Walking about town
Traveling through rural France sure is alluring. There’s always something around each corner to evoke the senses. It truly is wonderful. However, there’s a darker side…
Pretty much all of humanity know of World War One. Or the Great War. If there ever was such a thing. Great big bloody mess more like.
Anyway, this is evidenced in memorials to the fallen in each town. More accurately, the fallen FROM each town that traveled to war for some reason. Each an every town centre had a memorial to those lost, in variably with names inscribed in stone to those sons, husbands, bothers and fathers that never made it home. Reams and reams of names in most cases bear witness to the harsh reality of war.
The largest town we passed through, Castelnaudary, naturally had the largest memorial. It even had pictures. Sobering doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Even the smallest hamlet so far from the front gave their loved ones to die for the cause. It’s no wonder then that a generation later in 1940, when faced with the same decisions, France decided to forgo the loss and not lose any more valuable lives. And it’s for this they are remembered, rather than the valiant defense of their country in ‘The Great War’.
- Aperture: ƒ/16 Camera: Canon EOS 20D Focal length: 24mm ISO: 100 Shutter speed: 1/80s