tragedy, they all say so’.¹²¹ Soldiers and civilians endured similar conditions and, as a result, easily identified with each other’s hardships. Prolonged cohabitation and shared experiences acted against enmity and hatred. The protestant pastor of Liévin pointed out that many of his congregation could not hate or wish for the deaths of the German soldiers. Instead, they could not help but see the ‘man’ behind the ‘German’ with whom they shared their houses: It took a lot of reflection to think, in this context: this is war! So, if this soldier who ate at my table yesterday, who was good to me, who has children like me, does not return, I have to rejoice that he was killed! A certain amount of intellectuality is required to come to this arrogant view: the true people who feel more than they think did not always reach this point. And me, as pastor, should I have refused to understand the attitudes of those who, behind the German, saw the man?¹²²

Indeed, this pastor’s memoir suggests that religion offered a particularly important site of fraternization. It was not only shared experiences that brought soldiers and civilians together but also shared beliefs. This was the case on both sides of the lines. As Patrick Houlihan has demonstrated, German Catholic soldiers were more likely to participate in communal religious life with local French Catholics than with fellow soldiers who were Protestant or Jewish. The result was that

¹¹⁹ ¹²⁰ ¹²¹ ¹²²

Léon Morin, ‘Les Premiers jours d’occupation allemande à Liévin’, Gauheria 87 (2013): 23–5. CLC, Académie de Lille, F/Delta/1126/2, Dossier B.226, report of Lucien Legrand. Carré, ‘Cahiers d’occupation’, 13 Jun 1915, 36. Lemaître, Un An près des champs de bataille, 26.

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despite the military administration, the occupied territories became a ‘shared space of transnational catholic cooperation’.¹²³ On the Allied side, too, religion offered a means of bridging cultural differences between soldiers and civilians. In Noeux-les-Mines, the local Catholic priest was deeply impressed by the religiosity of Irish units stationed in the area, who regularly attended his services alongside local civilians. In late March 1916, over 600 soldiers ‘invaded’ the church for Sunday mass, ensuring there was standing room only.¹²⁴ The relationships soldiers formed with civilians at the front complemented their continued involvement with the civilian worlds they had left behind on the French, British and German home-fronts. In France, as Martha Hanna has demonstrated, soldiers at the front and civilians in the interior did not inhabit separate worlds, and could successfully maintain meaningful, loving relationships across wide spaces. She has argued that although ‘physical separation was the painful reality husbands and wives endured as long as the war lasted’, this did not necessarily ‘entail affective separation or cognitive alienation’.¹²⁵ As Hanna has suggested, soldiers wrote letters so frequently because they allowed them to maintain ‘their civilian identity in the midst of war . . . [and] kept them in contact with the reassuring familiarity of home’.¹²⁶ Soldiers were motivated by a desire to remain part of the civilian world from which they had been separated by war. The relationships which they formed with civilians at the front performed a similar function, and allowed both groups to generate a sense of normality that could act against the war’s overriding sense of abnormality. Through these encounters, soldiers could remain in contact with the civilian sphere, while the civilian communities, without their own adult male populations because of the mobilization, searched for a normal, adult male presence in the occupying armies.

Sex at the Front In a key scene in his best-selling wartime novel Le Feu, Henri Barbusse describes the moment the French soldier Poterloo crosses the German lines and observes his family interacting with German soldiers in his house in Lens: Beside the round table and the lamp there were men’s and women’s heads, lit up in the pinkish light. I looked at them, at Clotilde. I saw her clearly. She was sitting between two men, N.C.O.s I think, who were talking to her. And what was she doing? Nothing . . . She was smiling, she was happy. She seemed contented beside

¹²³ Patrick J. Houlihan, ‘Local Catholicism as Transnational War Experience: Everyday Religious Practice in Occupied Northern France, 1914–1918’, Central European History 45, no. 2 (2012): 241. ¹²⁴ ADA, 6V, histoire locale de la guerre, report on parish of Noeux-les-Mines (St. Martin). ¹²⁵ Hanna, Your Death Would be Mine, 23. ¹²⁶ Ibid., 9.

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these Boche corporals, that lamp and the fire which was giving off the warmth of home. And in the fraction of time when I went by in each direction I managed to see my kid holding out her hands to a fat gent in a braided uniform and trying to climb on his lap . . . So! You only have to go away for a while and you don’t count any more. You leave your home to go off to war and everything seems to be done for; but while you’re thinking that, they’re getting used to you being away and learning to do without you, to be as happy as before and have a laugh.¹²⁷

The scene clearly demonstrates the threatening nature of even the platonic relationships some soldiers and civilians developed, especially on the occupied side. Poterloo’s dismay springs from the fact that his family can almost continue as normal, while his life is wasted in the trenches. Although there is no suggestion of sexual impropriety, the very fact his wife is enjoying the company of German soldiers in the sacred, domestic space is a betrayal. Even more threatening than platonic relationships were, however, the sexual relationships and encounters that regularly occurred between French women and Allied and German soldiers. Female sexuality was a fraught issue in wartime France. In the context of the nation’s falling birth rate and the scale of wartime casualties, public discourse foregrounded the redemptive features of motherhood. France’s strong pronatalist movement helped develop a cult of motherhood and urged women to do their duty by having children and repopulating the nation.¹²⁸ This cult of motherhood was modelled on an acceptable version of bourgeois morality, but the radical suggestions of some commentators, such as polygamy or unwed motherhood, revealed the disruptions that war could bring to conventional notions of sexuality.¹²⁹ Wartime female sexuality was not, however, solely redemptive. Since war allowed men and women to interact in new, untested environments, it provided a context within which female sexuality was both threatened and threatening.¹³⁰ This was particularly the case when women encountered soldiers. On the one hand, women were represented as the quintessential victims of the most outright form of German barbarism—sexual violence. This was especially the case during the invasion when, as Ruth Harris has shown, ‘the actual victimization of women was transformed into a representation of a violated, but innocent, female nation ¹²⁷ Henri Barbusse, Under Fire, trans. Robin Buss (London, 2003), 145–6. ¹²⁸ Marie-Monique Huss, ‘Pronatalism and the Popular Ideology of the Child in Wartime France: The Evidence of the Picture Postcard’, in The Upheaval of War: Family, Work and Welfare in Europe, 1914–1918, ed. Richard Wall and Jay Winter (Cambridge, 1988), 329–68; Margaret H. Darrow, French Women and the First World War: War Stories of the Home Front (Oxford, 2000), 58–64; Susan R. Grayzel, ‘Mothers, Marraines, and Prostitutes: Morale and Morality in First World War France’, The International History Review 19, no. 1 (1997): 75–81. ¹²⁹ Grayzel, ‘Mothers, Marraines, and Prostitutes’, 76. ¹³⁰ Françoise Thébaud, ‘The Great War and the Triumph of Sexual Division’, in A History of Women in the West, vol. 5, Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century, ed. Françoise Thébaud, (London, 1996), 49.

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resisting the assaults of a brutal male assailant.’¹³¹ On the other hand, many commentators felt female sexuality posed a real threat to the health, morale, and morality of the armed forces. These fears arose, in part, from sexual encounters that occurred between local women and soldiers on both sides of the Western Front following the stabilization of the lines. Many women developed consensual, loving relationships with soldiers stationed in their towns, and even during the war marriages were not uncommon.¹³² On the Allied side, Victor Roulland, a military telegraph operator, and Augusta Carpentier, a school teacher, married in Arras in October 1915.¹³³ In total, 109 marriages between French women and British men occurred in the arrondissement of Béthune between 1914 and 1918.¹³⁴ Marriages also happened between French women and German soldiers in occupied France, even though German soldiers had to apply to their commanders for permission.¹³⁵ Indeed, some women returning from occupied France openly admitted to having relationships with the occupiers in their repatriation statements. One woman from Aumenancourt-le-Grand, in the Marne, identified a German N.C.O. as the father of her three-month-old child, and declared she intended to marry him after the war.¹³⁶ The armies stationed at the Western Front and public opinion more generally were, however, more concerned by casual sexual encounters between soldiers and local women. French, British, and German commanders, and civilian authorities, all believed the sexual desires of the troops needed to be fulfilled to maintain morale, but were wary of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (S.T.D.s).¹³⁷ These concerns partly arose from an overarching moralist discourse, explored by Susan Grayzel, who has shown that public commentators, especially in France and Britain, warned that contacts between soldiers and ‘immoral’ women at the front threatened the physical and moral health of the nation.¹³⁸ Responses to these perceived problems varied. Some commentators focused on the soldiers’ moral transgressions, presenting those who returned home with syphilis as threatening

¹³¹ Ruth Harris, ‘The “Child of the Barbarian”: Rape, Race, and Nationalism in France during the First World War’, Past and Present 141 (1993): 170; for similar arguments see Horne, ‘Corps, lieux et nation’, 92–4. ¹³² Kenneth Craig Gibson, ‘Sex and soldiering in France and Flanders: The British Expeditionary Force along the Western Front, 1914–1919’, International History Review 23, no. 3 (2001): 572–7. ¹³³ L’Illustration, 16 Oct 1915. ¹³⁴ ADPdC, 1 Z 225, Marriages between local women and foreign men, arrondissement of Béthune, 1914–1918. ¹³⁵ Nivet, La France occupée, 289–90. ¹³⁶ ADHS, 4 M 518, Report of Léontine C., 1 Aug 1917. For further examples see Nivet, La France occupée, 285–6 and Le Naour, Misères et tourments, 284–5. ¹³⁷ Peter Simkins has estimated that in 1916, 19.24 per cent of all B.E.F. hospital admissions were for sexually transmitted diseases. See Simkins, ‘Soldiers and Civilians’, 185–6. ¹³⁸ Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War, (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999), 122–3.

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the wellbeing of their family, an act tantamount to treason.¹³⁹ But for the most part, military commanders on both sides were more inclined to strictly control female bodies and sexuality in their attempts to prevent S.T.D.s. This was most apparent in approaches to prostitution, which was permitted on both sides of the lines. On the Allied side, after the initial disruption generated by the invasion, the sex-trade flourished. In Paris, it was concentrated around the train stations where soldiers on leave entered and exited the city.¹⁴⁰ Business also expanded in the zone des armées, which welcomed an increased number of sex workers, many of whom moved towards the front from the interior, or were refugees.¹⁴¹ The pre-war regulatory system continued, with prostitutes working either in brothels, or independently as filles soumises. Sex workers were registered and monitored by the local police, assisted by the army, and subject to regular medical examinations.¹⁴² During the war, brothels were open both to soldiers and civilians, until, after much debate, the military opened its own exclusive system of regulated brothels in March 1918.¹⁴³ On the occupied side, the German army also permitted regulated brothels, which it monitored in conjunction with local authorities.¹⁴⁴ Although Brussels was a noted site of sexual activity for the occupiers, as graphically captured by Otto Dix in his Memory of the Halls of Mirrors in Brussels, regulated prostitution was also common closer to the front in France.¹⁴⁵ Regulated prostitution was, however, only part of wider concerns, as the authorities also sought to control other forms of sexual contact between soldiers and local women. As Jean-Yves Le Naour has demonstrated, neither Allied nor German military commanders sought to distinguish unregulated, clandestine prostitution from other types of casual sexual encounters that women had with soldiers. Instead, ‘authorities considered the majority of women who responded to the advances of the soldiers as prostitutes’.¹⁴⁶ Engaging in sexual intercourse with a soldier, whatever the context, rendered a woman suspect and brought her within the military’s regulatory grasp. In January 1916, French high command sought to combat the spread of S.T.D.s in the zone des armées by subjecting women’s sexual activity to strict controls. Bars, cabarets, estaminets, and other establishments where clandestine prostitution was thought to occur were monitored; women not resident in the region before the war were subjected to close surveillance, as were those working for bars and restaurants if they were unrelated to the owners; while units were to keep

¹³⁹ Le Naour, Misères et tourments, 130–5; Michelle K. Rhoades, ‘Renegotiating French Masculinity: Medicine and Venereal Disease during the Great War’, French Historical Studies 29, no. 2 (2006): 293–327. ¹⁴⁰ Gregory, ‘Railway Stations’, 48–50. ¹⁴¹ Le Naour, Misères et tourments, 172–6. ¹⁴² Ibid., 157–60. ¹⁴³ Ibid., 212; Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War, 140–4. ¹⁴⁴ Le Naour, Misères et tourments, 161–2. ¹⁴⁵ Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 240. ¹⁴⁶ Le Naour, Misères et tourments, 175.

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registers of ‘suspect’ women who could be subjected to obligatory medical examinations.¹⁴⁷ Soldiers infected with S.T.D.s were also encouraged to denounce the women they had slept with. These women were then subject to medical examinations or, if they refused, expulsion to the interior.¹⁴⁸ As discussed in Chapter 1, the forced removal of ‘suspect women’ from the zone des armées occurred relatively frequently. Between June 1916 and March 1918, British authorities expelled at least 49 women accused of prostitution from the coal-mining region.¹⁴⁹ Similarly, the French removed 20 women from Pont-à-Mousson in March 1915, accusing them of leading ‘a scandalous life’ and being ‘the cause of serious breaches in discipline’.¹⁵⁰ The German army adopted a similar approach. Charles Bourgeois reported that the local authorities operated a ‘moral hygiene police force’, tasked with monitoring sexual contact between soldiers and local women.¹⁵¹ As on the Allied side, infected German soldiers could denounce women with whom they had slept. These women were then subject to compulsory medical examinations and, if infected, deported to Germany. Bourgeois estimated that during the occupation several hundred may have been removed from Lens and Liévin in this way, and that many were wrongly and deliberately denounced after they resisted German soldiers’ advances.¹⁵² Again, women working in entertainment venues were particularly suspect, and in 1915 female bar workers in Lens who were not related to the owners were called for compulsory medical screenings.¹⁵³ Among the most controversial aspects of the occupation were the German attempts to screen large sections of the female population for S.T.D.s. They had limited success, partly because of local protests. In Lens, German authorities once attempted to screen the entire adult population, male and female, but following the protests of the municipality, they agreed that only 300 of those deemed ‘suspect’ would be screened. A list was promptly delivered by the municipality.¹⁵⁴ At the time, many civilians felt the German army’s actions were a deliberate assault on French femininity, and an attempt to humiliate a defeated enemy. Charles Bourgeois claimed, for instance, that the inhabitants of Lens greatly resented the implication that ‘we were a race of degenerates, and that we were affected by shameful diseases’.¹⁵⁵ Some historians of the occupation, including Georges Gromaire, have repeated this assertion, but Jean-Yves Le Naour has shown this was not the German army’s intention. Instead, they were motivated by the same ¹⁴⁷ SHD, 19 N 874, ‘Note relative à la prophylaxie . . . ’, 15 Jan 1916. ¹⁴⁸ Le Naour, Misères et tourments, 141–2. ¹⁴⁹ SHD, 17 N 442, evacuation reports. ¹⁵⁰ SHD, 16 N 2517, French First Army to Direction de l’Arrière, 1 Mar 1915. ¹⁵¹ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ¹⁵² Ibid. See also ADPdC, 11 R 857, report on occupation of Billy-Montigny, 17 Dec 1915. ¹⁵³ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ¹⁵⁴ Ibid. A similar compromise occurred in Hénin-Liétard. See ADHS, 4 M 518, report on HéninLiètard, 22 Sep 1917. ¹⁵⁵ ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois.

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‘biological fears’ present on the Allied side. Allied and German commanders shared a common aim of avoiding ‘the reduction of troop-strength through erosion from syphilis in the short term, and the weakening of the race . . . in the future’.¹⁵⁶ On both sides of the lines, therefore, female sexuality was rendered suspect, and interactions between soldiers and local women were strictly policed. Women in occupied France were, however, subject to further pressures not felt by their counterparts on the Allied side. Social conventions in occupied France demanded that civilians distance themselves from the occupiers as much as possible. And sexual contacts were among the most radical infringements of these conventions. The memoir of Emilienne Moreau present an image of the ideal comportment expected of French women towards German soldiers. Moreau was a teenager living in occupied Loos-en-Gohelle, a village retaken by British forces in September 1915, amid bloody street fighting, while much of its civilian population remained in place. Moreau came to public attention for her actions during the battle, including caring for wounded soldiers and leading an attack on a German position that was firing on her improvised aid post, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Her co-authored memoir were published in Le Petit Parisien between December 1915 and January 1916, and focused not only on her actions during the battle but also her preceding experiences of occupation.¹⁵⁷ Her encounters with German soldiers presented a comforting view of French feminine virtue, as she remained impervious to their brutal advances. According to Moreau, the women of the town were ‘constantly exposed to the cruelty’ of the Germans, who regularly made advances on them. Once, in the middle of town a German soldier tried to hug her with ‘his two big paws . . . I instinctively responded with a hard slap’. This soldier was chastised by a passing officer, but Moreau warned the reader not to assume ‘this officer had chivalrously come to my defence’. He also made advances on her, and she only escaped him by running away. Later, she was propositioned again when another soldier entered her house to requisition sheets. She described how she ‘could hardly hide my anger . . . He left, but his eyes looked menacing and threatening, and I could not stop myself from shivering. This wretch was going to look for revenge’. Her resistance resulted in her temporary arrest.¹⁵⁸ The fact that many women did not conform to the ideal of feminine virtue epitomized by Emilienne Moreau was a cause of much tension within the occupied communities. Intimate contact with German soldiers was seen as indicative of a lack of patriotism and rendered women living under occupation doubly suspect. The figure of the ‘mauvaise française’, or the willing companion of

¹⁵⁶ Le Naour, Misères et tourments, 145. ¹⁵⁷ For a discussion of how Moreau’s memoirs reassert traditional conceptions of femininity see Darrow, French Women and the First World War, 106–13. ¹⁵⁸ Le Petit Parisien, 15 Dec 1915.

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German soldiers, was widely criticized during the war.¹⁵⁹ Denunciations of women accused of having been the companions of German soldiers were common, especially in repatriation reports, leading Philippe Nivet to argue that denunciation was an ‘obsessional theme’ in the interrogations of the rapatriés.¹⁶⁰ The rapatriés signalled many cases of direct sexual contacts between French women and German soldiers. But they also identified more loosely defined acts of ‘debauchery’ or ‘intimacy’, ranging from drinking, to dancing or playing music publicly with German soldiers. The fact that these activities contained the potential for sexual contact ensured they, too, were seen as indicative of moral-patriotic failings. When one woman repatriated from same town as Emilienne Moreau, Loos-en-Gohelle, appeared before the Conseil de Guerre of Boulogne-sur-Mer, charged with pillaging houses during the battle to retake the town in September 1915, the prosecutor also claimed that during the occupation she and two other women had invited German soldiers into their house and had parties with them, and danced to piano music. Although there was no evidence of sexual contact, the fact that they had danced openly with Germans was enough, and the prosecutor regretted only being able to bring charges of pillage, ‘and not against the debauchery of these miserable women’.¹⁶¹ James E. Connolly has argued it may be impossible to tell whether the scale of denunciations accurately reflects the scale of sexual encounters between German soldiers and French women. The ‘only verifiable fact’ is the obsession with denunciation.¹⁶² This obsession had a significant impact on those living under German occupation. The French state treated many women who had been denounced punitively upon their return to unoccupied France, subjecting them to increased surveillance, or sending them to the same internment camps as those expelled from the front on the Allied side.¹⁶³ The Allies also used the denunciations to compile lists of ‘suspects’. These were used by units advancing into reconquered territory, particularly in spring 1917 and late 1918 to perform a ‘triage’. They were to identify ‘dubious, suspect and undesirable elements’ and, if necessary, forcibly evacuate them to the interior.¹⁶⁴ Individuals, therefore, suffered greatly from denunciations. Yet the impact of denunciations was also collective, with mutual recrimination dividing communities. In November 1917, the Lens municipal council met in exile in Paris, and issued a protest against the collection of denunciations by the authorities. Émile Basly felt this was having severe negative effects, as ‘very honourable people’ were being targeted. Often, he claimed, ‘the person naming names is looking for revenge or acting on superficial reasons, and often has things on their own

¹⁵⁹ ¹⁶⁰ ¹⁶² ¹⁶⁴

Le Naour, Misères et tourmentes, 276–300; Connolly, The Experience of Occupation, 37–66. Nivet, La France occupée, 279. ¹⁶¹ Le Petit Béthunois, 18 Jun 1916. Connolly, The Experience of Occupation, 38. ¹⁶³ Le Naour, Misères et tourmentes, 292–3. SHD, 16 N 1661, Instructions on organization of reconquered territory, 10 Apr 1917.

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conscience’.¹⁶⁵ Sexual encounters with German soldiers, either real or imagined, played a central role in the wartime experiences of the occupied communities and ensured that, after repatriation, the threat of denunciation was a dominant concern. The full effects of such widespread denunciations would not, however, be felt until after the war, when civilians moved home and began rebuilding their communities.

Conclusion Isabel Hull has described the German army’s occupation policies during the First World War as constituting a ‘quest for perfect security’, which quickened its ‘pervasive interest in demonstrating authority’.¹⁶⁶ Other historians, notably Annette Becker, have suggested Germany’s occupation of France was a deliberate attempt to wage war against a defeated enemy population, and that the restrictions were part of a broader ‘regime of terror’.¹⁶⁷ Becker has claimed, for instance, that ‘the occupied endured a domestic siege, an invasion of personal space, in which military terror and administrative terror alternated to maintain subjection . . . [and] a state of shock’.¹⁶⁸ There is little doubt that some who lived through the German occupation shared this assessment—after his neighbour’s house was searched with no advanced warning, for instance, Léon Tacquet wrote in his diary that Lens was living ‘under a regime of terror’.¹⁶⁹ Such arguments, however, assume a degree of exceptionality, and suggest that the German army’s willingness to subjugate civilian populations to military control was a defining and distinguishing feature of how the German Empire conducted itself during the war. In fact, the German army’s distinctiveness in this regard may not have been absolute. As we have seen, the desire for total military control was not the exclusive preserve of the German army, and the British and French Armies also sought to tightly regulate the lives of civilians living in their areas of operation. Despite important differences between the scale and nature of the German occupation and the ‘friendly’ occupation on the Allied side, the situations are comparable. On both sides of the Western Front, the armies significantly curtailed civilian freedoms, and military considerations determined the rhythms of civilian life. Civilians at the front were expected to live according to the dictates of military administrations, but their encounters with military life also extended beyond these impersonal forces. In the towns at the front, civilians interacted on a personal level with soldiers from France and further afield. The military invaded public, as well

¹⁶⁵ Le Petit Béthunois, 25 Nov 1917. ¹⁶⁶ Hull, Absolute Destruction, 249. ¹⁶⁷ Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 12, 254 and Nivet, La France occupée, 364. ¹⁶⁸ Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 12–13. ¹⁶⁹ Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 2 Mar 1915.

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as private and personal spaces. On the street and in shops, cafés, brothels, and billets, soldiers and civilians came into ever closer, intimate contact. The relationships that civilians developed with these soldiers helped define the local wartime community, but were not without their complexities. Civilians, mainly women, encountered soldiers, exclusively men, in new and untested social situations, while in the occupied regions French citizens encountered the German enemy. Socially constructed norms and expectations of morality and patriotism determined how civilians should conduct themselves in such situations. When the realities of daily life resulted in these expectations being broken, tensions inevitably arose. Civilians’ responses to the imposition of military discipline and the presence of individual soldiers in their towns were highly variable, and ranged from acceptance, to indifference, and outright hostility. There were few simple responses and no clear patterns of civil–military relations. On the Allied side, many welcomed the armies but, for others, prolonged contact with friendly troops was a burden. On the occupied side, many civilians conformed to official expectations, and adopted a moral-patriotic attitude of resistance. Others, however, could not fail to sympathize with the human behind the enemy. Attitudes differed from time to time, and from location to location. What is clear, however, is that civilians and soldiers did not exist in mutually incomprehensible worlds. The gaps between both groups were easily bridged, and the result was that civil–military encounters further contributed to the extensive processes of militarization shaping urban life at the front explored so far in this book. The occupation regimes and the presence of soldiers structured the daily lives of civilians at the front and, alongside the experience of intense artillery bombardment, served to further distinguish them from their counterparts in the interior. But beyond altering civilian identities, proximity to the Western Front also profoundly impacted material conditions of life within the front-line towns, posing particular threats to the local economy and food supplies, and straining social relations. It is to these issues that this book now turns.

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4 The Social Impacts of Militarization Work, Wages, and Welfare at the Front

Between 1914 and 1918, wartime industrial mobilization radically altered the structures of economies, labour markets, and social policies in all belligerent societies. Thierry Bonzon has described the changes that occurred in Paris, London, and Berlin as an ‘unprecedented social and occupational reordering of production’.¹ In France, the labour market was significantly restructured, as workers moved into war-related industries, such as munitions and clothing. The use of immigrant labour and mobilized male workers in war industries, feminization, dilution, and deskilling all changed the composition of the labour force.² This caused large population movements, as workers travelled around France to fulfil local demands for labour, although many had little say over where they ended up.³ There were also important changes in production techniques and working conditions in many industries, as working days became longer and employers experimented with Taylorism and scientific-management.⁴ Patrick Fridenson has described how these processes transformed ‘the power of the state and perceptions of its appropriate role in French society’.⁵ State and public intervention in the economy expanded greatly, resulting in what Fabienne Bock has called the wartime ‘exuberance of the state’.⁶ Key industries, especially munitions and coal-mining, experienced significantly increased state regulation and intervention. State agencies and commissions oversaw the restructuring of the labour market and changes in working conditions, interacting with employers and labour representatives in novel ways.⁷ Such developments were far-reaching, and ¹ Thierry Bonzon, ‘The Labour Market and Industrial Mobilisation, 1915–1917’, in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, vol. 1, 164. ² Jean-Louis Robert, ‘Women and Work in France during the First World War’, in Wall and Winter, The Upheaval of War, 251–8; John Horne, ‘ “L’Impôt du Sang”: Republican Rhetoric and Industrial Warfare in France, 1914–1918’, Social History 14, no. 2 (1989): 201–23. ³ Patrick Fridenson, ‘The Impact of the First World War on French Workers’, in Wall and Winter, The Upheaval of War, 236. ⁴ John Horne, Labour at War: France and Britain 1914–1918 (Oxford, 1991), 117–20. ⁵ Fridenson, ‘The Impact of the First World War’, 236. See also Pierre Purseigle, ‘The First World War and the Transformations of the State’, International Affairs 90, no. 2 (2014): 249–64. ⁶ Fabienne Bock, ‘L’Exubérance de l’état en France de 1914 à 1918’, Vingtième siècle: revue d’histoire 3 (1984): 41–51. ⁷ John Horne, ‘A Parliamentary State at War: France 1914–1918’, in Parliament and Community: Papers Read before the Irish Conference of Historians, ed. A. Cosgrove and J. I. McGuire (Belfast, 1983), 224–30. Communities under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918. Alex Dowdall, Oxford University Press (2020). © Alex Dowdall. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198856115.001.0001

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prompted the French labour movement to increasingly adopt reformist rather than revolutionary tactics.⁸ The wartime industrial mobilization significantly modified the composition of the labour force and life in the workplace. But at the same time, material conditions of life were adversely affected and wartime price inflation put pressure on incomes. This, again, prompted state action, from its negotiations of collective wage agreements between employers and unions in war industries, to the expansion of welfare and social transfer payments.⁹ The effectiveness of such measures varied, and incomes lagged behind inflation, with the partial exception of certain sectors such as women munitions workers.¹⁰ Nevertheless, state involvement in wage setting and expanded social transfer payments were significant developments that prefigured the creation of the French welfare state.¹¹ These national patterns of industrial mobilization, state intervention in the economy, labour relations, and social welfare provision also applied to the front, at least on the Allied side. But economic life within the front-line towns was further shaped by proximity to the fighting and military occupation. This chapter explores the continuation, disruption, and transformation of economic activity at the front, as well as the consequences and meanings of this activity for the communities under fire. On both sides of the lines work, wages, and social transfer payments were vital for the survival of civilian communities. But work was always an activity that carried value beyond remuneration. In wartime, work and the economy gained added layers of meaning in all belligerent societies, and provided arenas within which civilian communities could define their relationships with national communities, and measure the extent of their support for national war efforts. This was especially the case for civilians at the Western Front, who lived and worked under fire. We have already seen how, on the Allied side, experiences of bombardment allowed civilians at the front to claim a privileged position within a national hierarchy of suffering. Similarly, they could use their work to further validate their particular contribution to the national war effort. For their counterparts on the occupied side, however, work—for the Germans and against the French—was a further source of tension. Although necessary for survival, and sometimes coerced by the Germans, work always raised the prospect of collaboration. On both sides of the lines, wartime changes to work and welfare practices further reveal the social impacts of the militarization of urban life at the Western Front. ⁸ On wartime labour reformism see Horne, Labour at War, passim. ⁹ Ibid., 73–5; Thierry Bonzon, ‘Transfer Payments and Social Policy’, in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, vol. 1. ¹⁰ Jonathan Manning, ‘Wages and Purchasing Power’, in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, vol. 1, 277; Fridenon, ‘The Impact of the First World War’, 240. ¹¹ Paul V. Dutton, Origins of the French Welfare State: The Struggle for Social Reform in France, 1914–1947, (Cambridge, 2002); Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge, 1993); Timothy B. Smith, Creating the Welfare State in France, 1880–1940, (London, 2003).

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Work, Wages, and Welfare on the Allied Side War brought major changes to economic life at the Western Front, although patterns of activity differed considerably in each of the four case studies examined. In Arras, proximity to the fighting crippled the local economy, which was already declining prior to the war. Although the town housed some textile firms, extensive bombardment meant that during the war they received no major army contracts.¹² Some who remained in the town were employed by the municipality, as firemen, policemen, labourers, and administrators, although the numbers involved were far fewer than in the pre-war years.¹³ Others worked in shops and cafés that catered to Allied soldiers, although even with this captive market, trade did not necessarily flourish. A British chaplain stationed in Arras in summer 1916 felt the remaining shops were ‘broken-down places of business’ that only opened for an hour each evening.¹⁴ Reims fared marginally better. Here, three main industries—textiles, food, and wine—accounted for the majority of the town’s pre-war workforce, with over 4,000 employed in the Champagne industry.¹⁵ War significantly disrupted this relatively undiversified local economy. Bombardment made working conditions precarious, transport problems caused raw materials shortages, and the departure of civilians for the interior eroded the labour force. Many businesses closed, and a December 1916 survey found only 48 still operating. These included the two newspapers; four breweries; three grocery stores; a small number of construction firms; textile and clothing firms; transport businesses; and laundries. At this point, the 19 Champagne companies that still operated accounted for most economic activity.¹⁶ Although production was disrupted, and transport problems interrupted distribution, these companies’ deep cellars protected existing stocks from bombardment, and between 1914 and 1918, 20 million bottles were exported from the town.¹⁷ When the last remaining civilians left Reims in February 1918, there were still 40 million bottles stored underground.¹⁸ Somewhat surprisingly, given the extent of the shelling, at least four manufacturers also secured government contracts. At the start of 1916, the Atelier de confections Guillon employed 80 in its workshop, with a further 300 women working from home, making trousers for the army. Two further workshops made army shirts and tents, while another employed six people producing metal grills to protect against grenade

¹² ADPdC, 11 R 1086, ‘Usines et établissements travaillant pour la guerre’, 22 Nov 1916. ¹³ ADM, 151 W 92, mayor Arras to mayor Reims, 25 Feb 1918. ¹⁴ IWM, Private Papers of Rev J.B. Marshal. ¹⁵ Jules Matot, Reims et la Marne: almanach de la guerre (Reims, 1916), 478. ¹⁶ ADM, 203 M 7, ‘Situation des établissements industriels’, 5 Dec 1916. ¹⁷ This was nevertheless significantly below the 35 million bottles produced in 1913. See Chatelle, Reims, 127–29. ¹⁸ SHD, 16 N 1661, letter from Bertrand de Mun to prefect Marne, 5 Jan 1918.

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explosions.¹⁹ Beyond such commercial and industrial activity, the municipality remained a significant employer. In March 1918, it had almost 120 staff, including 45 police officers.²⁰ These activities never amounted to more than a shadow of the town’s pre-war economy, however, and unemployment persisted throughout the war. As of April 1916, over 35 per cent of the town’s remaining 21,700 people received municipal unemployment benefits. When the number of families receiving military separation allowances is included, almost 60 per cent of the town’s population depended on some form of income assistance.²¹ By December 1916, there were still 1,977 men and 2,148 women out of work, in an adult population of 14–15,000.²² The unemployment problem was only ‘solved’ by the large-scale evacuations of April 1917. After this, the municipality abolished its unemployment scheme, and only 5,500 people working in accepted occupations, mainly in the Champagne industry and for the municipality, could remain.²³ The effects of war on Nancy’s local economy were also negative, if to a lesser degree than Arras and Reims. Although not bombarded as intensely or regularly as the other case studies, local industry still suffered from proximity to the front. Pre-war, Nancy was an important textile, engineering, and manufacturing centre, while iron-ore mining and steel production dominated its hinterland, in the industrial suburbs of Maxéville, Jarville, Frouard, Pompey, and NeuvesMaisons.²⁴ For Nancy, like most urban centres, the mobilization brought largescale unemployment, especially in heavy industry, which suffered from the loss of skilled workers.²⁵ Blast-furnaces were forced to close, engineering firms struggled to find orders, and by mid-August 1914 the municipality instituted short-term relief measures by hiring the unemployed for municipal works.²⁶ But as war continued and the national industrial mobilization took off, Nancy was left behind. In October 1915, representatives from the Nancy Chamber of Commerce summarized the town’s problems for the Parliamentary Budget Commission— government contracts were hard to come by; manpower was in short supply as workers transferred to the interior; transport difficulties prevented deliveries of ¹⁹ ADM, 203 M 213, ‘Liste des usines, établissements et ateliers travaillant pour l’armée’, Jan 1916. ²⁰ AMR, 238 W 9, ‘Personnel municipal’. ²¹ Like the allocation militaire, municipal unemployment benefit was a family payment, and so includes children and dependents. See ADM, 48 M ter 253, Reims census 3 Apr 1916. ²² ADM, 196 M 9, report from prefect Marne to labour ministry, 14 Dec 1916. ²³ ADM, 189 M 14, mayor Reims to sub-prefect Reims, 10 Nov 1917. ²⁴ Jean-François Eck and Pascal Raggi, ‘Une première expérience d’occupation allemande des mines françaises: Les charbonnages du Nord et les mines de fer de Lorraine pendant la Grande Guerre’, Entreprises et Histoire, 62 (2011): 66–94; Roger Pinot, Comité des forges de France au service de la nation (août 1914 – novembre 1918) (Paris, 1919), 27–9. ²⁵ Arthur Fontaine, L’Industrie française pendant la guerre (Paris, 1926), 49–51; Pinot, Comité des forges, 75–6. ²⁶ ADMM, 10 M 50, mayor Nancy to prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle, 11 Aug 1914.

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raw materials; while the army’s restrictions on movement made it difficult for commuters to make it to work.²⁷ From January 1916, these problems were compounded by bombardment, which forced many businesses to close.²⁸ As of May 1916, the blast-furnaces at Frouard, Jarville, and Maxéville were still not operational, while in January 1917, only eight companies in Nancy, and six in its industrial suburbs, were working on government contracts.²⁹ In Nancy, the core industries of metallurgy and engineering, on the one hand, and textiles, on the other, voiced similar complaints regarding industrial slowdown, but the impacts on their respective workforces were markedly different. Unemployed workers from Nancy in male-dominated industries like iron mining, steel manufacture and engineering were displaced, and sent to war factories elsewhere in the region, in Paris, or the French interior.³⁰ By mid-December 1915, male unemployment was more or less eradicated with only 63 registered unemployed men in Nancy, 34 of whom were over 60.³¹ The situation in the female-dominated clothing and textile trades was quite different. In December 1915, there were 1,271 women registered as unemployed in Nancy, with a further 600 unemployed female refugees. Female unemployment hovered around this level until mid-1916, when the town council established several workshops where registered unemployed women made sandbags and clothing for military contracts.³² This alleviated the situation somewhat, but unemployment lingered until February 1918, when those judged not to be of vital importance to the local economy were evacuated to the interior.³³ Despite the efforts of local employers and officials, the front made economic activity in Arras, Reims, and Nancy precarious in every sense, and all three towns remained marginal to the national economic mobilization. The situation in the Pas-de-Calais coalfields was quite different in view of the nation’s critical supply shortages. In 1913, the coalfield of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais was one of France’s primary industrial centres, extracting 27.4 million tonnes of coal, or 68 per cent of national production.³⁴ The mines under German occupation had produced 18.6 million tonnes in 1913, so only one third of the region’s productive capacity,

²⁷ ADMM, 9 M 24, ‘Chambre de commerce de Nancy – réunion tenue à l’occasion de la visite de M. Marin’, 7 Oct 1915. ²⁸ AMN, 1 D 436, municipal council deliberations, 18 Jan 1916. ²⁹ ADMM, 9 M 24, divisional inspector to prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle, 29 May 1916 and 8 R 177, ‘Liste des principaux établissements travaillant pour la Défense Nationale’, 9 Jan 1917. ³⁰ ADMM, 9 M 24, ‘Chambre de commerce de Nancy—réunion tenue à l’occasion de la visite de M. Marin’, 7 Oct 1915. ³¹ ADMM, 10 M 50, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to labour ministry, 27 Dec 1915. ³² 10 M 50, ‘Ville de Nancy: état récapitulatif des chômeurs’, Apr 1916. ³³ SHD, 16 N 1661, commander Eighth Army to commander Groupe des Armées de l’Est, 22 Jan 1918 and report from prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to commander Eighth Army on evacuations, 31 Jan 1918. ³⁴ Ministère du travail et de la prévoyance sociale, Statistique générale de la France: annuaire statistique, 1914–1915 (Paris, 1917), 184.

