In the past war passed through an area like a violent storm, leaving little physical trace besides corroding war materiel and the moldering corpses and bones of those who fought for a cause, or for survival. That is, in terms of Rosenzweig's postulate on species' diversity, it created a condition of temporary disturbance which appeared suddenly and was swiftly gone, allowing the recovery of the affected area in a short period of time.(1) World War I in Northeastern France was an exception. For over four years it rent the fabric of life and battered the landscape of the region, leaving its mark indelibly, but now, after 80 years, also subtly. In much of the region the front lines altered very little during the prosecution of the war and this led to a continuous upheaval throughout that area.Click here to go to a map of the Western Front in Northeastern France
At the start of the First World War, in the summer and early fall of 1914, German troops poured across neutral Belgium and into France behind the thunder of artillery, the lightning of explosions, a rain of shells and a hail of shrapnel. The effects were both immediate and long term and they encompassed all aspects of life in Northeastern France. Certain environmental effects of the war on the French countryside and cities were immediate and attributable to the destruction that is normally associated with war. Some of the consequences were temporary, lasting some 1 year to 2 decades. Others were of medium term consequence, enduring for about half a century. And a few of the repercussions have import which affect the area even today and are expected to continue into the foreseeable future. These effects run the gamut from the unceasing uncovering of unexploded ordnance to the psychological effects of the stress of the Front on soldiers and civilians alike to the political and cultural changes instituted in Elsass-Lohringen (Alsace-Lorraine) to changes in agricultural fertility, demography and the economic impact of the war.
In considering the initial phases of the war it is a salient article of interest that the movement of the armies was constrained by the technology (or lack thereof) of the early Twentieth Century. While much has rightly been made of the fact of railroad involvement in the transportation of troops and materiel, and the mobilization ability which the rail systems of France and Germany provided was surely of great import to the initiation of campaigns and offensives, the curious fact remains that once the troops got beyond the jumping off point for an assault their forward progress was dependent on factors with which Caesar, Chinggis Kahn or Lao Tzu would have been familiar. From our perspective, at the end of the Twentieth Century, when high mobility is the norm, we find it difficult to apprehend that the speed of the advance was constrained to that at which man or horse moves and was the determining element in the forward momentum of an offensive. And, while rail lines were extended as close to the Front as possible, a combatant would, as a matter of course, deny the use of their rail lines to an attacker by destroying the lines if they came under imminent danger of falling into the enemy's hands, thereby reinforcing this constraint. Until the introduction of the tank at the battle of
This stalemate holds the primary responsibility for the damage wrought on Northeastern France. The opposing lines fortified their positions by excavating trenches and reinforcing them with redoubts, strong points, fortresses and supply facilities. By November 1914 trench warfare was institutionalized. This defensive alignment of the two contending sides ensured unceasing disturbance to the areas within which the opposing armies struggled and, thus inhibited the area's ability to recover.(4)
In order to get an idea of the extent of the trenches on the Western Front let us scrutinize the average trench system as it was emplaced by the French or the British. Ordinarily each Allied trench system was about twelve hundred yards (almost a mile) wide. Further, this figure does not include the wire entanglements that added hundreds of yards to the depth of the line. Nor did it include the two to three hundred yards of no man's land between the opposing lines (due to the type of terrain the no man's land in Flanders was, on average, 150 yards wide and because of the high water table they used earthen breastworks rather than trenches in many places). The typical system consisted of three trenches. First, the fire trench, the most forward of the trenches, could be used to shoot at the foe, as a jumping off point for an attack or the first line of defense to repel an enemy assault. Then seventy to one hundred yards to the rear was the support trench, generally used for counter-attacks when a fire trench was overrun. Behind the support trench some hundreds of yards up to two miles away, lay the reserve trench. This was not usually a trench at all but more of a staging /supply area. Thus an entire trench system normally extended over a two mile width. In an area of the Front where frequent action occurred, with the back and forth of attack and retreat, the complex could be two or three trench systems deep and the lines could reach six to twelve miles wide. Moreover, the width of the front lines commonly expanded as the war progressed and 'advanced' technology came into use, such as, better grenades; improvements in artillery, and enhanced ballistics.(5)
When we look at the German lines (see the illustration below) we find that their system was frequently even deeper, more sophisticated and complex. German dugouts might have electricity, kitchens and even pictures on the walls. In some instances these networks could reach ten trenches in width.(6)
According to Cowley the stalemate and the network of earthworks created "...a great metropolis whose...industry...was...destruction." From 1914-1918 it was the largest city on Earth in population and area. The estimated population of the Western Front in July of 1916 was on the order of six million one hundred thousand. To put this in perspective, the English presence alone in Belgium (Flanders) and France equaled the population of the London of that time.
