Verdun Ossuary and Cemetery, France. © 2015 John M. Shea
"— The 28th. The thousandth day of the war. We see a certain number of marriages between elderly, but wealthy, hospital nurses and blind soldiers. At first sight that seems shocking. But after all, the ladies will enjoy what they would not otherwise enjoy. And their husbands will never see the marks of age. . . .— One ought to say: One and a half million dead young men."
Entries from April 28, 1917 from the diary of Michel Corday, French senior civil servant, living and writing in Paris. The French offensive in the Second Battle of the Aisne, was already a failure when Corday wrote. Earlier in the month he wrote against jingoists who wanted the war to continue 'to victory' at all costs, against the censorship the government imposed on the French press, and in favor of those who could speak truth about the war, both as it was in progress and after it ended. Germany declared war on France on August 3, 1914.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 248, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
1917-04-28, 1917, April, blind, French dead, Verdun Ossuary