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which accounted for 22 per cent of national production, remained in French hands following the stabilization of the front.³⁵ This meant increased coal imports, particularly from Britain.³⁶ But national requirements, and the high cost of British imports, placed a premium on production in the unoccupied Pas-de-Calais, however precarious the circumstances. By June 1915, production had recovered to 84 per cent of pre-war levels, while three concessions—Bruay, Ferfay, and Vendin—had already surpassed 1913 levels.³⁷ By October 1917, average monthly production for the eight unoccupied concessions was 50 per cent higher than 1913, and 90 per cent higher when Béthune—the concession closest to the front and subject to the most consistent bombardment—was excluded. By contrast, average extraction in the coal mines in the French interior had increased only 45 per cent on 1913. The Pas-de-Calais’ overall contribution to wartime coal supplies was considerable. In 1917, France used and consumed 46.288 million tonnes of coal. Of this, 37.5 per cent came from the coal mines in the French interior, 37.5 per cent from British imports, while the unoccupied Pas-de-Calais produced 25 per cent.³⁸ Miners under fire ensured prodigious levels of production, and supplied the nation with one quarter of its coal. Significant changes in working conditions, paralleling wider developments in the wartime economy, accompanied increased production. The working day had been set at eight hours, plus 30 minutes’ break, by the government in 1913, but in March 1915 this was extended to 9.5 hours.³⁹ Certain companies came to arrangements with their staff to exceed this limit at times of particular demand, while in the concessions closest to the front, frequent bombardments sometimes shortened the working day, or necessitated increased night work.⁴⁰ The size and structure of the labour force also changed. Coal mining was a strategic industry and, like railways and the postal service, not all workers were mobilized. Nevertheless, the mines lost approximately 30 per cent of their workforce in August 1914, while the exodus that accompanied the invasion resulted in further disruptions and staff losses. After the situation stabilized in November, production resumed and the workforce increased. By October 1917, the total workforce in the unoccupied Pas-de-Calais coal mines numbered 59,890, with some companies employing significantly more staff than in pre-war years.⁴¹ The

³⁵ Pierre Boulin, L’Organisation du travail dans la région envahie de la France pendant l’occupation (Paris, 1927), xvi. ³⁶ Horne, Labour at War, 94. ³⁷ ANMT, Mines de Bruay, 1994 050 0094, ‘L’effort des mines du Pas-de-Calais non envahi de 1914 à 1919’, 4–12. ³⁸ Total wartime consumption of coal did, however, decrease considerably. In 1913 France had consumed 64,758 million tonnes. See Fontaine, L’Industrie française, 194–5. ³⁹ Maurice Blazy, La Compagnie des Mines de Bruay et la Première Guerre Mondiale, 1910–1925: Contribution à l’histoire du bassin houiller du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais (Arras, 1978), 126. ⁴⁰ ANMT, Mines de Béthune, 1994 026 424, undated report on working hours. ⁴¹ ANMT, Mines de Bruay, 1994 050 0094, ‘L’effort des mines du Pas-de-Calais’, 3–16.

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exception was the Béthune concession, located closest to the front, which in 1917 employed just 38 per cent of its pre-war workforce.⁴² The composition of this enlarged workforce did not match other wartime industries, with women and immigrant workers, who played important roles in munitions, notably absent.⁴³ In April 1917, the Noeux company employed 10,326, including pit workers and surface support staff, but only 276 foreigners and 409 women.⁴⁴ This can be attributed to the highly skilled nature of coal mining, where there were few opportunities for dilution by unskilled female and immigrant labour. By and large, attempts to introduce foreign labour to the coal mines failed. In July 1917, a group of 45 North Africans were sent to work as surface labourers in Noeux. They encountered hostility from the local population, who, the subprefect reported, ‘take a dim view of the arrival of comrades from outside the region’. Two were killed during a bombardment, and the rest refused to work under such conditions.⁴⁵ Unable to rely on unskilled labour, the coal mines looked elsewhere. Nonmobilized refugee miners, who fled the occupied regions between August and October 1914, composed an important part of the workforce—over 3,000 refugees above the age of military service were employed by the Noeux company in April 1917.⁴⁶ The most important component of the workforce was, however, mobilized miners sent back from the army to work in the mines but kept under military discipline, known as sursis d’appel. These workers, present in most war industries, were a distinctive feature of the French industrial mobilization, and the proportion sent to the coal mines increased as the war progressed.⁴⁷ Approximately 30,000 miners were given sursis d’appel in 1914, but by August 1917 they numbered 100,000 nationally.⁴⁸ In certain companies in the Pas-de-Calais, mobilized labour constituted the most important component of the workforce—62 per cent in the case of Noeux in February 1917.⁴⁹ Sursitaires constituted one of the most direct forms of state intervention in the economy, and production in the unoccupied Pas-de-Calais coal fields thus remained high largely because the state provided the companies with a labour force. ⁴² ANMT, Mines de Béthune, 1994 026 602, Béthune company workforce figures. ⁴³ Of a total national munitions workforce of almost 1.7 million in July 1917, 36 per cent were mobilized workers, 30 per cent civilian males, 24 per cent female, and 10 per cent foreign. See Horne, Labour at War, 74. ⁴⁴ ANMT, Mines de Noeux, 1994 051 659, response to commission des mines questionnaire. ⁴⁵ ADPdC, M 7860, sub-prefect Béthune to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 6 Jul 1917. Hostility towards foreign labour was common in French coal mines pre-1914. See Rolande Trempé, Les Mineurs de Carmaux (Paris, 1971), 156–60. ⁴⁶ ANMT, Mines de Noeux, 1994 051 659, response to commission des mines questionnaire. ⁴⁷ Gerd Hardach, ‘Industrial Mobilization in 1914–1918: Production, Planning and Ideology’, in Fridenson, The French Home Front, 73–4. ⁴⁸ SHD, 7 N 495, ‘Note au sujet des mineurs’. ⁴⁹ ANMT, Mines de Noeux, 1994 051 659, Report on employment levels, Feb 1917. At the same time mobilized labour accounted for 60 per cent of the national coal-mining workforce. See Fontaine, L’Industrie française, 197.

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Two contrasting dynamics, therefore, shaped the local economies of the towns on the Allied side. Sectors that were not essential to the national war effort suffered, and unemployment became a major issue, particularly in Reims and Arras, where the local economy all but collapsed. Yet in the Pas-de-Calais coalfield, proximity to the front was not allowed to stand in the way of continued production, and the state diverted resources to the area to ensure it remained a significant contributor to the nation’s coal supply. But in all cases, wartime conditions profoundly restructured local economies, and changes to employment levels seriously impacted living conditions. As we shall see in more detail in Chapter 5, wartime price inflation was a significant problem, with one estimate of price rises for 13 foodstuffs registering an average increase between August 1914 and February 1918 of 109 per cent in northern France, and 102 per cent in the east.⁵⁰ This context ensured wages and, in their absence, social transfer payments were vital for the survival of the communities under fire. Employers, the state, and local authorities were obliged to respond to the increased material pressures felt by both the employed and the unemployed. Details of wage patterns are patchy and vary by sector. Little is known, for instance, about wages in the Reims Champagne industry. The picture is clearer for municipal employees, some of whom received cost of living supplements. Those in Reims fared relatively well. In September 1915, the town council granted all municipal employees a 5 franc monthly supplement per dependent, while those earning less than 2,000 francs per year received an additional 10 francs per month, which was increased to 5 francs per day in August 1918, after the council’s move to Paris.⁵¹ This compared well with similar supplements given to Parisian civil servants—Ministry of Justice employees received supplements worth 5.26 francs per day in 1918, although this still translated into a drop in real income of between 5 per cent and 34 per cent for those earning up to 4,500 francs before the war.⁵² Municipal employees in Reims earning above 5,000 francs a year did not, however, receive any cost of living bonuses and experienced significantly higher contractions in their real incomes—again in line with national patterns.⁵³ Their counterparts in Nancy received considerably smaller supplements—those earning below 4,300 francs received only 180 francs per annum, plus 5 francs per dependent child per month, and only from July 1917.⁵⁴ We know more about wage patterns in heavy industry around Nancy, and in the Pas-de-Calais coal mines. Those working on government contracts in metals and munitions earned similar wages to elsewhere in France. Wages rose slowly ⁵⁰ Lucien March, Mouvement des prix et des salaires pendant la guerre (Paris, 1925), 229. ⁵¹ AMR, 1 D 65, municipal council deliberations, 30 Sep 1915; AMR, 6 S 5, municipal council deliberations, 23 Aug 1918. ⁵² Jon Lawrence, ‘Material Pressures on the Middle Classes, 1914–1918’, in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, vol. 1, 240. ⁵³ Ibid., 238. ⁵⁴ Vogt, Nancy pendant la guerre, 59–60.

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early in the war; but from early 1917, the state sponsored a system of negotiated wage settlements in response to demands for larger increases. The result was that pay rates in war industries across the country were more or less standardized.⁵⁵ Piece rates, overtime, and bonuses make calculating precise earnings in these industries difficult, but Arthur Fontaine estimated that outside Paris, by late 1918 average male metal workers’ wages had increased 128 per cent over prewar rates, while female metal workers’ wages had increased 193 per cent.⁵⁶ In the iron-ore mines around Nancy, wages of above-ground labourers had increased 130 per cent over pre-war levels by October 1918.⁵⁷ The coal mines also registered increases, as the government brokered collective wage-supplement agreements between employers and unions and instituted family allowances for miners.⁵⁸ These gains were not evenly spread, however, and the lowest paid workers in the pre-war years—surface support and factory workers—received larger increases than the higher paid miners and pit workers: 155 per cent as opposed to 76 per cent by October 1918.⁵⁹ In absolute terms, wages in the coal mines of the Pas-deCalais remained higher than in the other mining regions, as had been the case prewar. The gains registered elsewhere were higher, and wartime demand did even wages up, but without absorbing the difference entirely. In the Puy-de-Dôme and the Allier, for instance, miners earning 4.64 francs per day in 1914 were earning 12.10 francs by 1918, a 160 per cent increase, compared with a 76 per cent increase to 14.84 francs in the Pas-de-Calais.⁶⁰ While wage increases and cost of living supplements gained by those in employment went some way towards alleviating the pressure of price inflation, it is unlikely that many experienced increases in real incomes. If, as indicated earlier, average inflation on a set of consumables ran to between 102 per cent and 109 per cent, then only low-paid manual workers, such as surface workers in the coal mines, could keep abreast. Others, especially miners, may have felt a perceptible dip in real incomes, even if they could still benefit from the strongly developed tradition of industrial paternalism practised by the mining companies, in the form of cooperative stores, discount housing, and free coal.⁶¹ The large numbers of unemployed, particularly in Reims and Nancy, were of course in a much worse position than those who kept their jobs. In 1914, France’s ⁵⁵ M. F. Leprince-Ringuet, Rapport sur l’industrie minière en Meurthe-et-Moselle pendant les années 1914 à 1918 (Nancy, 1919), 9; Horne, Labour at War, 73–6; William Oualid and Charles Picquenard, Salaires et tarifs: convention collectives et grèves, (Paris, 1928), 255–65. ⁵⁶ Fontaine, L’Industrie française, 128. ⁵⁷ Leprince-Ringuet, L’Industrie minière en Meurthe-et-Moselle, 9. ⁵⁸ Oualid and Picquenard, Salaires et tarifs, 460–71; R. Huard, ‘Les Mineurs du Gard pendant la Guerre de 1914–1918: guerre, syndicalisme et mentalités’, in Économie et société en LanguedocRoussillon de 1789 à nos jours (Montpellier, 1976), 281–93; Fridenson, ‘The Impact of the First World War’, 241; Pedersen, Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State, 116–17. ⁵⁹ ANMT, Mines de Bruay, 1994 050 0038, statistics on salaries. ⁶⁰ Oualid et Picquenard, Salaires et tarifs, 255. ⁶¹ ANMT, Mines de Noeux, 1994 051 659, response to commission des mines questionnaire.

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state welfare provisions lagged behind other European countries, although a 1905 law providing means-tested assistance to the sick, elderly, and infirm, and the 1910 workers’ and peasants’ pension scheme had made some progress.⁶² But unlike Britain, which provided unemployment assistance to certain trades under the National Insurance Act of 1911, and Germany, where there was a developing system of municipally supported labour union unemployment insurance funds, France had no scheme of social insurance to cover unemployment, and there were few provisions for able-bodied workers fallen on hard times.⁶³ In the absence of state measures, local Bureaux de bienfaisance provided aid. Funded by state and municipal subscriptions and private donations, and run by boards of local notables, these distributed charitable aid to the ‘needy’.⁶⁴ The war forced changes to this rudimentary system of public welfare, as the state and municipalities adopted more active roles in distributing unemployment assistance.⁶⁵ In Reims, despite concerns over social stigma attached to the Bureau de bienfaisance, it remained the primary source of welfare. The municipality’s role in its operations increased significantly, however, and it was allocated extra funds to provide unemployed workers with a standardized, means-tested payment.⁶⁶ Nancy, in contrast, did not rely on its existing welfare structure. As early as 2 August 1914, it supplemented its Bureau de bienfaisance by establishing municipal welfare offices to provide aid to the unemployed and the families of the mobilized. This began with bread, milk, and other foodstuffs, but from 9 September they also distributed cash.⁶⁷ This improvised system was replaced after the government, responding to the national unemployment crisis caused by the mobilization, undertook to subsidize the creation of municipal unemployment funds in areas of high unemployment.⁶⁸ In all, 77 such funds were created throughout France, and Nancy’s began in April 1915.⁶⁹ The amounts distributed in unemployment assistance were small. In Reims, rates were originally 0.50 francs per day for adults, plus 0.20 francs for dependent children, although they were raised to 0.70 francs and 0.40 francs respectively in ⁶² Philip Nord, ‘The Welfare State in France, 1870–1914’, French Historical Studies 18, no. 3 (1994): 821–38; John Weiss, ‘Origins of the French Welfare State: Poor Relief in the Third Republic, 1871–1914’, French Historical Studies 13, no. 1 (1983): 64–5. ⁶³ Bonzon, ‘Transfer Payments’, 290; Nord, ‘The Welfare State in France’, 826; George Steinmetz, ‘Workers and the Welfare State in Imperial Germany’, International Labour and Working-Class History 40 (1991): 29. ⁶⁴ Weiss, ‘Origins of the French Welfare State’, 49–52; Smith, Creating the Welfare State in France, 17. ⁶⁵ Smith, Creating the Welfare State in France, esp. Ch. 1–3. ⁶⁶ The council briefly considered establishing a new organization which would not have the social stigma of the Bureau de bienfaisance. See AMR, 1 D 65, municipal council deliberations, 1 Aug 1914. ⁶⁷ AMN, 1 D 434, municipal council deliberations, 2 Aug and 9 Sep 1914. ⁶⁸ ADMM, 10 M 50, labour ministry to prefects, 10 Sep 1914; Fontaine, L’Industrie française, 62; André Créhange, Chômage et placement, (Paris, 1927), 8–11. ⁶⁹ Fontaine, L’Industrie française, 62–3; AMN, 1 D 434, municipal council deliberations, 27 Nov 1914; ADMM, 10 M 50, mayor Nancy to prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle, 11 Feb 1916.

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January 1915, following the deaths of two elderly people from exposure.⁷⁰ They remained at this level—roughly half the military separation allowance—until the town’s evacuation. The council also hired unemployed men to clear rubble caused by bombardment. They were paid 2.50 francs per day, but demand for places on the work teams was such that most only worked four days out of 12.⁷¹ In Nancy, daily rates were originally 0.50 francs per adult and 0.15–0.25 francs per dependent child, alongside a bread allowance.⁷² After the introduction of the state-subsidized unemployment fund rates increased to 1.25 francs, with 0.50 francs per dependent—equivalent to the military separation allowance.⁷³ It is difficult to gauge precisely the effectiveness of these distributions. In certain restricted cases, the unemployed may have supplemented municipal grants by private contributions from charities, mutual aid funds, or syndical unemployment funds.⁷⁴ In addition, we do not know how long people spent on relief before finding employment. For some male factory workers, this may not have been long. But as unemployment lingered at the front, some, in particular female textile workers in Nancy and Reims, remained unemployed for lengthy periods, and suffered accordingly. What is clear is that many civilians living at the front, particularly municipal employees, miners, and the unemployed, experienced a notable drop in their real incomes.

The Meanings of Work under Fire Wages and benefits cannot give a complete picture of living standards no matter how they are defined. As Jonathan Manning has argued, ‘real wages are not equivalents of the degree to which urban populations responded individually or collectively to rapid economic fluctuations’.⁷⁵ Even if some workers’ wages kept track with rising prices, this was often only due to harder work and longer hours— as was the case with miners who worked 9.5-hour days. In wartime, greater hardship necessarily accompanied the ability of incomes to track price inflation, a fact which impacted living standards.⁷⁶ These were problems encountered throughout France. Indeed, the evidence presented here indicates that changes to wages, working conditions, and welfare entitlements at the front paralleled changes in the interior, especially in war industries and mining, which were increasingly regulated through collective

⁷⁰ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 5 Jan 1915; Jules Poirier, Reims 1er Août – 31 Décembre 1914 (Paris, 1917), 315. ⁷¹ ADM, 189 M 14, mayor Reims to prefect Marne, 16 Feb 1919; L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 2 Nov 1914. ⁷² ADMM, 10 M 50, mayor Nancy to prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle, 11 Feb 1916. ⁷³ AMN, 1 D 435, municipal council deliberations, 6 Apr 1915. ⁷⁴ Fontaine, L’Industrie française, 62 and Créhange, Chômage et placement, 40–2. ⁷⁵ Manning, ‘Wages and Purchasing Power’, 255. ⁷⁶ Ibid., 279.

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bargaining. But civilians at the front, unlike their counterparts in the interior, also faced enemy bombardment and friendly military occupations. These factors ensured the employed worked under difficult and dangerous conditions, and limited the ability of the unemployed to find work. Civilians at the front knew a degree of additional hardship not shared with civilians elsewhere in France. This reality charged debates surrounding wages and welfare with considerable emotion and symbolism. We have already seen how a discourse of civilian heroism arose, which foregrounded the sacrifices of the inhabitants of the front-line towns, and compared them to those of the soldiers in the trenches. This allowed civilians at the front to use the experience of bombardment to distinguish themselves from civilians in the interior, and claim a privileged position within a national hierarchy of suffering. The local economy became yet another arena in which these issues were played out, as wages and welfare helped communities to survive at the front, prove they could resist enemy attack, and contribute to the national war effort. Work under fire had an important place within the discourse of civilian heroism, which developed around and within the front-line towns. It was often construed as a patriotic act undertaken in defence of the nation. The civilians’ ‘duty’ to resist the enemy by continuing economic activity was often invoked. As Réné Mercier wrote in L’Est Républicain, after the first heavy bombardments of Nancy in January 1916, just as an officer would not abandon ‘his position and his sword at the declaration of war’, so neither should businessmen, wage-earners, and civil servants. ‘True courage’, he asserted, ‘is in work, especially if it is sometimes interrupted by the roar of explosions’.⁷⁷ Those who worked under fire to maintain the towns’ economy were heroized, such as M. Lefèvre, a security guard at the Campion Champagne company in Reims who, according to l’Éclaireur de l’Est, remained at his ‘post’ during a heavy bombardment, ‘calmly, because it is his duty, because he must watch over the building which he has been entrusted and to which he is profoundly attached . . . he scorns danger to fully accomplish his mission’.⁷⁸ In March 1917, the President of the Republic added his weight to the militarization of civilian economic activity at the front, when he awarded the Croix de Guerre to the director of the Pompey steelworks. The press release claimed he gave ‘the proud emblem of the poilus’ to the director in the same way that ‘a colonel who, not able to give the distinction to each of the men in his regiment, places it on the flag’. In his speech the President praised ‘the memory of the glorious dead, those who have fallen on the field of honour’, including two workers, Blaizius and Meyer, killed on the job during a bombardment.⁷⁹ Such statements legitimized the idea that work at the front was not just for material gain, but was crucial to the survival of community life and a sacrifice for the nation. Understandably, civilians under fire made demands in respect of wages ⁷⁷ L’Est Républicain, 15 Jan 1916. ⁷⁸ L’Éclaireur de L’Est, 7 May 1917. ⁷⁹ Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle, 18 Mar 1917.

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and social transfer payments on the basis of these sacrifices. There was a widespread belief that dangerous work conducted under fire should be rewarded with extra pay. Metal workers in the Meurthe-et-Moselle made such claims regularly. In autumn 1917, one group petitioned the prefect asking for compensation for the ‘risks of bombardment’, while more forceful claims were made at a union meeting in Neuves-Maisons when several workers complained of the fact that they had received the same wage increases as their Parisian comrades, even though they were ‘exposed to the dangers of bombardment, while those in Paris are fully secure’.⁸⁰ In August 1918 railway workers in Nancy demanded a ‘bombardment allowance’, as did the iron-ore mining syndicates in Neuves-Maisons and Ludres the next month.⁸¹ One police officer in Nancy reported that regularly in union meetings ‘workers vigorously emphasize their productivity under the shells, while many of their comrades have better conditions than them in areas where life is normal’.⁸² In making such claims, civilians demanded the state and employers, and by extension the national community, recognize the dangerous conditions under which they laboured. In this respect, work at the front reinforced the sense of difference that the experience of bombardment engendered towards civilians in the interior. Although metal workers and iron-ore miners in the Meurthe-etMoselle were not successful in their demands, other workers at the front were. When staff at Nancy’s state-run tobacco factory walked off the job in December 1917 in protest at lost earnings due to early closures mandated by air raid regulations, they were awarded an allowance worth two hours’ pay per day.⁸³ Others received hazard pay in recognition of the dangers they faced. In Nancy, municipal policemen and firemen received a ‘bombardment allowance’ worth 1.50 francs per day from April 1918, in recognition of the ‘risks of every nature [they] run, especially during bombardments’.⁸⁴ The government introduced similar measures for state employees. Originally, in March 1916, civil servants forced from their homes by the fighting received 1.25 francs per day, plus 0.50 francs per dependent, but in May 1917 this was extended to all civil servants ‘maintained in or returned to their positions in the localities where the frequency and destructive effects of the bombardments . . . oblige them to endure particularly onerous living conditions’.⁸⁵ The largest group to receive such an allowance were coal miners

⁸⁰ ADMM, 9 M 34, police report on metal-workers union meeting, 28 Oct 1917; ADMM, 8 R 238, police report on union meeting, 3 Sep 1917. ⁸¹ AMN, 2 I 39, police report on railway workers union meeting, 4 Aug 1918; AN, F/22/285, reports on iron ore mining union meetings for Neuves-Maisons, 15 Sep 1918 and Ludres, 15 Sep 1918. ⁸² SHD, 16 N 1540, commissaire spécial Nancy to commander 20th Region, 25 Mar 1918. ⁸³ AMN, 2 I 39, report on tobacco factory, Nancy, 13 Dec 1917. ⁸⁴ AMN, 1 D 438, municipal council deliberations, 10 Apr 1918. ⁸⁵ ADM, 203 M 46, presidential decree, 31 Mar 1916; Ibid., interior ministry to prefect Marne, 5 May 1917.

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employed at the Noeux mines, who received a warzone allocation worth 0.50 francs per day from February 1918.⁸⁶ Only a limited number of workers received bombardment allowances, but these served both to acknowledge risks taken by those working at the front and incentivize and legitimize their presence there. They also reinforced the broadly held belief among front-line civilians that the national community had a duty to provide for their material wellbeing as a result of the risks that they, like the soldiers, ran in its defence. This belief also found expression in demands for state aid to be given to the families of civilians killed and wounded by enemy fire. In August 1914, no provisions existed to grant assistance to the families of civilians wounded or killed in military actions. Early in the war, those who were victims of the fighting relied on improvised measures by municipal and departmental authorities, normally amounting to one-off, charitable payments. Nancy’s town council granted 100 francs to the mother of a 15-year-old girl killed during the first aerial bombardment of the town on 4 September 1914 as she appeared ‘in great need’, while in February 1915 the Reims town council introduced a pension for the widows of municipal employees killed on military service or in the town itself.⁸⁷ In February 1916, the government allocated 40,000 francs to the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais, ‘as emergency aid for the populations affected by wartime events’. This was distributed on the basis of need to wounded civilians or those whose family members were killed, as well as to those who lost property. The sums distributed were small. In June 1916, one woman in Béthune whose husband was wounded by shrapnel and out of work since November 1914 received just 30 francs.⁸⁸ In many cases, however, the families of those killed and wounded simply went without support, such as a postman named Duplouich working in the Pas-de-Calais, whose arm was amputated after he was injured by shellfire in February 1915. When he wrote to the prefecture asking for aid, they bluntly rejected his claim, informing him ‘there is no special law on the subject of compensation for damages caused to civilian civil-servants during and as a result of the war’.⁸⁹ As the war progressed, however, and as more civilians were killed and wounded, demands for compensation grew. Civilians living under fire repeatedly claimed that as they were suffering and dying for the nation in the same way as soldiers, the state had a duty of care towards them. Reims à Paris summarized this view in an editorial of April 1915: Now France owes these [civilian] victims, sacrificed for her, compensation that moreover she does not intend to refuse them. It is only natural that they benefit ⁸⁶ ANMT, Mines de Noeux, 1994 051 191, report to general assembly, 28. ⁸⁷ AMN, 1 D 434, municipal council deliberations, 5 Sep 1914; AMR, 1 D 65, municipal council deliberations, 10 Feb 1915. ⁸⁸ ADPdC, 11 R 1135, Folder on ‘secours d’extrême urgence . . . ’. ⁸⁹ ADPdC, 11 R 1086, letter from M. Duplouich to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 10 Jul 1915.

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from the surge of solidarity generated within the country by a bloody war,—just like the kin of those have fallen heroically on the fields of battle in the ranks of our national army, and just like the glorious wounded and disabled, who shall be the living proof of French bravery.⁹⁰

The same newspaper reiterated the point in February 1916, when it claimed the ‘valiant populations’ of the towns under fire were ‘equal to our heroic poilus’ and, when injured or killed, ‘they must be treated, from a legal point of view, like the soldiers who die intrepidly for the patrie or have been disabled defending it’.⁹¹ L’Éclaireur de l’Est echoed this when it argued that as injuries to civilians at the front were ‘caused by the enemy and military equipment’ they were ‘incontestably war wounds, comparable in every way, as regards their origin, to those that our soldiers receive in the army’. It demanded the civilian wounded and the families of those killed be granted the same pension rights as soldiers, and argued that: It is, in effect, entirely justified not to distinguish between the war’s victims. Civilians have earned the respect of the nation by not letting themselves be overwhelmed by the enemy’s barbarous conduct, or by the intimidatory bombardments. They have been killed to preserve the moral and material patriotism of the nation on the lines of fire.⁹²

Such arguments appear to have worked, and the state gradually came to recognize civilians as victims of combat. Three laws instituted financial compensation for families of civilians killed and injured. The first (9 April 1915) extended the military separation allowance—1.25 francs per day plus 0.50 fancs for dependents—to ‘every needy family whose primary income earner has been killed or captured or who, finding themselves in enemy territory at the opening of hostilities, had been kept prisoner’.⁹³ This was, however, a partial solution and lacked any provision for civilians wounded and unable to work. They were eventually covered by a second law on ‘civilian victims’ passed on 28 April 1916. This ‘integrated [the civilian victim] with the mobilized soldier’, and provided a grant to their family (or directly to the wounded civilian if they had no dependents). The grant was the same value as the military separation allowance and like the latter was only given to those deemed ‘needy’. There were, however, several restrictions—only injuries received ‘outside of any manifest negligence of the victim’ qualified, and the assistance only lasted for the duration of incapacity from work.⁹⁴ Finally, in July 1917, a law on state aid for war orphans—‘pupilles

⁹⁰ ⁹² ⁹³ ⁹⁴

Reims à Paris, 14 Apr 1915. ⁹¹ Ibid., 16 Feb 1916. L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 9 Feb 1916. For similar argument see Reims à Paris, 20 Apr 1918. Huber, La Population de la France, 309. AN, F/23/3, interior ministry to prefects, 30 Oct 1916; Huber, La Population de la France, 309.

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de la nation’—was passed. Significantly, this made no distinction between the children of military and civilian dead.⁹⁵ Civilians at the front welcomed the law on ‘pupilles de la nation’, as it accorded the same provisions to civilians and soldiers. L’Éclaireur de l’Est felt it was only appropriate that, ‘there will be no distinction between the civilian victims and the military victims of the war; those who have fallen, whether this was defending our soil or maintaining activity in our towns and villages despite the enemy’s system of terror, all deserve that their children are not forgotten by the country.’⁹⁶ The April 1916 law on ‘civilian victims’ was more problematic, as it did not introduce an unqualified right to state assistance for wounded civilians. The first draft brought before the Chamber of Deputies sought to give such an unqualified right, noting that because ‘civilians killed or wounded by enemy or French arms . . . are victims of the war, like soldiers who are killed and wounded’, then ‘compensation for damage caused to their person falls to the nation’.⁹⁷ The Senate, however, modified the bill to stipulate that this would be a means-tested grant given to those deemed ‘needy’.⁹⁸ Ultimately, only small numbers benefitted from this law during the war. The prefect of the Pas-de-Calais reported that by August 1918, only 284 claims had been made in his department, with almost 17 per cent rejected.⁹⁹ Many were disheartened by the bill’s limitations, especially the means-test and strict review panels.¹⁰⁰ But in their responses to the law, front-line civilians continued to assert that the state and the national community owed them certain rights in exchange for their sacrifices. The Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle cautiously welcomed the law, while complaining about the means-test, arguing that ‘as regards to the right to compensation, there should not be different categories of civilian victims defined by social position . . . France owes compensation to all victims of the war’.¹⁰¹ Similarly, L’Éclaireur de l’Est argued that ‘it remains for this law to be made into a true law of solidarity and to open to these victims not just the possibility of support, but the rights granted to victims of workplace accidents, or the military victims of the war’.¹⁰² Here we can begin to see how a language of social rights and responsibilities developed during the war out of sharp political friction between parliament and opinion in the affected regions over the treatment of civilians wounded at the front. Satisfaction in this regard eventually came in June 1919 with a law extending the pension entitlements and free medical assistance granted to soldiers in March ⁹⁵ Pupilles de la nation: application de la loi du 27 Juillet 1917, (Foix, 1924). On the ‘pupilles de la nation’ see Olivier Faron, Orphelins et pupilles de la nation de la Première Guerre Mondiale, (Paris, 2001). ⁹⁶ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 20 Mar 1916. ⁹⁷ AN, C/7775, dossier 8797, proposition de résolution on ‘victimes civiles de la guerre’. ⁹⁸ Ibid., dossier 8798, proposition de loi on ‘victimes civiles de la guerre’. ⁹⁹ ADPdC, M 1727, ‘Allocation aux victimes civiles de la guerre.’ ¹⁰⁰ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 14 Feb 1917. ¹⁰¹ Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle, 14 May 1916. ¹⁰² L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 26 Sep 1916 and 14 Feb 1917.

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1919 to ‘civilian victims’. This provided assistance to the wounded and the families of those killed, and covered wounds caused by Allied and enemy operations, including explosions of ordinance after the end of hostilities, and illnesses contracted in German prisoner camps. Although death, sickness, and injury caused by ‘negligence on the part of the victim’ were excluded and, unlike the military pension law, those applying had to prove the war caused their wounds and illnesses, the law was a notable development.¹⁰³ Unlike its wartime predecessor, it did not discriminate on the basis of income, and once the injury was proven, then the pension was granted by right. Michel Huber estimated that as of 1 January 1928, it benefitted 33,000 people—17,000 ‘invalides’, 9,600 widows and orphans, and 6,400 elderly relatives of civilians killed.¹⁰⁴ At the start of the war, military disability pensions were a form of charitable aid, as injury was seen as a natural risk inherent in the soldier’s ‘impôt du sang’ or ‘blood tax’, the universal requirement of all adult males to perform military service in exchange for the rights of citizenship. By March 1919, however, compensation for war injuries had evolved into a soldier’s right. The war, in other words, saw a development in the military component of French citizenship, in the emergence of the state’s obligation to care for the families and welfare of soldiers in exchange for their military obligations.¹⁰⁵ This process had a civilian parallel and in debates over their welfare entitlements civilians who lived under fire sought the same benefits as soldiers. This is perhaps more striking given the fact that the civilians demanding and eventually receiving compensation for their wounds on the basis of their citizenship were, in many cases, women, and as such were denied the most essential component of French citizenship—the vote. Indeed, in many of the above-cited newspaper articles, little or no distinction was made between the male and female civilian victims of military action—all claimed an equal entitlement to state assistance in exchange for their suffering. Here, again, we see evidence of the ‘non-gender specific civic virtue’ demanded of women exposed to German military violence.¹⁰⁶ The extension of state aid to wounded civilian women would, ultimately, prove to be a false dawn, and did not feed into a broader renegotiation of female citizenship. Instead, and in a similar manner to the migration controls described by Daniela Caglioti, state responses to wounded civilians served to fuel ‘expectations and promises of inclusion and anticipations of an enlargement of the boundaries of the political community to include usually marginalized groups like women and workers.’¹⁰⁷ Nonetheless, even if these

¹⁰³ Ministère des pensions, primes et allocations de guerre, Instruction du 1er Décembre 1920 pour l’application de la loi du 24 Juin 1919 sur les réparations à accorder aux victimes civiles de la guerre, (Paris, 1920), 2–3, 18. ¹⁰⁴ Huber, La Population de la France, 310. ¹⁰⁵ Bonzon, ‘Transfer Payments’, 301. ¹⁰⁶ See Chapter 2. ¹⁰⁷ Daniela L. Caglioti, ‘Subjects, Citizens, and Aliens in a Time of Upheaval: Naturalizing and Denaturalizing in Europe during the First World War’, Journal of Modern History 89, no. 3 (2017): 496.

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expectations and promises were never fulfilled, the war allowed civilians living under fire to participate in a reconfiguration of established notions of citizenship and formulate new claims on the social solidarity of the nation. Building upon their experiences of bombardment, they attributed meanings to their work, wages, and welfare, which set them apart from the rest of the civilian population.

Labour in German-Occupied France In German-occupied France, the same factors as on the Allied side shaped economic activity—proximity to the fighting, and the relative importance of local industries, resources, and labour to the national, in this case German, war effort. Yet the extent of economic disruption on the occupied side, its material effects on local populations, and the meanings civilians attributed to work under occupation were all markedly different. In the occupied coalfield, employment options were restricted. The municipalities were one source of work, and some people kept their jobs as teachers, municipal officials, and police officers, although we have few details on the numbers concerned. A certain number also worked in the municipal-run stores and distribution centres of the Commission for Relief in Belgium (C.R.B.), which controlled food supply. Beyond the C.R.B., commercial opportunities were limited, although some stores remained open, while some businesspeople supplied a modest black market.¹⁰⁸ The main-stay of the local economy was, however, coalmining, an industry seriously affected by war and occupation. In Lens and Liévin, the concessions nearest the front, extraction halted entirely in autumn 1914. Then, during the period of static warfare, mining infrastructure suffered greatly, both from Allied shells and deliberate German destruction. Elsewhere in occupied France and Belgium, German forces dismantled industrial equipment for transport back to Germany.¹⁰⁹ This was not the case in the coal-mining region, where the emphasis was on destruction rather than appropriation—German troops destroyed surface buildings with dynamite and flooded mine-shafts, so that production could not resume during the war.¹¹⁰ Slightly further back from the front, extraction continued at a reduced rate in the concessions of Courrières and Dourges, around Hénin-Liétard. Further east, the coal mines of the Nord were out of range of artillery fire and extraction was higher again. In neither case, however, did it approach pre-war levels. In the occupied Nord total production over the four years between 1914 and 1918 was only 43 per cent greater than in the single ¹⁰⁸ Boulin, L’Organisation du travail, 21; ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ¹⁰⁹ Nivet, La France occupée, 96–107 and Laure Hannequin-Lecomte, ‘Réalité et mythologie de l’occupation allemande durant la Grande Guerre: les cas des établissements Arbel’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 236 (2009): 5–25. ¹¹⁰ Boulin, L’Organisation du travail, 23; ADHS, 4 M 513, report of Elie Reumaux, 25 Feb 1917.

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year of 1913, while in the Pas-de-Calais, total wartime extraction was just 23 per cent of 1913.¹¹¹ The mines that remained open came under the close scrutiny of the occupation regime’s coal administration board, the Bergverwaltung.¹¹² This organization coordinated the distribution of French coal to two primary markets—the army and the local civilian population—and provided the mines with equipment and material to fulfil these demands.¹¹³ The German army’s need for coal was considerable, with estimates placing the proportion of local output requisitioned at between 33 per cent and 48 per cent.¹¹⁴ This presented the mining companies and their employees with a dilemma. Continued coal production was necessary for the material survival of the civilian population. But it also benefitted the occupying forces and, as such, entailed working for Germany and against France. The mining companies’ response was ambiguous and they attempted to navigate a delicate line between the demands of the occupiers and their moral obligation to resist. Some companies, such as Ostricourt, undertook quasi-campaigns of passive resistance by focusing on maintenance work rather than extraction.¹¹⁵ But others willingly cooperated with the Bergverwaltung, bypassing problematic local army commanders, benefitting from its technical expertise, and as much as possible ensuring smooth operations.¹¹⁶ Jean-François Eck and Pascal Raggi have concluded that in this way the Bergverwaltung played a role that was ‘at once tutelary and coercive . . . it aroused varied reactions among the directors, from refusals and disobedience to searches for accommodations that, in certain cases, came close to collaboration’.¹¹⁷ While we may readily identify the opinions of company directors, it is more difficult from the sources to judge what the miners themselves felt about their work. Those repatriated via Evian rarely commented on German use of French coal in their statements to French officials, perhaps understandably—one miner from Hénin-Liétard simply stated that the coal he mined was ‘sent in an unknown direction’.¹¹⁸ For his part, Élie Reumaux, the director of the Lens company, sought to justify the work done even though his mines did not function. In his repatriation report, he claimed that if the mines stopped working, ‘the population could have risked being deprived of coal’, and furthermore, that ‘the workers would have been unemployed and used by the Germans, whereas at the moment this working

¹¹¹ Boulin, L’Organisation du travail, 25. ¹¹² Ibid., 30. ¹¹³ Odette Hardy-Hémery, ‘L’industrie houillère en zone occupée: d’une coexistence ambiguë au contrôle par l’occupant’, Revue du Nord 325 (1998): 318. ¹¹⁴ ADHS, 4 M 513, report of Elie Reumaux, 25 Feb 1917; Eck and Raggi, ‘Une première expérience d’occupation’, 71. ¹¹⁵ Ibid., 73–5; Hardy-Hémery, ‘L’industrie houillère en zone occupée’, 323–4. See also Odette Hardy-Hémery, ‘Travailleurs forcés et mineurs dans le Nord occupé sous la Première Guerre Mondiale’, in La Main-d’oeuvre française exploitée sous le IIIe Reich, ed. B. Garnier and J. Quellien (Caen, 2003). ¹¹⁶ Eck and Raggi, ‘Une première expérience d’occupation’, 76–7. ¹¹⁷ Ibid., 69. ¹¹⁸ ADHS, 4 M 518, report of Pierre M., 18 Sep 1917.