If we consider the Front as a city, a class structure can be perceived by recognizing that the areas that the various members of the armies inhabited echoed the type of living conditions experienced in each. Headquarters, farthest to the rear, we can regard as upper class. Those areas where tactics and strategy were contrived did not experience the deprivations of hunger, cold, wet, mud and danger that the other sectors of the line endured and thus could be considered privileged. The railheads and rear supply areas, which were, in many cases, close to the edge of the trench systems, were the middle or business class; exhibiting those traits we associate with bureaucracy and the management of logistics and with which the middle class is so identified. This area was subject to some of the difficulties associated with the war, that is, mud, cold, wet and bombardment. Lastly, the front line housed the lower class in typically offensive slums. Here the men had to endure incessant shelling, deplorable conditions, such as, water and mud stagnant in the trenches; cold in winter and heat in summer; unceasing stress from the danger; little or no sanitary facilities, even for common bodily functions; mud; the psychological trauma of seeing friends killed and being required to kill other human beings; as well as coping with the very real possibilities of your own imminent death or disfigurement and susceptibility to disease. The line held the utmost danger for the least reward, something that slum dwellers everywhere understand. However, this slum population was extremely transient compared to the static nature of the inhabitants of slums in real cities.(9) But, even though the personnel changed, the slums remained.
This urban area had the attributes of what is known as a line city. The type of city customarily found along the course of a physical feature that precludes enlargement of the city into the surrounding area except in a linear form. A good example of this are the towns which occupy river valleys in the mountains, where, being constrained from expanding up the hillsides, the city grows along the river course. In the case of the Western Front it was the line of direct engagement which defined the linear nature of the city rather than any particular physical feature of the land.(10)
Nor was the life of the city a pleasant one. Many described it as hell on earth or as a gray moonscape or 'a premature ecological sink.' There was a perpetual brown haze caused by shellfire and mist and dust that reached several thousand feet into the air over the Front, so that it was not only the land that was polluted but the air as well. The air pollution was exacerbated by the use of chemical warfare. Gas, in particular, was used as an 'area denial' tool. For about a month after employment an area would be uninhabitable without protective measures, then the gas would dissolve, become inert and the area could be occupied. For example, mustard gas (dichlorethyl sulfide), known as a persistent compound, contaminated the earth for weeks after use, while chlorine would dissipate on the wind within hours. Therefore, the 'persistent' agents became the preferred ones as the war lengthened.
Cheyne describes the area as a "...tortured, shell-torn landscape...with mud up to vehicle axles." Mud was a particular problem. Not only did it exacerbate the horrendous conditions in the trenches, but it also proved hazardous in other ways. The phenomenon
The upheaval of the soil, the denuding of vegetation, the introduction of poisonous compounds, pollution of the air, destruction of structures, the incessant nature of combat operations, and loss of life later prompted many to consider the devastation in the area to have been second only to that wrought by the atomic bomb. Even if we only consider the casualties, the ravages of the war defy comprehension. At Verdun, of the one million men killed or missing, seven hundred thousand were never found and, of the remainder, only one hundred sixty thousand could be identified. The missing were either annihilated or interred in some unknown patch of earth by explosives or the conditions of the field. For the entire Front casualties averaged eight thousand, a day! Moreover, there was also the vengeance of Nature, which produced three casualties from disease for every two wounded.(14)
Other than the battlefield itself, there are several consequences which emanate from the establishment of the Western Front as a static, or almost so, area of havoc. In the départements the initial offensive left many areas depopulated and destroyed. In the Marne there had been some abandonment by farmers before the war due to land exhaustion and urbanization. However, at the start of the war four hundred thirty-six thousands lived in the Marne, while at the end of the war only two hundred thousand lived there. Rheims declined from two hundred thousand to five thousand, a loss of ninety-seven and a half percent of the populace! Of course, much of the decline can be accounted for through the great numbers of refugees seeking the safety of areas beyond the reach of the invader, but, even so, the decline was precipitous. Moreover, the military appropriated many areas behind the lines for supply depots, aerodromes, training camps, practice ranges, headquarters, rail yards, et cetera; forcing the inhabitants (particularly farmers) to forego the use of lands normally earmarked for agriculture, leading to other relocations. Additionally, the actual damage inflicted by war was certainly an element in people's decision to leave. Ninety percent of the communes in the war areas were damaged, farm animals were seriously depleted (up to ninety percent), villages were
literally blasted off the face of the Earth, wooded areas were destroyed utterly and the topsoil was blasted away to the unyielding, underlying chalk. Eighty-two thousand six hundred buildings were damaged or smashed beyond repair in the Marne alone. In the war zone where the conflict touched least, up to thirty percent of the buildings were damaged or destroyed. In the sectors somewhat closer to the Front, up to fifty percent of structures were affected. And in the regions where the fighting concentrated, up to eighty percent of the buildings were either heavily damaged or reduced to ruins. For instance, by October 12, 1914 five thousand shells fell on Lille. Then, during the initial assault on the city, from 9PM to 7AM, forty-three bombs per minute, over thirty-six thousand in fourteen hours, fell on the city, resulting in the destruction of eight hundred ninety buildings.(16) As Szasz puts it, "Cities were turned into rubble."(17) These conditions make it easy to understand the dramatic decrease in the numbers of civilian inhabitants in the region.
