The Thankful Villages
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 1:01 pm
I don't know if this has been posted before but it may be of interest to some..
http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/Hi ... -Villages/
having read the above article I then came across this by Hugh Scofield regarding a French village
"With 1.4 million dead or missing, France's male population was literally decimated in World War I. By the early 1920s thousands of memorials had been erected - the famous Monuments aux Morts with their long rolls of war-dead.
Just about all of France's 36,000 communes have their own Monument aux Morts. Many are a simple obelisk, crowned by a French cock or a palm frond representing victory. Others include pieces of statuary, much of it mass-produced so that the same representations of soldiery can be seen in many different villages.
In fact there are also a handful of places without a memorial. Sometimes this is because two or more neighbouring communes - with limited resources - agreed to share a single monument. But in a few very rare cases, it is because all the soldiers came back home.
Thierville - a tiny village in Normandy - is one such place. In some reference books, it is erroneously listed as the only commune where all the soldiers returned from the Great War. That is incorrect. What is true is that Thierville has not suffered a single fatality in any of France's last five wars - the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, World Wars I and II, Indochina, and Algeria. And on that score it is unique.the pattern was set in 1870, when a local man called Baptiste Saillot was one of only a few survivors from a famous cavalry charge at the Battle of Reichshofen in north-east France. He returned to Thierville and lived until 1933. Until recently, local people would assemble at Saillot's grave on Armistice Day - for want of a Monument aux Morts on which to lay a wreathe. But in 2009, the mayor erected a small plaque to honour the village's fighters and Resistance members. And this is now where they gather."
regards
Geoff
http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/Hi ... -Villages/
having read the above article I then came across this by Hugh Scofield regarding a French village
"With 1.4 million dead or missing, France's male population was literally decimated in World War I. By the early 1920s thousands of memorials had been erected - the famous Monuments aux Morts with their long rolls of war-dead.
Just about all of France's 36,000 communes have their own Monument aux Morts. Many are a simple obelisk, crowned by a French cock or a palm frond representing victory. Others include pieces of statuary, much of it mass-produced so that the same representations of soldiery can be seen in many different villages.
In fact there are also a handful of places without a memorial. Sometimes this is because two or more neighbouring communes - with limited resources - agreed to share a single monument. But in a few very rare cases, it is because all the soldiers came back home.
Thierville - a tiny village in Normandy - is one such place. In some reference books, it is erroneously listed as the only commune where all the soldiers returned from the Great War. That is incorrect. What is true is that Thierville has not suffered a single fatality in any of France's last five wars - the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, World Wars I and II, Indochina, and Algeria. And on that score it is unique.the pattern was set in 1870, when a local man called Baptiste Saillot was one of only a few survivors from a famous cavalry charge at the Battle of Reichshofen in north-east France. He returned to Thierville and lived until 1933. Until recently, local people would assemble at Saillot's grave on Armistice Day - for want of a Monument aux Morts on which to lay a wreathe. But in 2009, the mayor erected a small plaque to honour the village's fighters and Resistance members. And this is now where they gather."
regards
Geoff