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population is not badly off, because they receive their salary and enjoy several benefits that the Germans give them’.¹¹⁹ Reumaux’s assessment indicates the moral ambiguity created by work in the mines, which was both essential for the material survival of the occupied community and risked being construed as a form of collaboration. But he also points to another factor which shaped the meanings of work on the occupied side—the German army’s direct use of civilian labour. Germany’s use of labour in occupied France fell into a broader international context, as German forces recruited local civilian workers in all occupied territories, either voluntarily or through coercion. Germany’s use of occupied labour was most extensive in East Prussia, where 300,000 seasonal agricultural workers from Russian Poland were prevented from returning home and transformed into a reserve of forced labour in summer 1914, and in Ober Ost, where the army recruited more than 130,000 people into forced or voluntary labour companies for work behind the lines.¹²⁰ In Belgium, early attempts to recruit voluntary labour from among the unemployed for work in Germany were disappointing, and by October 1916, only 30,000 had signed up (although this rose to 160,000 by the war’s end).¹²¹ In response to these disappointing returns, beginning in October 1916, Germany targeted 60,000 unemployed Belgians for forced deportation. Ultimately, only 16,000 were deployed in German industry, and the scheme was cancelled in the face of international protest.¹²² Forced labour behind the lines was less problematic, and a further 62,000 Belgians were coerced into civilian labour battalions at the front.¹²³ In France, the labour requirements of the German army ensured there were few attempts to recruit French civilians for work in industry in Germany. Instead, they were organized into labour companies in the areas of military operations. As in Belgium, recruitment targeted the unemployed. The coal-mining region was a prime focus, as only three concessions—Courrières, Dourges, and Ostricourt— operated at reduced capacity and it remained an area of large-scale unemployment. In general, German commanders used town councils to drive recruitment, giving mayors quotas to be filled through the local unemployed.¹²⁴ Those who did not actively resist call ups were classified as ‘free’ labourers (freie Arbeiter), ¹¹⁹ ADHS, 4 M 513, report of Elie Reumaux, 25 Feb 1917. ¹²⁰ Jens Thiel, ‘Between Recruitment and Forced Labour: The Radicalization of German Labour Policy in Occupied Belgium and Northern France’, First World War Studies 4, no. 1 (2013): 42; Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, 72–4. ¹²¹ Thiel, ‘Between Recruitment and Forced Labour’, 41–5. ¹²² Ibid., 44–5; Kai Rawe, ‘Working in the Coal Mine: Belgians in the German War Industry of the Ruhr area during World War 1’, in Une Guerre totale? La Belgique dans la Première Guerre Mondiale: nouvelles tendances de la recherché historique, ed. Serge Jaumain, Michaël Amara, Benoît Majerus and Antoon Vrints (Brussels, 2005), 230. ¹²³ Thiel, ‘Between Recruitment and Forced Labour’, 44. ¹²⁴ BHA, Etappenformationen (WK), Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee, 146, order of Sep 1916 from Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee.

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although they were only ‘free’ in the sense that they remained living at home and that they were, technically, employed by the municipality rather than the German army. While working they remained under military supervision.¹²⁵ Those who refused labour call ups faced various coercive measures, including refusals of municipal welfare supports, fines, and, in extreme cases, imprisonment in military work camps.¹²⁶ In Courrières, those who refused to show for work faced a 10 mark fine, while in August 1916 the commander in Hénin-Liétard reported that 300 lived and worked in a military camp just outside the town, and that recalcitrants were punished by imprisonment on a diet of bread and water.¹²⁷ From October 1916, the Germans also established Zivil-Arbeiter-Bataillone (Z.A.B.s), punishment battalions for unemployed civilians who consistently refused work.¹²⁸ In many cases, this meant sending civilians from towns far back in occupied France to the front as labourers. Conditions endured by labourers at the front in occupied France were harsh but better than in Eastern Europe. In Lithuania, workers received 250g of bread and a litre of soup per day, whereas in France, ‘free’ workers received C.R.B. rations, while ‘civilian prisoners’ received 500g of bread per day, 100g of fresh or salted meat five days a week, as well as vegetables, salt, coffee, and fats.¹²⁹ German authorities discouraged leave from forced labour battalions, although granted it in certain cases.¹³⁰ They also provided compensation to the families of civilian labourers killed or injured at work.¹³¹ Labourers in Lens worked nine-hour days on various tasks, including loading and unloading transports, water-supply works, road repair, and support works in the military cemetery.¹³² The German army mainly used male labourers, but also employed women, often in laundries, for example, in Hénin-Liétard and Lens.¹³³ Although we do not know the total number of French labourers used by the German army, evidence suggests it effectively mobilized civilian labour on a large scale, particularly at the front. In summer 1916, the German commander of Hénin-Liétard was satisfied local manpower was used ‘to the greatest extent’, while in Lens the commander had a list of 600 ‘free’ adult males to be called-up ¹²⁵ Ibid. ¹²⁶ BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2101, ‘Grundsätze für die Verwendung von freien Arbeitern . . . ’, 17 Oct 1916; BHA, Etappenformationen (WK), Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee, 146, order of Sep 1916 from Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee. ¹²⁷ ADPdC, 10 R 3/320, note from German commander Courrières, 20 Aug 1916; BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2101, report on civilian labour from Hénin-Liétard, 23 Aug 1916. ¹²⁸ BHA, Etappenformationen (WK), Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee, 147, order from EtappenInspektion 6 Armee, 9 Oct 1916. See also Wegner, ‘Occupation during the War’. ¹²⁹ Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front, 73; BHA, 1. Bay. Inf. Div., 657, note from Oberkommando 6. Armee, 19 Jan 1916. ¹³⁰ BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2101, A.O.K.6 to Korps/Et.Insp., 12 Nov 1916 and note from Oberkommando 6 Armee, 26 Mar 1916. ¹³¹ BHA, 6. Bay. Res. Div., Bund 100, Akt 1–2, note from Generalquartiermeister, 4 May 1917. ¹³² BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2101, report on civilian labour from Lens, 26 Aug 1916. ¹³³ Ibid.; ADHS, 4 M 518, report on residents of Hénin-Liétard, 22 Sep 1917.

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when required, and reported no problems filling labour requirements.¹³⁴ The following year, the Bavarian Sixth Army reported that of 137,900 men aged between 15 and 60 and capable of work in its area, only 1,145—or 0.8 per cent—were unemployed. Of those in employment over 69,000, a slim majority, worked for the German army. Although the coal-mining region of the Pas-deCalais had been evacuated by this point, these figures nonetheless indicate something of the success of the German army’s mobilization of French labour.¹³⁵ The German army was, therefore, a major source of employment, and for many in the working-class communities of the coal-mining region, work for the Germans—voluntarily, forced, or indirectly through the mines—was difficult to avoid. As on the Allied side, such activity was imbued with meanings and symbolism beyond remuneration that affected social relations and attitudes towards the French nation. Most obviously, working for the German army could not validate local communities’ contributions to the national war effort, as it could on the Allied side, and might even be construed as work against France. Indeed, working for the Germans carried social stigmas that proved difficult for the occupied to resolve. The moral-patriotic framework developed in occupied France that sought to regulate interactions with the German army extended to the realm of work. Many, particularly those comfortable enough not to be subject to forced labour, decried work for the German army as an act of blatant collaboration. As James E. Connolly has shown, many middle-class lillois disdained those who worked for the Germans, while work for the Germans generated similar social tensions in the occupied Aisne.¹³⁶ In Lens, the wealthy lawyer Léon Tacquet vociferously criticized those who did not resist German labour requirements, describing them as ‘spineless’.¹³⁷ His most hostile opinions were, however, reserved for the mayor, Émile Basly, whom he felt ‘forced all these young people to work for the Germans against their patrie’.¹³⁸ Such attitudes suggest that certain contemporaries, normally the well off, felt this was an issue with a clear meaning, and that there was a straight choice between acceptance of work for the Germans, and patriotic refusal. For those actually subject to German labour requirements, however, the choice was rarely so clear, especially in the heavily working-class areas embedded in the front, where there was high unemployment and the military’s labour requirements were most acute. Even the supposedly ‘free’ labourers hired indirectly through the municipalities were coerced. As the Ortskommandant of Hénin-Liétard put it: ‘constraint on the free-workers is administered through decrees by the town-hall’, ¹³⁴ BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2101, reports on civilian labour from Hénin-Liétard, 23 Aug 1916 and Lens, 26 Aug 1916. ¹³⁵ BHA, Etappenfomationen (WK), Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee, 144, report on civilian labour from Etappen-Inspektion 6, 23 Aug 1917. ¹³⁶ Connolly, The Experience of Occupation, 73–8; Salson, L’Aisne occupée, 132–3. ¹³⁷ Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 28 Jan 1916. ¹³⁸ Ibid., 29 Jul 1916.

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while prison camps and the Z.A.B.s were further threats to compel the occupied to ‘volunteer’ as ‘free’ labourers.¹³⁹ Coercion—either tacit or overt—was so central to German labour policy in occupied France, particularly at the front, that it is difficult to identify genuine instances of voluntary labour. Consequently, civilians had to reconcile the imperative of working for Germany with their moral-patriotic obligation to avoid aiding the enemy. This is not to say the enemy pressed a patriotic, resisting population into work. Rather, many occupied civilians inhabited an ambiguous middle ground between acceptance and resistance. While accepting that work for Germany was inevitable, some nonetheless attempted to limit and control the types of work expected of them. The 1907 Hague Conventions theoretically regulated the use of local labour by occupying forces. In particular, Article 52 barred occupying forces from obliging inhabitants to take part in ‘military operations against their own country’, while occupiers could only use the services of civilians in the locality occupied.¹⁴⁰ In practice, the German army did not always adhere to the Convention. It often moved civilians towards the front to work under dangerous conditions. Léon Tacquet recorded two incidents in late summer 1916, when groups of civilian labourers around Lens experienced Allied bombardment, during which some were killed.¹⁴¹ One repatriated civilian, Jules Conratte, reported that a shell mortally injured two of his compatriots working near Courrières, while Charles Bourgeois reported that there were at least 18 casualties when a British plane bombed a group of labourers in Hénin-Liétard.¹⁴² The German army also put occupied civilians to work on tasks that were of obvious benefit to the German war effort, including digging trenches, building fortifications, and, notoriously, producing sandbags.¹⁴³ Although the German army used French civilian labour on work directly benefitting military operations, authorities were still aware of the limitations the Hague Conventions placed on them, and could not act completely indiscriminately. In late 1916, for instance, Bavarian Sixth Army commanders noted that Article 52 of the Hague Convention meant that ‘constraint is forbidden on such works that are in direct relationship with military operations, for example digging trenches in the forward battle-zones that are exposed to regular bombardment.’¹⁴⁴ Later, Sixth Army command reminded units that ‘employment of workers in areas

¹³⁹ BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2101, report on civilian labour from Hénin-Liétard, 23 Aug 1916. ¹⁴⁰ Scott, Hague Conventions, 125. ¹⁴¹ Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 29 Jul and 25 Sep 1915. ¹⁴² ADHS, 4 M 518, report of Jules Conratte, 14 Sep 1917; ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ¹⁴³ In summer 1915, female workers in Lille launched a high-profile protest against the requirement that they produce sandbags for the army. See Boulin, L’Organisation du travail, 18 and Becker, Oubliés de la Grande Guerre, 58–9. ¹⁴⁴ BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2101, ‘Grundsätze für die Verwendung von freien Arbeitern . . . ’, 17 Oct 1916.

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which are exposed to enemy artillery fire or gas attacks is prohibited’.¹⁴⁵ Such admissions opened a space within which occupied civilians could collectively oppose the Germans, extract concessions, and impose some control over the terms of their labour. In fact, civilians at the front were generally aware of the Hague Conventions’ stipulations on forced labour, and sometimes engaged in acts of collective opposition when they felt the German army overstepped these boundaries. In August 1915, Bavarian Sixth Army reported that ‘there are increasing signs the population of northern France, on the whole hitherto quiet and willing to work, is beginning to become difficult’, and that some civilians regularly refused work, citing Article 52 of the Hague Conventions.¹⁴⁶ Protests against work directly benefitting the German war effort or that was conducted under fire were common. In September 1916, a group of concerned citizens in Cambrai complained to local military authorities that civilians from the town were forced to produce timber that would be used against the French army, and to undertake work in areas that: are very often subject to attacks from airplanes, and even exposed to the fire of Anglo-French artillery . . . A reading of paragraph 2 of article 52 [of the Hague Convention] . . . leaves us confident that work or services required must be carried out next to the locality where those who undertake them reside.¹⁴⁷

In Avion, immediately behind the front lines in the coalfield, up to 250 workers constructing trenches and defensive positions downed tools in September 1916, stating that they would not work that close to the lines under fire.¹⁴⁸ Around the same time, in Wavrin, labourers refused to work in the fields because they felt it was too dangerous as British bombs had killed a local child.¹⁴⁹ Civilians repatriated from occupied France also claimed that work stoppages happened at the front despite strict punishments by the Germans.¹⁵⁰ The German army issued regulations to combat such stoppages. In June 1915, for instance, the Sixth Army ordered that maintaining production in war industries was a top priority, and that severe measures were to be taken against work stoppages—including hostage taking, punitive restrictions on movement, fines, and prison sentences. The note concluded that ‘any indulgence threatens the

¹⁴⁵ Ibid., A.O.K. 6 to constituent units, 30 Jan 1917. ¹⁴⁶ BHA, Etappenfomationen (WK), Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee, 143, report from Generalquartiermeister, 8 Aug 1915. ¹⁴⁷ Ibid., Letter from residents from Cambrai, 5 Sep 1916. ¹⁴⁸ Most of this group had returned to work by 9 September. See BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2101, report from Kommandeur der Pioniere III. Bayr. A.K., 9 Sep 1916. ¹⁴⁹ BHA, 6. Bay. Res. Div., Bund 100, Akt 1–2, letter from curé of Wavrin, Aug 1916. ¹⁵⁰ See for instance ADHS, 4 M 342, report of Marie-Louise V., 20 Dec 1916 and 4 M 518, report of Raymond L., 8 Sep 1917.

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authority of the army. Commanders at all levels must be aware that extreme strictness in the face of the population is necessary to avoid serious trouble’.¹⁵¹ The German army was not entirely repressive, however, and in August 1915 the High Command admitted that caution should be used when civilian protests made legitimate reference to the Hague Convention, and that ‘the threat or application of harsh coercive measures is to be avoided in cases where doubt as to the absolute validity of the work requirement might exist’.¹⁵² This ambiguity meant that acts of collective opposition by civilian labourers could, at times, generate positive outcomes. Some successfully resisted work in dangerous conditions near the front lines, such as eight protesting workers in Bois-Bernard in the coal-mining region, who forced the Bavarian First Army Corps to concede that it could not force them to work constructing fortifications. Instead, local commanders were instructed to ‘persuade’ them to work on the fortifications, but that if this did not work: ‘they are to be provided . . . for other work outside the area subject to enemy fire.’¹⁵³ Despite the inherently coercive nature of German labour policies, a space nonetheless existed within which workers could voice opposition and alter the conditions of their labour. Such work stoppages did not constitute outright opposition to the principle of labour requirements. But they did amount to a compromise of sorts between the requirement to work for the occupiers, and the imperative not to engage in activities against the French war effort. Sometimes, these were uneasy compromises, and many realized that after the war any work conducted for the occupiers could risk being construed as collaboration. Some sought a way around this by requesting certificates from the German army confirming they had been forced into work. In September 1916, for instance, the Bavarian Sixth Army reported that ‘cases have multiplied of local workers downing tools on the grounds that on the return of the French they would have to fear being punished for having worked for the Germans’, but that some were willing to go back to work if the German army presented them with certificates confirming they were forced labourers. In this instance, the authorities granted the request.¹⁵⁴ A similar incident occurred in December 1916, when the German army sent 100 workers to a sawmill in PetitRonchin, near Lille. Once there, they refused to work and made two demands. Firstly, to be able to ‘frequent their work places as free workers without military supervision’, and secondly, that they be issued with a certificate stating ‘they were forced to work against their will by order of the German military administration’.

¹⁵¹ BHA, 3. Bay. Inf. Div., 1919, report from Armee Oberkommando 6, 25 Jun 1915. ¹⁵² BHA, Etappenfomationen (WK), Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee, 143, report from Generalquartiermeister, 8 Aug 1915. ¹⁵³ BHA, 1. Bay. Inf. Div., 398, Gen-Kdo 1.B.A.K. to K.1.Inf.Div, 23 Mar 1916. ¹⁵⁴ BHA, Etappenfomationen (WK), Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee, 143, report from EtappenInspektion 6, 8 Sep 1916.

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Although the German authorities met both demands, approximately half the group still refused work and were promptly sent to a Z.A.B.¹⁵⁵ Work in occupied France posed a moral dilemma. It was a necessary activity, both for economic survival and because of German coercion. Yet it was also to be resisted on patriotic grounds, as it constituted work against the French war effort. Some may have reached a compromise by resisting work that directly benefitted the German army in the bombarded areas, while engaging in other forms of work elsewhere. But the incident at the sawmill in Petit-Ronchin demonstrates that occupied civilians did not always resolve the ambiguities and tensions generated by working for the German army, since both groups of workers resisted, but to different degrees. There were few easy solutions when the need to work was matched by the German army being the chief employer.

Conclusion Wartime conditions ensured chequered economic activity at the Western Front. On the Allied side, in the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais, state intervention generated increased industrial activity despite proximity to the front. In contrast, the local economies of Reims, Arras, and Nancy were not central to the wartime industrial mobilization. Here, French authorities made few efforts to assist local industries, and unemployment remained high. On the occupied side, the local economy suffered even more gravely, and high unemployment provided the German army with a large reservoir of labour to be recruited voluntarily or by force. In all cases, war severely affected working conditions and standards of living as well as the labour market. Wages and social transfer payments failed to match inflation, and remuneration for work suffered. But work at the front also carried value and meanings beyond remuneration, although these differed from one side of the lines to the other. On the Allied side, work validated the contribution of communities to the national effort, and provided a further manifestation of civilian resistance. Civilians used their work to actively renegotiate their position within the national community, as well as the state’s obligations towards them. Since, as they saw it, they were suffering like soldiers, they demanded material compensation through wage raises and welfare entitlements. Such demands consolidated the belief among civilians at the front that they were a distinct category of citizens, separate from civilians in the interior and defined by their direct experiences of war. The situation in occupied France was quite different. Here, work was a necessity given the German army’s coercive practices. Yet resistance to work that might harm the French war effort was also a ¹⁵⁵ BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2315, report from Ortskommandantur Raches-Thumesnil, 25 Dec 1916.

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moral imperative. There were few ready solutions to this problem, and many civilians attempted to navigate a difficult path between acceptance and resistance. Where civilians on the Allied side could use their work to define a privileged position for themselves within the national community, forced labour ensured occupied civilians had an ambiguous relationship with the national community from which they were separated. On both sides of the lines, local economies were profoundly impacted by the processes of militarization. Manpower and industry were either eroded by wartime conditions, or directed towards the needs of the competing belligerents. The responses of front-line communities to these changes reveal the deeply-held concepts of morality that underpinned economic activity in wartime. Civilians on the Allied side—convinced that suffering was not evenly distributed across the nation—demanded what they felt were fairer pay and welfare settlements. Their counterparts on the German side wrestled with the morality of working under occupation. Here, again, we may identify the social impacts of militarization, as front-line communities sought to define their relationships with the national economy within the context of their direct experiences of military violence. Yet the social impacts of militarization extended beyond the realm of work, welfare, and wages, as wartime conditions also had severe impacts on food supplies near the front. Threats to local food supplies necessitated innovative forms of state and municipal intervention; generated heated debates about appropriate moral behaviour in wartime; and provided a further arena where front-line communities could define their relationships with the nation.

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5 Feeding the Front-Line Towns On 2 August 1914, Le Petit Béthunois published an editorial predicting the extensive impact hostilities would likely have on living conditions in France. It felt the threat was such that large-scale state intervention in food supplies would be inevitable, with bakeries, grocery stores, dairies, and butcher’s shops all coming under municipal control, and rationing introduced on most products. It also predicted that wartime food supplies would be underwritten by a powerful moral economy centred on the authority of the soldier. The newspaper was certain that ‘all those who shall leave to take up arms, workers and bourgeois alike, can be certain that their families will not want for anything and, in any case, the patrie will not forget its obligations as regards its children’.¹ As the war progressed, many of these predictions proved accurate. The state and local authorities took ever-larger roles in organizing supplies, while popular expectations around food were shaped by a deeply moral language, focused on the sacrifices of the soldiers. Citizens demanded that authorities take action to minimize inequality and punish those who profited while others suffered.² All belligerent societies faced these developments, and municipal authorities actively sought to manage food supplies so as to alleviate hardships and minimize social tensions. Successes varied between states, as Thierry Bonzon and Belinda Davis have shown in their studies of Paris, London, and Berlin. The latter notably experienced a worse situation than did Paris and London.³ What the editors of Le Petit Béthunois could not predict, however, was the extent to which material conditions and popular expectations around food would vary within states. The urban battlefields at the Western Front experienced particularly acute problems of food supply. This chapter explores why this was so, and the solutions implemented. But it also moves beyond bureaucratic ¹ Le Petit Béthunois, 2 Aug 1914. ² Jean-Louis Robert, ‘The Image of the Profiteer’, in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, vol. 1, 104–32. ³ Thierry Bonzon, ‘Consumption and Total Warfare in Paris, 1914–1918’, in Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of the Two World Wars, ed. Frank Trentmann and Flemming Just (London, 2006), 49–64; Thierry Bonzon, ‘La Société, l’état et le pouvoir local: l’approvisionnement à Paris, 1914–1918’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 183 (1996): 11–28; Belinda Davis, ‘Food Scarcity and the Empowerment of the Female Consumer in World War 1 Berlin’, in The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, ed. Victoria De Grazia and Ellen Furlough (Berkeley, CA, 1996), 287–310; Belinda J. Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics and Everyday Life in World War 1 Berlin (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000); Thierry Bonzon and Belinda Davis, ‘Feeding the Cities’, in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, vol. 1, 305–41. Communities under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918. Alex Dowdall, Oxford University Press (2020). © Alex Dowdall. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198856115.001.0001

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measures, to consider the meanings attributed to food shortages on both sides of the lines. In wartime, food was a key issue that tested both the state’s ability to manage limited resources equitably and peoples’ willingness to endure sacrifices and shortages for the national effort. In France as a whole, popular debates around food supply centred on what could be considered acceptable levels of sacrifice. But at the Western Front, such debates were also inflected by civilians’ direct experiences of bombardment and the constant military presence. The militarization of urban life shaped local moral economies at the Western Front, further distinguishing these populations from civilians elsewhere in France.

Food Supplies on the Allied Side of the Lines The outbreak of war in August 1914 generated serious provisioning problems in northern France. As was the case elsewhere, the mobilization disrupted transport and distribution networks, while the call-up of labourers to the army affected local agricultural production. The German invasion soon exacerbated the situation. During the war of movement, towns were cut off and forced to rely on local resources. Food stockpiles evaporated, either consumed by civilians or requisitioned by Allied or German troops. During the German army’s brief occupation of Reims in September, for instance, it ordered the requisition of 100,000 kg of bread, 50,000 kg of meat, 25,000 kg of vegetables, and 5,000 kg each of coffee and salt.⁴ In such conditions, a regional supply crisis quickly developed. Following the stabilization of the front, the desperate conditions facing the remaining civilians became clear. In mid-September 1914, the prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle reported that an ‘extremely urgent’ situation existed in his department, which had been ‘ravaged by military operations’, with local supplies either requisitioned or destroyed.⁵ Conditions in the Pas-de-Calais were just as serious, and the prefect reported that ‘the primary needs of a population comprising a mass of people whose houses have been destroyed, as well as numerous refugees from the surrounding areas’ could not be met unless the government and the army took emergency measures.⁶ In Noeux-les-Mines, the interruption of rail traffic, military restrictions on road travel, and the large numbers of refugees passing through caused severe shortages. Jam, butter, and eggs were impossible to procure, while queues of several hours formed outside bakeries.⁷ In November, the mayor of Armentières pleaded for government aid when his town ran out of flour,

⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷

AMR, 1 D 65, municipal council deliberations, 7 Sep 1914. AN, F/23/102, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to Général en Chef, 17 Sep 1914. SHD, 16 N 2516, prefect Pas-de-Calais to direction arrière, 14 Oct 1914. ANMT, 1994 051 1355, administrator’s report, 19 Oct 1914.

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salt, petrol, coffee, meat, sugar, and coal, while in Arras, the French army had to provide 6,000 bread rations to prevent mass hunger.⁸ The disruption of regional agricultural production and a lack of reliable transportation lay at the root of this supply crisis. Unable to rely on local producers, towns at the Western Front were obliged to import most of their food from elsewhere in France or from abroad. But prioritization of military traffic on roads and railways meant deliveries were always subject to disruption, and shortages persisted throughout the war. In late 1915, town councillors in Nancy still complained that ‘the complete disorganization of civilian transport’ was causing regular shortages.⁹ In March 1915, deliveries of frozen meat were temporarily interrupted;¹⁰ in August shortages of flour and sugar had to be offset by emergency shipments from state authorities;¹¹ February 1917 saw the closure of schools and municipal buildings following an interruption in the coal supply;¹² while in 1918 there were shortages of flour in July, and coal in September.¹³ Similar periodic shortages were common all along the front. In summer and autumn 1917, bread shortages caused major social unrest in the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais. In Bruay, retailers were unable to secure stocks through their regular channels, and the coal-mining companies had to make distributions from their private stores.¹⁴ More chronic problems, including price rises, compounded episodic shortages. Although evidence regarding what civilians at the front paid for food is scattered, available sources give a clear indication of the upward trend in most prices. Bread remained relatively stable as prefects and mayors could fix price limits from the beginning of the war. By March 1918, for instance, bread prices in Reims were only 16 per cent greater than 1914.¹⁵ Price rises on bread were higher in the Pasde-Calais, which saw a 32 per cent increase between August 1914 and August 1917.¹⁶ But all this was a good deal lower than increases on other goods. Table 5.1 provides a price index for six staples sold on the market at Reims between 1914 and 1920. Prices of all six products increased considerably, if to variable degrees, by the end of the war. Price rises on eggs and butter compared favourably with other large regional towns. One estimate of average price increases for butter in towns of over 10,000 inhabitants, excluding Paris, is 133 per cent by the end of 1917, compared with just 89 per cent in Reims. For

⁸ AN, F/23/102, mayor Armentières to interior ministry, 16 Nov 1914; SHD, 16 N 2528, directeur arrière to commissaire régulateur Le Bourget, 25 Oct 1914. ⁹ AMN, 1 D 435, municipal council deliberations, 7 Dec 1915. ¹⁰ AMN, 1 D 436, municipal council deliberations, 15 Mar 1915. ¹¹ Ibid., 9 Aug 1916. ¹² AMN, 1 D 437, municipal council deliberations, 7 Feb 1917. ¹³ AMN, 1 D 438, municipal council deliberations, 3 Jul 1918 and 11 Sep 1918. ¹⁴ ADPdC, 11 R 878, mayor Bruay to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 21 May 1917. ¹⁵ ADM, 128 M 20, report on monthly food prices, 1914–1922. ¹⁶ ADPdC, R 609, note on bread price limits, 19 Aug 1914; ADPdC, R 521, note on bread price limits, 27 Aug 1917.

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Table 5.1. Index of Retail Prices in Reims, 1914–20 (1914 = 100). Product

1914 (pre-war)

Oct 1914

Oct 1915

Oct 1916

Mar 1917

Jun 1917

Jul 1920

Butter Eggs Potatoes Beans Pork Beef

100 100 100 100 100 100

63 – 144 166 – 105

130 124 88 210 199 195

166 157 139 300 338 213

194 180 194 610 – –

189 180 433 783 – –

442 500 – – 750 447

Sources: 1914: AMR, 5 W 3, ‘Dépenses annuelles d’une famille de 4 personnes, 1914–1922’; Oct 1914: Hess, La Vie à Reims, 11 Oct 1914; Oct 1915 and Oct 1916: L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 26 Oct 1916; Mar 1917: L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 4 Mar 1917; Jun 1917: AMR, 20 W 48, ‘Cours des denrées alimentaires’, 4 Jun 1917; Jul 1920: ADM 128 M 20, report on monthly food prices, 1914–1922.

Table 5.2. Retail Prices on Nancy’s Market, 1915–18. Product

19 Oct 1915

First Trimester 1918

Eggs (12) Butter (kg) Potatoes (kg) Beans (kg)

2.70 francs 4.40 francs 0.15 francs 0.80 francs

3.60 francs 9.50 francs 0.45 francs 2.20 francs

Sources: ADMM, 6 M 671, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to interior ministry, 19 Oct 1915; AN, F23/188, ‘Prix de vente au détail de denrées pendant les trois trimestres de 1918’.

eggs, the average increase over the same period was 107 per cent in France’s large towns, compared with 80 per cent in Reims.¹⁷ More serious were price rises on pork, which more than trebled by October 1916. This was out of line with the 63 per cent increase in pork prices registered in France’s other large towns.¹⁸ While the price of potatoes dipped early in the war, in line with Paris, it soon rose and continued to rise for the rest of the war.¹⁹ Other towns along the front experienced similar inflation. In the Pas-de-Calais, the officially regulated price for butter in July 1916 was 3.70–3.90 francs/kg.²⁰ By August 1918, this had more than doubled to 8 francs/kg.²¹ Table 5.2 indicates price rises were similar in Nancy. Between October 1915 and early 1918 the price of butter more than doubled, potatoes and beans almost trebled in price, while prices of eggs registered a more modest increase. Such absolute figures clearly

¹⁷ ¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹

March, Mouvement des prix, 184–5 and 190–1. ¹⁸ Ibid., 176–7. Bonzon and Davis, ‘Feeding the Cities’, 319. ADPdC, R 609, ‘Arrêté relative à la taxation des denrées’, 22 Jul 1916. ADPdC, R 592, ‘Taxation des denrées de première nécessité’, 8 Aug 1918.

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indicate the pressures increasing prices put on consumers, but can hide moments of acute difficulty when localized shortages caused rapid price inflation for individual products. In the Pas-de-Calais coalfield, a poor local harvest following the harsh winter of 1916–17, combined with widespread military requisitions, saw the price of potatoes rise sharply to 0.75 francs/kg in late April 1917. By the middle of May, however, authorities had secured fresh stocks and prices had fallen by three-fifths, to 0.30 francs/kg.²² Persistent shortages and price rises created genuine hardship within the frontline communities, and were a source of considerable tension as civilians demanded that the authorities root out perceived abuses in the supply system. Such demands were couched in a highly moral language. In this respect, attitudes at the front mirrored those in the country as a whole, where debates surrounding food proceeded from the position that a certain level of sacrifice was acceptable, even necessary, for the successful prosecution of the war effort. The dominant language of wartime social morality, discussed in Chapters 2 and 4, extended to questions of food, and defined fair and unjust, acceptable and unacceptable sacrifices. In this realm, as in others, images of idealized civilian behaviour were ‘dominated by the demotic figure of the poilu’, and civilian sacrifices on the home front were rendered acceptable in light of the greater sacrifices of the soldiers in the trenches.²³ But contemporaries also defined the nature of civilian sacrifice in opposition to negative social identities which had particular impacts on food supplies: the profiteer, the hoarder, and the speculator.²⁴ These figures drove up prices, restricted already limited supplies, and threatened, rather than conformed to, the moral economy. Demands for the eradication of their nefarious influence framed wartime debates around food. Civilians at the front on the Allied side shared these concerns with their counterparts in the interior. Local authorities appealed for moral social behaviour such as when, in December 1914, Béthune town council voted to chastise retailers selling products at inflated prices as ‘criminal speculators . . . [in whom] the bitterness of profit destroys all noble sentiments of humanity and patriotism’. The council appealed to the moral authority of the soldiers, and criticized these retailers for worsening the plight of families who were ‘already so tested by the absence of their breadwinners’.²⁵ A letter from a factory worker in Jarville, outside Nancy, to the prefect in December 1917 reveals the wide extent of this wartime language of social morality beyond official pronouncements. He had heard the forthcoming bread ration would be 300g per day, and stated that while this was too low, ‘if more is not

²² ²³ ²⁴ ²⁵

ADPdC, 11 R 878, report of prefect Pas-de-Calais, 7 Apr 1917. Horne, ‘Social Identity in War’, 119–20. Ibid., 127–9; Robert, ‘The Image of the Profiteer’. AMB, 1 D 18, municipal council deliberations, 1 Dec 1914.

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possible we will consent’. He accepted the principle of necessary sacrifice, but demanded radical measures be taken to rectify abuses he identified in the supply system. He accused bakers and grocers of mislabelling produce and selling portions weighing less than advertised, and complained that sugar was rationed while patisseries catering to the wealthy still operated. He also claimed local bakers used sawdust to adulterate flour, and even included a piece of bread with his letter to prove its poor quality (its survival in the archives for over a century perhaps proves his point). He felt the state could easily adopt a fair, collectivist response to the problem of ‘thieving retailers’ by taxing their profits, because ‘the state, it is everybody’.²⁶ Such demands defined a moral community from which speculators were excluded, and mirrored similar demands made in the interior. The scale of the food crisis at the front, and the strength of civilians’ demands for an equitable supply system, compelled Allied authorities to take action to offset the most negative effects of shortages and price rises. Immediately after the mobilization, the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais anticipated what this might mean. He wrote to the mayors of his department, outlining how they could maintain social peace and strengthen ‘the ties which must unite all . . . citizens’. Managing food supplies would be a central part of this mission, and the prefect encouraged the mayors to think of ways to stop ‘voracious speculation, and excessive increases in prices of essential food products’. Their primary tools in this regard were the laws of 19 July and 5 April 1884, which allowed them to fix price limits on bread and meat. But the prefect also encouraged mayors to create municipally controlled stocks of discount food and appeal to the good nature of shopkeepers not to raise prices.²⁷ Ultimately, municipal authorities, in cooperation with the state and the military, went considerably further in their efforts to guarantee a stable food supply, smooth inequalities, and prevent social unrest. In his classic study of the wartime French state, Pierre Renouvin felt this process extended so far that ‘private enterprise disappeared under the encroachments of state control; it was regulated, disciplined, and stifled’.²⁸ Although this assessment may be somewhat exaggerated for the country as a whole, it comes close to describing the situation within the towns at the Western Front. Early in the war, many municipalities organized emergency aid for those experiencing difficulties due to the mobilization, including the newly unemployed and families of soldiers. Béthune and Nancy distributed free milk and bread during the first week of August.²⁹ But as the war picked up pace, and the frontline regions were cut off from suppliers, such limited measures proved inadequate. It was not just the destitute who were at risk of hunger, but the entire population.

²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ ²⁹

ADMM, 6 M 669, signed but illegible letter to prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle, 2 Dec 1917. ADPdC, 11 R 2150, prefect Pas-de-Calais to mayors, 3 Aug 1914. Pierre Renouvin, The Forms of War Government in France (London, 1927), 53–4. AMN, 1 D 434, municipal council deliberations, 2–3 Aug 1914; Le Petit Béthunois, 6 Aug 1914.

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In this context, the pressing need to secure adequate supplies ran up against ideological commitments to free trade. M. Antoine, the councillor charged with overseeing food supply in Nancy, pointed to this tension when he asserted in early September 1914 that the council’s job was to ‘help retailers in every way and only replace them in the smallest manner possible’.³⁰ These intentions were, however, difficult to fulfil and as conditions deteriorated, municipalities regulated many aspects of the free market. One of their first tasks was establishing and maintaining secure supply lines. Originally, this amounted to aiding private retailers to source supplies, such as when the Nancy town council organized a weekly supply train from Dijon, or sent representatives to Normandy, Brittany, and Switzerland to help retailers purchase supplies.³¹ Early in the war, the Ministry of Commerce also tasked chambers of commerce in the Nord and the Pas-de-Calais with assisting municipalities in arranging deliveries for local retailers.³² In this way, local authorities assumed key intermediary positions in controlled supply chains. Municipal interventions in the local economy soon extended much further, however. Councils also directly purchased supplies, which they sold at wholesale and at retail. Nancy’s town council made its first purchase of goods, which it sold on to retailers for resale at controlled prices, in late August 1914, and repeated this exercise numerous times throughout the war.³³ Although the council never established a formal municipal store, it sold discount produce, including chicory, coffee, and meat, directly to consumers at periodic municipal auctions.³⁴ The active role taken by the municipality in Nancy irked some free-market liberals on the council, with one group complaining in June 1916 on behalf of the local grocers’ syndicate that the municipal auctions were exceeding their remit.³⁵ Indeed, post-war council reports on the town’s food supplies insisted that ‘it must be remembered the municipality did not and could not engage in commercial activities; it only intervened to come to the aid of retailers and facilitate the food supply of the population’.³⁶ This was not, however, a fully accurate assessment, and local demands for a fair and just food supply, combined with the difficulties involved in supplying a civilian population at the front, compelled the council to make repeated, direct interventions in the market. Some 30km north-west of Nancy, and considerably closer to the front lines, municipal councillors in Pont-à-Mousson displayed a similar reluctance to ³⁰ AMN, 1 D 434, municipal council deliberations, 4 Sep 1914. ³¹ SHD, 16 N 2516, mayor Nancy and prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to Joffre, 27 Aug 1914; SHD, 16 N 272 prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to Grand Quartier générale, 1 Sep 1914; AMN, 4 H 382, ‘Le Ravitaillement de Nancy, 1914–1922’, 38. ³² Le Petit Béthunois, 27 Sep 1914. ³³ AMN, 1 D 434, municipal council deliberations, 28 and 30 Aug 1914. ³⁴ AMN, 4 H 382, ‘Rapport de M. Antoine . . . ’, 20–3. ³⁵ AMN, 1 D 436, municipal council deliberations, 28 Jun 1916. ³⁶ AMN, 4 H 382, ‘Le Ravitaillement de Nancy, 1914–1922’, 41–2.