Then there are, of course, those instances in which the fighting or the occupier displaced or eliminated the civilian populace. In the case of Lille, mentioned above, the bombardment caused more than an hundred civilian casualties. Moreover, during the war many more succumbed to the factors of an harsh occupation, rampant disease and lack of sufficient food. Throughout the war the death rate was thrice births in Lille and its population was reduced by fifty percent.(18) the Germans occupied most of the Departement du Nordby the end of October 1914. This departement, which includes Lille, was and is the most productive in France. It produces a large percentage of the country's coal, steel, textiles, cereal, beetroots, and potatoes. It also had the highest birth rate in France, in contrast to the slow demographic increase around the rest of the country at this time. Additionally, Lille is the commercial and financial center of the département and a major railroad and canal hub for a dense transportation system.
But, its unenviable geographic position on the Northern European Plain, in the border lands of the low countries and Germany has made it an invasion target at least once every one hundred years for the past eight hundred years. This time the Germans not only invaded, but they occupied the Nord for most of the war. With occupation the Germans instituted forced labor, deportations and the taking of hostages, further increasing the impetus to flee and depleting the population. In addition, in the département as a whole the destruction was extensive and the economy severely affected. Approximately three hundred sixty thousand buildings in the département were damaged or destroyed, factory capacity was reduced by eighty percent and many assets were confiscated by the invaders, thus, providing added incentive to flight.(20)
Additionally, even though the crop yields of 1914 were excellent, in the occupied and battle areas the war seriously disrupted the supply of labor. With a significant proportion of the men absent due to military service (the French lost one million soldiers killed or missing in the first two years of the war) the harvest was left in the fields; some of it destroyed in the fighting, some simply rotting in place for lack of labor and some left for lack of transport. This resulted in food scarcity and rationing.
As Offer suggests, the conflict degenerated into a war of attrition, and the privation that that entailed began early in Northeastern France.(21) The impact on people of this deprivation is readily seen in the following photograph of two sisters, one of which lived in the war zone throughout the war.
The harm this caused coupled with the incredible loss of life due to the war's destruction was a demographic disaster. France had an historically low birth rate through the Nineteenth and into the Twentieth Century. It hovered just slightly above population replacement. Curiously, it was in the Nord where the demographic increase was the highest in France, exactly the place which suffered the greatest population losses in the war. The birth rate plummeted. The war, of course, decimated the cohort that was entering its reproductive years. The repercussions of this are dramatically displayed in the chart below. Readily apparent is the striking discontinuity in the age pyramid for the age classes reduced by the war.
As part of the cause for the privation visited on the area, the fighting altered a great deal of the agricultural land and made it uncultivatible. The combination of shelling, entrenchments, and mining removed soil to underlying chalk in the most devastated regions and without a layer of topsoil the earth cannot support agriculture.
Cheyne reports that "...not a shred of vegetation remain[ed] in the devastated landscape." While Smith relates that not only were fruit trees destroyed by explosives, but by gas as well. And Clout points out that one hundred sixteen thousand six hundred forty hectares(26) were rendered beyond hope of restoration in the Marne alone and that the war adversely affected three million three hundred thousand hectares in ten départements. The Départements of the Marne, the Somme, the Aisne, the Nord and Pas de Calais contained the most devastated districts. And not only crops bore the brunt of the devastation, farmers also lost over a million and a half head of livestock.(27)
Overall the régions dévastées (devastated regions) covered six thousand square miles, this represents an additional forty percent over our previous estimate of the area directly affected by trench warfare. The conflict destroyed more than one thousand villages within the region, with some villages so utterly obliterated that they never recovered or rebuilt. Also, the war damaged over a half a million houses and completely destroyed more than fifty percent of those. In the realm of transportation the fighting destroyed thirty-five hundred miles of railroad track and eight hundred bridges.(28) A Union general in the American Civil War summed up the devastation of that war in a way that is applicable here when he wrote, "Homes, crops, railroads had been destroyed; farming and business had come to a stand still. The landscape looked for many miles like a broad black streak of ruin and desolation."(29)
As the war continued and more and more intensive bombardments were brought to bear on less and less area, villages were reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble, some completely and permanently erased from the earth. Typically, the battlefields were shorn of everything but mud and the detritus of war. Although the shattered trees so familiar from photographs only occurred during second half of war as artillery technology 'improved'. In the aftermath of battle all landmarks were obliterated and one had to find one's way by compass. Moreover, artillery barrages produced in the landscape a 'frozen choppy sea', in which the earth mimicked the appearance of the sea when it develops a 'chop'; a wave action usually caused by wind or the interaction of currents in which there is little consistency in the form of the waves, resulting in short, violent and chaotic conditions on the water's surface. But, on the battlefield, without the fluid nature of the ocean, the 'chop' never subsided. The broken condition of the ground this produced made it difficult to walk and impossible to farm. The greatest extent of devastation occurred in the Somme in 1917. As they fell back to the Hindenberg Line the Germans' 'scorched earth' policy left a swath of destruction thirty miles wide.(30)
Turning for a moment from physical damage, we can see, as mentioned above, the Front had an enormous, continuing affect on the men assigned to the lines. The psychological impact of these experiences could unman even the bravest soldier. The affliction that we are familiar with as post traumatic stress syndrome appeared in World War I as 'shell shock'. As we know, the symptoms might erupt suddenly in the midst of battle or remain submerged until the danger was past or even surface years after the event. Bloch in Strange Defeat said that he did not so much fear the shells, but the worst, most unnerving aspect of a bombardment was the noise. Commands were given in sign as speech, even shouting, was inaudible. Occasionally, the noise of bombardment could be heard as far away as London.(31) This gives us a window into this psychological aspect of the war and its effects on the soldiers and tells us how the war affected their thoughts rather than simply relating its destructive power and potential for damage. As mentioned above, there was the problem of life on the line, literally and figuratively. The soldiers had to contend with an unnatural situation and this produced enormous stress and strain on them. Some were able to endure these difficulties. Others broke down, before, during or after their experience. It is surprising, given the circumstances of incessant shelling, horrendous living conditions and constant danger that any soldier could carry out his mission. However, the ever present death and danger became psychologically accommodated quickly in order to cope with the tasks of survival in the war zone. However, this avoidance exacted its payment after the situational stress had been removed and many men where psychologically crippled by the war, some even institutionalized.
