Inscription: Chalons, France
Chalons, also in Champagne Country, is about 90 miles east of Paris. One of the World War One Unknown Soldiers now at rest at Arlington National Cemetery was shipped home from Chalons.
Some 7,000 French soldiers from World War One are said to be buried at the Chalons military cemetery. They all face a monument that proclaims "Death is nothing, so long as the Country lives. En Avant!"
One must assume this photograph was taken at a time during or after WWII that photographs seemed the reasonable thing to do. What must this grizzled generation of soldiers have thought of what had happened in these same places, just 30 years before?
"So long as the country lives ..." Did it ring hollow in the face of so much death? Perhaps that's why you see this photograph this way, why a few pieces of art about this same cemetery are painted in much the same fashion. Seven thousand soldiers on this one plot.
Notation: The Last Salute | Fields of Victory | Art | Art | Satellite view
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