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intervene in the market as they did not, according to the local police commissioner, wish to ‘hurt the interests of several intermediaries’.³⁷ The army, however, repeatedly urged the council to take a more active role, and insisted that since German shelling had cut the town’s railway link and restricted road access, the only way to prevent speculation was for the council to directly purchase all supplies for the remaining 2,500 civilians and pass them to retailers for sale at controlled prices.³⁸ In the face of sustained criticisms, the council eventually increased municipal purchases in July 1915.³⁹ Other town councils were less averse to intervening in the market. In Reims, the municipality became the dominant player in securing wartime supplies, not only organizing deliveries for private retailers, but directly purchasing the majority of the town’s food. Between September 1914 and March 1918, it supplied over 97,000 kg of chocolate, 27,000 tonnes of coal, 76,500 kg of beans, and 1.1 million kg of potatoes to the town’s retailers.⁴⁰ It also established a municipal store and, in October 1917, a dairy, selling municipally purchased frozen meat, coffee, dried vegetables, eggs, butter, pasta, milk, and other essentials directly to consumers at controlled prices.⁴¹ The council also purchased coal, which it made available at discount prices, helping the town avoid the worst of the coal crisis endured in the rest of France in winter 1916, before these functions were taken over by a departmental coal authority.⁴² Municipal intervention hardly needed encouragement in the socialist-dominated Pas-de-Calais coalfields, where the Ministry of the Interior praised the vigorous efforts of local mayors to limit price rises by creating municipal butcher’s shops and groceries.⁴³ By 1917, both Béthune and Bruay had well-established municipal stores, and the prefect urged the mayors of smaller communes to purchase food and pass it on to private retailers for sale at controlled prices.⁴⁴ Municipal interventions in wholesale and retail aimed to combat speculation and rising prices by providing access to affordable food. The extent of wartime price rises, however, required further radical actions, with Allied authorities placing price limits on a range of goods. As mentioned earlier, mayors could already set maximum prices for bread and meat.⁴⁵ Given the centrality of bread to all diets, authorities were eager to control it, with Nancy and many towns in the

³⁷ ADMM, 6 M 671, Pont-à-Mousson police commissioner to prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle, 2 Aug 1915. ³⁸ Ibid., commandant d’armes Pont-à-Mousson to commander First Army, 24 Jul 1915. ³⁹ Ibid., mayor Pont-à-Mousson to commandant d’armes Pont-à-Mousson, 22 Jul 1915. ⁴⁰ Ville de Reims, Compte rendu des travaux du Conseil Municipal de 1912 à 1919 (Reims, 1920), 13. ⁴¹ Ibid. ⁴² L’Éclaireur de L’Est, 25 Jan 1915; 11 Feb 1917; 17 Mar 1917. ⁴³ ADPdC, R 609, interior ministry to sub-prefect Béthune, 17 Nov 1916. ⁴⁴ ADPdC, 11 R 2123, prefect Pas-de-Calais to interior ministry, 9 Feb 1918 (incorrectly dated 1917). ⁴⁵ Michel Augé-Laribé and Pierre Pinot, Agriculture and Food Supply in France during the War (London, 1927), 81; Pierre Pinot, Le Contrôle du ravitaillement de la population civile (Paris, 1925), 5.

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Pas-de-Calais setting maximums in August 1914.⁴⁶ Municipalities were slower to control meat prices. Nancy required butchers to advertise prices from April 1915, but stopped short of full regulation, preferring instead to put downward pressure on prices through competition from municipal discount meat sales.⁴⁷ Reims went further. From May 1915, the council set prices in consultation with industry representatives, and in November 1915 began importing the town’s entire meat supply, which private butchers sold at controlled prices.⁴⁸ Besides meat and bread, price controls could not legally be placed on other products in 1914, but this did not prevent some authorities near the front from trying. In August 1914, the prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle set maximum wholesale prices throughout the department for flour, potatoes, beans, rice, and salt, among other products, while in December 1914, local military authorities in Pont-à-Mousson had the mayor issue a decree fixing maximum prices on 33 products.⁴⁹ The French government regularized the situation on 20 April 1916, when it passed a national law on price controls. This allowed prefects in the interior to set maximum prices on a limited number of consumer products. The law disappointed many socialists, who had sought to eliminate profiteering and create a genuine moral economy through price controls on all basic items.⁵⁰ In the zone des armées, however, such hopes were met and the law’s provisions were considerably more wide-ranging, empowering army commanders, in consultation with prefects, to set local price limits on almost all food and drink.⁵¹ Despite the opposition of some agricultural and commercial representatives, from mid-1916, price limits came into force on a wide range of products. In the Nord and the Pasde-Calais, milk, margarine, sugar, rice, and vegetables were capped in July 1916, and potatoes, butter, and eggs were controlled at different levels in different towns.⁵² In the Marne, authorities issued maximum prices for 23 products in September 1916, only to abolish them in June 1917, and reintroduce 22 further price limits in February 1918.⁵³ The success of these efforts to make food more affordable depended, of course, upon private retailers adhering to price limits. Authorities faced a problem of ⁴⁶ L’Est Républicain, 3 Aug 1914; ADPdC, R 609, note on bread price limits, 19 Aug 1914. ⁴⁷ AMN, 1 D 435, municipal council deliberations, 13 Apr 1915; AMN, 4 H 382, ‘Le Ravitaillement de Nancy . . . ’, 23. ⁴⁸ Le Courrier de la Champagne, 22 Nov 1915. ⁴⁹ ADMM, 6 M 671, minutes of departmental food supply committee, 6 Aug 1914; Ibid., list of maximum prices, Pont-à-Mousson, 14 Dec 1914. Whether authorities were legally allowed to issue such orders is unclear. In July 1915, the French army admitted that its powers under the State of Siege did ‘not permit it to issue orders limiting prices on products other than bread and meat’. See ADM, 203 M 129, Général directeur des étapes to prefect Marne, 14 July 1915. ⁵⁰ Horne, Labour at War, 92–3. ⁵¹ SHD, 16 N 2525, ‘Loi sur la taxation de denrées’, 20 Apr 1916 and subsequent explanatory note from interior ministry, 8 May 1916. ⁵² ADPdC, R 609, ‘Arrêté relative à la taxation des denrées’, 22 Jul 1916. ⁵³ ADM, 134 M 6, ‘Taxation des denrées’, 21 Oct 1916; Ibid., direction des étapes G.A.C. to prefect Marne, 10 Jun 1917; ADM, 203 M 5, arrêté of 20 Feb 1918.

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enforcement, and at times retailers charged above the maximums. Police in Béthune caught retailers over-charging for milk, vegetable oil, and butter in August 1916, while bakers in Hersin-Coupigny exceeded the price limit in October 1917.⁵⁴ But, in general, examples of over-charging were relatively rare and more often than not retailers adhered to the maximums. In late summer 1916, police in the coal-mining region reported that some shopkeepers found it difficult to keep to the new price limits on butter and milk due to high transport costs, and withdrew their stock from market, but that most retailers respected limits on other products.⁵⁵ Moreover, price controls were a means of regulating private retail, but the ever-greater role played by municipalities in supply and distribution meant an important number of civilians secured supplies from public authorities. Municipalities supplied bulk purchases to retailers for resale under the condition they be sold at controlled prices, while municipal-run stores sold all produce at controlled prices, a fact that attracted more hard-pressed customers as the war continued. By March 1918, the client base of the Béthune municipal store, in a town with a pre-war population of 15,300, had increased to 12,000, mainly because it sold all its merchandise within the price limits.⁵⁶ Taking on evergreater roles in wholesale and retail allowed town councils to counter the problem of private retailers selling above maximum prices. Municipal interventions in supply, combined with official and unofficial price limits, created a highly controlled retail environment at the front. This was complemented by measures that sought to minimize the effects of shortages and inequalities by controlling and altering consumption patterns. Various measures implemented on a national level by the government also affected the front regions, especially the national programmes of rationing on coal and sugar from 1917, and bread from January 1918, as well as meatless days and restrictions on patisseries and luxury goods.⁵⁷ But on a local level, too, municipalities in the towns under fire tried to alter consumption patterns. Town councils provided substitutes for scarce and sought-after products, such as reducing the flour content in bread, or substituting fresh meat with foreign-import frozen meat, although these efforts never assumed the drastic levels seen in Germany and parts of Eastern Europe.⁵⁸ In ⁵⁴ ADPdC, R 609, report from Béthune police commissioner, 2 Aug 1916; ADPdC, R 521, mayor Hersin-Coupigny to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 30 Oct 1917. ⁵⁵ ADPdC, R 609, reports from Noeux-les-Mines police commissioner, 7 Aug 1916, Béthune police commissioner, 31 Jul 1916, and Bruay police commissioner, 1 Aug 1916. ⁵⁶ ADPdC, 11 R 2123, ‘Organisations publiques d’alimentation, 1918’ and mayor Béthune to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 15 Mar 1918. ⁵⁷ ADMM, 6 M 669, note on operation of patisseries, 11 Dec 1917; Pinot, Le Contrôle du ravitaillement, 97–8. ⁵⁸ Ville de Reims, Compte rendu . . . , 11–12; AMN, 1 D 435, municipal council deliberations, 6 Jul 1915. On food substitutions elsewhere see Bonzon and Davis, ‘Feeding the Cities’, 323–4; Martin Franc, ‘Bread from Wood: Natural Food Substitutes in the Czech Lands during the First World War’, in Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe, ed. Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Rachel Duffett and Alain Drouard (Farnham 2011), 73–83.

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addition, free distributions and municipal soup kitchens supplemented the diets of the most vulnerable. Armentières established a municipal kitchen in August 1914, and by January 1915 it was distributing over 300,000 meals a month.⁵⁹ In Nancy, a privately run charity had been providing low-cost meals to working-class families since 1884, while a municipal soup kitchen complemented it from May 1917.⁶⁰ In Reims, the council established soup kitchens in early February 1915, and advertised them as a further manifestation of the town’s defiance. They claimed to serve not just the town’s poor, but all ‘the Rémois who have not deserted their town’ and, after the intense bombardment of April 1917, they reassured the town’s remaining inhabitants that they could still get a good meal of soup, meat, vegetables, bread, coffee, and beer for 0.75 francs, even under the German bombs.⁶¹ In the Allied-controlled regions, therefore, public authorities sought to regulate and supplement the free market in order to minimize inequalities, ease social tensions, and respond to consumers’ demands. These measures formed part of a broader national pattern as, throughout France, public authorities assumed greater roles in managing supplies. In the interior, however, interventions generally happened later and to a lesser extent than at the front. In Paris, as Thierry Bonzon and Belinda Davis have shown, the city council rarely intervened in food supplies early in the war, with the exception of fixing price limits on bread, due to the reluctance of councillors and the belief that the war would be short.⁶² This changed with the emergence of social tensions arising from increased prices and shortages.⁶³ A supply crisis in winter 1917 forced the council’s hand, and prompted an expansion of municipal intervention.⁶⁴ Alongside the government’s rationing of sugar, coal, and bread, the Paris council fixed maximum prices on other products and established municipal butchers in March 1918.⁶⁵ Similar trends are evident elsewhere. In Bourges, the council began by helping retailers bring goods into the town, but was later required to undertake municipal wholesale in July 1918. It anticipated introducing municipal retail, but did not before the armistice.⁶⁶ In Tours, the council held off setting price limits on bread until

⁵⁹ Gobert, La Guerre dans le Nord, 6–7 and 65. ⁶⁰ ADMM, 6 M 671, police report, 27 Jul 1918; AMN, 1 D 437, municipal council deliberations, 2 May 1917. ⁶¹ AMR, 1 D 65, municipal council deliberations, 8 Sep 1915. L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 12 Feb 1915 and 24 Apr 1917; Ville de Reims, Compte rendu . . . , 14. ⁶² Bonzon and Davis, ‘Feeding the Cities’, 327. ⁶³ Bonzon, ‘La Société, l’état et le pouvoir local’, 11–15; Idem., ‘Consumption and Total Warfare’, 51. See also Tyler Stovall, ‘The Consumers’ War: Paris, 1914–1918’, French Historical Studies 31, no. 2 (2008): 293–325. ⁶⁴ Bonzon, ‘Consumption and Total Warfare’, 56. ⁶⁵ Bonzon, ‘La Société, l’état et le pouvoir local’, 27; Bonzon and Davis, ‘Feeding the Cities’, 331–3. ⁶⁶ C. J. Gignoux, Bourges pendant la guerre (Paris, 1926), 31–2.

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December 1915, but by the last year of the war, it was obliged to open a municipal butcher and begin a limited programme of municipal wholesale.⁶⁷ At the front, public authorities intervened in the market to a greater extent than their counterparts in the interior. Private retailers still operated, but difficult conditions meant large-scale public intervention was the only way to ensure the survival of civilian communities under fire, and considerable administrative efforts were made to maintain standards of material wellbeing and minimize social tensions. But beyond the scale of the intervention, important questions still arise: did such measures actually succeed in maintaining nutritional standards? And, perhaps more importantly, were civilians at the front convinced that an equitable supply had been achieved?

Adaptation, Suffering, and Entitlement: The Moral Economy of the Western Front Despite the administrative efforts of authorities to control worsening supply situations, civilian consumption patterns declined relative to pre-war norms. Evidence relating to consumption on the Allied side is fragmentary, but the scope of the measures introduced provides an indication of conditions endured. Controlled prices could only limit rather than prevent inflation. Furthermore, maximum prices and municipal-controlled wholesale and retail were confined to essential products such as bread, milk, potatoes, dried vegetables, and pasta, while luxury items came from private retailers, and were not controlled. National programmes of rationing of bread and sugar also limited consumption, while temporary shortages were a perennial worry, affected most products, and sometimes even forced reductions of official rations. In early July 1918, for instance, supply problems compelled the prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle to halve the bread ration in Nancy for a week.⁶⁸ Although frozen meat was a relatively successful replacement for fresh meat, there were few other serious efforts to substitute scarce products. In general, although Allied authorities succeeded in guaranteeing an adequate food supply for the survival of civilian populations at the front, diets became more monotonous and consumption declined. Nonetheless, social class remained an important variable. The unemployed, and those on fixed salaries and incomes, such as municipal employees, struggled. In Nancy, for instance, there were middle-class complaints over the erosion of incomes in late 1917 and early 1918, and police reported that some ‘note with terror that soon they will not be ⁶⁷ Michel Lhéritier and Camille Chautemps, Tours et la guerre: étude économique et sociale (Paris, 1926), 25–7. ⁶⁸ AMN, 4 H 382, ‘Rapport de M. Antoine . . . ’, 14.

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able to meet their most basic material needs’. Conversely, working-class families, particularly those earning relatively high wages in war industries, were better insulated against inflation.⁶⁹ In fact, as the national programme of rationing guaranteed access to minimum levels of bread and sugar, the most deprived members of pre-war society may have noticed a moderate increase in living standards.⁷⁰ Whether or not the restrictions placed on consumption at the front were greater than those in the French interior is difficult to gauge, due to the fragmentary nature of the evidence. What is clear is that products subject to rationing on a national level—bread, from January 1918 and sugar from March 1917—were available in the same quantities. The availability and affordability of other products varied. As mentioned already, price rises on dairy products including eggs and butter were lower in Reims than in Paris, but potatoes and meat, especially pork, were less affordable than in the capital.⁷¹ Periodic, sharp price rises and shortages due to transportation difficulties may also have been felt more keenly at the front than in the interior, while shortages in the first months of war linked to the German invasion were particularly acute at the front. In most cases, however, these changes in consumption levels relative to pre-war norms generated frustration on the Allied side. This was especially the case in the coal-mining region, where local diets were relatively undiversified and so particularly poorly suited to wartime conditions. Pre-war, working-class adult males in northern France depended on staples such as bread and potatoes, consuming approximately 875 g of each per day, along with 30 g of butter and variable amounts of fresh meat and vegetables. This meant that working-class families in the Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region were vulnerable to wartime shortages and rationing.⁷² This was notably the case during the winter of 1917–18, when bread shortages created widespread hardship. Postal control reports record the growing sense of frustration felt by the mining population. In late December 1917, lengthy queues formed outside bakeries and locals complained about having to make repeated trips to secure bread. One woman presented a stark picture, writing that ‘here everything is in crisis, there are often days when there is no bread, and you only see women running from one village to another looking for bread, very often there are miners who cannot go to work.’⁷³ In early 1918, censors reported that supply problems were the root cause of threatened strike activity, and posed a greater threat to civilian morale than German bombardments.⁷⁴

⁶⁹ SHD, 16 N 1540, report from commissaire spécial, Nancy to commander 20th Region, 30 Nov 1917. For similar complaints see reports of 31 Dec 1917 and 5 Jan 1918. ⁷⁰ On this point see Jay Winter, ‘Some Paradoxes of the First World War’, in Wall and Winter, The Upheaval of War, 9–42. ⁷¹ See C5P8-C5P9. ⁷² Collinet and Stahl, Le Ravitaillement de la France, 64–5. ⁷³ SHD, 16 N 1452, Boulogne postal control, 24–30 Dec 1917. ⁷⁴ Ibid., 24 Jan 1918. For a full discussion of this see Chapter 2.

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The introduction of the national programme of bread rationing by the government in March 1918 did not resolve the situation. Discontent was inevitable since the maximum ration of 500 g, given to workers in heavy industry, was lower than pre-war consumption. When one woman heard a rumour that daily bread rations would be just 300 g, she complained that: ‘if they give us this ration, nobody will go to work . . . as it is impossible to work with such a small amount of bread.’⁷⁵ Another woman in Noeux-les-Mines thought the 500 g given to labourers in heavy industry was insufficient, and supplemented her son’s ration with her own: ‘you know well that it is impossible to live on 500g of bread each. Your brother Auguste eats his own share, and sometimes mine, as I can see that he is hungry so I give him mine and tighten my own belt. If we were unfortunate and I was not with him, he would die of hunger.’⁷⁶ Such complaints continued until the end of the war, as miners struggled to adapt to changes in their diets, despite the interventions of local and national authorities. In their work on wartime food regimes, Thierry Bonzon and Belinda Davis have demonstrated the importance of analysing such changing civilian consumption levels, but have also pointed out that focusing on calorific intake alone cannot sufficiently account for the cultural dimensions of food. While a certain diet may meet energy needs, or prevent starvation or ill-health, consumers may still be unsatisfied due to scarcities of highly valued products.⁷⁷ Furthermore, the maintenance of an adequate diet is no guarantee against social tensions resulting from perceived inequalities in supply. As John Horne has pointed out, while it is difficult to give a detailed picture of what civilian consumption patterns were actually like during the war, what is important is that much of contemporary opinion felt living standards had declined.⁷⁸ In wartime France, people did not merely demand a food supply that met their material needs, but a moral economy that minimized inequalities and acknowledged sacrifices made for the nation.⁷⁹ For civilians under fire at the front, this meant demanding a food supply system that not only eradicated the immoral influences of hoarding and speculation, but one that also recognized the particular sacrifices they, like the soldiers, made for the nation. The context of enemy bombardment generated unique perspectives on the wartime moral economy within the front-line towns. Food was intimately associated with survival at the front, and maintaining supplies under bombardment was presented as a particularly heroic act, another means of maintaining normality under German fire, and further proof the community could survive enemy assault. In September 1915, for instance, Le Miroir presented images of

⁷⁵ SHD, 16 N 1452, Boulogne postal control, 18–24 Feb 1918. ⁷⁶ Ibid., 17–23 Jun 1918. ⁷⁷ Bonzon and Davis, ‘Feeding the Cities’, 314. ⁷⁸ Horne, Labour at War, 91. ⁷⁹ Alex Dowdall, ‘Community, Suffering and Entitlement: Food and Morality in the French FrontLine Towns, 1914–1918’, French History (forthcoming).

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Figure 5.1. Supplying the Community at the Front: ‘La bravoure de la population civile de Reims’, Le Miroir, 26 Sep 1915. Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

food deliveries as proof of ‘the bravery of the civilian population of Reims’ (see Figure 5.1). In this way, food suppliers assumed an important place within the towns under fire, and those who remained were praised for sustaining the community. Public

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discourse presented the provision of food as an idealized act of selfless heroism, rather than a profit-making enterprise. Early in the war, for instance, local residents of Reims wrote to a local paper thanking the Malatrai family, shopkeepers in an exposed area of the town, for not closing despite the bombardment.⁸⁰ Similarly, the director of the Grande Laiterie Rémoise felt the risks his staff took to deliver the town’s milk should be recognized. He asked the prefect to write a letter of thanks to a female employee injured by shellfire during her deliveries, and asserted that: ‘the courage and devotion that our staff has shown is unanimously recognized by our wounded population.’⁸¹ At the height of the bombardment in April 1917, l’Éclaireur de l’Est made sure to thank ‘our town’s retailers who continue to assure the food supplies of our fellow citizens in such difficult conditions’.⁸² Bombardment thus gave added resonance to food supplies, and retailers were intimately linked to the community’s survival. In this context, speculation also accrued added meaning, and retailers who acted immorally by charging unjustified high prices were criticized for compounding the suffering caused by German shells. In January 1915, for instance, l’Éclaireur de l’Est complained that ‘our unfortunate town’s painful circumstances, so distressing for some, seem to be a favourable opportunity for certain unscrupulous retailers to speculate on misery and fatten their nest eggs’. The paper presented these speculators as feeding off human misery, and insisted that ‘the inhabitants of Reims have been courageous enough that they should not have to suffer again from the brazen trafficking of certain speculators.’⁸³ The paper repeated its complaints in May 1916, when potatoes suffered price rises, claiming that ‘it is time that measures are taken so that we are sheltered from such exploiters. We do not want to escape the Boches only to fall under the blows of these unscrupulous retailers’.⁸⁴ Direct comparisons between speculation and German shelling heightened the seriousness of the offence, and rhetorically linked speculators with the enemy physically destroying the town. The physical danger of bombardment added a further dimension to the language of wartime social morality within the communities under fire, and painfully reinforced the sense of entitlement of civilians at the front to special consideration in food supplies, as in other matters. As Elizabeth X from Nancy put it in relation to bread rationing: It is regrettable they give the same quantity in all regions, because it is certain that in towns and localities subject to continual emotions you need to be well fed to

⁸⁰ L’Éclaireur de L’Est, 30 Oct 1914. ⁸¹ ADM, 29 M 19, director Grande Laiterie Réimois to prefect Marne, 8 Sep 1915. ⁸² L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 9/10 Apr 1917. ⁸³ Ibid., 8 Jan 1915. ⁸⁴ Ibid., 6 May 1916.

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endure them courageously. If those in the south are content with 200g of bread, it would not be enough for the people of Lorraine.⁸⁵

Thierry Bonzon and Belinda Davis have argued that in Paris, London, and Berlin ‘it was the unequal distribution of deprivation more than the deprivation itself that annoyed people the most’.⁸⁶ At the front, too, people accepted a certain level of deprivation. What they demanded, however, was not a strictly equal distribution, but a supply system that acknowledged the additional sacrifices made by civilians at the front by granting them extra provisions. In October 1917, for instance, following the national introduction of coal rationing, authorities in the Pas-de-Calais fixed monthly limits at between 50 kg for a single person, and 200 kg for families of more than five, roughly equivalent to the ration in Paris. But whereas Parisians saw this as equitable, Béthune town council felt it was an unfair response that did not take account of the additional hardships of life at the front. The mayor asserted ‘it is not acceptable that [the population of Béthune] is . . . sacrificed to other regions that are well supplied and whose calm position in the rear is not comparable to the far more discouraging situation at the front’.⁸⁷ Once again, bombardment prompted civilians under fire to demand a privileged position within a national hierarchy of suffering. In Nancy, René Mercier argued this position explicitly in L’Est Républicain. He wrote that a level of sacrifice was inevitable in war, but that: it does not seem just that the towns that suffer from bombardments are treated on exactly the same footing as those where you can sleep in perfect calm, far from the shells and the missiles, and without hearing the constant sound of cannonfire . . . Those in Bordeaux do not have the same life as those in Nancy, and Limoges is not as devastated as Pont-à-Mousson. By this we mean that the civilian’s work is much more difficult here than elsewhere.

He felt that eventually, ‘that which has been done for the soldier [will be] done for the civilian’ but that in the meantime people should ‘keep smiling, and accept with discipline the little inconveniences that current necessities bring to us.’⁸⁸ He later claimed it would be appropriate to provide an additional 100 g bread ration to those living under fire.⁸⁹ Police reports suggest such opinions were widely held within front-line communities. When Nancy experienced bread shortages in July 1918, police reported that: ⁸⁵ SHD, 16 N 1465, Nancy postal control, 14 Dec 1917. ⁸⁶ Bonzon and Davis, ‘Feeding the Cities’, 340. ⁸⁷ AMB, 1 D 18, municipal council deliberations, 16 Oct 1917; Triebel, ‘Coal and the Metropolis’, in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, vol. 1, 363. ⁸⁸ L’Est Républicain, 26 Apr 1918. ⁸⁹ Ibid., 28 Apr 1918.

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the civilian from Lorraine, and especially the worker, conscious of his special situation and the meritorious effort he undertakes in dangerous conditions, as well as the services he gives the nation in agreeing to live and work here despite the bombs, seems to accept the restrictions with some difficulty, especially when they become excessive. It seems to him that the special regime he endures should be the sine qua non of an equally special regime . . . as regards food supplies.

The report concluded that local civilians would not admit ‘that they must accept the same restrictions as if they were in the rear’.⁹⁰ Such attitudes implied an acceptance of shortages, but also a belief that those in the interior should bear them more heavily. The police commissioner saw no malice in this attitude. Rather, it was ‘full of a spirit of fairness and logic’. Unlike hazard pay and compensation for injuries, discussed in Chapter 4, authorities did not meet such demands for extra food, and did not implement a special regime. Nevertheless, the belief of civilians at the front that they should be shielded from the worst of the war’s material hardships played an important role in defining their attitudes towards sacrifice, entitlement, and the nation. Despite the significantly expanded role assumed by local authorities in food supply at the front, civilians living under fire still felt that inequalities plagued the system. Even if their basic material needs were met, and considerable efforts were undertaken to root out hoarders and speculators, the context of bombardment generated a perceived disparity relative to the interior.

Food and Morality in Occupied France The task of supplying a civilian population under fire was even more difficult on the German side, where the occupation quickly generated a severe supply crisis. These areas were cut off from the world market and unable to import goods. They also had a reduced capacity for producing food, given the absence of an adult male working population and proximity to the fighting. The German army’s requisitions and restrictions on movement worsened the situation. The winter of 1914–15 was particularly difficult. Shortages were constant, prices for available goods were high, and occupied civilians were forced to improvise, drawing on whatever resources they could find.⁹¹ The curate of Loos-en-Gohelle remembered this winter as ‘sad and sombre’, since the population made do with 110 g of rye flour per head per day, allocated by the German army.⁹² In Lens, Émile Basly

⁹⁰ SHD, 16 N 1540, report from commissaire spécial, Nancy to commander 20th Region, 23 Jul 1918. See 25 Mar 1918 for a similar report. ⁹¹ Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 131–9; Nivet, La France occupée, 150–4. ⁹² ADPdC, 11 R 857, ‘l’Année tragique de Loos-en-Gohelle.’

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created a municipal store early in the war, which sold discounted produce sourced in Lille, but the situation remained precarious.⁹³ He organized several women to grind flour in coffee grinders after the local mill broke down; and, when the German authorities ordered him to dispose of horses killed by shellfire, he secretly distributed the meat to the population.⁹⁴ Officially, Germany refused to provision the occupied population, as was its obligation under the Hague Conventions, unless the Allies ended their naval blockade.⁹⁵ In reality, in the early phases of the war, individual German units intervened locally when conditions proved particularly difficult. In February 1915, the commander in Péronne issued instructions that each commune should provision itself from its own resources but, if truly unable to, the German army could provide rice, flour, potatoes, salt, and sugar, but on no account would it provide meat, bread, jam, biscuits, eggs, or vegetables.⁹⁶ Despite such emergency provisions, the occupied communities were in a precarious situation, and by spring 1915 mass starvation was a real prospect. This potential disaster was averted in May 1915, when the Commission for Relief in Belgium (C.R.B.), which began operations in Belgium in late October 1914, extended its operations to occupied France. This neutral, charitable organization, established under the patronage of Herbert Hoover, was a humanitarian enterprise of unprecedented scale, and guaranteed food supplies for approximately 2.2 million occupied French civilians. It operated in a delicate position between the belligerent nations, and its successes lay as much in diplomacy as logistics, following a policy of strict neutrality.⁹⁷ A significant problem was that its existence fundamentally undermined the logic of the Allied naval blockade. The civilian populations of France and Belgium were, in effect, caught in a struggle between humanitarian need and economic warfare. Some Allied civilian authorities and military commanders were unwilling to relinquish the claim that a moral obligation fell on Germany to feed the occupied populations of Europe, while they also feared that the food imported by the C.R.B. could be requisitioned by the German army for its own use.⁹⁸ Eventually, however, humanitarian need won out, and when the C.R.B. secured commitments from the German army that it would

⁹³ ADHS, 4 M 519, report of Émile Basly. ⁹⁴ Basly, Martyre de Lens, 42–8; ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ⁹⁵ Peter Scholliers and Frank Daelmans, ‘Standards of Living and of Health in Wartime Belgium’, in Wall and Winter, The Upheaval of War, 141; Paul Collinet and Paul Stahl, Le Ravitaillement de la France occupée (Paris, 1928), 3; Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 140. ⁹⁶ BHA, Gen. Kdo. I B. Arm. Korps, 1117, order from General Von Xylander, Péronne, 15 Feb 1915. ⁹⁷ George I. Gay and H. H. Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium: Documents, vol. 1 (Stanford, CA, 1929), 110. The C.R.B. was run by an American–Spanish committee under Hoover’s direction. Following America’s entry into war, the administration was taken over by a Spanish–Dutch committee, although Hoover retained a controlling influence. ⁹⁸ Becker, Cicatrices rouges, 143; Nivet, La France occupée, 150; de Schaepdrijver, La Belgique, 108.

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not requisition foodstuffs, operations began in late 1914 in Belgium, and May 1915 in France.⁹⁹ In both France and Belgium, highly decentralized systems distributed C.R.B. food. The C.R.B. imported food from the international market into the occupied zones. It was then distributed by locally run organizations, the Comité national de secours et d’alimentation (C.N.), in Belgium, and the Comité d’alimentation du nord de la France (C.F.), in France. A series of committees of descending scale distributed food within the occupied regions. At the top were district committees, reporting to the national executives of the C.N. and the C.F. Below were regional committees, each operating a warehouse which stored C.R.B. produce. The primary units in the supply chain were 4,731 communal committees established throughout France and Belgium.¹⁰⁰ Each communal committee, normally comprised of a town’s mayor, town councillors, and other local notables, arranged deliveries of food to the town from the regional warehouse. Once C.R.B. food arrived in a town, the communal committee distributed it from its stores. These were located in buildings that acted as centres of community life, such as schools and sports halls, and were staffed by municipal employees remaining in the town and rendered unemployed by the occupation, such as postmen and teachers.¹⁰¹ Many local politicians, particularly those in the socialist coal-mining region, welcomed this strong municipal role in food supply. Émile Basly described the distribution of free bread made through the municipal bakery as one of his ‘socialist dreams . . . that the war, by a disappointing irony, forced me to fulfil’.¹⁰² In most cases, the communal committee and municipal store attracted the personalities and channelled the energies of the pre-war town council. As the German authorities restricted town councils in most of their activities, food supply presented a last vestige of public communal life operating under occupation.¹⁰³ In Belgium, rations distributed by the C.R.B. were originally intended to supplement domestically produced food. But as the war continued and Belgium’s capacity for replenishing its domestic food supply shrank, the ration system expanded until it provided most of the population with the greater part of their food.¹⁰⁴ In France, the situation was more extreme given the region’s limited resources and capacity for production, and from the beginning the C.R. B. supplied the majority of the region’s food. The C.R.B. sold its rations in France to the population at controlled prices. Those capable of paying, such as those with savings or those still employed by municipal authorities, were charged marginally

⁹⁹ Gay and Fisher, Public Relations, 516–19 and 414–17. ¹⁰⁰ George I. Gay, The Commission for Relief in Belgium: Statistical Review of Relief Operations (Stanford, CA, 1925), 8–9. ¹⁰¹ Collinet and Stahl, Le Ravitaillement de la France, 71–2. ¹⁰² Basly, Martyre de Lens, 49. ¹⁰³ A similar situation developed in Belgium. See de Schaepdrijver, La Belgique, 115. ¹⁰⁴ Albert Henry, Le Ravitaillement de la Belgique pendant l’occupation allemande (Paris, 1924), 121–3.

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250g 63g 47g 15g 15g 15g 15g 18g As Available As Available

Source: Collinet and Stahl, Le Ravitaillement de la France, 59.

above cost price. The profits accrued were distributed to the unemployed, who could then purchase their own rations.¹⁰⁵ A highly controlled system of rationing restricted what people could purchase, and in May 1915 the C.R.B. aimed to provide the following daily ration to the French population: In addition, the German army requisitioned the local wheat harvest, but agreed to sell bread and potatoes back to the civilian population to supplement C.R.B. rations.¹⁰⁶ Further measures assisted the most vulnerable members of society. Urban areas received extra food as, unlike the countryside, they could not grow personal garden produce.¹⁰⁷ Children received nutritional supplements and extra milk, while the sick and elderly received extra biscuit rations, priority access to milk and cocoa, and an artificial food supplement from 1918. Soup kitchens distributed free supplementary rations to the neediest, and school restaurants provided adolescents with extra nutrition.¹⁰⁸ Those working in heavy industry, including the coal mines, also received additional rations.¹⁰⁹ Given the scale of the food crisis in northern France, therefore, most civilians— especially in urban areas—depended on the C.R.B. for the majority of their food. According to the organization’s official historian, its task was to place a ration ‘in the hands of every man, woman and child’.¹¹⁰ This is not to say, however, that the C.R.B. monopolized food distribution. In Lens, the municipal store supplemented C.R.B. rations by sourcing a limited number of items from Holland through the Lille Chamber of Commerce.¹¹¹ Some private retailers also operated, mainly in larger towns and cities, but their stocks were limited and expensive, and therefore inaccessible to most of the population. Léon Tacquet, one of the wealthiest men in Lens, could supplement his C.R.B. rations with purchases from private retailers, ¹⁰⁵ ¹⁰⁶ ¹⁰⁸ ¹⁰⁹ ¹¹⁰

Collinet and Stahl, Le Ravitaillement de la France, 79. Gay and Fisher, Public Relations, 598–600. ¹⁰⁷ Ibid., 439. Collinet and Stahl, Le Ravitaillement de la France, 90–1; Nivet, La France occupée, 169–70. Hardy-Hémery, ‘L’industrie houillère en zone occupée’, 327–9. Gay, Statistical Review, 62. ¹¹¹ ADHS, 4 M 519, report of Émile Basly.

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paying 6 francs/kg for beef and 0.75 francs per egg, but most could not afford such luxury.¹¹² Charles Bourgeois, the chief of police in Lens, was pleased when the municipal store opened as it regularized food prices, and placed a ‘brake’ on speculation.¹¹³ A black market also existed, but it too was poorly stocked and expensive, while the C.R.B. and the German authorities took strict measures to prevent its further development.¹¹⁴ Anyone caught selling C.R.B. food on the black market or to German soldiers was severely punished, in one case with a fourmonth prison sentence.¹¹⁵ In Lens, Basly uncovered over 400 incidents of false claims of C.R.B. rations.¹¹⁶ Those caught defrauding the C.R.B. received a ‘punishment card’ instead of a regular ration book, entitling them to claim only bread and other essentials.¹¹⁷ The seriousness of the food crisis in occupied France, and the near-total disappearance of local productive capacity and retail, prompted radical solutions and the C.R.B., in conjunction with local public authorities, came to control almost all aspects of supply and distribution. As on the Allied side, the survival of the occupied civilian populations depended on the development of a highly controlled supply system. But despite the large-scale interventions of the C.R.B., the vast majority of occupied civilians experienced considerable material hardships. Only the very wealthy could benefit from the limited private retail market to mitigate the impact of inadequate and irregular food supplies. In his diary, for instance, Léon Tacquet rarely complained about food. The German authorities permitted him to travel to Lille to coordinate food deliveries for Lens, and while there he normally dined well. In September 1916, he had a ‘magnificent lunch’ of ‘soup, steak, fatted chicken, ham, beer, and a fine wine, all at very high prices, truly wartime prices, but very good’.¹¹⁸ Even under fire in Lens he ate well. In June 1915, when he was unable to source fresh meat, he took from a large private store, eating an ‘excellent dinner’ of cold chicken, salad, asparagus, and carrots.¹¹⁹ Tacquet was an exception, however, and most occupied civilians were restricted to C.R.B. rations. One woman repatriated from Lens remarked that ‘nobody except the rich could buy [meat on the open market]. It sold for 6 francs per half kilo’.¹²⁰ The C.R.B. had a target ration for all civilians. Conditions on the ground, however, ensured these targets were not always met, and had to be revised repeatedly. Distributed supplies varied from time to time and place to place. German-supplied potatoes and bread supplemented C.R.B. rations, although

¹¹² ¹¹³ ¹¹⁵ ¹¹⁶ ¹¹⁷ ¹¹⁸ ¹²⁰

Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 1 Oct 1916. ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of chief of police Bourgeois. ¹¹⁴ Nivet, La France occupée, 166. Collinet and Stahl, Le Ravitaillement de la France, 83. ADHS, 4 M 519, report of Émile Basly. Collinet and Stahl, Le Ravitaillement de la France, 83. Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 23 Sep 1916. ¹¹⁹ Ibid., 6 Jun 1915. ADPdC, 11 R 857, report of unnamed woman repatriated from Lens, 28 Mar 1917.

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again, distributed amounts often fell below what German authorities promised. Based on either targeted or distributed rations, consumption of pre-war staples, including bread and potatoes, slumped on the occupied side. In early 1917, civilians received 450 g of bread per day (300 g from the C.R.B., plus 150 g from the German army). Combined with 400 g of potatoes also distributed by the German military, this amounted to less than half the pre-war daily consumption of bread and potatoes.¹²¹ In Comines, bread rations began at a comparatively generous 500 g per day, but by the middle of 1917 were more often 250–300 g of rye bread. One local representative pleaded to the C.R.B. for regularity in the supply, since the town’s proximity to the fighting meant ‘the people are already much tried from the physical point of view’.¹²² C.R.B. deliveries were always precarious, partly because Allied governments never allowed the organization to build up stockpiles.¹²³ As a result, any interruption in the supply chain could cause immediate and acute distress. The supply situation changed weekly and sometimes daily and, with the exception of bread, there was no guarantee that particular products would be available. Communal committees distributed whatever goods they received, and certain items would not be available for weeks.¹²⁴ From time to time, C.R.B. rations were interrupted entirely. In such cases individual German units provided emergency aid, but the amounts available were small. In February 1917, the Fifth Bavarian Infantry division was instructed to distribute only 180 g of flour, 200 g of potatoes, 7 g of chicory, 10 g of salt, and 25 g of meat per head, per day in such circumstances.¹²⁵ The effort to feed occupied France was considerable and prevented mass starvation. But the C.R.B.’s rations remained irregular and inadequate relative to pre-war norms, and put constant mental and physical strain on the occupied populations. The C.R.B. itself estimated the daily calorific intake from its rations ranged from a low of 1,250 to a high of 1,850—enough to sustain existence, but well below the normal level of 3,000 for an adult male.¹²⁶ Supplies, however, not only lacked quantitatively, but also qualitatively, with available food bland and monotonous. In October 1917, a man named Lenglet, from Lille, wrote to the C.F. and clearly, if colourfully, captured the situation: Dear Sir, The Lord deliver us from cabbages! Why this avalanche of cabbages? Why this obligation to eat cabbages? If you want tomatoes you are obliged to take cabbages! If you want carrots, still cabbages! If you want potatoes, again cabbages! If one buys them, however, they must be eaten and they become sickening.

