Craonnelle, tranchée du Blanc Sablon ???

[Achache]

Bonjour,

Champ d'Asile :



JMO Cie 24/2 du 7e G p 38/49

Bien à vous,

[:achache:1]

[gerwald]

désolé pour le bug ACHACHE mais ce matin je ne le voyais pas !!
merci et a+
salutation

[bernard bacelon]

Bonjour à tous
voici quelques photos du secteur du Blanc-Sablon et du boyau des 4 arbres prises par mon Grand-Père René PAQUET chef de la 4eme section 10eme Compagnie du 12RI qui a occupé ce secteur entre Janvier et Mai 1915.

Cordialement
Bernard

[bernard bacelon]

Re bonjour à tous
J'ai raté .... l'insertion multiple de photos dans mon précédent message
Voici le reste des photos

En espérant apporter un complément intéressant à ce sujet
Cordialement
Bernard

[bill02]

bonour sur cette carte on a la tranchée des 4 arbres
fred

[ChrisDickon]

Bonjour tous,

I am an author in the US researching a book on Alan Seeger of the Foreign Legion. I would be grateful for your assistance in trying to answer a question posed by his Letters and Diary http://digital.tcl.sc.edu/cdm/ref/colle ... ger/id/334 beginning on page 85 in this copy, and on following pages. His regiment spent 6 months in C-----, and I need to be know the identity of C----. I believe it is Craonelle, but I haven't been able to confirm that.

Here is an article written by Seeger for the New York Sun which describes C--- in various ways:


TO THE "NEW YORK SUN"

February 5, 1915.
We are back in cantonment after eight days on the firing line. This is the longest stretch we have yet done without relief. The reason? The Kaiser's birthday. We looked for trouble on that day and there was no lack of indications that we were going to have it. There has been talk of a mysterious paper thrown into the lines with the warning that a general attack was to be made. And in the still winter nights behind the hostile crest the continual noise of distant trains and motors could be heard, bespeaking a concentration somewhere along the line.
The preceding night I was out on sentinel duty. In a clear sky, the moon, a few nights from the full, flooded the hillsides, making it impossible for patrols to circulate. Not a shot was being fired. The sinister silence confirmed every suspicion that something was under way. At midnight a French battery behind us broke it rudely and ironically by firing twelve times in succession over the crest as a birthday greeting. The enemy did not respond. And so the long night wore away and the day came and passed without incident for us.
The blow had fallen on some other point of the line. Strewn pitifully along the summit of the crest opposite we who were on guard could still see the bodies of the French soldiers where they have been lying ever since September, when the magnificent élan of the battle of the Marne finally broke on this bleak hillside and ever since when both sides have been sitting facing each other, neither risking the perils of a further attack. Once more we have been cheated in our hope for action, but it may not be for long.
The greatest change has come over our life here lately. In my last letter I described the soldier's days and nights in the trenches, and I am afraid I drew a rather gloomy though by no means exaggerated picture. For the last month, however, we have not been living in trenches at all, but in a ruined village. It has been much more romantic. Along the vast battle line from Belfort to the sea each regiment has its sector of a few kilometers to defend.
Ours is a corner of field and forest fronting on the semicircular crest of the plateau where the enemy are intrenched---a good foothold on one end of the crescent, too. Here the soldiers live in the earthen dugouts, amid all the discomforts I described. But at the foot of the hill, corresponding exactly to the position of the stage in a Greek theatre, lies the village of C-----. From all the various points of the sector that we have been assigned to its battered houses and great burned down château have been visible. Other companies, though, had held it up to a month ago, when it came round to our turn.
It was under the full moon of a month past that we marched into C----- for the first time. I shall never forget the impressiveness of that stealthy, silent entrance. We had left our cantonment at midnight. Five or six kilometers through the forest and the road came out into a pleasant open country, covered with orchards. Sharply silhouetted in the moonlight against the black slopes of the plateau behind were the bright walls and peaked tile roofs of the, typical little French town. I had become familiar in our march to the front from Mailly with the tragedy of these pretty centres of peace and happiness made desolate by war. But no scene of ruin that we passed through exceeded the spectacle that met our eyes here.
There had been no general conflagration in C----- it is true, for the Germans had not had time to fire it as they have done systematically wherever they could. But there was literally not a house that had not been riddled with shrapnel or disembowelled by the deadly "marmites " that must have fallen on it in a perfect inferno of fire. Picking our way through the débris that littered the streets we filed in through that picture of desolation that makes always so striking a background for a column of infantry advancing.
Poor ruined villages of northern France! There they lie like so many silent graveyards, each little house the tomb of some scattered family's happiness. Where are the simple, peace loving country folk that dwelt here when these windows were squares of yellow lampIight, not, as now, blank as holes in a skull? The men away at the war or already in their graves; the women and children refugees in the south, dependent upon charity. The pity of it all is that the French guns have done and have had to do the material damage.
When the Germans marched back in August there was no resistance to their advance. But it was with the artillery close on their heels that they were chased out in September. It is frightful to think that only at such a price can the French regain their conquered territory. If the enemy are to be driven across the frontier does it not mean that every town and village between must be laid in ruins? The alternative is staggering. . . .
At C----- our quarters are most picturesque. They are the wine cellars of the village's two châteaux. Here the soldiers have been able to bring straw, coal and candles, and with a good roof over their heads, safe from shells and from rain, enjoy a degree of comfort quite exceptional for a position where the crack of the German mausers as they snipe at sentinels seems at our very doors and where the mitrailleuse upon the hillside could rake our cellar door itself were it not for the encircling groves.
The big château has been completely burned down. Nothing remains but the shell. It sits in the midst of an immense, heavily wooded park, the wall of which, several kilometers long, forms part of our line of defence. Pretty paths intersect the dense groves. There are benches, here and there, fountains and summer houses. The lawn that encircles the château slopes down behind to a charming little artificial lake. Everything bespeaks the pleasure retreat of some man of wealth and taste. Before the ruined mansion, truly seigniorial in its proportions, stand ancestral pines.
Nothing could be more romantic on a moonlit night than the view of these silent walls gleaming amid the great black cones; nothing more eerie than the silent grove, in which there is never the complete assurance that the park wall completely separates one from the lurking enemy.
The little château is in the town itself, surrounded by no considerable estate. It has been ripped open with bombardment, but was not set on fire. Strange enough, the pillaging of six months has not begun to exhaust the loot that litters its floors knee deep. Here all the possessions of some once comfortable family lie scattered about as they have been pulled from desk, cupboard and bureau. Sheets and pillowcases lie mixed up with family photographs and correspondence in a chaos of disorder.

-

I will be very grateful to those who can help me to firmly identify C---. I will be in the region in May following Seeger's route from September 1914 to his death at Belloy en Santerre on July, 1916.

Merci

Chris Dickon

[Eric de Fleurian]

Bonjour Chris
Alan Seeger appartenait au 2e régiment de marche du 2e régiment étranger avant que celui-ci ne fusionne, le 11 novembre 1915, au sein du régiment de marche de Légion Etrangère.
Il s'agit donc bien du secteur de Craonnelle dans lequel, mis à la disposition de la 36e DI, le régiment prend position, entre le 24 et le 30 octobre 1914, et y reste jusqu'au 23 mai 1915.
Cordialement
Eric