These effects manifested themselves in both the soldier and the civilian. Among civilians there were problems of adapting to the occupier or the loss of loved ones or the lack of employment or the destruction of the home or the trauma of bombardment. Curiously, ordinariness had to continue as people struggled to stay alive in an unstable situation. War thus made life more complex. The day to day requirements of life still had to be met whether it was baking bread, milking the cow or getting water; and in a throwback to primeval times survival became paramount. But, the additional strains imposed by the war as requirements, hazards and hardships were piled on the daily routines created an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and uncertainty which strained the psychological composition of civilian and soldier alike. These stresses generated coping mechanisms that were not always socially appropriate either during or after the war. For instance, collaboration with the enemy in order to maintain life might be an activity that would cause repercussions within the community and yet, occasionally, it was the only means of survival. Therefore, there was an approach-avoidant psychological situation produced that provoked nearly insurmountable stress. Further, the war altered the psycho-social environment and became an enabling factor for anti-social behavior, as displayed in the looting, chaos and anarchy that occurred when an area changed hands. This ceaseless and pervasive climate of fear induced serious psychological problems that persisted for years.(32)
Psychological problems were not the only health concerns. As the Chinese proverb has it: After war comes plague. World War I certainly confirmed the validity of that particular saying. As mentioned above, disease claimed one-third again as many casualties as did direct combat. Not only were the normal, communicable diseases (air-borne viruses, bacterial infections, measles, etc.) intensified; but the lack of sanitation, the overcrowding, at the front and in the rear areas, and the lack of sufficient nutrition all played roles in enhancing the spread of disease throughout the region. Diseases of contamination such as typhoid fever also abounded. In addition, as at the Front, sanitary facilities in the world at large in early Twentieth Century were rudimentary. There were no widespread power distribution grids, running water or sewage systems; privies were the norm; and there were few bathtubs; while personal hygiene was poor at best. Nor does this take into account that through the fifth war year food was increasingly scarce and the resultant malnutrition heightened disease susceptibility. Further increasing the problem, the exigencies imposed by the war economy, which not only encompassed shortages of food, included the rationing of items, like soap, which might have mitigated unsanitary conditions. Concomitantly, while Offer touts the ability of England to draw on resources of men, materiel and food from the larders of the overseas dominions, this interdependency also had the effect of enabling the swift spread of contagion. That is, the spread of disease throughout the intercommunicating world was enhanced by mass movements of people due to the war. In that fifth year of the war France had two million refugees living in less than adequate conditions, while millions more were displaced elsewhere. In the last months of the war this set the stage for the appearance of one of the most fearsome plagues ever to strike mankind.(33)
'Spanish' Influenza, in its most virulent form, killed more people in one hundred twenty days than the war did in all its four and one-quarter years. It first appeared in a less malevolent form in the winter of 1917-18. What are thought to be the initial cases surfaced in February in Spain. By May it had affected France, Greece, Scotland, Macedonia, Egypt and Italy. Additionally, the English fleet saw ten thousand cases in that month. In the three months starting in June there were eight million cases in Spain. In this early stage recovery was a foregone conclusion. However, that would not continue to be the case. In early September the first British death attributed to the flu was that of a soldier in France. Curiously, he would prove to be one of a very few British soldiers at the Front so stricken. It appears that the high incidence of the flu in the winter and spring in the ranks of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) conferred upon them almost total immunity to the later, more deadly form of the flu. Oddly enough the stress and privation of front line troops conferred considerable immunity, as did the resistance to respiratory disease which people in urban areas developed in the course of heavy interpersonal contact that is a characteristic of city life. However, this immunity of British soldiers in France did not extend to their forces anywhere else and England suffered enormous losses everywhere.
This was indeed a plague. Striking globally in force at summer's end, by early October 'Spanish' Influenza was a world-wide pandemic. Although the war killed ten million over five years, by 17 November (12 weeks into pandemic) the flu had killed six million. By the end of December, as the pandemic was fading, it had killed almost twenty-two million people. In a world of two billion people, it infected 1 billion. In Germany it accounted for two hundred twenty-five thousand deaths. This led a US doctor to conjecture that its affect on the Germany Army helped win the war for the Allies. The UK lost two hundred and twenty-eight thousand to the flu, Italy three hundred seventy-five thousand, Russia approximately four hundred fifty thousand, the U. S. five hundred forty thousand and in India it is estimated that the death toll was twelve and one-half million or four percent of the population. Figures for France are estimated to be in the three hundred thousand range. Moreover, as a long-term consequence, one-third of the survivors developed later complications, such as heart, kidney or liver disease.