¹²¹ Gay and Fisher, Public Relations, 598–600. ¹²² Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford (HILA), C.R.B. Records, Box 504, Folder 7, report on feeding of Comines, 3 Aug 1917. ¹²³ Gay, Statistical Review, 27. ¹²⁴ Collinet and Stahl, Le Ravitaillement de la France, 32. ¹²⁵ BHA, 5. Bay. Inf. Div., 3489, instruction from Generalintendant des Feldheeres, 5 Feb 1917. ¹²⁶ Gay and Fisher, Public Relations, 445.

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Have you ever eaten them for 8 consecutive days and on certain days at midday and night? Try it! . . . Are we then no longer free? We must do without vegetables altogether or eat cabbages till death! The inquisition did not think of this torture.¹²⁷

Lenglet’s frustration at the C.R.B.’s ‘avalanche of cabbages’ points to the cultural dimensions of food, which existed on the occupied side as much as on the Allied. But the responses of civilians to perceived inadequacies in supply differed markedly from one side of the lines to the other, not least because the absence of newspapers and open political dialogue precluded occupied civilians from participating in public debates about food. Nevertheless, food remained a dominant concern for the occupied. It was also a highly problematic issue, which necessarily brought occupied civilians, especially public officials, into close contact with the occupying forces. With so many people dependent on the C.R.B., the attitudes and actions of its local administrators were closely monitored. Indeed, the C.R.B. was aware that its activities were a source of suspicion within certain sections of the population. In August 1916, for instance, a delegate reported to the national executive of the C.R.B. that there existed in northern France ‘a deep rooted idea that the C.R.B. was exclusively a business proposition and that the people engaged in it were making money and acquiring a fortune’.¹²⁸ Although this was not the case—the C.R.B. was strictly charitable—the sense that some unscrupulous administrators could use the system for financial gain helped generate a language of social morality under occupation, which defined how those involved in food supply should act towards the occupiers. Like so many other aspects of occupied public life, this was shaped by the idea of ‘respectable resistance’, outlined by Connolly.¹²⁹ Public officials involved in food supply were still required to ostentatiously demonstrate their distance from the occupying forces, while those who failed to live up to the appropriate moral standards risked accusations of mauvaise conduite. These attitudes are particularly evident in the repatriation statements given by civilians returned from German-occupied France via Switzerland. Accusations against municipal authorities in charge of C.R.B. rations were common. The mayor of Monchy-le-Preux, for instance, was accused of having ‘appropriated produce from the American food supplies to resell at a profit and at exorbitant prices’, while the inhabitants of Homécourt, in the Meurthe-et-Moselle, were ‘infuriated by their mayor who they accused of passing commission produce to the Germans’.¹³⁰ Similarly, the mayor of Hénin-Liétard allegedly ‘had excellent ¹²⁷ HILA, C.R.B. Records, Box 505, Folder 1, letter from M. Lenglet, 5 Oct 1917. ¹²⁸ HILA, C.R.B. Records, Box 52, Folder 1, minutes of C.R.B. delegates meeting, 10 Aug 1916. ¹²⁹ See Chapter 3, C3P11. ¹³⁰ ADHS, 4 M 517, report of Monsieur D., 4 May 1917; HILA, C.R.B. Records, Box 504, Folder 6, report on repatriations, 31 Dec 1916.

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relations with the enemy authorities. He even facilitated the “leaks” that occurred in the food supplies’, and arranged the arrest and deportation of a municipal employee who complained.¹³¹ Such actions not only diminished the food available to the local population, thus compromising its wellbeing, but contravened the attitude of patriotic resistance expected of occupied civilians by relieving hardships on German soldiers. In the context of occupation, assistance rendered to the enemy compounded profiting from the hardship of one’s compatriots. Whether such accusations were justified is difficult to gauge. It is clear that a degree of fraud existed within the C.R.B., and that some sold rations to German soldiers or on the black market for profit. As mentioned earlier, Basly identified over 400 such cases in Lens. Many reports of the propriety of those involved in food supply in the bombarded zones are contradictory, however. A number of repatriated civilians from Lens, for instance, commented favourably on Émile Basly’s role in organizing supply.¹³² One group applauded the role the municipality played in preventing German soldiers from appropriating rations, including its threats of diplomatic actions.¹³³ But others—including Léon Tacquet—were convinced Basly actively manipulated the town’s food supply. In his wartime diary, Tacquet claimed the mayor profited from the occupation by charging above set prices for C.R.B. produce. In the summer of 1915, when the communal store’s butter ran out and Basly requisitioned the remaining stocks of a local retailer, M. Noiret, Tacquet accused the mayor of using the occupation to promote populist agendas and improve his post-war electoral chances. Tacquet claimed Noiret did nothing as he ‘feared the mayor’s reprisals: he has a son of military age who could be arrested by the Germans if denounced’.¹³⁴ Whether these accusations were true is, perhaps, beside the point. What matters is that food supply generated suspicion and recrimination within the occupied communities. Basly, and others like him, were expected to patriotically resist the occupiers, and maintain a positive working relationship with them so as to guarantee uninterrupted access to supplies. These positions were, perhaps, irreconcilable, and a source of considerable tension. For those involved in organizing supply, therefore, food and social morality were deeply intertwined. But for consumers, too, food supply offered an arena of collective action within which they could display their attitudes towards the occupiers. Some used questions of food supply to challenge the occupiers. Coalminers in the few concessions that continued operating, for instance, sometimes went on strike to convince the Germans to supplement C.R.B. rations. In ¹³¹ ADHS, 4 M 342, report of Laurence B., 18 Dec 1916. ¹³² See, for instance, the repatriation reports conserved in the archives of the Pas-de-Calais, none of which accuse Basly of mismanaging supplies. ADPdC, 11 R 857, repatriation reports. ¹³³ ADHS, 4 M 518, collective repatriation report on Lens, 7 Aug 1917. ¹³⁴ Tacquet, Dans la fournaise, 5 Jul 1915. For further accusations see 10 Sep 1915, 11 Dec 1915, 23 Dec 1915.

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September 1916, groups of miners threatened work stoppages because of meat shortages. Their actions were successful, and the German authorities arranged for weekly deliveries of horsemeat.¹³⁵ Later, in the mines of the Nord, the German military sought to combat absenteeism and protests caused by poor supplies by incentivizing work through extra sugar rations.¹³⁶ Such protests and work stoppages were important and, although they did not constitute open resistance, represented a limited challenge to the absolute authority of the occupiers. Some went further, and used questions of food to actively undermine the occupation regime. Since the C.R.B. supply network presented one of the few opportunities for movement around the occupied zones, it could facilitate the spread of resistance activity and represented a threat to military authority. The German army recognized this, and subjected C.R.B. convoys to tight surveillance. Civilians operating these convoys could not enter shops and cafés, or communicate with other civilians, and were kept under constant surveillance.¹³⁷ The system was not watertight, however, and in July 1916 the Bavarian Sixth Army noted that ‘eminent persons in the local communities and persons of trust in the [C.F.] are inciting the male population to refuse work. There is suspicion that these people sporadically receive corresponding instructions during their stays in Lille.’¹³⁸ Although there is little evidence that such resistance activities seriously threatened Germany’s military capabilities on the Western Front, they further reveal how the food supply system was imbued with the moral-patriotic imperatives of ‘occupied war culture’. Food supply thus constituted a space within which some occupied civilians faced accusations of collaboration, and others successfully defined themselves against the occupiers by adopting attitudes of patriotic resistance. In one respect, therefore, questions of food supply under occupation shared something with the situation on the Allied side, as in each case they developed into conversations about who were the worthiest and most deserving contributors to the national effort. The stakes were, however, much higher, and placed significant stress on the occupied communities. This was because the practice of ‘respectable resistance’ and the denigration of mauvaise conduite were centred on expectations of postwar judgement.¹³⁹ Indeed, instances of collaboration and profiteering were often subjected to moral opprobrium in post-occupation denunciations. Some of those involved in food supply under occupation—such as Émile Basly— acquitted themselves well, and continued in public roles after the war. Others had to fight to defend their reputations. We have already seen that the town ¹³⁵ BHA, 5 Bay. Inf. Div., 3489, Etappen-Inspektion 6 Armee to army corps, 20 Sep 1916. ¹³⁶ Hardy-Hémery, ‘L’Industrie houillère en zone occupée’, 329. ¹³⁷ BHA, 4 B. Inf. Div., 2561, instructions from Ortskommandantur Epinoy, 23 Mar 1916. ¹³⁸ BHA, Gen. Kdo. III B. Arm. Korps, 2517, XXVII Reservekorps to Armee Oberkommando 6, 16 Jul 1916. ¹³⁹ Connolly, ‘Notable Protests’, 697 and 701.

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council of Hénin-Liétard was accused of siphoning C.R.B. food to the Germans. But soon after the armistice, the municipal employee in charge of food supplies wrote to the prefect to defend his patriotic credentials, claiming that when he refused to give additional rations to a ‘bad woman’ (mauvaise femme) whose husband volunteered to dig trenches for the Germans, he was denounced and fined.¹⁴⁰ For a small number, including the mayor of Moyenneville in the Pas-deCalais, denunciations had serious ramifications. He was accused of siphoning food for his own gain and, upon his repatriation in 1917, was sent to a detention facility in the French interior until the end of the war.¹⁴¹

Conclusion The patterns that characterized developments in food supply at the front were similar in many respects to those that characterized work, welfare, and the local economy. On both sides of the lines, food was scarcer in wartime and, despite state and charitable interventions, civilians’ material conditions deteriorated, albeit to different degrees. These developments compounded the other forms of suffering attendant upon life at the front. Civilians’ contrasting responses to these wartime shortages also resembled those formulated in response to developments elsewhere in the economy. On the Allied side, bombardment modified the language of wartime social morality, and civilians claimed their added suffering under fire entitled them to additional food supplies. These demands helped civilians under fire to further define themselves as a distinct group within the civilian population. Those living under German occupation were denied the opportunity to formulate such coherent collective responses to shortages, especially since bombardment by Allied shells could not be used as leverage to secure additional supplies. But a moral economy did develop on the occupied side, centred on perceptions of ‘respectable resistance’ and mauvaise conduite, and public officials and private citizens were judged harshly for perceived indiscretions in their dealings with the occupiers. The histories of work and welfare on the one hand, and food supply on the other, demonstrate the importance of changes in material conditions at the front, as well as the forms of representation that civilians used to interpret these changes. On both sides of the lines, civilians endured hardships that distinguished them from civilians elsewhere in France. But the responses available to them varied from one side to the other. On the Allied side, German bombardment provided an underlying meaning to material hardship. On the German-occupied side, Allied bombardment could not provide the same meaning. The result was that whereas ¹⁴⁰ ADPdC, M 2470, report to prefect, 21 Nov 1918. ¹⁴¹ ADPdC, M 2272, affaire Boudringhin.

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civilians on the Allied side articulated a distinct place for themselves within the nation on the basis of their suffering, occupied civilians had an ambiguous relationship with the national community from which they were separated. Material conditions were thus central to how civilians at the front attempted to understand the transformation of their towns into battlefields, as well as their role in the wider war effort.

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6 Communities in Exile Refugees from the Front

In April 1918, Le Petit Rémois described the final evacuation of Reims by its remaining civilians, whom it named the ‘last of the faithful’. One woman recounted the deep attachment she still felt towards the bombarded town, and her emotions at being forced out: As long as I live I will remember this journey when our tears did not stop flowing, and when we did not dare raise our voices for fear of chasing away the last memories of our dear petite patrie. All along the road, we passed more and more poilus who went joyously and singing towards the poor town that we had left. I would have given a great deal to have jumped out of the truck and retaken the hard road alongside them.¹

When the group reached Épernay, they were frustrated to find nobody to welcome them, and shocked that the bare hall in which they were to sleep only had straw bedding. After having lived under fire at the front for almost three and a half years, these civilians, like many others who had preceded them during the war, now had to adjust to a difficult existence as refugees in the interior. As Chapter 1 demonstrated, leaving the front—either voluntarily or through compulsory evacuation— was difficult and often traumatic. This is also evident in the above quotation, where the sense of finality suggests that those who fled feared breaking their connections to their homes, dissipating community bonds, and leaving their towns as nothing but ruins, devoid of urban life. Yet, despite these fears, refugees more often than not successfully maintained strong connections with the communities they left. Previous chapters have shown how experiences of military violence, occupation, and material hardship radically altered the internal dynamics of civilian communities at the front, and differentiated them from the rest of the population. This chapter, in turn, will examine the experiences of refugees from the bombarded towns, and consider how forced displacement shaped the front-line communities.

¹ Le Petit Rémois, 7 Apr 1918. Communities under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918. Alex Dowdall, Oxford University Press (2020). © Alex Dowdall. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198856115.001.0001

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In this respect, the chapter seeks to uncover refugees’ experiences and voices, and use these to understand their relationships with the communities they left behind. This is in contrast to much of the existing literature on First World War refugees in general, and French refugees in particular, which has focused instead on the attitudes and actions of states and local host communities towards the displaced, as well as the role played by the image of the refugee in the processes of national mobilization.² These studies have argued that in the French case, refugees were originally warmly welcomed in the interior as physical manifestations of German barbarism, and that charitable mobilizations in their favour helped solidify the emerging ‘war cultures’. As the war progressed, however, and as suffering and hardship spread across the national community, these original warm welcomes dissipated.³ By 1917, refugees could no longer live up to the stylized image of the ‘heroic victim’ presented early in the war, while popular resentments focused on supposedly undeserving and lazy refugees who were in receipt of significant government aid.⁴ In certain cases refugees, particularly those repatriated from German-occupied France, were denounced as ‘Boches du Nord’—suspect elements having been in intimate contact with the enemy.⁵ In this way, historians have taken France’s treatment of its refugees as indicative of the original strength of wartime mobilization, and the subsequent limitations of national unity and solidarity when faced with the pressures of total war. Indeed, Philippe Nivet has concluded in his comprehensive study that ‘refugees remained in the margins of the French population’, and that their treatment ‘contradicts the idea that the Great War was a determining moment for the unification of the nation’.⁶ However, focusing on the attitudes of the state and host communities towards refugees in this way obscures refugees’ own experiences, the internal dynamics of refugee communities, and their active engagement with the state and their abandoned homes. Historians of other refugees have warned against excluding such questions from analysis.⁷ Peter Gatrell has pointed out that historians too often portray refugees ‘as miserable flotsam and jetsam . . . as inescapable “victims” of

² Matteo Ermacora, ‘Assistance and Surveillance: War Refugees in Italy, 1914–1918’, Contemporary European History 16, no. 4 (2007): 445–59; Julia Thorpe, ‘Displacing Empire: Refugee Welfare, National Activism and State Legitimacy in Austria-Hungary in the First World War’, in Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced Migration in the Twentieth Century, ed. P. Virdee and Panikos Panayi (Basingstoke, 2011), 102–26. ³ Pierre Purseigle, Mobilisation, sacrifice, citoyenneté, 288–93; Michaël Amara, Des Belges à l’épreuve, 55–6 and 68–70; Philippe Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 271–6. ⁴ Amara, Des Belges à l’épreuve, 77–8 and 112; Purseigle, Mobilisation, sacrifice, citoyenneté, 294–304; Purseigle ‘A Wave onto our Shores’, 442–3. Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 293–329. ⁵ Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 377–82; Purseigle, Mobilisation, sacrifice, citoyenneté, 297–8. ⁶ Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 556–8. ⁷ For a recent collection which seeks to expand the history of refugee experience during the war, see Peter Gatrell and Liubov Zhvanko, eds., Europe on the Move: Refugees in the Era of the Great War (Manchester, 2017).

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war or revolution, not as agents of change’, and that avoiding refugees’ own experiences and actions hides the fact that ‘states make refugees, but that refugees can also make states’.⁸ This was especially the case in Eastern Europe in the years after 1917, when the displaced played key roles in the dissolution of empires and the formation of new nation states.⁹ In France, refugees could also make vibrant local communities. This chapter will demonstrate how refugees brought strong social ties, rooted in their home communities, with them into exile, and used these to navigate displacement. Indeed, French refugees were not merely defined by their experiences of displacement, but also by their memories of, and continued associations with, their abandoned home towns. This was especially the case for refugees from the Western Front’s urban battlefields, who maintained deep, emotional bonds with their bombarded home towns throughout the war. Their experiences of exile are inseparable parts of the urban history of the Western Front.

Sites of Displacement Refugees from the bombarded towns formed part of a broader pattern of wartime displacement. This began in 1914, when large numbers of French and Belgian civilians fled the German invasion. Those who fled the actual fighting, atrocities, and destruction joined others reacting to rumours and fears of German brutality.¹⁰ Panic grew as increasing numbers fled their homes, and the arrival of refugees in Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region prompted many locals to leave. By January 1915, the government counted 560,000 refugees in France—450,000 French and 110,000 Allied, mainly Belgians.¹¹ After the stabilization of the front this number continued to grow, albeit more slowly and consistently, as civilians on the Allied side gradually abandoned difficult living conditions. The Germans also repatriated over 100,000 of the elderly, sick, and children from their side to unoccupied France via Switzerland, in an attempt to further burden the French war effort.¹² By February 1918, the total number of refugees in France was 1.3 million, just over 1 million of whom were French. The German spring offensive and return to the war of movement caused fresh displacement, and as many refugees left home during the last six months of the war as during the

⁸ Peter Gatrell, ‘Refugees – What’s Wrong with History?’, Journal of Refugee Studies 30, no. 2 (2017): 175. ⁹ See, in particular, Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking and Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell, eds., Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (London, 2004). ¹⁰ Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 175–86. ¹¹ Huber, La Population de la France, 173. ¹² Noëlle Roger, The Victims’ Return, with an historical note by Eugène Pittard (London, 1917), 134. Michel Huber calculated almost 500,000 people were repatriated to France via Switzerland between October 1914 and January 1919, but it is unclear how many arrived after November 1918. See Huber, La Population de la France, 189.

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invasion of 1914. In September 1918, the total number of refugees in France reached a high of 1.85 million, or almost 5 per cent of the pre-war population.¹³ In general, the urban battlefields at the Western Front followed this national pattern, with large numbers leaving in 1914, a slower exodus in the middle years of the war, followed by the complete or near-complete forced evacuations of late 1917 and early 1918. By mid-1918, the majority of their inhabitants were refugees in the interior: Arras, Reims, and the German-occupied coalfield were empty, only essential miners remained in the Allied coalfield, while Nancy’s population was reduced by half.¹⁴ Where these refugees settled had a major impact on their relationships with the communities they left, as the geography of displacement allowed refugees to remain part of the front-line communities. In fact, many of those from the Allied side sought to remain as close as possible to their homes by relocating within their own department, or within the zone des armées.¹⁵ This, according to the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais, was a result of their ‘desire to remain near their homes, amidst populations that have the same customs and morals as themselves’.¹⁶ Local patterns of displacement arose, in other words, from refugees’ desires to remain in familiar environments, where they could draw on the support of pre-existing social and family networks.¹⁷ The Pas-de-Calais, for instance, hosted more refugees than any other department, despite being bisected by the front. As Table 6.1 demonstrates, by September 1918, 321,000 of its population were displaced, of whom 37 per cent (118,000) were still in the department. Much displacement occurred within the coal-mining region, and miners from the German-occupied side and from communes under heavy fire on the Allied side moved a short distance to the relative security of the westernmost villages, where they often lived in conditions identical to what they knew at home, lodging with family members, and securing jobs with local mining companies. This swelled the populations of several towns, including Bruay, which grew from 18,000 to almost 45,000 by June 1917.¹⁸ By September 1918, 12 per cent of refugees from the Marne, and 26 per cent of those from the Meurthe-et-Moselle, had remained within their home departments. Similar local patterns of displacement occurred in German-occupied France, where civilians from Lens and the coal-mining region moved, either freely or under duress, relatively short distances to other towns further back. For some, this was while they awaited repatriation to unoccupied France, but others spent the entire war displaced within the occupied territories. In September 1916, for instance, over ¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁷ ¹⁸

Huber, La Population de la France, 173. For a full discussion of civilian departures from the front, see Chapter 1. Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 79–100. ADPdC, M 1727, ‘Le Pas-de-Calais pendant la guerre – service des réfugiés’. Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 85. ADPdC, 11 R 859, sub-prefect Béthune to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 13 Jun 1917.

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1,900 refugees from the coalfield were in Denain, 1,700 in Astres, over 1,000 in Cambrai, and 2,040 in and around Valenciennes.¹⁹ A total of 1,686 refugees, including 111 from Lens, spent the war in nearby Douai.²⁰ The local character of displacement near the front was furthered by the fact that groups from the same bombarded towns often moved together to the same sites of refuge. This could have radical effects on the demographics of host communities, with refugees constituting distinctive minorities and, in some extreme cases, even outnumbering locals. In February 1915, 849 Rémois moved 30 km down the road to Épernay, while at the end of 1916, 254 refugees from Pont-à-Mousson lived collectively with other refugees in Nancy’s Drouot barracks.²¹ Berck-Plage, a coastal town in the Pas-de-Calais with a pre-war population of 12,000, eventually hosted almost 24,000 refugees. So many came from Arras that the town received the nickname Arras-Berck.²² In the regions near the front, therefore, not only did large numbers of refugees remain in familiar environments, but they did so alongside other refugees from their home communities, thus lessening the sense of dislocation and preserving existing social bonds of family and neighbourhood. However, not all refugees remained within the zone des armées, or at the front on the German side. Roughly three-quarters of refugees on the Allied side travelled to the French interior while, on the occupied side, considerable numbers moved to Belgium. Yet in these cases, too, settlement patterns ensured significant groups of refugees from the bombarded towns remained together. This was partly a result of the evacuations organized by civilian and military authorities, which aimed to send people in groups to the interior. When schools, orphanages, and hospitals were evacuated, their residents were normally sent together to designated locations. Thus, 400 elderly people in municipal care in Arras were evacuated to a sanatorium at Neuville-sous-Montreuil in late 1914, 3,240 people in municipal care in Reims were sent in groups of 20 to 100 to various institutions in the French interior in July 1916, and Nancy’s schools were evacuated to camps in the Ille-et-Vilaine and Calvados at the beginning of 1918.²³ The mass evacuations of early 1918 also attempted to group evacuees together in the interior. In February 1918, Nancy’s town council sent evacuees to the same ¹⁹ BHA, Etappenformationen (WK), Etappen-Inspektion der 6 Armee, 160, list of refugees within operational areas of 6th Army. ²⁰ Pascale Bréemersch and Bernard Ghienne, ‘1914–1919: Liste des réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais dans la ville de Douai’, Gauheria 79 (Dec 2011). ²¹ ADM, 203 M 106, ‘Etat nominatif des réfugiés, ville d’Epernay’, 18 Feb 1915; Eugène Vivin, Rapport sur le fonctionnement de la caserne Drouot du 1er Septembre 1915 au 31 Décembre 1916 (Nancy, 1917), 9. ²² L. Duplais, Berck-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais), Ville et plage pendant la Guerre, histoire locale complète de 1912 à 1919 (Liège, 1919), 72; Le Lion d’Arras, 31 Jan 1916. ²³ ADPdC, 11 R 1135, report to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 4 Feb 1915; ADM, 203 M 16, hospice administrator to prefect Marne, 9 Aug 1916; AMN, 4 H 282, ‘colonies scolaires de la Ville de Nancy . . . ’.

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regions, including the Yonne and the Loir-et-Cher, in convoys of between 800 and 1,000, while 1,200 Nancéiens found refuge together in a disused artillery barracks in Caen.²⁴ Similarly, most of the final 5,000 civilians leaving Reims in February 1918 departed in groups; over 1,000 moved to the Hautes-Pyrénées, where at least 373 ended up in Lourdes and 77 in the small mountain village of Luz.²⁵ As we have seen, however, military authorities were reluctant to order such evacuations and, on the Allied side at least, most departures from the front were less orderly. The 1914 invasion generated chaotic conditions, while departures in the middle years of the war were haphazard, as individuals, families, and small groups gradually chose to leave. Nevertheless, despite the lack of co-ordination, groups of refugees from the same bombarded towns coalesced in the interior, particularly in large cities and towns. Philippe Nivet has demonstrated that the geography of French wartime displacement was uneven, with certain departments and towns hosting large groups of refugees. He does not, however, break these groups down by location of origin.²⁶ This omission ignores a key aspect of French refugees’ wartime experiences: namely that refugees actively sought out others from their own communities. This trend is revealed in the Interior Ministry’s statistics on the locations of refugees in September 1918, provided in Table 6.1, which demonstrate the extent to which refugees from the same departments grouped together. In the cases of the Pas-de-Calais, Marne, and Meurthe-et-Moselle, the vast majority either remained in their home department, fled to Paris alongside thousands of others from their home department, or inhabited an interior department alongside at least 1,000 others from their home. In the case of the Pas-de-Calais, 97 per cent of refugees Table 6.1. Sites of Displacement: Locations of Refugees by Home Department, Sep 1918. Home Department

Pas-de-Calais Marne

Meurthe-et-Moselle

Number of refugees from department % displaced within home department % displaced to Paris % displaced to interior departments (excluding Paris) alongside at least 1,000 others from home department

321,426 37% 6% 54%

92,824 26% 6% 46%

119,657 12% 22% 55%

Source: Huber, La Population de la France, 182–4

²⁴ SHD, 16 N 1661, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to commander French Eighth Army, 26 Feb 1918; Ville de Nancy, Rapport Relatif aux évacuations, 5–6, 12–15; SHD, 5 N 161, war ministry to prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle, 8 Feb 1918. ²⁵ SHD, 5 N 84, interior ministry to prefect Marne, 20 Feb 1918; ADM, 203 M 72, ‘Listes d’adresses d’évacués du département réfugiés dans d’autres départements’. ²⁶ Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 108–12.

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fell into one of these categories. This may have been partly due to the sheer scale of displacement from the Pas-de-Calais, which produced the largest proportion of French refugees. But even in the case of the Meurthe-et-Moselle, from where significantly less refugees originated, 78 per cent were either displaced locally, in groups to Paris, or to interior departments alongside at least 1,000 others from their home department. If we move below these departmental totals, we may also identify large groups of refugees from the front-line regions settled together in the interior. A survey conducted in March–April 1916 by the Société Amicale de la Marne—the representative committee for refugees from the Marne—revealed significant groups from Reims congregated in the urban centres to the south and west of the Marne. Dijon, housed 392 refugees from the Marne, of whom almost 340 were from Reims, while in the Aube there were 122 rémois refugees in Romilly-sur-Seine and 302 in Sainte-Savine.²⁷ Other towns further into the French interior also housed significant numbers of refugees from Reims and the Marne, including Nice (251), Marseille (206), Angers (151), and Nevers (113).²⁸ Elbeuf, in Normandy, housed a large number from the Marne, including 230 rémois, after several factories relocated there.²⁹ Refugees from other towns at the front followed similar trends, as far as can be told from scattered evidence. Large groups of refugee coalminers from the Pas-de-Calais worked in central and southern French mining towns such as Montceau-les-Mines, which housed 1,351 by December 1915.³⁰ In Paris, too, refugees from particular locations grouped together. The Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais noted that: Every region has its own neighbourhood, near where its committee is based: go to the Faubourg Montmartre, the quartier du Temple, the Rue Saint-Martin and you will find those from the Meuse, the Marne, the Oise, and the Aisne; on the Rue de Bondy you will see those from the Ardennes; on the Boulevard Barbès, near the Château-Rouge station, you will see those from Artois; on the Place de l’Odéon you will meet those from Picardy. As for those from the Nord, they do not leave the environs of ‘their’ train station.³¹

The same was the case on the German side where, in April 1917, the entire population of Lens was evacuated en masse to Maffe in Belgium.³²

²⁷ ADM, 10 R 506, Côte-d’Or; 10 R 505, Aube. ²⁸ ADM, 10 R 509, Maine-et-Loire; 10 R 506, Bouches-du-Rhône; 10 R 511, Nièvre; 10 R 505, AlpesMaritimes. ²⁹ ADM, 10 R 512, Seine Inférieure. ³⁰ Figure compiled from lists of refugees from Pas-de-Calais in Montceau-les-Mines in Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 28 Jul, 4 Aug, 7 Aug, 11 Aug, 21 Aug, 1 Sep, and 4 Dec 1915. ³¹ Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 19 Jun 1915. ³² ADHS, 4 M 517, report, 3 May 1917.

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The geography of refugee settlement thus saw substantial clusters of refugees from the towns under fire throughout the French interior, occupied France, and Belgium. These collective settlement patterns ensured refugees lived, acted, and thought about displacement alongside others from their home communities. Admittedly, not all refugees settled in large urban centres. Many ended up in rural locations and some, particularly urban-dwellers, found this frustrating. But even in such cases, the groups could be quite large, particularly relative to the small size of their host communities.³³ There were few instances in which refugees ended up entirely alone, and this allowed most to preserve a sense of community. The broader importance of this fact emerged in Dampierre, a small village in the Aube that hosted five families from the Marne. Once settled, they established a representative committee to liaise with national refugee representatives.³⁴ Such collective action demonstrates that cohabitation alongside other refugees from the same home locality facilitated the formation of group bonds and solidarities. This had important consequences for the internal dynamics of refugee communities, and how they engaged with the bombarded towns they left behind.

Communities in Exile Groups of refugees from the front displaced to towns and villages across unoccupied France did the same as the marnais families in Dampierre, and established representative committees to defend their interests. Refugees from Reims and the Marne set up associations in Elbeuf, Lyons, Dijon, Toulouse, Tours, Royan, Marseille, Vichy, Royat, Coutainville-Plage, Romilly-sur-Seine, Nice, Nîmes, Bordeaux, Le Mans, Saint-Etienne, and Orléans, as well as many in towns within the Marne.³⁵ Their counterparts from the Pas-de-Calais were just as active. Refugees from Arras in the department of the Somme established a committee in Amiens, which had over 2,000 members by spring 1915. Similarly, refugees from Béthune formed a ‘friendly association’ in Paris, while groups from the Pasde-Calais established committees in Bruay, Le Portel, Boulogne, Calais, Étaples, Fruges, Berck-Plage, Rang-du-Fliers, Touquet-Paris-Plage, Saint-Omer, Mametz, Aire-sur-la-Lys, and Saint Pol.³⁶ Many of these local groups were small, representing between a handful and several hundred refugees. But they increased their effectiveness by affiliating with ten national state-funded committees, one for each

³³ Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 106–7. ³⁴ ADM, 10 R 505, Aube, refugee group in Dampierre to Amicale de la Marne, 7 Jan 1916. ³⁵ Matot, Reims et la Marne, 579–86. Matot’s list is far from exhaustive, and a reading of the refugee press indicates the existence of many more local groups. ³⁶ ADPdC, 11 R 1135, Comité des artésiens réfugiés dans le département de la Somme to prefect Pasde-Calais, 25 Mar 1915; AMB, 1 D 18, municipal council deliberations, 21 Dec 1917; ADPdC, M 1727, ‘Le Pas-de-Calais pendant la guerre – Service des Réfugiés’.

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invaded department, operating out of Paris.³⁷ Normally organized by parliamentarians and notables from the front regions, these national committees lobbied government in favour of improved conditions for refugees, published newspapers, distributed material aid, and, like the local groups, aimed to promote collective feeling and community sentiment among refugees spread throughout France. Michaël Amara has argued that Belgian refugees in France and Britain created similar committees because of their failure to integrate into host communities.³⁸ In the face of their hosts’ indifference or outright hostility, refugees turned to each other for mutual support. This impetus may also have been at play in the French case, but the importance of the committees’ focus on refugees’ home regions should not be overlooked. Groups of refugees established geographically rooted committees based on their region of origin rather than their region of displacement: they worked together because they were from Reims, Arras, the Marne, or the Pas-de-Calais, not because they were in the Aube, Marseille, or Paris. This focus on home was crucial in allowing the refugee committees to promote collective action, sociability, and local community sentiment among refugees from the bombarded communities dispersed throughout France. In Paris, the national committees were social hubs, and organized an array of events that explicitly sought to maintain attachments between refugees and their abandoned homes. These ranged from lectures to information sessions, cinema screenings, and children’s parties, and were often quite large. In January 1915, for instance, the senator for Reims Léon Bourgeois addressed over 2,000 members of the Société Amicale de la Marne. He encouraged the refugees to be proud of their town’s sufferings, and delivered a lengthy tribute to the mayor Dr Langlet, who he felt ‘today symbolizes so well the heroic town of Reims in the eyes of France and the world’.³⁹ This speech clearly demonstrates that refugees, too, were exposed to the public discourse which heroized the civilian populations of the front. The committees held events of this size periodically throughout the war. Several thousand attended an information session after the heavy bombardment of Reims on 21–2 February 1915; over 4,000 refugees from the Pas-de-Calais attended a conference on reconstruction in December 1917; while 5,000, including many from the occupied territories, attended a talk later the same month by the newly repatriated Émile Basly.⁴⁰ A stream of small-scale events complemented these large meetings. Taken together, they reveal the continued strength of refugees’ community ties and focus on home while displaced. In Paris, most committees had offices where refugees could meet, talk, exchange information,

³⁷ The committees under discussion here are the Société Amicale de la Marne, Société d’Assistance aux Réfugiés, Évacués et Sinistrés de Meurthe-et-Moselle and the Comité Central Officiel des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais. ³⁸ Amara, Des Belges à l’épreuve, 322–6. ³⁹ Reims à Paris, 9 Jan 1915. ⁴⁰ Ibid., 27 Feb 1915; Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 6 Dec and 13 Dec 1917.

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and read the press.⁴¹ From September 1916, the Meurthe-et-Moselle committee organized a monthly social evening.⁴² There were parties and gift distributions for refugee children, particularly at Christmas. In May 1915, the Reims school of music even re-opened in Paris, and began organizing regular classes.⁴³ Such activities were not confined to Paris, with provincial committees also organizing regular events. In spring 1915, for instance, the deputy for Reims, Camille Lenoir, addressed 350 rémois refugees in Elbeuf, and promised to defend their interests.⁴⁴ The Toulouse committee of refugees from the Marne was especially active, and held meetings throughout the war. An event that took place on 19 October 1915 serves as a typical example. The committee’s president, Marcel Sézanne, spoke about conflicts between refugees and locals, and urged ‘calm and good sense to prevent disputes’, after which the group read the refugee newspaper, Reims à Paris, aloud.⁴⁵ The Reims refugee committee in Dijon was also active, organizing a concert and a lecture on Reims cathedral in March 1916, a party in October 1916, a gala evening for refugees in February 1917, and another lecture on the cathedral in June 1918.⁴⁶ They also held regular committee meetings, which included public readings of the refugee press.⁴⁷ Refugee miners from the Nord and Pas-de-Calais in Aurillac were also well organized; their 1917 All Souls’ Day ceremony for refugees who had died in exile drew large crowds, including representatives from nine regional committees.⁴⁸ Committees thus allowed refugees from the same regions to remain in close contact in exile, and focus their social lives around their continued attachments to their abandoned homes. In this respect, many of the committees’ activities catered to all refugees from their respective departments, including those whose homes were not necessarily under fire. But the committees also catered specifically to refugees from the bombarded towns, by keeping them informed of the ongoing destruction. In November 1915, for instance, a list of all recently shelled areas of Reims was read at a meeting of the Toulouse committee, while in early December of the same year the committee organized a lecture on ‘the miseries of the ancient town of Champagne’.⁴⁹ The spread of such information performed a crucial social function, since refugees, like those who remained under fire, experienced the destruction of architectural heritage as an assault on the community’s identity. Those from Reims, for instance, fixated upon their burned cathedral, with the Paris committee hosting a lecture on its architectural beauty by Théophile Homolle, a member of the Academie des Beaux Arts, in April 1915, and organizing ⁴¹ Reims à Paris, 23 Dec 1914. ⁴² Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle, 10 Sep 1916. ⁴³ Reims à Paris, 3 Mar 1915, 12 Jun 1915, 1 May 1915. ⁴⁴ Ibid., 3 Apr 1915. ⁴⁵ Ibid., 17 Nov 1915. ⁴⁶ Ibid., 4 Mar 1916, 15 Nov 1916, 17 Feb 1917, 15 Jun 1918. ⁴⁷ Ibid., 27 Dec 1916. Reading refugee newspapers aloud was common practice at provincial meetings. See Reims à Paris, 29 Jan 1916 and ADM 10 R 506, Charente-Maritime and ADM, 10 R 506, Côte d’Or. ⁴⁸ Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 18 Nov 1917. ⁴⁹ Reims à Paris, 17 Nov 1915, 8 Dec 1915.

