A woman munitions worker carrying a shell apparently drops another one on the foot of a frightened man who clearly does not realize, as she does, that they are not in danger. No doubt his foot hurt.
La Femme et la Guerre.Leroy - Aux munitions.Women and the WarTo the munitions.Signed: FFLeroy?Reverse:No. 139 - P, J. Gallais et Cie, éditeurs, 38, Rue Vignon.Paris, Visé no. 139.No. 139 - P, J. Gallais and Company, publishers, 38 Rue Vignon.
"The strikes of the trade unions had also become an increasing problem to the harassed government. The day before, Poincaré himself witnessed a strike demonstration by several thousand women armament workers. In a mob they marched down the Champs Élysée, turned off on the Avenue Alexandre III and demonstrated outside the Élysée Palace. 'Their clamors rose up for more than two hours,' he wrote in his diary. . . . Vastly more important than strikes, pacifism or the growing agitation by the left-wing political parties, however, was the menace of the mutinies. The night before, the government had received a report from Colonel Herbillon, its military-liaison officer, that fresh mutinies were breaking out in the XXIst Corps—'the troops refuse to go into the trenches.'"
After the failure of French commander in chief Robert Nivelle's 1917 spring offensive — the Second Battle of the Aisne — mutinous incidents broke out in the French army beginning in April. As the mutinies worsened in May, as many as 100,000 workers also went on strike. The strikes continued into June, and the most violent and serious of the mutinies occurred in the first weeks of the month. Women workers struck for the 'semaine anglaise,' an English work week, one that ended at noon on Saturday. The French were becoming sick of the war, of the government's refusal to consider a peace other than victory, of soldiers being denied leave, of soldiers being thrown into barbed wire and machine gun fire. Raymond Poincaré was President of France throughout the war; the Élysée Palace is the official residence of the nation's president.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, page 201, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
1917-06-03, 1917, June, strike, mutiny, French strike, women worker, French woman worker, French woman munitions worker