As is normal for influenza the onset was 'sudden'. However, in this case, so sudden as to defy imagination. People fell dead in seconds without symptomatic onset, soldiers fell dead off their horses, many died within six hours of their exhibiting the first signs of the flu. Collier relates the story of a soldier going home on leave getting onto a trolley for the last leg of his journey. Upon his boarding the conductor dropped to the platform and died. At each following stop another person or persons would be laid out dead on the platform until only he and the driver were left. Finally, the driver keeled over at his post and the soldier, thankful to be alive, walked the rest of the way home. This story shows that the target population of this flu was unlike the customary ones of the very young, the ill or the old. The cohort affected was fifteen to forty, the most productive members of society and the prime ages for conscription. This preference for the productive adult member of society suggests that the concentrations and logistics required to carry on the war imbued this population with a higher risk. It seemed the more robust you were the more susceptible to attack by the flu. This focus on the mainstream of the population and its attendant impact is the caveat I mentioned in regard to the demographic decline for France during the war years. It is likely that the incidence of the flu skewed the demographic figures for the last year of the war and that the consequences of the flu are not, and probably cannot be, separable from those engendered by the war.
Conditions of the war also exacerbated the problems caused by the outbreak. The dearth of physicians in civilian life because of their call up to the war effort had a negative impact. Almost one hundred percent of French doctors were conscripted leaving medical services severely strained and the death toll due to untreated secondary infections was substantial. Social services were also overburdened as sickness overtook many manning those positions. One positive effect that the immunity of the BEF had was that in December 1918 they were able to supply seven hundred thousand French refugees returning to French-Belgian border area villages with food and medical care when the flu had stricken most of the officials of the area and no other help was available. Their help is credited with saving four hundred thousand lives in the Northeast.
There can be no doubt that the war enhanced the ability of the flu to spread worldwide in an extremely short time frame. This, due to the movement of large groups of soldiers around the world. Although the appellation of Spanish was applied to this particular strain, it is not known where it originated. However, although the suspicion that the conditions of the war, whether they involved malnutrition (the flu heightened that problem as harvests worldwide went unworked due to labor shortages), crowding, or lack of sanitation, were responsible for the virulence of the disease and the immense death toll; that postulate cannot be proven. However, the coincidence of factors argues convincingly for that position.
On the other hand, the normal unsanitary conditions of poverty certainly share the blame. The conditions noted by health workers everywhere during the outbreak encouraged new more stringent hygienic practices in food handling, in public behavior, in housing and sewage, and provided the impetus for stronger public health agencies. The World Health Organization was formed under the League of Nations and continued under UN. Great strides were made in the dissemination of medical information which today permeates political borders, but until the impetus of the pandemic did not. Perhaps it was facilitated by the aura of cooperation within which the Allies worked. But, it can be said that this cooperation was one of the most beneficial results of the era.(34)
While humans suffered through the pandemic, the disease that the land suffered was caused by the incessant fighting which raged across the region. The area still exhibits physical scars from the war; bomb and mine craters have become lakes or have been left as they were created, many simply too large to reclaim for farming. Even today one can visit Lochnagar Crater near the village of La Boiselle. It was created by 27 tons of ammonal on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
In this aerial photograph these fields show the chalk which was brought to the surface by mining, shelling and trench-digging in addition to the crater.(36) Shell holes and trench lines, highlighted by the chalk which was exposed in their formation, can still be seen today. In fact, astronauts have commented that they can recognize the battlefields from space by the broken ground and crater pock marks. As late as 1936 German dugouts were still extant near Lille and trenches, gun posts and wire entanglements were still visible near Arras. Recovery and reclamation took a long time. A more poignant visible reminder of the war are the thousands of cemeteries (2000 British alone) which cover the entire region that encompassed the Front. Incredibly, in 1936 there were more British memorials in the area of the Somme than buildings of the local inhabitants.(37)
However, these obvious blemishes are not the most significant symptom manifested in the region. In addition to physical scars are the concealed dangers of unexploded bombs (UXB) which date to the war. In the forest near Verdun, on the uneven grade of still extant bomb craters and trench lines, unexploded bombs lie everywhere. In some places the litter of UXBs is so great that one cannot even walk about. It is estimated that there are twelve million UXBs near Verdun alone. This has led the government of France to simply cordoned off six million acres above Verdun in a "Cordon Rouge" (red ribbon or area) which has been closed ever since the war. Many other areas have also acquired that forbidding designation, as the munitions technology of the time was primitive and about fifteen percent of all rounds fired never exploded (this compares with a six percent failure rate in W.W.II). It is thought that there are still millions of pieces of ordnance near the Somme and Marne. Deeply buried UXBs constantly work their way to the surface like stones in a field. The considered opinion of those who work to clear these is that it will take centuries for all of them to surface, since many buried themselves deeply in mud. Some of the heavy shells are estimated to be twenty meters deep at the present. It is thought that in the most affected areas farming will be precluded for at least another century. Many areas that had been agricultural land and much that had been deforested by the war was allowed to return to trees until it could be cleared of UXBs. Webster provides examples that give an idea of the intensity of the shelling. On 15 February 1917 the British and French bombarded the German lines in the Marne with eleven million shells in one day (throughout the war more shells fell in the Marne than anywhere else). Nor did the Germans shrink from massive bombardment; on 27 May 1918 the Germans fired seven hundred thousand shells in three hours in support of their Spring offensive. With the fifteen percent failure rate mentioned previously, we can see that, using just the above examples, in those twenty-seven hours alone more than one million seven hundred fifty-five thousand UXBs were sown. And this figure does not include the grenades, mortars and other smaller explosives that were employed in these battles. It is estimated that an average of one thousand shells fell on every acre of the Western Front. Again, using the fifteen percent failure rate, we find that, on average, every acre had one hundred fifty UXBs strewn on it. Even the rivers were treacherous with their complement of unexploded bombs and mines. Finding these UXBs is a serious matter. In 1991(!) thirty-six farmers died when their equipment hit old shells and another fifty-one were injured. Moreover, as with anything exposed to the elements, the cases of these munitions are deteriorating, making the disposal hazard even greater.