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a visit to the Musée de sculpture comparée at the Trocadero, where its damaged stonework was displayed in November 1917.⁵⁰ The committees, in other words, endeavoured to maintain especially strong bonds between refugees from the bombarded towns, and the communities that remained under fire. These efforts allowed the displaced to stay part of both a social and imagined world of the front. This process found a particularly clear expression at Christmas 1916, when the Marne committee in Romilly-sur-Seine hosted a party for refugee children. The organizers distributed oranges and madeleines, which had been brought from Reims. These, they felt, were ‘doubly tasty, because they were shaped under fire’, and would allow the children to form an emotional bond with their abandoned home.⁵¹ The image of the abandoned home thus played a key role in keeping a sense of community and local identity alive among refugees. But for those from the front-line towns, the link was powerfully reinforced by continued bombardment. By charting the ongoing destruction from afar, attending lectures on local history and architecture, or even eating madeleines brought from the front, they could affirm tangible connections with the urban battlefields, despite physical separation. The committees were not alone in attempting to foster ties between refugees and the bombarded towns, however. Municipalities and prefectures at the front also played an important role, as they felt particularly responsible for ‘their’ refugees. This was notably the case for those displaced within German-occupied France, who had no independent refugee representative committees. When the population of Lens left for Maffe in Belgium in April 1917, for instance, they were accompanied by Émile Basly and the remaining municipal councillors. Basly later claimed he went to great efforts to reconstitute the community after evacuation, establishing a hospital and town hall in Belgium. He travelled around the region to ‘look after the welfare of the refugees’ and claimed that while in Belgium, ‘we had an obsession with our petite patrie’.⁵² On the Allied side, local authorities were similarly active. In late 1914, Léon Mirman, the prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle, asked France’s other prefects to help him locate all refugees from his department so he could give them information on their homes and families, and re-establish ‘a link between them and Lorraine’. He felt this was his duty as ‘whatever loving care could be given to them, they are all evidently suffering from feeling distant from their petite patrie’.⁵³ Nancy’s municipality expressed similar sentiments in advance of the evacuations of February–March 1918, when it promised to ‘follow [the evacuees] morally’ in their new setting, helping them with advice, ensuring their needs were

⁵⁰ Reims à Paris, 3 Apr 1915, 3 Nov 1917. ⁵¹ Ibid., 6 Jan 1917. ⁵² Basly, Martyre de Lens, 260–3. ⁵³ ADM, 203 M 1, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to prefect Marne (and other departments), 16 Dec 1914.

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met, and ‘in a word, continuing to administer them beyond the town’. This would involve establishing a roving municipal commission to travel the country and monitor the conditions of evacuees, especially schoolchildren.⁵⁴ On both sides of the lines, therefore, local officials insisted their duties did not end with evacuation. Many acted on these promises, and worked to improve the conditions of refugees in the interior. In June 1918, one of Nancy’s school inspectors visited a school for refugee children in Querqueville, outside Cherbourg. He was shocked by the conditions he witnessed, and noted that there was no blackboard, no glass in the windows, and local authorities had taken no actions to improve conditions. He wrote to the prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle urging him to intervene, and his report elicited the following admonition from the prefect to the school’s director: You must well understand that if these colonies had to move away from Nancy on the orders of the army, I cannot lose interest in them. A moral link joins them to Nancy . . . I am saddened by the thought that our little refugees are in classrooms lacking window panes, and without blackboards. You are administratively accountable to the prefect of the Manche who appointed you. But you are also morally accountable to these refugees and to us.⁵⁵

Displacement—like bombardment or military occupation—was another threat to the local community’s integrity. But, as the prefect’s talk of ‘our little refugees’ reveals, it was one that officials sought to counter by claiming ownership over the displaced and using administrative oversight to build ‘moral links’. Just like the representative committees in the interior, local authorities at the front believed refugees remained integral parts of the front-line communities, which, they insisted, were still unified while dispersed. The activities of the representative committees created social bonds between refugees from towns under fire, while front-line authorities built administrative ties between the displaced and their abandoned homes. But we must also consider how the press articulated strong imagined links between refugees and front-line communities. Indeed, French refugees were avid consumers of news, and formed their own dedicated newspapers to serve their interests. Ten titles, one for each invaded department, and affiliated with the relevant national representative committee, appeared. High readership figures, and the fact that reading passages aloud was a common activity at refugees’ meetings, proves the reach of these papers.⁵⁶ ⁵⁴ Ville de Nancy, Rapport relatif aux évacuations, 6–7. On the municipality’s duty towards its schoolchildren see L’Est Républicain, 1 Mar 1918. ⁵⁵ ADMM, 8 R 217, prefect Meurthe-et-Moselle to school director in Querqueville, 23 Jun 1918. Emphasis is in the original. ⁵⁶ The Journal des Réfugiés du Nord had a print run of 40,000, while L’Aisne printed 18,000. See Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 157–8.

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All explicitly claimed to use news and information to foster community ties between the refugees and their home towns. The opening editorial of Reims à Paris stated, for instance, that its aim was to give refugees from the Marne : the information for which they are so eager during their involuntary and momentary exile; to defend their interests; to create a link between them . . . [this newspaper] will be everything for everyone . . . It will be the connection between all refugees from Reims and the Marne, not only in Paris, but in all regions of France . . . To find each other, to correspond, to obtain information and defend our interests, to report on initiatives and disseminate good works, it will be at the disposal of all those who find themselves far from the petite patrie.⁵⁷

Like the representative committees, the refugee newspapers catered to all the displaced, not just those from the bombarded towns. Yet they gave the latter a privileged position, aiming to maintain connections between those who had left and those remaining under fire. Le Lion d’Arras, the ‘Siege Journal’ set up in Arras in January 1916, stated in its opening editorial that by circulating news between refugees and the front it would ‘maintain the soul of Arras intact and unified’ and would be ‘the bond between Arras at the front and Arras that is dispersed’.⁵⁸ Similarly, Le Petit Rémois hoped to combat differences that might emerge between those who left Reims and those who remained by facilitating the exchange of information, promoting mutual understanding, and allowing both groups ‘to live the same life across space’.⁵⁹ The refugee press, therefore, insisted those who stayed under fire and those who left were both part of a broader community temporarily dispersed by war. These ‘dispersed communities’ were to be maintained through a consistent and reliable flow of information. Refugees, especially those from the bombarded towns, avidly consumed information about their homes. The exchange of information was a key aspect of the meetings and events that have been described here, while refugees in different parts of France regularly wrote to each other, and to those still at the front. These activities created a constant flow of news.⁶⁰ Information was particularly valuable to those from towns on the German-occupied side, who rarely heard from their homes. In May 1916, a group of refugees from Lens in Paris demonstrated how precious information was, by pleading with the prefect of the Pas-deCalais to provide them with any ‘news of their beloved city’.⁶¹

⁵⁷ Reims à Paris, 23 Dec 1914. ⁵⁸ Le Lion d’Arras 1 Jan 1916. ⁵⁹ Le Petit Rémois, 15 Dec 1915. ⁶⁰ For a representative example, see ADPdC, 1 J 2008, which contains letters written between several members of the Leroux family, of Arras, and their friends, displaced to Berck-Plage and Calais. Many letters are preoccupied with exchanging information received about Arras. ⁶¹ ADPdC, M 878, petition to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 4 May 1916.

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Information from the front was precious, and the refugee press further catered to this need. The press provided a forum through which refugees dispersed across France and civilians remaining at the front could keep informed of each other’s well-being. In the early months of the war, refugee newspapers published addresses of refugees in the French interior; lists of soldiers from the front regions killed in battle; and the names of civilians killed at the front.⁶² As the war continued, titles catering to refugee audiences reported on economic and administrative activity, and the daily lives of civilians still living at the front. In June 1915, for instance, Reims à Paris published accounts of the operation of the primary schools established in the champagne cellars of Reims, and the soup kitchens that the town had established.⁶³ Other articles in the refugee press focused on blackouts,⁶⁴ 14 July celebrations,⁶⁵ the continued operation of municipal services,⁶⁶ the work of postmen and firemen,⁶⁷ as well as crimes, accidents, and deaths. The Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle, in particular, ran a regular section entitled ‘chez nous’, which reported small news items from Nancy.⁶⁸ But, above all, editors of the refugee press felt that for refugees to remain part of the front-line communities they needed accurate, factual reporting of the destruction caused to their towns by artillery bombardment. The refugee press claimed its accounts, shorn of the sensationalism that surrounded reports of civilian life under fire in the national press, would give a true picture of events in the bombarded towns, and so allow refugees to remain part of their bombarded community. Le Lion d’Arras summarized this in its opening editorial when it claimed that ‘all newspapers speak of Arras; and not only French newspapers . . . But read them and you will not know anything about us’. Only those from Arras would be able to ‘uncouple the truth’ from ‘so many fictional mises en scènes’. It criticized the ‘journalists from friendly or neutral countries, chance commentators, travellers who risk an hour in Arras to get a sensational article’, who were ‘too often inventors’. Le Lion d’Arras, on the other hand, undertook to report ‘that which the newspapers do not say, but that which the history of the city wants to know: everyday life at the front, humble and simple, sometimes monotonous, but never banal: the daily details of our wartime events, which all seem the same to the foreigner who does not know names or streets, but which will speak to the heart of those from Arras’. As a result of its reporting, it intended that all those from Arras ‘dispersed to all corners of the land’, would remain ‘attached to the Martyred Town’.⁶⁹ ⁶² See Reims à Paris, 21 Apr 1915, for a ‘nécrologie Rémoise’ listing civilian victims of bombardment. ⁶³ Ibid., 26 Jun 1915, 29 Jan 1916. ⁶⁴ Le Petit Rémois, 15 Dec 1915. ⁶⁵ Reims à Paris, 21 Jul 1915. ⁶⁶ Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 30 Jun 1915. ⁶⁷ Ibid., 24 Jul 1915, 17 Nov 1915. ⁶⁸ On 3 March 1918, for instance, there were reports of three drownings, a fire, and the murder of a young refugee in Nancy. See Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle, 3 Mar 1918. ⁶⁹ Le Lion d’Arras, 1 Jan 1916. For similar complaints see Le Lion d’Arras, 17 Jan 1916 and Reims à Paris, 19 Jan 1916.

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Although censorship prevented the publication of precise details of bombardments, the refugee press provided a level of detail far beyond the national press. Among many examples, Reims à Paris listed the number of shells hitting Reims each day and gave detailed updates on the state of the town following particularly heavy bombardments, such as in April 1917.⁷⁰ Even after the complete evacuation of 1918 the paper maintained a section entitled ‘the situation in Reims’, which described bombardments and military actions around the town.⁷¹ Likewise, the Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle provided accounts of the bombardment of Nancy by heavy artillery in January 1916, and also published a ‘martyrology’ that listed all bombardments up to December 1916.⁷² The Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais published accounts of life at the front from locals, such as a diary entry written by an inhabitant of Arras focused on the bombardment of the town, the civilian death-toll, and the continued operation of municipal services.⁷³ The paper also described the effects of Allied attacks on the occupied coal-mining region, such as when, in September 1917, it reported on Canadian assaults on now evacuated Lens. The reporter was ‘struck by the development of the destruction,’ further stating that ‘numerous blocks of houses in the southern part of the urban area have been replaced by ruins’.⁷⁴ Such articles ensured refugees remained informed of the gradual destruction of their abandoned homes. But they also intended to foster an emotional response from refugees, and encourage them to remain imaginatively engaged with their home communities. The Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle, for instance, published a photo of war ruins each week, accompanied by the caption ‘never forget!’ Other articles described the ruined urban landscape in highly emotive language, such as when one reporter insisted that although German shelling had transformed Arras into a ‘formless chaos . . . which brings tears to the eyes’, he still recognized it as the ‘cradle of my distant childhood . . . , infinitely dear petite patrie, I salute you!’⁷⁵ The specialist refugee press thus ensured the displaced from towns at the front remained keenly aware of the gradual destruction of their homes. This, alongside the actions of the representative committees and front-line municipalities, meant refugees were not fully cut off from their communities. When they viewed the war and their position in it, their field of vision was not confined to the conditions they endured in their locations of refuge. The press, their representative organizations and local authorities at the front consistently reminded them they were members of broader communities, dispersed throughout France. Le Lion d’Arras summarized this in May 1916, when it wrote that the economic reconstruction of the town ⁷⁰ Reims à Paris, 21 Apr 1917. ⁷¹ Ibid., May 1918. ⁷² Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle, 11 Jan 1916, 18 Jan 1916, 25 Mar 1917. ⁷³ Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 30 Jun 1915. ⁷⁴ Ibid., 20 Sep 1917. For a similar article on the ‘agony’ of Lens, see Le Petit Béthunois, 7 Apr 1918. ⁷⁵ Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 7 Jul 1915. See also, 23 Sep, 14 Oct and 1 Nov 1916 for further lyrical descriptions of the ruins of Arras.

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after the war would be completed quickly and efficiently as the refugees ‘love their Arras . . . in order to be sure you only have to have felt the heartbeat of our refugee meetings in Paris which only hope for the return to the martyred town . . . They have a single soul extended towards the distressed city’.⁷⁶ Here, home is conceptualized not just as a physical space, but as a deeply held feeling that accompanied refugees into exile.

Bombardment and Refugee Welfare The extent to which refugees themselves were conscious of being part of these broader communities, as well as the importance they ascribed to them, is revealed through analysis of their expectations regarding their welfare. Material hardship was a fact of life for refugees, who left behind houses, property, jobs, and other forms of fixed income. Many of those who fled in 1914 only brought the possessions they could carry by hand and were dependent on private charity or the improvised actions of local authorities. Charities and officials hastily organized soup kitchens in Parisian train stations and transit centres along the front through which refugees passed. At the Gare du Nord in Paris, ‘the halls and annexes were transformed into immense dormitories. Wagons with straw arrived constantly, which the refugees used for sleeping’, while at the Gare de l’Est, members of the public received refugees and gave them ‘food and quantities of clothing, because they appear deprived of almost everything’.⁷⁷ In Dunkerque, the town council had distributed 25,000 free meals by early October 1914.⁷⁸ As the war progressed, so did the charitable mobilization in favour of refugees. Private charitable committees, often under the patronage of local notables, provided aid to refugees in Paris and the provinces; mutual aid societies assisted members who had been displaced; while socialists and syndicalists, through their local comités d’action, worked with municipalities and cooperatives to help refugees.⁷⁹ But charity was not an adequate response to the situation, and coordinated government intervention was soon required. The cornerstone of the national welfare system organized for refugees was the ‘allocation’—a means-tested, daily allowance. This was originally issued by local authorities alongside free meals and housing, but the amount varied from location to location.⁸⁰ It was standardized nationally in December 1914, at 1.25 francs per adult per day, plus 0.50 francs per dependent child. Unlike unemployment benefits, this figure was explicitly pegged to the soldiers’ separation allowance, ⁷⁶ Le Lion d’Arras, 5 May 1916. ⁷⁷ Le Petit Parisien, 3 Sep 1914, 29 Aug 1914. ⁷⁸ Chatelle, Dunkerque pendant la Guerre, 18–19. ⁷⁹ Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 137–66; Amara, Des Belges à l’épreuve, 93–6. Dutton, Origins of the French Welfare State, 46; Horne, Labour at War, 142. ⁸⁰ Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 115–17.

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thus implying that refugees, too, were suffering for the nation and deserving of its support.⁸¹ The allocation was complemented by rent supplements, free medical assistance, and a hardship fund.⁸² This welfare system defined refugees as a distinct category of civilians who were particularly deserving of assistance and solidarity. This principle was contained in the ‘Refugees’ Charter’ of February 1918—a set of instructions issued by the Minister of the Interior, which codified the benefits in existence at that date. By publicizing these measures, the government sought to make refugees aware of their entitlements, and ensure greater fairness in the administration of aid by local authorities. It also sought to justify refugee assistance on the basis of the suffering the displaced endured for the nation. France had, it claimed, contracted a ‘genuine debt . . . towards a category of citizens who have had to bear the heaviest part of the miseries provoked by the war and the sacrifices demanded by the national defence’. As a result, refugee aid was not ‘a favour that can be accorded or refused to those affected in an arbitrary manner, but a genuine right’. Civil servants and the public were to show ‘real sympathy and active devotion’ in their dealings with refugees, ‘who have suffered more than others’. Providing aid to these ‘victims of the war’ was a ‘patriotic duty’ and a ‘work of national solidarity’.⁸³ The Charter thus melded the image, current throughout France since the invasion, of refugees as the war’s quintessential victims in need of aid with the unambiguous assertion that this aid was accorded by right as a component of French citizenship. Refugees were keenly aware of these rights. Indeed, like their counterparts at the front who used the experience of bombardment to reconfigure established notions of citizenship and formulate new claims on the social solidarity of the nation, refugees also insisted they were deserving of special treatment as a result of their sufferings. Refugees consistently engaged with the welfare regime, highlighting the notable gaps that remained, and the material hardships they continued to endure. Articles in the refugee press regularly focused on the insufficiency of the allocation, overcharging by unscrupulous shopkeepers, poor housing, high rents, and evictions for the non-payment of rent, while refugees themselves rarely remained silent when confronted with difficult material conditions.⁸⁴ In fact, refugees were inveterate letter writers, and regularly petitioned authorities. In this respect, they acted similarly to the soldiers who, as Emmanuelle Cronier has demonstrated, enacted a form of citizenship through letters and petitions sent to the Ministry of War and parliamentary representatives on the subject of leave entitlements.⁸⁵ One ⁸¹ AN, F/23/3, interior ministry to mayors of France, ‘Allocation et régime général’, 1 Dec 1914. ⁸² Ibid., interior ministry to prefects, ‘secours sur fonds de concours’, 13 Mar 1915. ⁸³ Journal officiel de la République Française, 17 Feb 1918, ‘Instructions portant fixation du régime des réfugiés’. ⁸⁴ See, for instance, Reims à Paris, 28 Jun 1916, 17 Feb 1917; Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 28 Jul 1915, 10 Nov 1915, 16 Jul 1916, 20 Sep 1916. ⁸⁵ Cronier, Permissionnaires, 28–30. On the broader importance of letter-writing for soldiers see Martha Hanna, ‘A Republic of Letters: The Epistolary Tradition in France during World War 1’,

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group of refugees in Mametz appealed to the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais when their allocation was unfairly withdrawn in February 1916, while a self-described ‘group of martyrs’ from the Pas-de-Calais complained to the prefect later that year of the treatment they were receiving. They demanded he improve the lot of refugees by introducing price limits on essential products, and expressed indignation that while they and the soldiers were suffering, others were acting ‘vulgarly’ by playing ‘rowdy’ and ‘shrill’ piano music in bars and cafes.⁸⁶ Mlle Choquet, a schoolteacher from occupied Hénin-Liétard repatriated to Monfarville (Manche) in mid-1917, described the problems endured by many in a letter to the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais: The manner in which we have been welcomed here makes our stay in free France more difficult than in occupied France or Belgium . . . The locals did not want to put us up in their houses. Instead, they gathered 10 beds together in two houses. The first had no windows and was used as a henhouse; the second, in which we now live, had been closed up for over a year after its owners died . . . When we arrived, weakened by privations and mental suffering, broken by a week spent in a train, we had to sweep out all the dust and the cobwebs. We were given nothing to clean with and not even a piece of wood to light a fire and get rid of the smell of damp that poisoned the air in the house . . . I do not ask for the impossible, but only that you quickly remove us from the hell we are currently living in.⁸⁷

Refugees did not passively accept whatever benefits the state granted them. They viewed displacement through the lens of democratic citizenship, and campaigned to secure their rights and improve their conditions. These campaigns were led by refugees’ locally organized representative committees, which lobbied government in favour of improved conditions.⁸⁸ To do this successfully, they combined to form the union des comités centraux de réfugiés. This pressure group worked closely with the influential groupe parlementaire des régions envahies, a parliamentary group of deputies and senators from the front-line regions, including such high-profile names as Léon Bourgeois and Émile Basly. Although the groupe parlementaire had a broad constituency and represented all those from the frontline regions—including those remaining under fire and those in the army— defending refugees’ interests was at the heart of its mission. Both the union des American Historical Review 108, no. 5 (2003): 1338–61 and Martyn Lyons, ‘French Soldiers and their Correspondence: Towards a History of Writing Practices in the First World War’, French History 17, no. 1 (2003): 79–95. ⁸⁶ ADPdC, 120 R 10, Petition from refugees in Mametz to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 17 Feb 1916 and petition from a ‘groupe de martyres’ to prefect Pas-de-Calais, 7 May 1916. ⁸⁷ ADPdC, 11 R 2102, Mlle Choquet to prefect Pas-de-Calais and inspecteur de l’académie, 21 Sep 1917. ⁸⁸ Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 153–66.

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comités and the groupe parliamentaire ensured refugee welfare remained an issue of national importance through parliamentary speeches, debates, and public meetings. They advised the government on issues concerning refugees, and although their demands were not always met, they ensured refugees had a strong voice inside and outside the French parliament. But the committees did not merely seek to improve state welfare provisions. They also supplemented them, by providing material aid directly to refugees. These aid distributions were made on the basis of region of origin, with each committee only assisting refugees from its department. Most committees distributed material aid, operated jobs bureaus, charitable workshops, clothingdistribution services, and repatriation and medical services.⁸⁹ The committees also ran soup kitchens, and distributed food and clothing to refugees newly arrived in Paris or passing through to the interior, such as those evacuated from Reims in April 1917.⁹⁰ They provided emergency financial assistance to refugees in particularly difficult situations, such as those who were evicted, while they also aided refugees in Paris who were forced out of temporary accommodation by the German artillery bombardments of spring 1918.⁹¹ The scale of their work in distributing aid was significant. By April 1915 the Amicale de la Marne had already provided new clothing to 4,131 families, direct cash aid to 1,417 families, and had arranged 3,348 free medical consultations.⁹² By August 1919 the Pas-deCalais committee had spent over 2.8 million francs on refugee assistance, while the Amicale de la Marne had spent over 3.4 million.⁹³ These welfare activities provided refugees with an important supplement to state and charitable aid. But they also had a broader, perhaps unintended, significance, as they allowed refugees an outlet to express their attachments to their homes, as well as their identities as members of displaced communities. This was because refugees regularly wrote to their representative committees describing their conditions, soliciting aid, or asking the committees to intervene on their behalf with state authorities. A major function of the national committees was, in other words, to act as clearing houses for refugees’ demands and petitions. In dealing with these claims, either by distributing aid from their own funds or forwarding the letters to relevant local or state authorities, representative committees produced a voluminous correspondence. Of the departments studied, only the correspondence of the Amicale de la Marne has survived. During the war, it produced over 45,000 pieces of correspondence while dealing with refugees’

⁸⁹ Reims à Paris, 23 Dec 1914; Bulletin de Meurthe-et-Moselle, 1 Dec 1914. ⁹⁰ Reims à Paris, 18 Nov 1916, 14 Apr 1917. ⁹¹ Ibid., 13 Feb 1918, 6 Feb 1918. ⁹² Ibid., 12 Jun 1915. ⁹³ Nivet, Les Réfugiés français, 162. Some local committees also possessed modest aid budgets. The Marnais refugee committee in the Côte-d’Or, for instance, distributed 1558.15 francs to refugees between August 1917 and January 1918. See Reims à Paris, 16 Feb 1918.

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claims, including many from Reims, for assistance.⁹⁴ These letters provide an invaluable insight into the expectations of refugees with regard to their material welfare, and the ways in which those from Reims engaged with their bombarded home community. These letters and petitions allowed refugees to articulate their experiences of exile. They also constituted a way for individuals to participate in national debates on refugee welfare, become actively engaged in the management of their material conditions, and exercise some control over the otherwise disorientating experience of displacement. Most often, refugees wrote to their representative committees describing their poor living conditions and seeking assistance. One elderly man from Reims living in Boissy-Saint-Léger asked for coal, potatoes, or dried vegetables to supplement his ‘modest allocation’; a female refugee in Hautvillers requested help to buy warm winter clothing for her two young children as she had been forced to leave her possessions in Reims; while another woman asked for help finding a better room than the ‘almost uninhabitable hovel’ that she was forced to live in in Paris.⁹⁵ But refugees were also keenly aware that the representative committees distributed aid on the basis of local and regional identities. As a result, in their letters they foregrounded these identities as a means of legitimizing their claims for assistance. For refugees from Reims, and in all likelihood those from the other bombarded towns, this meant asserting their continued membership of a community under fire, even while displaced. Many claimed that although they had left Reims, they still belonged to the bombarded community, and that they were entitled to mutual aid on this basis. Rémois who petitioned the Amicale de la Marne emphasized their local experiences during the war, including the suffering they had undergone during the invasion and the time they had spent under bombardment before they left home. In March 1916, for instance, a man asked the Amicale for financial assistance as he was struggling to support his large family. But when making his claim, he felt his experiences in the bombarded town were as relevant as his difficult financial situation and his large family. He informed the Amicale that he had remained in Reims until 1915, working in the champagne industry. He and his family had been ‘bombarded since 4 September’, before they were forced to find shelter and live in the Werlé Champagne cellars, where his wife gave birth to their eighth child. It was only after this that they reluctantly left.⁹⁶ A woman from Reims sheltering in Redon reassured the Amicale that ‘we are honest workers who lived at number 3, ⁹⁴ Letters sent to the Amicale by refugees, and responses, are contained in 164 folders between ADM, 10 R 92 and 10 R 256, and ADM 10 R 505 and 10 R 513. The folders sampled contain approximately 250 letters each, allowing for a rough estimate of 45,000 letters in total. ⁹⁵ ADM, 10 R 168, letters to Amicale de la Marne from G. Gondelle, 3 Dec 1917; Ep. André Leclerc, 27 Nov 1917; Mme. Vve. Bourgeois, 26 Nov 1917. ⁹⁶ Ibid., letter to Amicale de la Marne from M. Egée, 6 Mar 1916.

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Rue de la Concorde in Reims, where we left everything that we possess. Thanks to our hard daily work, we never asked for anything to raise our family’. But she also emphasized her attachments to the bombarded community, since she had remained ‘in Reims under the bombardment with my children’ for a time before leaving.⁹⁷ Bombardment was a formative experience, and one which refugees used to prove their continued attachment to their home communities, even while in exile. Some also reasserted their emotional attachments to their bombarded home town, and described their frustrations at being separated from it and having to rely on welfare and charity. One woman from Reims in Vierzon asked for aid as she had three young children, was sick, and could not work. She asserted that as a refugee she had ‘suffered more than under the shells’ and that she ‘really regretted having left [Reims], but my house was destroyed’.⁹⁸ Another woman in Fissy appealed to the Amicale after the mayor of her host village stopped her allocation. She stated that she would have gone to the prefecture in Bourges, but that she knew she would not receive a response. She, too, expressed regret and frustration at being forced out of her home, and stated that ‘during these hard times I have come to miss Reims despite its bombardments.’⁹⁹ One particularly forceful appeal came from a soldier from Reims writing on behalf of his wife, who had left the town without any possessions and found herself in a difficult financial position. He pleaded that as a father he should not be left ‘in the trenches with a heavy heart thinking that his family, his own little world is suffering in a region without linen or clothes’. And he made a direct appeal to a sense of local solidarity when he claimed that if his wife and children were better looked after, ‘I would be able to continue doing my duty until the very end and soon drive the boches off from our poor town that is so continually tested’.¹⁰⁰ These letters clearly reveal that for refugees from the front-line towns, physical separation from their community did not entail emotional detachment. The displaced were keenly aware that the front-line communities extended into exile, and provided important sources of material aid. This aid was not charity. Neither was it an entitlement. It was a form of mutual assistance organized on a regional basis. But although refugees were not entitled to this aid, they could expect it as members of a particular, local community. This aid was distributed to all refugees from a department, and to qualify all they needed to do was prove their regional affiliations. But refugees from Reims went further and, to add legitimacy to their claims, reasserted their identities as members of a bombarded, front-line community. The records of the other departmental representative committees do

⁹⁷ ⁹⁸ ⁹⁹ ¹⁰⁰

ADM, 10 R 508, letter to Amicale de la Marne from Ep. Bertaux, 15 Sep 1916. Ibid., letter to Amicale de la Marne from Mme. Membré, 22 Mar 1917. Ibid., signed but illegible letter to Amicale de la Marne, 21 Dec 1916. ADM, 10 R 510, letter to Amicale de la Marne from Lucien Deleval, 8 Oct 1915.

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not survive, but the attitudes of refugees from Nancy, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais may be inferred from those of Reims, who made claims for material assistance in a language that appealed to a sense of local community which, they maintained, remained important despite displacement.

Conclusion Experiences of having lived under fire, and the fact of being from a bombarded town, shaped how refugees from towns at the front dealt with displacement. They congregated in the same places of refuge, socialized with other refugees from their home communities and maintained social, emotional, and imagined links with the bombarded towns they had left. As their demands for aid demonstrate, they thought of themselves as temporarily displaced members of bombarded communities, and expected mutual assistance on this basis. The preceding chapters of this book discussed how civilians who lived under fire at the front developed distinct perspectives on the war that separated them from the rest of the civilian population. This chapter has demonstrated that despite or, perhaps, because of their displacement, refugees from towns at the front were also party to this process and that they, too, were part of an important category of civilians with distinct wartime experiences. Unlike issues discussed in other chapters, however, displacement did more to link than to distinguish civilians on either side of the lines. Although some civilians who were displaced within occupied France were not repatriated, those who were had many of the same responses to displacement as civilians who left from bombarded towns on the Allied side, or those from the German-occupied coal-mining region who fled the invasion of 1914. They cohabited with other refugees, often in the southern mining regions; they participated in events organized by the refugee committees; they benefitted from aid the committees distributed, and they avidly sought news and information concerning the ongoing destruction of their homes. For them, like their counterparts from towns on the Allied side of the lines, the wartime experiences of the bombarded community remained a central reference point. In his analysis of refugees in Eastern Europe during and after the First World War, Peter Gatrell has demonstrated that ‘when they took to the road, refugees were by definition deprived of membership in a close-knit local community’, but that displacement allowed them ‘access to a new, much broader national community, built on the foundations of a common sense of loss and the need for collective effort to regain what had been forfeited in wartime’.¹⁰¹ The French case ¹⁰¹ Peter Gatrell, ‘Refugees and Forced Migrants during the First World War’, Immigrants and Minorities 26, no. 1–2 (2008): 95. For similar arguments see Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 201.

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is both analogous, in that refugees successfully built collective bonds in exile, and different, in that these bonds were, in fact, based on continued membership in a close-knit local community that had been left behind. By refocusing attention away from the state and host communities, and towards the actions and attitudes of French refugees themselves, we can identify the depth of their commitment to their abandoned homes. During the First World War, French refugees were not merely the passive victims of material hardship; they took an active role in shaping the conditions of their displacement, and worked hard to remain invested in their home communities. This was especially the case for those who were forced from the bombarded towns, but who felt they remained part of the front-line communities. The experiences of bombardment, military occupation, and material hardship threatened the integrity of urban life at the Western Front. So, too, did forced displacement. And yet, while these pressures radically altered the internal dynamics of civilian communities at the front, a strong sense of local community identity survived and, indeed, was crucially important for how civilians responded to the progressive transformation of their towns into battlefields.

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Epilogue: Towards Reconstruction, 1914–1920 As the Allied armies advanced into German-occupied France and Belgium in September and October 1918, talk of an armistice spread. The reactions of civilians from the urban battlefields of the Western Front to these developments were ambivalent. Some welcomed the news, and looked forward to peace with joy and expectation. On 16 October, for instance, a resident of Marles-les-Mines, in the west of the coal-mining region, wrote that ‘everyone is content . . . I have hardly slept as I have been thinking about this long-desired peace so much’.¹ However, postal censors in the Pas-de-Calais noted that such opinions were in the minority. Of the letters they sampled in late October, only 13 called for immediate peace, whereas 102 ‘expressed a desire to see hostilities continued until the moment our enemies “ask for mercy” ’.² The sight of the ruins, the suffering endured, and the memory of the dead all coloured attitudes towards the impending end of hostilities. One man in Noeuxles-Mines, on hearing that Lens had been ‘demolished, ruined, wrecked’, asserted that ‘we must make them pay dearly for these sufferings and atrocities. In my opinion we must take all their territory as far as the Rhine to guarantee our frontiers, keep hold of their colonies, impose a harsh war indemnity and keep all their prisoners until the reconstruction is complete’.³ Others were even more severe, and postal censors noted civilians’ calls for revenge and their demands that the war be taken to Germany. One man wrote from Noeux-les-Mines in late October that ‘we should make the boches feel what war is, ruins, devastation, and misery. Now they have been forced back they raise their arms and cry “comrades!” We should not be too accommodating’.⁴ Postal censors in Nancy reported that many in the region demanded the French army go into Germany and extract vengeance ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth and town for town’.⁵ In Épernay, one woman thought a French occupying force ‘should morally torture their women, their young boys and girls, just like they made ours suffer’.⁶ The cessation of hostilities on 11 November 1918 did little to change these attitudes and, like French soldiers, civilians at the front appear to have

¹ SHD, 16 N 1453, Boulogne postal control, 15–31 Oct 1918. ² Ibid. ³ Ibid. ⁴ Ibid. ⁵ SHD, 16 N 1465, Nancy postal control, 1–15 Oct 1918. ⁶ SHD, 16 N 1455, Châlons-sur-Marne postal control, 16–31 Oct 1918. Communities under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918. Alex Dowdall, Oxford University Press (2020). © Alex Dowdall. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198856115.001.0001

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demonstrated continued hatred towards Germany following the armistice.⁷ For both civilians and soldiers, a growing awareness of the scale of wartime losses inspired these hatreds. Postal censors in the Marne felt that although the armistice generated ‘a unanimous explosion of joy’ within the civilian population, this feeling was tempered by anger and regret, expressed especially by those who had lost loved ones during the fighting. Many were frustrated to see operations stopping before the German frontier, and called for reprisals against the now defeated enemy, insisting that ‘we should go into Germany and make their civilian population endure what ours has had to endure, and bombard German towns a bit more to avenge our dead’.⁸ The armistice thus elicited a complex mix of joy, relief, anger, and frustration among civilians from the front. This was also a time of hope and anticipation, as the armistice opened the prospect of refugees finally returning home, and pre-war communities reconstructing and reconstituting themselves. The process of return and reconstruction would, however, prove long and arduous, and presented its own challenges. During the war, front-line civilians had constructed forms of identity deeply entwined with the urban battlefields they inhabited. In many respects, they claimed a moral ownership of their bombarded towns, which paralleled that of the soldiers and the trenches. But after 1918, these urban battlefields gradually transformed back into towns, and their wartime civilian inhabitants were forced to engage with new or returning social actors, all of whom claimed a stake in the reconstruction, from urban planners to construction workers, immigrants, and returning soldiers. These encounters raise important questions. To what extent did the front-line civilians, who lived through their towns’ destruction, control and direct the reconstruction? How did they interact with the new populations that flooded their towns after 1918? And did the militarized identities they developed in wartime last into peacetime? These questions point to the social and cultural history of reconstruction—a vast topic, which lies beyond the scope of this book. But, by way of epilogue, we may sketch how the front-line civilians began to tackle some of these questions in the immediate postwar years, as they moved towards reconstruction. The complex process of planning for reconstruction reveals many of the problems faced by front-line civilians, whose interests and opinions collided with those of professional urban planners. Indeed, many of France’s urban planners, like Alfred Agache, saw wartime urban destruction as an opportunity, rather than an irrevocable loss or a cultural crime. As early as January 1915, Agache was organizing lectures and conferences on ‘the resurrection of towns

⁷ On the hatred French soldiers expressed towards their German counterparts in the aftermath of the armistice, see Bruno Cabanes, La Victoire endeuillée: la sortie de guerre des soldats français (Paris, 2004), 12. ⁸ SHD, 16 N 1455, Châlons-sur-Marne postal control, 1–15 Nov 1918.

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after the war’.⁹ In his opinion, the war had the benefit of suppressing in the frontline regions ‘all the obstacles which in normal times stand in the way of ’ reform, thus giving the ‘devastated communes the advantage of carrying out reforms all at once and, in rebuilding their ruins, conforming to the principles which should govern every urban area’.¹⁰ For an urban planner like Agache, the misfortunes of war unexpectedly created an opportunity to implement a reformist vision. Agache was not alone. He was a leading figure within a movement of professional urbanists which had been growing in influence in the pre-war years. In 1912, he was a founding member of the Société française d’urbanistes (S.F.U.), which coined the term ‘urbanisme’ to describe its holistic approach to town planning. It was concerned with far more than the emphasis on wide streets and circulation that had characterized earlier urban development under Baron Haussmann. Instead, S.F.U. urbanists did not just think of themselves as planners, but as social and economic reformers tasked with improving the conditions of the working class. For them, urban hygiene, moral progress, and economic prosperity did not just depend on good circulation, but on the effective social engineering of urban space, to be achieved through rigorous town planning.¹¹ Early in 1915 Agache, along with two colleagues, Edouard Redont and Jacques Marcel Auburtin, laid out a template for post-war reconstruction in an extensive theoretic manifesto, Comment reconstruire nos cités détruites. This argued that after the war northern France’s towns should be reconstructed according to detailed master plans, which would coordinate a sweeping socio-economic remodelling of urban space, through widened streets, the separation of industrial and residential districts, and the construction of model housing in garden-city style estates. This was a consciously modern and rational vision of urban reform, which insisted that social and moral improvement could be generated through proper planning, and that the reconstruction of the devastated regions would provide a template of urban renewal to be followed by all French towns. But the authors also sought to balance this modernist approach through concessions to local particularism. Although they warned against the ‘fetishization of the past’, they admitted that the desires of property owners could have a place in their plans, and that ‘all monuments of the past, no matter how humble they are from an architectural or historic point of view, should be respected and valued’.¹² Even if the authors believed themselves to be more realist and pragmatic than utopian, theirs was nonetheless an idealistic vision of urban reform. Individual agency,

⁹ Le Temps, 30 Jan 1915. ¹⁰ Alfred Agache, Edouard Redont and Jacques Marcel Auburtin, Comment reconstruire nos cités détruites: notions d’urbanisme s’appliquant aux villes, bourgs et villages (Paris 1915), 6. ¹¹ On the development of the S.F.U. see David K. Underwood, ‘Alfred Agache, French Sociology, and Modern Urbanism in France and Brazil’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 50, no. 2 (1991): 130–66. ¹² Agache, Redont, and Auburtin, Comment reconstruire, 54.

