A French officer charging into battle in a watercolor by Fernand Rigouts. The original watercolor on deckle-edged watercolor paper is signed F. R. 1917, and addressed to Mademoiselle Henriette Dangon.
Signed F. R. 1917Reverse:Addressed to Mademoiselle Henriette Dangon
"By April 1915 the villagers of Nanteuil-de-Bourzac, and, indeed, the women of France in general, had plenty that might make them susceptible to depression. Victory was nowhere in sight, and casualties were already in excess of half a million men killed or wounded. It was evident that the short and victorious war to which their sons and husbands had so resolutely set off was not within reach. . . . 'There are so many dying now that it makes you tremble,' Marie [Pireaud] confessed, and she begged her husband, 'Oh do all that you can to avoid all danger because your death would be mine.'"
The letters of a young French couple from the Dordogne, Paul and Marie Pereaud, are in the French military archives in Vincennes. Paul fought at Verdun, the Somme, in the Nivelle Offensive, and in northern Italy. Marie tended the family's farm with her parents and in-laws. The couple corresponded through the five years the war kept them apart.
Your Death Would Be Mine; Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War by Martha Hanna, page 72, copyright © 2006 by Martha Hanna, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2006
1915-04-02, 1915, April, trench, observation post, sniper plate