And, as if that were not enough, about three percent of the UXBs contain chemical agents that are still potent enough to kill and blind and their casings are even more fragile, being hollow canisters, than those of the explosives. Approximately thirty tons out of the nine hundred tons of UXBs recovered annually contain chemical agents.(39)
Webster, Cheyne, Hynes and Clout all relate that these 'duds' are still being unearthed by farmers in the present. It is common practice to set any discovered shells by the side of the road for retrieval and disposal by the Département du Déminage, an arm of the French government which operates in as much secrecy (to allay citizen concern) as possible to eliminate the UXBs which litter Northeastern France. This department has, since 1946, collected eighteen million artillery shells, ten million grenades, six hundred thousand aerial bombs and six hundred thousand underwater mines (this figure does, of course, include ordnance from W.W.II) and cleared and reclaimed two million acres. The department also receives about two million citizen calls for the pick up of UXBs per year; these include grenades, mines, shells and bombs. I liken this problem to the problem of land mines in our own time. There are approximately one hundred million land mines scattered around the globe from contemporary conflicts, in addition to those of W.W.II vintage which still lie undiscovered. Although these mines are specifically meant to maim, their hidden nature and concealed hazard give them many parallels. We can see that both problems will be with us long after they have served their heinous purpose. We can expect the Département du Déminage to be in business for a long time to come.(40)
As seen in the case of the 'démineurs' the French government attempted to mitigate and recover from the effects of the war as quickly as possible. It had to deal with a denuded, broken landscape, shattered economy, and displaced citizenry. In fact, recovery had started before hostilities had ended with the founding of organizations, both public and private, to assist reclamation, even though the relief effort took many months to finally coordinate. The first priorities were to clear the rubble and demolish the hulks of the damaged structures. Additionally, work had to be done to relieve the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions that occurred with the return of the populace. Of the two hundred thousand refugees from the Marne, sixty-five thousand returned within one year. Although only sixteen of thirteen thousand buildings in Rheims remained intact, one-third of the population returned within one year.(41)
The government took responsibility for the disposal of shells, filling of trenches, removal of wire, restoration of farms, helping farmers, and building temporary shelters in the région dévastées. However, progress was slow. The lack of building supplies hindered reconstruction, forcing some residents to live in temporary housing through 1923. Lack of manpower exacerbated the situation as France had lost one man in every twenty-eight to the war. Additionally, she had her share of the thirty million wounded, which added to the dearth of available labor. January 1921 saw only fifty-seven percent of the land to be cleared of shells, trenches, wires, and war debris cleared in the Marne and just three-quarters across Northeast France as a whole. Less than fifty-five percent of damaged farm land had been cleared, leveled and planted by January 1921. But, by 1922 those figures rose to sixty-five percent in the Marne and seventy-five percent across the region. The population of the region recovered to eighty-four percent of the 1911 figure by 1922. And there was a labor shortage in the early 1920s, as some refugees did not return, which drew people into the region. This also led to an influx of immigration from other countries; especially Poland, which assisted in the replacement of the demographic fallback. The wine growing region of Champagne recovered by 1923, even though its vines had been severely mauled. By 1931 most villages that would be rebuilt, were and with better infrastructure (running water, sewers, etc.) than before the war. However, the population of four hundred twelve thousand in the Marne in 1931 was still twenty-four thousand less than in 1914. More significantly, only eighty-six percent of the Marne's pre-war agricultural land had recovered by the 1930s.(42)
Recovery was not only slow, it was uneven. While Lille had already recovered, Lens was still in ruins. After a year there was only 1 permanent house, merely seven thousand out of thirty-two thousand pre-war residents had returned by December 1919, and the cost to rebuild the city was estimated at two hundred million francs. A year after
At first there was little employment or commercial activity, since the factories were gone and the land was unfit for cultivation. No running water, power or other infrastructure remained. But, economic recovery was seen as the engine by which the entire region could be revitalized. One-third of all French industries were in the Northeast in addition to the majority of industrial mineral deposits. Further, the region had supplied eighty-one percent of wool production and ninety-five percent of flax output. Those areas received the focus of the priority reconstruction. With government support, in one year fifty-five percent of the destroyed factories had reopened. The mining industry also worked swiftly to restore production. They estimated resumption of production of iron and coal in 1922 and returned to three-quarters of pre-war output by 1927. In the aftermath of war, "cities recovered; lands were farmed again." For example, in 1920 Ypres had not finished rebuilding, but in 1991, Ypres, rebuilt, according to Hynes, appeared unchanged from Medieval times and yet it is a town less than a century old. Reconstruction of many areas took the form of reproduction. Faithful to the appearance that it once had, the reconstruction of demolished Ypres enabled it to 're-present' itself to Hynes as an age old composition.(45)