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local traditions, and modernization would all be balanced harmoniously through the master plan. The S.F.U. was among a number of wartime groups that looked forward to reconstruction as an opportunity for remodelling space and society in northern France.¹³ Others included the Association des Hygiénistes et Techniciens Municipaux, which organized the major Exposition de la cité reconstitué, in the Tuileries gardens in Paris in summer 1916. Exhibits showcased modern building materials, model houses, and prefabricated structures that could be used to implement a properly planned reconstruction; lectures and speeches during the exhibition discussed modern, rational urban planning, and the conservation of tradition and local styles; while competitions were held for the best plans of model villages and towns.¹⁴ Like the S.F.U., the organizers of the Exposition hoped that in bringing these ideas to the public, local officials, and the wider planning and architectural community, they could influence reconstruction to ensure there would be ‘no more deadly slums; no more dark and narrow lanes, no more neighbourhoods without parks, squares or games fields’.¹⁵ France’s professional urban planners thus hoped for a modern, progressive reconstruction of the north, which would serve as a template of ideal urban planning to guide future developments in the interior. But, although the modernist vision of France’s urbanists claimed to make concessions to local architectural styles, it still ran up against the expectations and aspirations of the front-line civilian communities. They, too, grappled with the problem of destruction and reconstruction, even before the end of hostilities. From their perspective, reconstruction was not the property of elite planners, but a collective, democratic process that should reiterate the commitment of the community to the shattered urban space it inhabited. The town council of Reims signalled as much when, as early as February 1915, it launched a consultation process asking the public to suggest how the town could be rebuilt and improved. Their announcement did, indeed, replicate the discourse of urban hygiene and modernization advanced by the S.F.U., stating, for instance, that ‘nobody would concede that we should conserve these narrow, winding streets [around the cathedral]; the necessities of modern circulation and the requirements of hygiene in a large urban centre, demand a total transformation of the urban plan.’¹⁶ Some public responses also advocated such a distinctly modernist approach. One detailed but anonymous submission pushed for the adoption of a regulatory

¹³ For an overview the urbaniste movement see Danièle Voldman, ‘Les Guerres mondiales et la planification des villes’, in Villes et guerres mondiales en Europe au XXe siècle, actes du colloque de l’European association of urban history à Strasbourg, ed. Rainer Hudemann and François Walter (Paris, 1997). ¹⁴ Louis Gaultier, Exposition de la Cité Reconstituée: esthétique et hygiène, rapport générale (Paris, 1917). ¹⁵ La Cité reconstituée: journal hebdomadaire, 9 Jul 1916. ¹⁶ L’Éclaireur de l’Est, 18 Feb 1915.

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plan as quickly as possible, and claimed that Reims should emulate other modern cities, such as San Francisco, Buenos Ayres, and Canberra.¹⁷ But the modernizers were not the only, or even the dominant, voices within the devastated communities, and many others saw the objective of reconstruction as the return to a pre-war norm. Many were, for instance, motivated by a deep sense of nostalgia for their now destroyed homes, and found it difficult to imagine wholescale remodelling. This sentiment emerged particularly strongly among refugees from the front, for whom the experience of displacement provoked a deep longing for their abandoned homes. One refugee from Reims in Firminy articulated this sentiment clearly when he wrote to a refugee newspaper in late October 1917, describing his feelings when he realized his home town’s trams closely resembled those running on Firminy’s network: Why did nostalgia for my dear home country take hold of me this evening more than others? . . . Why did the activity of a town which does not suffer from the war make me dream of sunny afternoons in Reims when people brushed against each other between the Place d’Erlon and the Patte d’Oie? Why did the bright trams, so similar to those which once transported us to La Haubette, bring my thoughts back to this same obsession?¹⁸

Such ‘obsessions’ with their now-vanished homes shaped how the displaced thought about reconstruction. For them, memories of the past, rather than modernist visions, shaped the future. Indeed, many refugees were distinctly hostile to the idea of modernization, fearing it would erase the memories associated with their home towns. One refugee from Reims in Marseille, for instance, wrote in a letter in May 1918 that ‘our poor Reims must be in a sad state, and if it is ever reconstructed it will no longer be the old town which we knew and loved, but a new, Americanized town, without memories of the past’.¹⁹ The S.F.U. had recognized that local residents would harbour such thoughts, and had therefore attempted to make concessions to traditional architectural styles and local particularism. But for refugees wishing to reconstruct memories of their now-devastated homes, this was simply not enough. One ‘refugee architect’ gave the Exposition de la cité reconstituée a scathing review in the press, lamenting what he felt was its lack of emphasis on local styles, and criticizing the modern buildings on display as ‘sickly outlines of warehouses’ of which France should be ashamed. He found a model for a new church particularly objectionable,

¹⁷ ADM, 3 Z 577, anonymous submission, ‘Ville de Reims: reconstitution des quartiers détruit par le bombardement’. ¹⁸ Le Petit Rémois, 28 Oct 1917. ¹⁹ SHD, 16 N 1455, Châlons-sur-Marne postal control, 11 May 1918.

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and wondered how this ‘stingy warehouse’ could replace the ‘sweet poetry of our old belfries’.²⁰ Here we see the origins of a deep tension between modernist visions of the future and conservative images of the past, which would dominate post-war reconstruction efforts. As Hugh Clout has demonstrated, in the years after 1918 the former urban battlefields of the Western Front adopted radically different approaches to this question. Some, such as Reims, adopted a modern approach, with a town plan aimed at separating industrial and residential zones and designed by the American urbanist George B. Ford, despite protests from some locals that this would lead to the creeping ‘Americanization’ of their home.²¹ Others, including Béthune and Armentières, opted for a ‘regionalist’ approach in an attempt to return to pre-war styles (even if they made sure ‘traditional’ building facades were supported by modern, and unseen, reinforced concrete frames).²² Arras was even more conservative in its reconstruction efforts, which in many respects sought an unvarying return to the past. The town council had drafted an ambitious, modernizing plan in 1917, but this was discarded under the weight of local criticisms.²³ What developed after 1918 was, according to Hugh Clout, ‘reconstruction à l’identique’.²⁴ The town’s Flemish gothic squares, the cathedral, and the Palais Saint Vaast were rebuilt in part using salvaged masonry, and with the assistance of pre-war iconographic material.²⁵ Many of the town’s less iconic buildings were also reconstructed in a conservative style, as locals, especially business owners, sought to return the town and its economy to its pre-war state as quickly as possible.²⁶ In this case, few of the ambitions of the urbanists were realised. Like so many other aspects of the war’s legacies, reconstruction plans were caught between an urgent desire to modernise, and a compelling need to return to a pre-war norm using traditional frames of reference.²⁷ During and after the war, therefore, professional urban planners and local communities developed contrasting visions of how post-war reconstruction should proceed. But actual reconstruction was dependent upon the residents of the former urban battlefields returning home. During the war, most had expected ²⁰ Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 1 Jul 1916. ²¹ Clout, ‘The Great Reconstruction’, 16–18; see also Marc Bédarida, ‘La Reconstruction de Reims (1918-1928), compassion et aide américaines’, in Américanisme et modernité: L’idéal américain dans l’architecture, ed. J.-L. Cohen and H. Damisch (Paris, 1993). Research on post-war urban reconstruction is still limited. On the reconstruction of the French countryside see Hugh Clout, After the Ruins: Restoring the Countryside of Northern France after the Great War (Exeter, 1996). ²² Clout, ‘The Great Reconstruction’, 10–15; see also Bourgeois, ‘La Reconstruction d’Arras’, 945–54. ²³ Bourgeois, ‘La Reconstruction d’Arras’, 947–9. ²⁴ Clout, ‘The Great Reconstruction’, 13–14. ²⁵ Ibid. ²⁶ Bourgeois, ‘La Reconstruction d’Arras’, 954. ²⁷ On the tensions between ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’ in post-war commemoration culture, see Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995) and Stefan Goebel, The Great War and Medieval Memory: War, Remembrance and Medievalism in Britain and Germany, 1914–1940 (Cambridge, 2007).

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that once the hostilities ended, return and reconstruction would begin quickly. The ability to return home as soon as possible was, after all, a main reason why a significant number of French refugees remained in the front-line regions.²⁸ Following the armistice, however, the assumption that the pre-war community would quickly return home encountered the harsh realities of life in the former battle zones. The prospect of returning to the front in the weeks and months after November 1918 was daunting, especially as winter set in and military rule remained in place. The government introduced several measures intended to speed returns: the relaxation of restrictions on movement on 5 December 1918; free rail transport for returnees; advances of 1,000 francs to purchase essential household items; and prefabricated housing available to rent or buy at discount rates.²⁹ But these measures had a limited impact since supplies of prefabricated housing lagged behind demand, and there was a severe transportation crisis throughout late 1918 and early 1919, with refugees complaining of waits of up to a month for transportation. In the final days of hostilities, some refugees took matters into their own hands and, rather than waiting for the authorities to facilitate their journeys home, returned to the front surreptitiously. In some cases, Allied military commanders struggled to manage the influx into their rear echelon areas. French gendarmes were almost overwhelmed as 10,000 civilians, most without proper authorization, returned to Lens and the surrounding areas on 31 October and 1 November 1918.³⁰ But most could not make such difficult and clandestine journeys. Instead, throughout late 1918 and 1919 refugees made their way to Paris, where they were effectively stranded. Hundreds spent days camped out in the Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est, almost in a repeat of the chaotic days of late 1914.³¹ If they finally got a train, the journey could be arduous, with the trip from Paris to the Pas-de-Calais taking upwards of 24 hours, often in cattle wagons. Preferential treatment was given to those with important administrative roles, as well as labourers, architects, and tradesmen essential to the reconstruction. But for the rest, especially the elderly, widows with young children, and those without employment prospects, the immediate post-war period was frustrating, as they realized the end of war would not mean the end of displacement. France’s wartime refugee population, therefore, fragmented into those who could return quickly and those who could not. Indeed, it appears that for some displacement may have lasted for years after the armistice. At the time of the March 1921 census, the combined population of the ten invaded departments still lagged 720,000 below pre-war levels, a discrepancy at least partly explained by the ²⁸ See Chapter 6, C6.P8-C6.P10. ²⁹ ADPdC, 1 Z 304, Commission interministérielle des régions libérées, Ce que tout réfugié et tout sinistré doit savoir (Paris, 1919). ³⁰ ADPdC, M 2507, report of Lieutenant Courtelin, 10 Nov 1918. ³¹ Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 2 Mar 1919.

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fact that even three years after the end of hostilities, a significant number of refugees had failed to return home.³² But evidence suggests that for those left behind, these added years of displacement did not necessarily loosen the bonds they held with their abandoned homes. Even though many refugees were unable or unwilling to return immediately, they still identified with their home communities. This was partly encouraged by the state—during the first peacetime municipal elections of 1919, for instance, refugees were granted absentee ballots in their homes, rather than a vote in their host communes.³³ But it was also because refugees themselves continued to engage with home from exile. Refugee committees still met regularly, while refugee newspapers encouraged the displaced to imaginatively engage with their homes and even experience the reconstruction vicariously, through detailed progress reports.³⁴ But perhaps most important in this respect were the letters and petitions refugees themselves continued to write to the authorities seeking aid and demanding their rights. These letters are testament both to the state of limbo refugees inhabited, and the continued strength of their local identities and desires for home. A prime example is a letter written by a man named Brunet, a refugee in Boulogne, in late August 1920, almost two years after the end of the war. He wrote to complain that his government allocation had been stopped. An elderly man incapable of work, he asked that this decision be reversed until he was able to return to his native Drocourt, where he could ‘die happy’.³⁵ Such sentiments suggest that rather than integrating into their host communities, refugees maintained distinct local identities tied to their abandoned homes well after the armistice and into the period of reconstruction. But despite these difficulties, civilians nonetheless gradually returned to their devastated home towns. The first to do so in late 1918 were shocked by the sight of the ruins. In his diary, Paul Hess described returning to Reims just before Christmas 1918: Walking along the Place d’Erlon, we caught a vague glimpse of fresh devastation, caused by fires or shells, which we had been unaware of up to then. The same horrific tableau reappeared from time to time thanks to the feeble nocturnal light.

³² Admittedly, these total figures offer an imprecise gauge of population changes. They cannot tell us, for instance, how many of those who failed to return were soldiers killed during the war; or how many of those living in the region in March 1921 were temporary reconstruction workers. See Maurice Zimmermann, ‘La Population de la France en 1921’, Annales de géographie, 169 (1922): 39. ³³ ADPdC, M 921, telegrams coordinating refugees’ absentee ballots for municipal elections of 30 Nov and 7 Dec 1919. ³⁴ See, for instance, Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 29 Dec 1918, for an account of a refugee meeting in Jumeaux (Puy-de-Dôme), and 5 Jan 1919, for a descriptive overview of reconstruction in Béthune. ³⁵ ADPdC, 120 R 29, letter from M. Drocourt, 26 Aug 1920.

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We had truly left Paris behind. We had spent 9 months in the capital with its shining lights, and now we return mournfully to the night, the freezing, damp cold, while with the help of our electric pocket lamps we attempt to find our way through the chaos.³⁶

Indeed, for many of the first returnees, the scale of the task of reconstruction was daunting. Alongside the physical destruction, military rule and restrictions were still in place, winter was approaching, and Spanish Flu was wreaking havoc. A December 1918 report on the town of Courrières neatly summed up the problems. It concluded that for reconstruction to begin, labourers and construction workers needed to be allowed return; credit needed to be provided for food, clothes, and furniture; unexploded ordinance had to be collected; free movement had to be allowed; temporary bridges constructed and prefabricated buildings supplied for the homeless; work teams were needed to clear debris; generators had to be provided for lighting and heating; doors, windows, cement, and building materials had to be provided; and a store established to assure food supplies. The report concluded that once these measures were taken, ‘life could begin again very quickly in Courrières’.³⁷ This was, clearly, an overly optimistic assessment, and throughout 1919 and 1920 individuals and representative groups complained about the physical hardships, shortages, and other difficulties facing civilians returning to the former battlefields. In January 1919, one anonymous letter written to the Pas-de-Calais refugees’ association lamented that returnees were being ‘left to sort themselves out: woe to those who are weak or do not know how to swim!’, while around the same time the president of the Association pour la défense des intérêts d’Arras et son arrondissement complained to the Prime Minister that the military authorities at the front were ‘totally powerless to carry out the mission of reconstruction’. He pointed to the lack of building materials preventing houses from being repaired, continued pillage, and destruction of property by Allied troops still in the region, and inefficiencies in clearing and removing debris as the major problems faced, and asked for the Prime Minister’s intercession since Parliament appeared to have ‘completely forgotten’ Arras.³⁸ By the following year, the housing situation in the town does not appear to have improved much. Most people were living in prefabricated barracks, and would remain so for the foreseeable future as there were no more houses that could be easily repaired, and it would be some time before fresh housing stocks became available.³⁹ A lack of supplies and bureaucratic

³⁶ Hess, La Vie à Reims, 530. ³⁷ ADPdC, M 2507, ‘Rapport à Monsieur le Préfet du Pas-de-Calais sur ma visite à Courrières’, no date. ³⁸ ADPdC 120 R 29, anonymous letter to Association de défense des originaires des régions envahies et des évacués, 31 Jan 1919; ADPdC, 10 R 1/1, M. Doutrempuich to Président du Conseil, 20 Feb 1919. ³⁹ ADPdC, M 2290, ‘Rapport du directeur général départemental adjoint’, 21 Feb 1920.

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inefficiencies were compounded by the dangers that continued to plague these former battlefields. Unexploded ordnance littered the towns, delaying reconstruction and endangering lives. Accidents were common, such as when in early 1919 an eight-year-old boy in Hénin-Liétard had his fingers blown off his right hand and his face burned, while his mother and sister were seriously injured, after a detonator he was playing with exploded.⁴⁰ Those who made the arduous journey home quickly realized, therefore, that reconstruction would be physically and emotionally draining. But, just like those who remained refugees after 1918, the returnees used the sense of community developed in response to wartime conditions to navigate the immediate post-war transition. In Reims, a society of civilians who had ‘remained under the bombardment’ was formed in October 1919, while in most former urban battlefields hostility and suspicion towards ‘comfortable’ civilians in the interior remained strong throughout the early years of reconstruction.⁴¹ In late January 1919, Henri Merlin, a member of the conseil général of the Marne, contrasted the mood in Paris, where everyone was gleefully returning to theatres and parties after years of boredom, with the refugees returning home, who were ‘an unpleasant sight slipping through the joyous crowd’. These were the representatives of ‘wounded France, ruined by war, homeless France without bread’, ignored by the capital’s partygoers.⁴² Others complained that while the rest of France was busy building triumphal arches, the devastated regions were in desperate need of basics such as food and mattresses.⁴³ The belief that civilians from the front-line towns deserved preferential treatment in recognition of their soldier-like sufferings on behalf of the nation also continued into the immediate post-war years, and may even have expanded to include those who had lived under German occupation. In March 1919, the Bulletin des Réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais asserted that those who had lived under occupation ‘have a right, just like our brave soldiers, to a liberation indemnity’ because ‘they too did their duty’, having been ‘subjected to a regime that ruined the majority of them physically and financially’.⁴⁴ For the front-line communities, ‘cultural demobilization’ was a gradual process, and their wartime collective identities, structured around the assumption that their sufferings set them apart from the rest of the population, shaped how they dealt with the onset of peace and the beginning of reconstruction.⁴⁵ And yet, as larger numbers returned home and as reconstruction picked up pace in the early 1920s, these wartime collective identities were sorely tested by

⁴⁰ Bulletin des réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 2 Feb 1919. ⁴¹ ADM, 48 M ter 140, founding minutes of the Société des habitants restés sous le bombardement, 5 Oct 1919. ⁴² Bulletin des réfugiés du Pas-de-Calais, 26 Jan 1919. ⁴³ Ibid., 8 Dec 1918. ⁴⁴ Ibid., 13 Mar 1919. ⁴⁵ On ‘cultural demobilization’ see John Horne, ‘Demobilizing the Mind: France and the Legacy of the Great War, 1919–1939’, French History and Civilization, 2 (2009): 101–19.

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new post-war social pressures. During the war, those who left for the interior as refugees created broader ‘dispersed communities’, based on their abandoned homes, and successfully maintained these attachments through years of exile that followed the armistice. But whether such collective solidarities survived their ultimate return home is unclear. In towns formerly occupied by the German army, for instance, the period of return and reconstruction brought new challenges, which exacerbated the tensions and recriminations that had begun during the war. In Sainghin-en-Weppes, just north of the coal-mining region, returning refugees who had fled in 1914 were shocked to find the houses they had previously rented inhabited by their neighbours who had remained under occupation. One man—Arthur Delacroix—wrote to the refugee representative committee, alleging that the mayor told him that because he and his family had ‘left voluntarily, and could remain away’, he would not remove the house’s new tenant. Delacroix felt it was a ‘stupidity’ that such a situation could arise, and lamented that ‘there are those who remained with the boches who can return home, they have houses reserved for them . . . but we cannot return, who had to leave during the mobilization, when the boches arrived in 14’.⁴⁶ Unlike Belgium, the formerly occupied regions of France did not witness widespread popular purges of those deemed to have collaborated or benefitted from occupation. Instead, the local press waged campaigns denouncing those suspected of ‘misconduct’, while a limited number of punishments were meted out through civilian courts and courts martial, although normally only in high-profile cases. Yet despite this limited repression, the end of occupation was nonetheless the beginning of a new period of debate, reckoning, and recrimination that threatened to fragment the front-line communities between those who had left, and those who had remained.⁴⁷ Further tensions emerged from the fact that the communities reconstituted from late 1918 onwards were manifestly not the same as those disrupted in 1914. The reconstruction brought significant numbers of labourers—both domestic and foreign—to the former battlefields of northern France. In Arras, for instance, the population swelled from 23,000 pre-war, to almost 40,000 in early 1920, once all reconstruction workers were included. Many were transient labourers, and so the town’s population did not remain at this level, but some stayed to build new lives for themselves.⁴⁸ How they interacted with civilians who had formed part of the ⁴⁶ ADPdC, 120 R 29, letters from A. Delacroix to Association de Défense des originaires des régions envahies et des évacués, Dec 1918. ⁴⁷ On popular purges in Belgium see Xavier Rousseaux and Laurence Van Ypersele, eds., La Patrie crie vengeance! La répression des ‘inciviques’ belges au sortir de la guerre 1914–1918 (Brussels, 2008); on the repression of collaborators in post-war France see Jean-Yves Le Naour, ‘ “Femmes Tondues” et répression des “femmes à boches” en 1918’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 47 (2000): 148–58; Renée Martinage, ‘Les Collaborateurs devant la cour d’assises du Nord après la très Grande Guerre’, Revue du Nord, 309 (1995): 95–115; Connolly, The Experience of Occupation, 289–93. ⁴⁸ ADPdC, M 2290, ‘Rapport du directeur général départemental adjoint’, 21 Feb 1920.

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wartime community would be a defining issue for the former urban battlefields throughout the interwar years. So too would be the relationships between local civilians and the French, British, and Dominion troops who had fought in their towns, as well as the families of those who had died, all of whom could legitimately claim a part in post-war remembrance of wartime destruction. This included the work of the soldier-writers who had encountered civilians under fire during their time at the front and who, writing in the 1920s and 1930s, generated a literary legacy around the urban battlefields. Perhaps the most striking images of urban destruction appear in Jean Cocteau’s Thomas l’Imposteur of 1923, when the main characters visit Reims. The town they encounter has suffered such destruction that nature itself is forcing its way back through the urban fabric, with grass growing in the streets and ‘trees coming out of windows’. This is a space wracked by almost hallucinatory violence, where a horse crosses the town while ‘limping through its innards’ (powerfully reimagined by Georges Franju in his 1965 film version as a horse on fire galloping through the town). But it is the sight of civilian suffering that prompts the most visceral response. When Clémence de Bormes witnesses a ‘poor Rémoise and her little daughter destroyed by fire from heaven’, she realises that the shells spare no one, and insists on returning to her daughter.⁴⁹ British and Allied writers, too, fictionalized the civilian presence at the Western Front, most notably R. H. Mottram in his Spanish Farm Trilogy, published from 1924. This series of novels seeks to re-centre the war itself, placing the small Vanderlynden farm in French Flanders at its heart, and following the interactions of the various individuals—civilians and soldiers—who pass through this space. The interconnected stories that make up the trilogy highlight the sometimes willing, sometime grudging interdependence that developed between French civilians and the B.E. F. in wartime. But these relationships are always layered with confusion and misunderstanding, typified by the ‘crime at Vanderlynden’s’—a supposed rape that never actually occurred—which forms the background of Mottram’s third volume.⁵⁰ Novels such as these helped shape remembrance of the civilians’ war on a national level, albeit within the context of a broader post-war literary output primarily concerned with the destabilising impacts of trench warfare on soldiers’ identities.⁵¹ But on a local level, too, former soldiers and their families played an active role in reconstruction and the shaping of remembrance in the years after 1918. This was especially the case in Ypres, where the newly established Commonwealth War Graves Commission employed and housed a significant ⁴⁹ Jean Cocteau, Thomas l’Imposteur (Paris, 1923), 51–8. ⁵⁰ R. H. Mottram, The Spanish Farm Trilogy (London, 1927). ⁵¹ Leonard V. Smith, The Embattled Self: French Soldiers’ Testimony of the Great War (Ithaca, NY, 2007); Nicolas Beaupré, ‘Soldier-Writers and Poets’, in Winter, Civil Society, vol. 3 of The Cambridge History of the First World War, 445–74.

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number of former British servicemen.⁵² Although former Allied servicemen may not have been as permanent a fixture in other areas, the new practice of battlefield tourism saw mourners and pilgrims, many of whom were veterans or the relatives of those killed, flock to the Western Front from 1919 onwards.⁵³ The former urban battlefields sought to capitalize on this development, and Arras, Reims, and Lens all engaged in skilful marketing campaigns to attract pilgrims and tourists. A series of advertising posters (see Figures 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3) launched in collaboration with France’s railway companies presented ruined urban landscapes as reverential sites of silent contemplation, and implied that, like the cemeteries containing the military dead, the front-line towns were also worthy sites of pilgrimage. All this meant that despite rhetoric to the contrary, the front-line towns could not simply return to a pre-war ‘norm’—either architecturally, or in terms of what constituted the community. Even if they were only transient visitors, reconstruction workers, veterans, bereaved family members, and other pilgrims all played a role in local politics and society. They developed their own memories of these urban battlefields, and helped shape reconstruction, commemoration, and remembrance throughout the interwar period. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the front-line communities were drastically reshaped in the post-war years by the return of local soldiers demobilized from the French army. As we have seen, front-line civilians carved out a space for themselves during the war within national and local discourse as the equivalents of soldiers; indeed, the parallel between civilians’ experiences of military violence and those of the soldiers in the trenches was a cornerstone of their collective identities. The result was that in late 1918, front-line civilians, like military veterans, emerged from the war as an inter-class social group distinguished from the rest of French society by shared experiences and collective representations. But as the soldiers returned home, and as the war passed from the realm of experience into memory, this sense of equivalence appears to have weakened. Certain post-war measures sought to recognize civilians’ wartime suffering, and place them on a level with the soldiers. As we have seen, a June 1919 law gave soldiers’ pension benefits to 30,000 ‘civilian victims’, while during post-war parliamentary debates over legislation regulating the repatriation of soldiers’ corpses, several deputies inserted an amendment stating that ‘civilians, victims of bombs or war accidents’ should also be declared ‘mort pour la France’.⁵⁴ But, as Susan Grayzel has demonstrated, on the national level memories of civilian victims killed by air raids faded under the weight of the memory of the dead ⁵² Mark Connelly, ‘The Ypres League and the Commemoration of the Ypres Salient, 1914–1940’, War in History 16, no. 1 (2009): 51–76; Mark Connelly and Stefan Goebel, Ypres (Oxford, 2019), 63–119. ⁵³ David William Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919–1939 (London, 1998). ⁵⁴ Grayzel, ‘The Souls of Soldiers’, 619.

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Figure 7.1. From Urban Battlefield to Site of Memory: Geo Dorival, ‘Arras’, Poster for the Compagnie de Chemin de Fer du Nord. Source: SARDO - Centre National des Archives Historiques (CNAH) du Groupe SNCF; © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2019

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Figure 7.2. From Urban Battlefield to Site of Memory: Julien Lacaze, ‘Lens’, Poster for the Compagnie de Chemin de Fer du Nord. Source: SARDO - Centre National des Archives Historiques (CNAH) du Groupe SNCF

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Figure 7.3. From Urban Battlefield to Site of Memory: Geo Dorival, ‘Reims’, Poster for the Compagnie de Chemin de Fer de l’Est. Source: SARDO - Centre National des Archives Historiques (CNAH) du Groupe SNCF; © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2019

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soldiers.⁵⁵ Unlike the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, no national monument to the civilian dead was constructed, and memories and public commemorations of their experiences devolved to the local level, to towns and villages across the former battlefields. The construction of memory was an integral part of the reconstruction of the former urban battlefields, and Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the towns in the coalmining region of the Pas-de-Calais all built memorials to both their civilian and military dead. In most cases, however, these monuments reveal how the wartime parity between civilian and military experiences of war was downgraded in the post-war years. In Nancy, for instance, the town’s military and civilian dead were commemorated separately, in two memorials located across from each other in the municipal cemetery. Their proximity suggests a certain degree of equivalence, but their physical separation and the larger scale of the soldiers’ monument delineates a clear hierarchy.⁵⁶ Reims and Arras, in contrast, ostensibly commemorated soldiers and civilians side by side on a single memorial in the town centre. And yet in both cases, the symbolism of the monuments foregrounds military experiences. In Arras, when the monument was inaugurated in November 1931, speeches celebrated the sacrifices of both soldiers and civilians, with the Bishop of Arras asserting that the town’s ‘civilian victims mixed their blood with that of the soldiers’, while a plaque inscribed with the names of the town’s civilian dead was affixed to the base of the memorial, next to one listing the military dead. Yet the monument itself (see Figure 7.4) and its inscriptions bear no reference to civilian experiences of war: a winged figure of peace stands atop a pedestal with a poilu underneath; each side carries bas reliefs symbolizing war and peace; while the inscriptions read ‘Arras to its children killed in the defence of justice’ and ‘the French soldier/ yesterday a soldier of God/ today a soldier of humanity/ always a soldier of justice’.⁵⁷ This monument could sit comfortably in almost any town in France, given its focus on the universal mission of the French soldier on behalf of humanity, and the near total absence of civilian war experiences. The visual symbolism of the Reims war memorial is similarly reticent when it comes to the war experiences of the town’s civilians. Like Arras, the monument was ostensibly dedicated to civilians and soldiers, and when it was inaugurated in June 1930, a local newspaper published a roll of honour, containing the names of 3,827 soldiers and 740 civilians from the town killed during the war. Yet the monument itself elides the experiences of those same civilians: it is composed of a ⁵⁵ Ibid., 620. ⁵⁶ For descriptions and images of Nancy’s war memorials see MémorialGenWeb, accessed 9 Aug 2019, http://www.memorialgenweb.org/mobile/fr/com_global.php?insee=54395&dpt=54&comm= Nancy&. ⁵⁷ For a description and images of the monument see Mémoires de pierre en Pas-de-Calais, ‘Arras’, accessed 9 Aug 2019, http://memoiresdepierre.pagesperso-orange.fr/alphabetnew/a/arras.html.

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Figure 7.4. Arras War Memorial. Source: Mémoires de pierre en Pas-de-Calais, ‘Arras’, http://memoiresdepierre.pagesperso-orange.fr/ alphabetnew/a/arras.html. Accessed 27 Aug 2019

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:  , –

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central figure contemplating the scale of the war’s death and destruction, with bas reliefs dedicated to the families of the dead, represented by a dying soldier and grieving mothers, and the future generations who can learn from the follies of war. The inscription reads: ‘children of Reims fallen on the field of honour, may this monument erected by your murdered town forever express its mourning and its pride’. Another, unsuccessful design had sought to address the town’s civilian wartime experiences in a more direct manner, and had included the inscription ‘for France and for liberty, the town of Reims, bombarded and destroyed, gave the blood of eight thousand of its children, soldiers and civilians’.⁵⁸ The fact that the latter design was rejected suggests how the wartime experiences of front-line civilians were diluted in a post-war memory landscape dominated by veterans and the military dead. The monuments erected in areas of the Pas-de-Calais coal fields formerly occupied by the German army could, at first glance, contradict this position. Indeed, the war memorials of both Liévin and Lens clearly include civilian experiences (see Figures 7.5 and 7.6), and place them alongside those of the soldiers. In the former, a miner in civilian clothing assists a wounded soldier, while a bas relief displays a woman and a child fleeing the ruined town. Similarly, the Lens memorial contains two identical male figures—one dressed as a civilian miner, another as a soldier—and a woman and a child fleeing the devastated town. In both cases, the inscriptions—‘Liévin to its dead, 1914–1918’ and ‘Lens to its children, 1914–1918’—are seemingly broad enough to include all victims of the war, military and civilian. And yet, even these apparently inclusive war memorials only reference particular aspects of the civilian experience of war. The work of civilians in the mines, and the plight of those forced out as refugees are placed on a par with the sacrifices of the soldiers. But the experiences of those who remained under German occupation are omitted entirely.⁵⁹ This omission emerges glaringly from a speech given at the opening of the Liévin memorial in October 1923 by the town’s assistant mayor. He spoke of the town’s 747 military dead alongside the 363 civilians who died from bombardment, and suggested that both groups contributed to victory, as ‘the superhuman exploits of the soldiers would have been in vain if they had not been well supplied in material to respond to the despotic German army’s storm of machine gun fire’. He described how the coal-mining region had played a crucial role in supplying this material, despite it having been ‘under enemy fire, bombardment destroyed the extraction pits and destroyed the workers’ ⁵⁸ Jean-Pierre Husson, ‘Le monument aux morts de Reims’, accessed 9 Aug 2019, http://www.cndp. fr/crdp-reims/memoire/lieux/communaux/reims.htm. ⁵⁹ For a description and images of the Liévin monument see Mémoires de pierre en Pas-de-Calais, ‘Liévin’, accessed 9 Aug 2019, http://memoiresdepierre.pagesperso-orange.fr/alphabetnew/l/lievin. html; for Lens see Mémoires de pierre en Pas-de-Calais, ‘Lens’, accessed 9 Aug 2019, http:// memoiresdepierre.pagesperso-orange.fr/alphabetnew/l/lens.html.

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Figure 7.5. Liévin War Memorial. Source: Mémoires de pierre en Pas-de-Calais, ‘Liévin’, http://memoiresdepierre.pagesperso-orange.fr/ alphabetnew/l/lievin.html. Accessed 27 Aug 2019

houses. But the miners went to work anyway. In danger at home and in the street, they still went underground . . . [those who died] also fell on the field of honour, and we owe them the same recognition and admiration. Civilian soldiers, mine workers . . . your memory will remain undying and history will register your bravery.’⁶⁰ The speech, and the memorial, clearly equate civilian experiences of military violence with those of the soldiers, continuing wartime discourse into the post-war era. And yet the assistant mayor’s speech ignores the fact that, during the war, Liévin was occupied by the German army, its mining infrastructure was destroyed, and no coal was extracted. The miners he likened to soldiers were those who left in 1914, and spent the war working under fire on the Allied side. Here, again, we can identify how the discourse of civil–military equivalence fractured in post-war collective memory. Even in those few cases where it was deployed, it served to mask other, more complex and troubling, civilian experiences of war. ⁶⁰ Mémoires de pierre en Pas-de-Calais, ‘Liévin’, accessed memoiresdepierre.pagesperso-orange.fr/alphabetnew/l/lievin.html.

9

Aug

2019,

http://

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:  , –

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Figure 7.6. Lens War Memorial. Source: Mémoires de pierre en Pas-de-Calais, ‘Lens,’ http://memoiresdepierre.pagesperso-orange.fr/ alphabetnew/l/lens.html. Accessed 27 Aug 2019

Daniel Sherman has argued that representations of civilian suffering remained relatively rare in French war memorials, even in towns and villages that had undergone bombardment and occupation. Even when civilian suffering was represented, this was most often in a qualified manner, in a form that made sure to maintain the superiority of the active suffering of the soldiers.⁶¹ The war memorials of Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-deCalais confirm this, foregrounding military experiences over those of civilians or, in case of Lens and Liévin, including civilian experiences of violence and exile only as a means of eroding other civilian experiences of occupation. Such developments mirror how the memories of other non-combatant participants in the conflict were constructed after 1918. Margaret Darrow has demonstrated how, for instance, during the conflict women’s war stories and narratives, including those of volunteer nurses, received wide diffusion, but that post-war nurse memoirists ⁶¹ Daniel J. Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (Chicago, 1999), 291–5.

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helped to erase their own experiences from the public memory of the war by subordinating their roles to those of the soldiers.⁶² Although current research in the area is limited, the evidence presented here suggests that the period of reconstruction set in motion a broader process whereby civilian memories of military violence and occupation were overshadowed by the experiences of the returned soldiers. As the urban battlefields of the former Western Front slowly transformed back into towns, their wartime civilian inhabitants faced a series of new challenges that questioned, or even ignored, the moral value of their wartime suffering. The militarized identities, which they had developed in wartime, may have survived for a period after 1918. But physical reconstruction, resettlement, and the construction of collective memories were all contested processes that pitted the frontline civilians against other groups, and diluted the specificity of their militarized identities. Perhaps more than anything else, it was the return of the soldiers, and the dominance of military experiences in public discourse after 1918, which pushed the experiences of front-line civilians to the margins of collective memories of the conflict. The inhabitants of the Western Front’s urban battlefields may have experienced the war as members of militarized civilian communities and as the moral equivalents of the soldiers. But it appears unlikely that these identities survived intact through their return home and the long process of reconstruction.

⁶² Darrow, French Women and the First World War, 1–2; see also Margaret H. Darrow, ‘French Volunteer Nursing and the Myth of the War Experience in World War 1’, The American Historical Review 101, no. 1 (1996): 80–106.

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Conclusion The Western Front during the First World War has become one of the most recognizable geographic spaces in European history. The horrific conditions endured by the soldiers in the trenches and the enormous human and material costs of the Battles of Verdun and the Somme have become bywords for war’s futility. The imagery of the Western Front is dominated in popular representations by soldiers, weaponry, mud, and corpses. This is the opening motif of one of the most successful and influential novels to emerge from the war, Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu, where elderly, sick men look down from a sanatorium high in the Alps, on a vision of war and chaos below. They see: A great livid white plain extend before them. In their vision, figures rise up out of the plain, which is composed of mud and water, and clutch at the surface of the ground, blinded and crushed with mire, like survivors from some monstrous shipwreck. These men seem to them to be soldiers. The plain is vast, riven by long parallel canals and pitted with waterholes, and the shipwrecked men trying to extract themselves from it are a great multitude.¹

This is an almost featureless landscape, blighted by humans’ mechanized attack on the earth, which subsumes the military dead. Here, soldier and battlefield are indistinguishable. This book has presented an alternative picture of the Western Front—one that is urban rather than rural, and one where the soldiers are not the sole inhabitants of the battlefield, but share it with civilians. Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coalmining region of the Pas-de-Calais were all transformed into urban battlefields, and their civilian inhabitants were at the forefront of a process of militarization that blurred the lines between civilian and military experiences of war. At the front, urban populations experienced extreme levels of military violence in the form of artillery bombardment; they were subjected to military discipline and occupation regimes, with soldiers being a constant presence in their lives; and proximity to the front drastically affected their local economies and food supplies. From the perspective of these civilians, the war rendered any distinction between the ‘front’ and the ‘home front’ meaningless.

¹ Barbusse, Under Fire, 6. Communities under Fire: Urban Life at the Western Front, 1914–1918. Alex Dowdall, Oxford University Press (2020). © Alex Dowdall. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198856115.001.0001

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It is by now perhaps a truism of First World War historiography that the conflict militarized civilians to a greater extent than previous wars, by exposing them to radical new forms of violence and co-opting them into industrial and economic mobilizations on an unprecedented scale. Scholarly uses of the term ‘militarization’ have, however, tended towards generalization, so that it is often used to describe phenomena experienced by almost all civilians in all belligerent countries.² By uncovering the urban history of the Western Front, however, this book has interrogated and nuanced the concept of militarization, demonstrating how it functioned variably to impact some civilians to a far greater extent than others. By exploring civilians’ individual and collective responses to the traumatic experiences of life in a warzone, the book has also uncovered the broad social impacts of militarization on civilian communities. For civilians at the front, their militarization, through direct experiences of violence and occupation, shaped how they understood their place within the national community at war. One of the most defining experiences for civilians at the front was artillery bombardment. This book considered whether the forms of violence unleashed against civilians at the Western Front were traditional or modern, and thus contributed to broader debates surrounding the radicalization of military violence between 1914 and 1918.³ The evidence here is contradictory. In its intent, the bombardment of towns at the Western Front between 1914 and 1918 was traditional. These were not deliberate attempts to eradicate civilian populations, and do not appear to foreshadow the exterminatory logic underpinning the destruction of urban space during the Second World War.⁴ Rather, through their reluctance to force evacuations, civilian and military authorities on both sides accepted that it was inevitable, and legitimate, that civilians would be caught up in the daily attrition of siege warfare, as had been the case during previous conflicts. Where urban violence at the Western Front marked a new departure was in its scale as, for the first time, modern weaponry reduced entire large towns to ruins. Urban violence of this scale would remain a part of European warfare during the twentieth century, and the ruins of Hamburg, Coventry, and countless other European cities in the summer of 1945 bore a striking resemblance to those of Reims, Arras, and Lens in November 1918. But moving beyond the nature and intent of such extreme military violence, we can also draw broad conclusions about how bombardments were represented in wartime, and how they shaped civilians’ identities. This book has uncovered how civilians under fire at the front emerged as a distinct social category in public representations. In posters, newspaper reports, books, photographs, and pamphlets, ² For a discussion of the literature on ‘militarization’, see the Introduction. ³ See Introduction, CI.P4. ⁴ The literature on urban warfare, and especially the bombing war, is vast. See, in particular, Overy, The Bombing War, and Claudia Baldoli, Andrew Knapp, and Richard Overy, eds., Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940–1945 (London, 2011).

