CHARLES FAIR
The small country town of Fere-en-Tardenois was the site of British GHQ from 12 Sept to 8 October 1914 during the Battle of the Aisne. Behind a high brick wall in one corner of the "Grande Place" is the house used by General Sir John French. Pershing also used this house as his HQ in 1918, but he lived across town at 2 rue du Gres. The fine 16th century market hall is exactly as shown in the Michelin Guide.
My penultimate stop was at the Butte de Chalmont. The Butte is a long low hill, which is nearly 600 feet high. It dominates the wide open valley that is the upper reaches of the Ourcq basin. For this reason it was of some tactical importance in July 1918.
This is one of the most wonderful Great War sites that I have yet visited in France. Unaccountably, it does not appear in "Before Endeavours Fade". Instead I learnt of it in a superb new guide to the Western Front: "Premiere Guerre Mondiale des Flandres a l'Alsace."
On the Eastern end of the Butte is the National Memorial to the Second Battle of the Marne. This is the work of the sculptor Paul Landowski (who also created the Moroccan memorial at Senlis) and it was inaugurated 21 July 1935 by President Lebrun. Where the road (D229) crosses the lower slopes of the Butte is a sculpture of a woman. She represents France, and is dressed in a simple cloak and is carrying a shield on her left arm. She is walking slowly forward and is gazing serenely east, over the broad plain.
About 150 yards behind her, on the upper slopes of the Butte, is a group of eight figures called the "Fantomes". The figures represent: a young recruit, an engineer, a machine-gunner, a grenadier, a colonial soldier, an infantryman, a pilot, and in the middle the spectre of death leaving his shroud. This is one of the most powerful pieces of sculpture I have yet seen on a battlefield memorial. As I was there the sun was setting behind the "Fantomes" which were casting long shadows down to the foot of the Butte. The way in which the two sculptures are juxtaposed by an effective use of the landscape, combined with the perfect light conditions gave the site an incredible atmosphere. The effect was quite spellbinding and I could have stayed for hours. Whoever chose the site for the memorial indeed chose well.
(There is an article on Landowski and the Fantomes 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 final halt was at the Bois du Chatelet, just south of Brecy. This was the site of one of the German guns, popularly known as Big Berthas, which shelled Paris in 1918. This site is also featured in the same Michelin Guide. The 1919 pictures show the gun platform, but all I could find, exactly in the position described, was a large perfectly circular waterfilled hole. There were also embankments and straight ditches leading into the hole which marked the light railway that was used to bring ammunition to the gun.
Copyright © Charles Fair, May,
1997.
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