Today there is some disagreement on the residue of the war. It is Hynes' belief that "Unless artificially preserved, the Great War's ruination of fields and towns has nearly disappeared." He notes that some pristine battlefields still survive since they received protection, for example at the Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge. He records that forty square miles north of Ypres had been completely ruined, but, is now restored with only a few water-filled craters as lakes and some trench lines evident. He sees the war now as a tourist attraction with trenches and shell holes and no trees and monuments and cemeteries. However, the scars remain. Perhaps not as evident from the aerial view that Hynes used, but they do remain.(46) Moreover, they remain not only as physical scars on the land, but in the skewed demographics of the generation that lost their lives in the war and their children and their children's children. They remain in the 'forbidden zones' of the areas which still teem with unexploded ordnance, even though these places exhibit the placid outward appearance of forest or field, there is death there and the violence of the war awaits the unwary footfall still. They remain in the hectares of infertile soil which no longer supports farmers' efforts to support mankind. They remain in the legacy of W.W.II, which found its genesis in a rail car in Compeigne in the thought that the rehabilitation of the physical ruins of the battlefields of Northeastern France could be wrung from the fiscal ruin of another area. They remain in the distorted minds of the generals and politicians who constructed that incredible exercise in futility, the Maginot Line that diverted the resources that were so desperately needed for reconstruction and which also changed the face of Northeastern France. They remain in the minds of the people whose thoughts were crippled by the war and whose aberrations passed on to the next generations. They remain in the actions of the governments of the world that think national policy can be promoted by the same means that destroyed a generation. They remain in the changed face of the political world and the repercussions of those changes which today we find still deadly. Offer sees all the West making progress before the war and he perceives the war as a font of despair and pain and a turn from this progress; he might have something there.(47)
Some healing has, however, taken place. We see it in the recognition that war-making can irreparably change (damage) the environment and, thus in the attempts, pitiful and unsuccessful though they are, to preclude it.(48) It is evident in the organizations which cross cultural and political boundaries, such as the International Red Cross, the Doctors without Borders, the United Nations and plethora of international organizations devoted to peace, hope and health. It shows in a revivified Northeastern France, now, with Paris, the engine of the French economy. This healing is exemplified by the new unity of Europe, where those who wasted the blood of their generation with such profligacy in conflict with one another now join hands to strive to improve the environment of future generations.
The 'Great War' left a legacy of physical and psychological damage on northeastern France. The injuries were of varying duration. Some did not extend beyond the immediate end of the war. The alleviation of the disruption of population concentrations by displacement and mobilization, the dismantling of the Front as the most populous city of the time and the reduction of death by action and disease were all accomplished within months, even moments, of the armistice. The rebuilding of the industrial and agricultural economy of the area, given priority by the government, proceeded quickly, if unevenly, and yet consumed a decade or more. The removal of the detritus of battle, the recovery of the land and reclamation of the battlefield for agriculture was predominantly accomplished in the ten to twenty years following the war. Other ravages took somewhat longer. The repair of the psyche of those, soldier and civilian, who were unable to withstand the horror of the war consumed many years and, in cases, was completed only by death's release. Repopulation of the region also took considerable time and even necessitated government's encouragement of immigration from other lands, Poland in particular. And there are continuing effects. As mentioned, the demographic impact has now mitigated, but as with all concepts whose ramifications are not fully able to be delineated quantitatively, we shall never entirely assimilate all of the consequences contained within the millions of lives unlived as a result of the carnage of the war. UXBs are still claiming lives and maintaining forbidden zones of possible death and destruction in the region. Unreconstructed stretches of battlefield and obliterated towns can still be visited today. Naturally, the cemeteries and memorials remain as well. Thus, unlike wars previous or subsequent, the effects of World War I on northeastern France can be seen to have affected the area in not only the short term, but also, due to its nature as the first industrial total war and a positional stalemate for four years, over an expanded time frame whose end we have not yet seen.
(2)Smith, Corinna Haven & Hill, Caroline R. Rising Above the Ruins in France: An Account of the Progress Made Since the Armistice in the Devastated Regions in Re-establishing Industrial Activities and the Normal Life of the People. NY: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1920: 6.
(3)Buffton, Deborah Darlene. The Rituals of Surrender: Northern France Under Two Occupations, 1914-1918/1940-1944. Ph.D. Thesis, 1987, University of Wisconsin, Madison: v.
Laffin, John. A Western Front Companion, 1914-1918: A-Z source to the Battles, Weapons, People, Places, Air Combat. Phoenix Mill, Far Thrupp, Stroud, Gloustershire: Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1994: 1.
