Nine million people died, twenty million were wounded, seventy million people were involved in the Great War, most of which was fought on French soil. France lost ten percent of its population. One million men died at Verdun. Lest we forget.
Update. A new World War museum, the Musée de la Grande Guerre, has just opened in the town of Meaux, an hour's drive east of Paris (close to Paris Disneyland). It comes from the large collection of a single man, Jean Pierre Verney, who became interested in the war back in the 1960s, when World War I artefacts were cheap. The collection was eventually bought by the government for 600,000 euros-- far less than it is worth; a foreign museum had offered 2,000,000 euros, but Verney wanted to keep it in France-- with the proviso that a museum would be built to house it. The museum opened on November 11, 2011 (11-11-11). According to the Parisien, the largest display window shows American troops.
As usual the intellos rushed to get their digs in. World War I historian Annette Becker called Mr Verney a handyman who collected bric-à-brac. Le Monde complained that the museum was old-fashioned, "a museographic curiosity that one would have thought was now in the past" (it has scenes with mannequins and trenches, dioramas and real uniforms), and "is this the best way to show the horror of war?" The writer did not propose another way: possibly he thinks everyone should just read a book.
Comments