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front-line civilians were presented heroically resisting the enemy in their battered homes, just like the soldiers in the trenches nearby. They were, in effect, represented as equivalents of the soldiers, and assumed a privileged position within the ‘moral economy’ that structured social relations in wartime France—they became figures of stoic heroism to be emulated by civilians in the interior. Front-line civilians self-identified in similar terms, and claimed that the direct experience of artillery bombardment, far more than the intermittent aerial bombing raids targeted against their counterparts in the interior, placed them alongside soldiers. As members of ‘communities under fire’, they distinguished themselves from the rest of the civilian population. Their newly militarized identities, and their selfperceived suffering on behalf of the nation, served as the basis for a whole host of claims on the social solidarity of the national community—from demands for wage increases, to increased rations and pensions and compensation for wounding. Bombardment, in other words, expanded the terms of French citizenship, as civilians demanded rights, entitlements, and benefits on the basis of their experiences of military violence. What is more, many of those civilians heroized in public discourse, and the majority of those demanding that the state recognize their suffering, were women. And although their experiences and demands did not generate a lasting renegotiation of female citizenship, they still participated in a temporary broadening of the national political community in wartime. This book has thus provided fresh insights into the social history of the First World War, by identifying an as-yet unrecognized social group that made particular claims on the national community—front-line civilians. Matters were, of course, more complex on the German-occupied side, where civilians were bombarded by French and Allied artillery, and no form of public discourse existed within which to frame or legitimize civilian suffering. Civilians under German control recognized the transformative nature of their exposure to military violence, but could not explain it as suffering for the nation. Nevertheless, even if responses to artillery bombardment differed from one side of the lines to the other, civilians on both sides encountered similar objective conditions. Not only were towns on both sides subject to intense artillery bombardment, but civilians’ lives were increasingly controlled and regulated by military authorities. Unlike civilians further back in Lille or Belgium, civilians at the front in Germancontrolled France faced the twin pressures of artillery bombardment and military occupation, and in this respect they had much in common with civilians in the Allied-controlled front-line zones. On both sides of the lines, military authorities enforced strict discipline and controlled civilians’ movements, while soldiers became an inescapable presence on the street, in shops, and in people’s homes. The military presence further exposed civilians to the harsh realities of warfare at the Western Front. It also placed considerable strain on the front-line civilian communities, and threatened to generate severe social tensions, especially on the German side where civilians were expected to perform highly public displays of

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moral resistance. Recriminations, accusations of collaboration, and denunciations, especially of local officials, began even before the war ended. Although the stresses and tensions of occupation were most acute on the German side, they also afflicted civilians on the Allied side, where factors such as military indiscipline and the army’s efforts to control female sexuality tested the limits of cooperation. By adopting a comparative approach, which places the Allied and German treatment of civilians within the same frame of analysis, this book has recontextualized Germany’s occupation of northern France. It has questioned whether the German occupation of France was truly exceptional in the violence it enacted upon civilians, and suggested that it may, in some respects, have had more in common with the situation on the Allied side of the Western Front than the radical ‘transformative’ occupation enacted in Ober Ost. A multiplicity of occupation experiences existed in Europe during the First World War, from the Western Front, to Belgium, Poland, Romania, and Ober Ost. This book has demonstrated the importance of recognizing the individuality of each scenario, while also understanding them as parts of a broader, European trend towards the control of civilian populations by military authorities in wartime. Bombardment and military occupation transformed the lives of civilians at the Western Front. So too did forced displacement, which encompassed an evergreater number of civilians from the front as the war progressed. This book has demonstrated, however, that refugees remained integral members of the front-line communities, even while in exile in the French interior. Refugees’ letters and newspapers clearly reveal their continued deep commitment to their abandoned and destroyed homes. While displaced, refugees from the same location socialized together, provided each other with mutual, material support, and maintained contacts with those who had stayed behind at the front, irrespective of which side of the lines they had come from. These activities allowed them to remain imaginatively and socially part of the bombarded local communities they had left behind. By revealing the continued commitment of refugees to their home communities, this book has offered an original perspective on the history of wartime forced displacement. Existing studies of France’s wartime refugees, and Nivet’s comprehensive account in particular, have been concerned with the attitudes of the state and host communities in the interior, and with the creation of the regime intended to control and manage refugees.⁵ This book, in contrast, has written the history of forced displacement from the perspective of refugees themselves. It has recast France’s refugee population as active agents capable of shaping the terms and conditions of their displacement, and shown that they were not just defined by the experience of exile, but also by their continued attachments to their home communities.

⁵ Nivet, Les Réfugiés français.

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The attachments refugees maintained to their abandoned homes point to broader conclusions. Direct encounters with military violence, and especially the traumatic experiences of bombardment, occupation, and forced displacement threatened the integrity of France’s front-line communities. War scattered communities and destroyed the physical spaces they inhabited, strained social and family bonds, generated considerable material hardships, and killed and wounded thousands of civilians. And yet, despite these intense and prolonged physical assaults on local communities, a sense of community identity remained intact throughout the war, and was of crucial importance for how civilians navigated the pressures of life in the battle zones. War did not, in other words, destroy the frontline communities, but transformed them, and shaped the sense of belonging felt by civilians. This was, in certain respects, part of a common European story, as civilians across France and other belligerent nations used local experiences and frames of reference to mediate engagement with broader national and international war efforts. But because civilians at the front endured such radically transformative local experiences of war, they developed distinct perspectives on their particular contribution to the national cause, which set them apart from the bulk of France’s civilian population. In the face of unprecedented levels of physical destruction, civilians at the front constructed new, militarized, identities. They joined themselves to the soldiers in the trenches, distinguished themselves from civilians in the interior, and demanded the national community recognize the sacrifices they made on its behalf. From the perspective of the front-line communities, the war thus generated a clear moral hierarchy. This was a cause of some tension, and many people at the front expressed genuine frustration towards civilians in the interior. But, and here we reach a further broad conclusion of this book, this is not to say that their commitment to the French war effort ever weakened. The full physical impact of war never seriously compromised support for the national effort within the frontline communities, even in German-occupied France. In fact, the opposite was the case, and civilians at the front were convinced that their sufferings were proof of a greater level of commitment to the national effort. Here we may identify the full social impacts of militarization, which transformed the identities of civilians at the front, framed their relationships with the nation, and served as the basis for their continued commitment to the war effort. In his comparative study of Europe’s social mobilizations between 1914 and 1918, John Horne has argued that the scale of the wartime violence simultaneously ‘tested the legitimacy of pre-war states and the sense of national community to the limits.’⁶ Ultimately, liberal democracies, including France, proved more resilient when faced with ‘total war’ than their more authoritarian counterparts. Although France expanded its repressive state

⁶ Horne, ‘Mobilizing for Total War,’ 5.

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apparatus, it never used these powers to their full extent, and support for the war remained largely self-generated from below. Even during the morale crises of 1917 and 1918, the state could draw on reserves of democratic legitimacy and broad political participation to sustain the national mobilization.⁷ The example of the front-line communities demonstrates the extent of the French state’s resilience during the First World War. Because even here, at the heart of the Western Front, and subject to the extreme violence of industrialized warfare, local communities participated in a process of ‘self-mobilization’, and civilians publicly expressed forms of identity which proved their commitment to the national cause. The militarized identities of the civilian inhabitants of Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais did not survive the long process of return and reconstruction. In the years after 1918, the military dominated public representations and collective memories of the conflict, subordinating and eroding the experiences of non-combatants, even those who had suffered extreme violence. By contrast, the civilian victims of urban violence during later conflicts, particularly the Second World War, have retained a greater degree of visibility. From Leningrad to Warsaw, Hamburg, and, more recently, Sarajevo and Donetsk, urban violence has remained a prominent feature of warfare in Europe, turning cities into battlefields. On each occasion, civilian populations were at the heart of military operations, and forced to adapt to life in a warzone. This had also been the case between 1914 and 1918, despite the myth that the First World War was predominantly a soldiers’ war. The civilian inhabitants of Nancy, Reims, Arras, and the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais were among the first to suffer the full impact of modern, industrialized war in an urban setting. But they would not be the last.

⁷ Horne, ‘Remobilizing for Total War,’ 195–211.

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Sources and Bibliography Archival Collections France Archives nationales, Paris (AN) Series C – ‘Assemblées nationales’. Series F/7 – ‘Ministère de l’Intérieur – Police générale’. Series F/22 – ‘Travail et sécurité sociale’. Series F/23 – ‘Services extraordinaires des temps de guerre’.

Archives nationales du monde du travail, Roubaix (ANMT) 1994 026 – Mines de Béthune. 1994 050 – Mines de Bruay. 1994 051 – Mines de Vicoigne, Noeux et Drocourt. 1994 055 – Mines de Lens.

Service historique de la défense, Vincennes (SHD) 3 N – ‘Comité de Guerre’. 5 N – ‘Cabinet du Ministre’. 6 N – ‘Fonds Clemenceau’. 7 N – ‘État-Major de l’Armée’. 16 N – ‘Grand Quartier Général’. 17 N – ‘Missions militaires françaises’. 19 N – ‘Armées’.

Archives départementales de la Haute-Savoie, Annecy (ADHS) Series M – General Administration.

Archives départementales de la Marne, Châlons-en-Champagne (ADM) Series M – General Administration. Series T – Education.

Archives départementales de la Marne, Reims (ADM) Series R – Military Affairs. Series Z – Sub-Prefectures.

Archives départementales de la Meurthe-et-Moselle, Nancy (ADMM) Series M – General Administration. Series R – Military Affairs.

Archives départementales du Nord, Lille (ADN) Series R – Military Affairs.

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Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais, Arras (ADPdC) Series J – Private Papers. Series M – General Administration. Series R – Military Affairs. Series Z – Sub-Prefectures. Series Fi – Iconography.

Archives municipales de Béthune, Béthune (AMB) Series D – General Administration.

Archives municipales de Nancy, Nancy (AMN) Series D – General Administration. Series H – Military Affairs. Series I – Municipal Police.

Archives municipales de Reims, Reims (AMR) Series D – General Administration (pre-1917). Series S – Private Papers. Series W – General Administration (post-1917).

Bibliothèque municipale d’Arras, Arras (BMA) Ms 1443-9, Manuscript diary of Jules Cronfalt, 1914–1918.

Archives diocésaines d’Arras, Arras (ADA) Series 6 V, post-war reports compiled by parish priests on local life during the war. 4 Z 27/1, Parish register, Lens, 1914–1918. 4 Z 84/3/A, Parish register, Noeux-les-Mines, 1914–1918.

Collection la contemporaine, Nanterre (CLC) F/Delta/1126, Academie de Lille Papers.

Germany Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abt. IV, Kriegsarchiv, Munich (BHA) Armee Oberkommando 6. Etappenformationen (WK), Etappen-Inspektion der 6 Armee. I Bavarian Army Corps. I Bavarian Reserve Army Corps. III Bavarian Army Corps. Infantry Divisions. Auflösungsstäbe (WK), Heeresfriedenskommission.

United Kingdom Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum, London (IWM) Private Papers of Captain F. G. Chandler, 07/12/1. Private Papers of F. E. Collins, 82/1/1.

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   Private Papers of W. Cook, P/101. Private Papers of Lt. Col. H.M.B. de Sales la Terriere, 67/242/1. Private Papers of Major E.S.B. Hamilton R.A.M.C., 87/33/1. Private Papers of F.E. Harris, 06/29/1. Private Papers of Rev. J. B. Marshal, 67/180/1. Private Papers of Major E.A. McKechnie MC, 88/27/1. Private Papers of J. Nettleton, P/194. Private Papers of Surgeon Captain G. Nunn RN, 06/49/1. Private Papers of Major S.O.B. Richardson, 99/13/1. Private Papers of R. I. Smith, 86/36/1.

The National Archives, Kew, London (TNA) War Office Files.

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Theses and Dissertations Heimburger, Franziska, ‘Mésentente cordiale? Les langues dans la coalition alliée sur le front ouest de la Première Guerre Mondiale’, (PhD Thesis: EHESS, Paris, 2015). Lauwers, Delphine, ‘Le Saillant d’Ypres entre reconstruction et construction d’un lieu de mémoire: un long processus de négotiations mémorielles, de 1914 à nos jours’, (PhD Thesis: EUI Florence, 2013).

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Index Abelé, Henri 40 Académie de Lille 113 aerial bombing 1, 3, 6, 13, 31, 34, 52, 67, 85, 89, 147, 227 regulation of by Hague Conventions 12 Affléville 22 Agache, Alfred 204, 205 Aix-la-Chapelle 89 Albert 25 Aleppo 1 All Souls Day 63 Alsace-Lorraine 7, 8, 20–22, 79, 168, 169, 190 Amara, Michaël 188 Amiens 52, 54 Angers 186 anti-German sentiment 20 Ardennes 21 Armenian Genocide 3 Armentières 26, 34, 46, 53, 59, 65, 103, 106, 153, 162, 208 armistice 203–204 Arras 1, 7, 10, 22, 23, 25, 26, 38, 45, 58, 69, 99, 100, 118, 127, 192, 208 bombardment of 25, 31–33, 194 destruction, civilian responses to 73, 76, 77 destruction, scale of 53 economy of 127 evacuation of 46, 49, 51, 184 Hôtel de Ville, destruction of 9, 71, 73, 75–76 internal migration 37 local history of 78–79 occupation of by German Army 23, 99 passage of troops, 1914 20 pillage by Allied soldiers 107–108 population of 43, 44, 46, 213 pre-1914 4 public services 40 reconstruction of 208, 211, 213 refugees in 22, 23 refugees from 184, 187, 193, 194 as urban battlefield 27, 55 war memorial 219, 220 Arras, Battle of (1917) 5, 32, 46 artillery bombardment of towns 1, 4, 6, 10, 14, 17, 25, 52, 78, 225–227 See also buildings, destruction of; civilians

by Allies 81–90 and civilian morale 80–81 clairvoyants 38 during invasion of 1914 21 in German propaganda 82–83 impact on urban life 35–42, 56 ‘normality’ as response to 39–41, 56, 59, 64 press reporting on 58–60, 62–64, 193–194 protections against 29, 30, 38–39 and refugees 189 regulation of by Hague Conventions 12 scale of 30–31 suicide as response to 91 survival strategies 37–38, 65–66 atrocities, 1914 2, 3, 13 Auburtin, Marcel 205 Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane 5 Aumenancourt-le-Grand 118 Aurillac 189 Avion 114, 148 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region Bach, André 100 Badonviller 22 Balkan Wars 3 targeting of civilians 11 barbarism 71, 73, 82 Barbusse, Henri 116, 225 Barrès, Maurice 7 Basly, Émile 10, 41, 60, 83–84, 96, 98, 122, 146, 169, 171, 176, 177, 188, 190, 197 Basque identity 16 battlefield tourism 225–218 Beauvais 100 Becker, Annette 123 Becker, Jean 108 Becker, Jean-Jacques 20 Belfort 44 Berck-Plage 184, 187 Berlin 23, 125, 152, 168 Besançon 100 Béthune 7 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region attitudes towards rationing 168 bombardment of 10, 33, 38, 63, 66 bombardment, protections against 29

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Béthune (cont.) coal-mining 129, 130 destruction, civilian responses to 77 emergency aid for civilian wounded 138 evacuation of 45 municipal food supply 157 municipal store 159, 161 refugees from 187 reconstruction 208 soldiers in 105, 106, 109, 111, 113 speculation 161 billeting 47, 95, 100, 102, 103, 105, 107, 115, 124 Billy-Montigny 10, 97 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region Binet, Félix 108 black market 173, 176 blackouts 29, 34, 55, 96, 193 ‘blood tax’ 141 ‘boches du Nord’ 181 Bock, Fabienne 125 bomb shelters 29, 30, 38 Bonzon, Thierry 125, 152, 162, 165, 168 Bordeaux 168, 187 Boulogne 187, 210 Bourgeois, Charles 33, 40, 49, 96, 97, 106, 109, 120, 147, 173 Bourgeois, Léon 40, 64, 188, 197 Bourges 162 bread 81, 106, 134, 135, 145, 153, 154, 156, 157, 159–165, 167, 168, 170–174 Breton identity 16 British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) 20, 26, 97, 98, 100, 205 arrival in France 44 and civilian evacuations 47 civilian frustration at 102–103 crimes against civilians 108 Brittany 158 Broutchoux, Benoît 19 Bruay 10, 130 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region food shortages 154 municipal store 159 refugees in 183, 187 Brussels 97 buildings, destruction of 53, 71–75 Bully-Grenay 33, 67 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region Buxerulles 47 Buxières 47 Caen 185 Caglioti, Daniela 141

Carnegie Endowment for World Peace 12 Carpentier, Augusta 118 Carré, Hélène 85–86, 112, 115 Catholicism 8, 39–40, 71, 73, 75, 115–116 Calais 8, 187 Cambrai 34, 52, 148, 184 Carillon, Camille 100 censorship 13, 65–68, 80, 108, 109, 164, 194, 203–204 Châlons-sur-Marne 8, 52, 54 champagne industry 8, 47, 127 See also local economy, Reims Chandler, Captain F.G. 111, 112 Charleroi, Battle of (1914) 21 Château-Thierry 99 Châtelet 23 Chérau, Gaston 58 Chickering, Roger 15 children 40, 117, 182 See also Schools and allied soldiers 112–113 and bombardment 59, 62, 84–86, 148 evacuation of 43, 44, 45–48, 49, 57 and German soldiers 113–114 nutrition 172 refugee children 189, 191, 199, 200 war orphans 139 citizenship 141, 196, 197, 227 civil-military encounters see also soldiers ‘familial’ relations 112–114 fraternization with German troops 24 sex 118–123 social tensions resulting from 98, 121–123 civilians, front-line See also evacuation of civilians; militarization attitudes towards allied bombardment 83–91, 227 attitudes towards German bombardment 37–41, 57, 64–66, 226–229 attitudes towards interior 4, 14, 18, 66–70, 126, 135, 167–169, 178, 212, 227, 229–230 attitudes towards Parisians 67–69 casualties 53–54, 221 civilian identity 10, 57, 63–64, 69, 90 ‘civilian victims’, law of 1916 140 ‘civilian victims’, law of 1919 141 comparisons with soldiers 40, 58–60, 62–65, 69, 84, 90, 136, 139–140, 150, 212, 215, 219–224, 227, 229 in post-war commemorations 219–223 public representations of 58–60, 63–64 resistance, capacity for 40, 45, 49, 51, 58–59, 62–66, 70, 76–77, 79, 80, 136, 151, 165–167, 227

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 self-definitions 4, 18, 65, 69, 90, 126, 136, 138, 141, 201, 227 welfare provisions for wounds 138–141 civilisation 70, 71 Clout, Hugh 208 coal mining 9–10, 125 See also industrial mobilization, Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region changes in working conditions 130 changes in workforce 130–131 under German occupation 142–143, 176 production levels 129–130 wages 132–133, 137 coal supplies 129–130, 154, 159, 161, 162, 168 Cocteau, Jean 214 Coesfeld, Ebmaier 110 collaboration 146, 149, 177, 213 commemoration 215, 219, 221–224, 230 Commission for Relief in Belgium 170–177 attitudes of civilians towards 175–177 establishment 170 organisation 171 rations distributed 171–174 Confédération générale du travail 10 Connolly, James E. 97, 122, 146, 175 Conratte, Jules 147 Cook, Wilfred 107 cooperatives 133, 195 corons (miners’ houses) 9 Courrières 10, 19 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region bombardment of 147 coal-mining under occupation 142, 144 mining disaster (1911) 10, 19 reconstruction 211 Croix de Guerre 68, 121, 136 Cronfalt, Jules 26, 40 Cronier, Emmanuelle 105, 196 cultural history 5, 18 curfews 95, 96, 101, 103, 104 Darrow, Margaret H. 223 Davis, Belinda 152, 162, 165, 168 Debouzy, Marie 100 decentralization 16 declaration of war, 1914 19–21 denunciations 98, 100, 106, 121–123, 177, 228 deportation 104, 120 destruction 17, 53, 71–78 See also Buildings, destruction of literary representations of 214 Dijon 158, 186, 187, 189 Dix, Otto 119 Donetsk 1

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Douai 8, 34, 184 Dourges 142 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region Dreyfus Affair 7 Driant, Emile 7 Dunkerque 34, 54, 195 Edirne (Adrianople), Siege of (1912) 11 Elbeuf 186, 187, 189 Épernay 52, 54, 180, 184, 203 Erhart, Louis 107 Etappengebiet 6, 94 evacuation of civilians 42–51, 180, 184 Exposition de la cité reconstitué 206, 207 Flemish identity 16 Fontaine, Arthur 133 food controls see also Commission for Relief in Belgium; food supplies; moral economy; social morality on Allied side 152, 157 on German side 170–177 price limits 158–161 rationing 161, 163–165, 167 food supplies see also Commission for Relief in Belgium; food controls; moral economy; social morality accusations of collaboration 175–177 attitudes towards shortages 164–168 black market 173, 176 consumption patterns 163–165, 174 differences between front and interior 162–164 emergency food aid 157, 161, 170, 174 inflation 126, 132, 154–156, 164 frustration at shortages 80–81 protests under occupation 177 representations of food suppliers 165–167 role of German army 170, 172–174 role of municipalities 158–159, 161, 171, 172 shortages 153–154, 163, 168–170 forced displacement 228 see also Refugees to French interior 184–187 geography of 183–187 in German-occupied France 183, 190 local character of 183–187, 201 scale of 182 forced labour 96, 97, 144–149, 151 Ford, George B. 208 Forsant, Octave 46 Foulon, Abbé E. 21, 23, 32, 76 Fraipont, Gustave 71, 72

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Franco-Prussian War 1, 3, 24 francs-tireurs 11 occupation following 7, 8, 24 targeting of civilians 11 French Army accused of using Reims cathedral as observation post 71 advance into Alsace, August 1914 21 civilian evacuation policies 44–45, 47, 49 civilian frustration at 102–104 deportation of civilians from front 101 efforts to minimize tensions with civilians 102 emergency food aid 153 execution of suspected spies 99 Fridenson, Patrick 125 Frouard 128, 129 Funck, Marcus 2 Gatrell, Peter 181, 201 gender 58–59, 120, 121, 141 See also sex; sexuality German Army advance into Belgium, August 1914 21 attitudes towards bombarded civilians 82 Bavarian 6th Army 94, 96, 110, 146–149, 177 civilian evacuation policies 47–49 and food supply 170 Grand Couronné offensive 22 hostility of occupied towards 86 invasion of France, 1914 21, 25–26, 44 pillaging 108 protection of civilians 29 repatriation of civilians 48, 97, 182 Spring Offensive (1918) 32, 34, 50–51 use of civilians as human shields 47 Gerson, Stéphane 17 Geyer, Michael 14, 49 Ginisty, Paul 58 Grand quartier général (G.Q.G.) 100 Grayzel, Susan R. 59, 118, 215 Graves, Robert 111 Groupe parlementaire des régions envahies 197 Gumz, Jonathan 3 Hague Conventions (1907) 12, 147–149, 170 German reservations 13 and protection of civilians 12, 147–149 Hamburg 1, 226 Hanna, Martha 116 Harris, Ruth 117 Heeres-Friedens Kommission 110 Heimat 15

Hénin-Liétard 10, 212 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region arrival of German troops 23, 94 bombardment of 34, 147 coal-mining 142, 143 denunciations 177 forced labour 144–148 German occupation 95, 98, 113–114 outbreak of war 19 refugees from 196–197 Hess, Paul 20, 23, 24, 27, 35, 38–39, 41, 51, 57, 73, 210 Hilaire, Yves-Marie 9 Homécourt 175 home front 2, 13, 14, 17, 34, 156, 225 hospitals 12, 33, 55, 58, 83, 87, 112, 184, 190 hostage taking 96, 148 Hoover, Herbert 170 Horne, John 3, 60, 165, 229 Houlihan, Patrick 115 Huber, Michel 55, 141 Hull, Isabel V. 3, 48, 123 human shields 47 Iliad 1 immigrant workers 125, 131 industrial mobilization 13, 62, 125–126 see also coal mining; iron-ore mining; local industry; wages; work dilution 125 feminization 125 state intervention 125 inflation 126, 132, 155, 164 see also food controls, food supplies influenza, Spanish 211 internment 3, 101, 122 iron-ore mining 128 Jarville 128, 129, 156 Joffre, Joseph 21, 87 Jones, Heather 3 journalists 58 kitchens, municipal 162, 172, 193 Kitson, Simon 9 Kramer, Alan 3 Kultur 70 Landsturm 95 Langlet, Jean-Baptiste 8, 45, 60, 188 language 106 Laon 34, 52, 89 de Lardemelle, General Charles 79 Laurent, Joseph 7

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 Ledunc, Victor 64 Légion d’Honneur 6, 66 Leipzig, Battle of (1813) 11 Lens 1, 7, 9, 10, 22, 25, 29, 33, 35, 41, 83, 84, 110, 120, 122, 143, 146, 209, 217 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region arrival of German troops 23 black market 176 bombardment of 83–84, 86–88, 194 evacuation of 49 food shortages 169, 173 German occupation of 95–97 municipal store 172 pillage 109 population of 43, 44, 48 refugees from 183, 190 screening of population for sexually transmitted diseases 121 war memorial 221–223 Liévin 10, 25, 33 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region attitudes towards German soldiers 114, 115 bombardment of 25, 33, 35, 37, 84–86 civilian casualties 84 civilian population of 36–37 deportations 120 evacuation of 48 German occupation of 47, 94–96, 109 as urban battlefield 31 war memorial 221–223 Ligue de la Patrie Française 7 Lille 8, 23, 47, 52, 95, 97, 113, 114, 227 aerial bombing of 89 allied bombardment of 26, 89 civilian casualties 54 Limoges 168 Lithuania 145 Liulevicius, Vejas Gabriel 104 local identity 10, 15–17, 57, 64, 199–200, 202, 229 See also Heimat; petite patrie and local history 78–80 and reconstruction 206–208 as response to artillery bombardment 70–71, 75–78, 90 local history 15, 78–79 local industry 128 See also champagne industry; coal mining; industrial mobilisation; wages; work in Arras 8, 127 in Nancy 7, 128–129 in Reims 8, 127–128 local government 16, 17, 62 and food supplies 158–159, 161, 171, 172 and refugees 190–191

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local political discourse 62–66, 81, 166–167, 215, 227 London 2 Loos-en-Gohelle 10, 33, 121, 122, 169 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region Lorraine 21, 79, 168, 169, 190 Lourdes 185 Louvain 73 Ludres 137 Lunéville 8 Luz 185 Lyons 187 Maffe 190 Malines 73 Mametz 187 Marin, Louis 7, 51 Martin, Alice 39, 76 Marne, Battle of the (1914) 21, 23–25 Marquiset, Jean 89 marriage 118 Marseille 186–188, 207 de Maud’huy, General Louis 102 Mayeur, Jean-Marie 16 Maxéville 128, 129 meat 145, 153, 154, 157–161, 163, 164, 170, 172–174, 177 Mercier, Réné 21, 37, 39, 136, 168 Méricourt 10 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region Metz 7 military discipline 99 military indiscipline 107–110 militarization 14, 18, 34, 90, 92, 116, 124, 126, 151, 224, 225, 226, 229–230 of civilian identity 69, 80, 81, 90, 91, 229 comparisons of civilians and soldiers 40, 58–65 definitions of 13–14 of urban space 26–35, 56 Mirman, Léon 8, 19, 22, 60, 63, 91, 190 Mission militaire française (M.M.F.) 100–103 monarchism 8 Monchy-le-Preux 175 Monfarville 197 Mons, Battle of (1914) 21 Montceau-les-Mines 186 moral economy 152, 156, 165, 178, 227 See also social morality Moreau, Emilienne 122 Morin, Léon 114 motherhood 117 Mottram, Ralph Hale 214 Moyenneville 178 Mulhouse 21

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de Mun, Bertrand 50 municipal socialism 16 municipal stores 158, 159, 161, 170, 171, 172 Nancy 1, 7, 8, 10, 24, 29, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 91, 111, 132, 136, 167, 168, 203 bombardment of 22, 31, 35, 37, 194 Chamber of Commerce 128 civilian casualties 54 destruction, scale of 53 evacuation of 50, 63, 184 food shortages 154 inflation 155, 164 local economy 128–129 local history 78 municipal food supply 158, 159, 161 and outbreak of war 19 population of 43, 46 pre-1914 7 refugees in 54, 184 refugees from 190–191 temporary evacuations from 37 as urban battlefield 27, 56 war memorial 219 xenophobia 20 national identity 15, 17, 57, 75, 229 Neuves-Maisons 128, 137 Neuville-sous-Montreuil 184 Nevers 186 Nice 186, 187 Nîmes 187 Nivelle Offensive (1917) 32 Nivet, Philippe 122, 181, 185 Noeux-les-Mines 25 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region allied soldiers 105 bombardment of 25, 30, 33 coal-mining 131, 137 desires for reprisals 203 food shortages 153, 165 formation of trenches in vicinity 26 religion 39, 115 restrictions on movement 37, 103 Nomény 22 normality 39–40, 42, 56, 59, 64 Normandy 158 North Sea 5 nostalgia 207 Noyon 24 nurses 14, 58, 223 Ober Ost 104, 144, 229 occupation 2, 3, 14, 94–95, 104–105, 225, 227–228

See also British Expeditionary Force; German Army; French Army; Ober Ost; soldiers; zone des armées Allied ‘friendly’ occupation 4, 99–105, 123 of Belgium 144 forced labour 96, 97, 144–149 German occupation (1871–73) 7, 11 German occupation, beginning of 23–24, 94, 109 German occupation, omission from war memorials 221–223 German occupation, policies 94–99 German occupation, as ‘regime of terror’ 4, 123 German occupation, structure 94 German occupation, views of Allied officers 93 hostage taking 96, 148 ideas of collaboration 146, 149, 177, 213 ideas of resistance 97–98, 104, 114, 143, 147, 150, 175, 177, 228 local authorities and 97–98 localised nature of 97 Ober Ost 104, 144, 206 post-war tensions 213, 228 regulation of by Hague Conventions, 1907 12, 99, 147–149 repatriation 47, 97 ‘transformative occupation’ 104, 227, 228 Operation Alberich 48 Orchies 23 orphans, law of July 1917 139 Paris attitudes of front-line civilians towards 67 bombardment of 2, 34, 52, 59, 67–69 civilian casualties 52 refugees in 185, 188, 195, 198, 209 Siege of Paris (1870–71) 1, 11 soldiers on leave 105, 119 Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region 7, 10, 23, 27, 40, 65, 94, 111, 120, 129–131 See also coal mining; Avion; Béthune; BillyMontigny; Bruay; Bully-Grenay; Courrières; Dourges; Hénin-Liétard; Lens; Liévin; Loos-en-Gohelle; Méricourt; Noeux-les-Mines; Sallaumines anti-German sentiment 20 arrival of German army, 1914 24 bombardment of 33–34 destruction, scale of 53 evacuation of 49–50 food shortages 154, 164 forced displacement within 183 forced labour 144 municipal food supply 159–160

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 and outbreak of war 19 passage of troops, 1914 20 population of 46 pre-1914 9–10 refugees from 185 stabilization of trenches in, 1914 25 as urban battlefield 29, 55 war memorials 221–223 Perreux, Gabriel 14 Péronne 170 petite patrie 16, 70, 76–78, 180, 190, 192 see also Heimat; local identity petitioning 196, 198–199, 210 pillage 107–109, 211 Pompey 128, 136 Pont-à-Mousson 22, 34, 101, 107, 120, 158, 160, 168, 184 price limits 159–160 prison camps 96, 141, 147 prisoners of war 12, 21, 34, 73 Proctor, Tammy M. 14 profiteering 17, 156, 157, 167, 177 propaganda 64, 82, 105 Prost, Antoine 5 prostitution 119 radicalization of warfare 3, 226 rape 12, 22, 214 rationing see food controls reconstruction 203, 204, 211–212 see also urban planning attitudes of refugees towards 194, 207, 210 modernism vs. traditionalism 205–208 reconstruction workers 213 role of local community in 206–208 wartime planning for 206 Redont, Edouard 205 refugees 23, 26, 119 assistance of 4, 195–202 attitudes towards ‘home’ 4, 181, 188, 190–192, 194, 195, 199–202, 210, 228 attitudes towards reconstruction 207 charitable assistance for 195 during invasion of 1914 22 experiences of 4, 182, 199–200 in industry 131 local government assistance for 190–191 petitioning 196–199, 210 reception of 181 refugee press 191–196, 210 Refugees’ Charter (1918) 196 representative committees 187–189, 197–201 return home 209–213

Reims 1, 7, 10, 23, 24, 29, 38–40, 45, 57, 60, 64–66, 68, 91, 99–100, 103, 106, 107, 111, 132, 136, 212, 218 See also champagne industry; Langlet, Jean-Baptiste; Reims Cathedral bombardment of 24, 31, 32, 35, 37, 39, 46, 57 civilian casualties 53 destruction, civilian responses to 78 destruction, scale of 53 evacuation of 44, 46, 50, 78, 180, 184 food suppliers, representations of 165–167 German occupation of, 1914 25, 99 inflation 155 internal migration 37 literary representations of 214 local economy 127–129 municipal food supply 159–161 outbreak of war 19 passage of French troops, 1914 21 population of 43, 44 pre-1914 8 public services 40 reconstruction 206–208 refugees from 185–187, 198–201, 210 refugees in 22 spy fears 19 stabilization of trenches in vicinity 25 unemployment assistance 134 as urban battlefield 27, 28, 55 war memorial 219 Reims Cathedral 8, 75 in Allied propaganda 71 bombardment of 71–73 civilian responses to destruction 75, 78–80, 189 and reconstruction 206 religion 40, 70, 115 Rémy, Clotilde-Jehane 39, 77 repatriation 47, 97, 182 reprisals 204 requisitioning 30, 47, 95, 100, 102, 103, 110, 153, 156, 169, 170 Renouvin, Pierre 157 resistance 97–98, 104, 114, 143, 147, 150, 175–177, 228 restrictions on movement 96, 101, 148, 209 Rethel 23 return of refugees, 1918–1919 208–209 Richter, Klaus 104 Robida, Albert 73, 74 Romilly-sur-Seine 186, 190 Roulland, Victor 118

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Rouvroy 97 Royan 187 Sachs, Miranda 114 Saint-Mihiel 47 Sallaumines 10, 20 See also Pas-de-Calais coal-mining region Sarajevo 1, 230 Schaepdrijver, Sophie de 97 schools 40, 64 See also children separation allowances 128, 135, 139, 195 Serbia 3 Service des relations avec les autorités civiles 100 sex, regulation of 118 sexuality 117–118, 121–123 sexually transmitted disease 118–120 Sherman, Daniel 223 Siege of Troy 1 siege warfare 1, 26, 226 Siegfried Line 48 Société amicale de la Marne 186, 188 social history 4, 18, 226, 227 social mobilization 14, 229–230 socialism 10, 16 social morality 17, 60, 151, 156, 169–170, 175–178 See also moral economy Société française d’urbanistes 205 Soissons 25, 34, 39, 99 soldiers See also British Expeditionary Force; civilmilitary encounters; French Army; German Army; occupation attitudes of front-line civilians towards 109, 114–115 attitudes towards civilian suffering 110–112 and children 112–114 civil-military encounters, Allied 20, 93, 103–104, 123, 214 civil-military encounters, German 24, 123 drunkenness 107 indiscipline 107–110 pillage 107–109, 211 public representations of 17, 60 sexual encounters with civilians 118–122 Soloman, Léon 20 ‘spirit of 1914’ 20 Spring Offensive (1918) 32, 34, 50–51 spy fears 19, 99, 101 Stalingrad 1 Strasbourg 1, 7, 11 strikes 19, 164, 176 sugar 8, 154, 157, 160–164, 170, 172, 177

suicide 91 sursis d’appel 131 Switzerland 47, 98, 158, 175, 182 syndicalism 10 Tacquet, Léon 35, 39, 85–87, 95, 98, 123, 146, 147, 172, 173, 176 Taylorism 125 textiles 8, 127–129 theatre 53, 212 Thomas, Albert 62 Toul 44 Toulouse 187, 189 Tours 162 trenches 26, 27, 29, 38, 50, 56, 62, 105, 107, 117, 147, 148, 178, 225 unemployment 128, 129, 132, 150 welfare provisions 134–135 Union des comités centraux des réfugiés 197 ‘unknown soldier’ 219 urban history 2, 226 urban planning 204–208 urban warfare 1–2, 5, 11, 24–34, 78, 226, 230 Vachon, Marius 76 Valenciennes 96, 184 vandalism 71 Verdun 24, 34, 44 Verdun, Battle of (1916) 225 veterans 215, 221 Vichy 187 victims, civilian, law of 1916 140 victims, civilian, law of 1919 141–142 Villain, Virgine 22 Vimy Ridge 34 wages 126, 132–133, 135–136, 150, 164 bombardment allowances 137 war cultures 5 war memorials 219–222 Wavrin 148 Weber, Eugen 15 welfare payments 126, 134, 150, 195–201 Western Front civilian population levels 43–45, 48–51, 209 definitions of 5–6 formation of 24–26 literary representations of 225 Wolff, Alfred 27, 73, 99 work 126 see also industrial mobilization; local economy; wages

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 forced labour 96, 97, 144–146, 148–149, 151 social and cultural dimensions of 126, 135–138, 150 under German occupation 126, 142–151 wounds 6, 22, 53–54, 82, 91, 105, 111, 112, 138–141, 227, 229 war weariness 80 Winter, Jay 208 World War 2 1–3 xenophobia 20

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Ypres 26, 34, 214 Zeppelins 34, 52, 66, 67 zone des armées 6, 44, 80 extent of 100 food controls in 160 powers of military over civilians within 49, 100, 101, 120 prostitution in 119 refugees in 183, 184 restrictions on civilian movement 101