(4)Rosenzweig.
(5)Cheyne, G. Y. The Last Great Battle of the Somme; Beaumont Hamel, 1916. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, Ltd., 1988: 32, 35.
Cowley, Robert. "The Unreal City." MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. 6, #2, 1994: 12-16.
(6)Ibid.
(7)Mottram, R. H. Journey to the Western Front: Twenty Years After. London: G. Bell & Son, Ltd., 1936: 4.
(8)Ibid.
(9)Cowley: 8,10,15, 18, 21.
(10)Ibid.
(11)Laffin: 116.
(12)Although I have yet to confirm this theory through metereological records.
(13)Cotton, William R. & Pielke, Roger A. Human Impacts on Weather and Climate. NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992. First published in 1995. Chapter on cloud seeding.
Cheyne: 11, 91.
Cowley: 8, 10, 15, 18, 21.
Hynes, Samuel. "Verdun and Back: A Pilot's Log." MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. 44.4 (1992): 63.
Mottram: 31-32.
Webster, Donovan. Aftermath: The Remnants of War. NY: Pantheon Books, 1996: 25.
(14)Ibid.
Webster; Aftermath....:62
(15)Smith: 104.
(16)Clout, H. D. "Rural Revival in Marne, 1914-1930." The Agricultural History Review., v42, II: 141-145, 150, 153.
Buffton: ii, v, 13-15, 66-67, 69 123-124.
(17)Szasz, Ferenc M. "The Impact of WWII on the Land: Gruinard Island, Scotland, and Trintiy Site, NM as Case Studies." Environmental Review. 19 4(Winter 1995): 15.
(18)Buffton: ii, v, 13-15, 66-67, 69 123-124.
(19)Smith: 6.
(20)Buffton: 13-15, 66-67, 69 123-124.
(21)Offer, Avner. The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
Cheyne: 17, 71.
(22)Smith: 98.
(23)Harp, Stephen. "War's Eclipse of Primary Education in Alsace-Lorraine, 1914-1918." Historian. 57 (Spring 1993). [Online] Available e-mail.: mrmf@uhura.cc.rochester.edu from oclc-fs@oclc.org, 20 March 1997.
Cheyne: 17, 71.
Offer.
Smith: vii, 3, 99, 237.
(24)Pinchemel, Philippe. France; A Geographical Survey. Trans. Christine Trollope & Arthur J. Hunt. NY: Praeger, 1969.
(25)Ibid.
Buffton: iii.
(26)One hectare equals 100 acres.
(27)Buffton: ii, 13-15,66-67, 69 123-124.
Clout: 140, 153.
Cheyne: 17, 71.
Offer.
Smith: vii, 3, 99.
(28)Clout: 140.
Smith: 3, 5.
(29)Boyer, Paul S.; Clark, Clifford E., Jr.; et al. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. Volume 1: to 1877. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Co., 1995: 335.
(30)Cowley: 15.
Mottram: 48, 186, 188.
(31)Eksteins, Modris. The Rights of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. NY: Doubleday, 1989, pp. 139, 141.
(32)Buffton: 55, 62, 65-66, 124.
(33)Collier, Richard. The Plague of the Spanish Lady: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919. NY: Atheneum Press, 1974: 7, 11, 16-17, 220, 266.
Wade, Betsy. "Finding Out About Vaccines." New York Times. 24 Nov 1996: Sunday Travel Section.
(34)Collier: 7, 11, 15, 20, 34, 37-40, 42, 44, 72-73, 80, 110, 157, 174, 220, 236, 246, 287-288, 290-291.
(35)Laffin: 191; picture obtained from After the Battle magazine.
(36)Porch, Douglas. "Artois, 1915." MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. 5.3 (1993): 42.
Laffin: 191.
(37)Webster, Donovan. Aftermath: The Remnants of War. NY: Pantheon Books, 1996: 63.
Hynes: 66.
Mottram: 5, 155, 176, 241.
(38)Webster; Aftermath....: 151.
(39)Webster, Donovan. The War Moved On. The Bombs Stayed." Simthsonian, Feb 94, v24, #11: pp. 28-30, 31, 34.
_____; Aftermath....: 26, 28-29, 35-36, 52.
(40)Williams, James. Chicago: "Report on Concern Over Land Mines." "ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings", 21 June 1997.
Cheyne: 35, 65.
Clout: 143.
Porch: 42.
Webster; "The Soldiers....: 29-30, 35.
_____; Aftermath...: 67.
(41)Clout: 140, 143, 145-146.
Smith: 3-5,8-9, 15, 27, 29, 237, 241.
(42)Clout: 140, 143, 145-146.
Smith: 59-60, 79, 99.
(43)Mottram: 40.
(44)Clout: 151, 153.
Mottram: 43, 104, 136, 239.
Smith: 3-5,8-9, 15, 27, 29, 59-60, 79, 99.
(45)Buffton: iii.
Clout: 154.
Hynes: 62.
Smith: 105, 110, 113, 117, 172.
Szasz: 15.
(46)Hynes: 63, 66.
(47)Mottram: 271.
Offer: 14.
(48)Szasz: 29.