CHARLES FAIR

Chantilly and Senlis

16th Arrondissement con

Outside the Musee d'Art Moderne (Av du President Wilson) is a Statue of France. The statue shows France, in mythical costume, watching the horizon: one hand protects her eyes while the other holds a long spear. I had a sense of deja vu at this, as it is identical to one that I had seen in the Museum at St. Cyr-Coetquidan in Brittany last year. In fact the sculptor, Antoine Bourdelle, made four identical bronzes. (There is an article on Bourdelle in Monuments de Memoire: Monuments aux Morts de la Grande Guerre pub 1991, MPCIH, Secretariat d'Etat aux Anciens Combattants et Victimes de Guerre.) The plinth of the sculpture includes an inscription by the poet Charles Peguy.

In the Place 11 Novembre, outside the Trocadero, is a plinth which bears an equestrian Statue of Marshal Foch. From here, if you gaze across the Seine and though the main arch of the Eiffel Tower, you will see the Ecole de Guerre and Joffre's statue.

A few hundred yards away, at 21 rue Raynouard, is a plaque to the American Field Service. The headquarters and a hospital belonging to this volunteer ambulance unit was based in the building which used to stand on this site. The plaque recalls that nearly 2,500 wounded French soldiers were cared for on the site, and that 127 members of the AFS lost their lives for France.

20th Arrondissement

Pere-Lachaise Cemetery is reputed to be the most visited cemetery in the world and is the main tourist attraction in this quarter of the city. It is the most famous of the Paris cemeteries and is the equivalent of London's Highgate Cemetery. Maps near the entrances show the locations of the most famous residents including Chopin, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde and the sixties rock singer Jim Morrison. The full list is a veritable roll-call of the great and good who have illuminated all facets of French and Parisian life over the past 200 years or so. An intriguing place to walk around, and no doubt very atmospheric on a foggy day.

However, I had come to see the graves of two men. One was that of Guillaume Apollinaire, one of the most famous French war poets, who died of influenza on the 9 November 1918 and who was buried here two days after the Armistice. Born in Rome 1880, he in fact had a Polish mother and an Italian aristocrat father, and his real name was Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky. He is buried with his widow, who died in 1967. Their headstone eschews traditional designs and is a simple menhir about eight feet tall. The other Great War grave is that of Henri Barbusse, writer of the famous novel Le Feu (translated as Under Fire).

The cemetery held several surprises in that it is the location of five Great War memorials. Near the Eastern edge of the cemetery, near the Crematorium, is the Avenue des Combattants Etrangers Morts pour la France. This has a Monument to the Garibaldiens and Italians who died in the Argonne, separate monuments to Czech soldiers and to Greek soldiers who died in French service, and to Belgian soldiers who died on French soil. The most unusual was a Monument to Armenian soldiers who died in French service. This consisted of a stone shaped like a 10 foot high cut diamond, the base of which was engraved with the names of battles in which Armenian troops fought.

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Paris concluded (for the moment) - next: the Marne

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