“Maire adjoint. Socialiste."
O N THE WAY into the deputy mayor's town, Armentieres, I see a directional road sign pointing to nearby Bailleul. During the
Race to the Sea in 1914, the townspeople of Bailleul fled in terror, and the retreating German army let the inmates of an
insane asylum run free in the deserted streets. This incident, which inspired film director Philippe de Broca'sclassic pacifist
farce, King of Hearts, is not difficult to dredge up from memory after spending time in the Bizet customs post. Inmates still run a few asylums in
French Flanders.
I walk into the large town square of Armentieres, a paved expanse used as a parking lot. Somewhere a reconstructed belfry
chimes out the time. A few cafés give out onto the square, the clings and clangs of their pinball machines adding to the late-afternoon
carillon. The city, once famous as a party town for British troops, was leveled in the fighting of 1918 and hastily reconstructed
afterward. A song, " Mademoiselle from Armentiéres, " became an anthem for soldiers in this sector, its countless verses —
raunchy or polite, depending on the audience—always concluding with the chorus, " Hinky-dinky (or " Inky pinky") parlay-voo.
" There are worse ways to end a visit to Flanders:
“Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parlay-voo?
Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parlay-voo?
Your eggs and frites, they give us the squits.
Hinky-dinky parlay-voo.
••••• author's route
C HAPTER
3
Artois
i. Lille to Aubers to Neuve Chapelle
T HE RAIN FALLS. Armentieres becomes a puddle in search of the hole in my shoe. I take a commuter train to the capital of French
Flanders, Lille, and put off for a day my journey south to the slag heaps of Artois. I bring a book with me, Pride and Prejudice, and read it in a restaurant. Elizabeth tells Darcy to take a hike just as it's time for me to go back to the Front and do
the same. I forget to look at Lille.
Ten years later Lille will be an aspiring Europolis, a showcase of shiny technology parks and shopping centres. The high-speed
train that goes under the Channel will stop at a glitzy, glassy station in the middle of town. Lille as a satellite of Brussels,
a suburb of London, a city in eastern Kent—all notions that would cause its most famous son, Charles de Gaulle, to turn over
in his tank. Expressways and express rail lines stream west of Lille toward England. The tiny cemeteries and memorials in
the fields near Armentieres, St. Omer, Bailleul, and Hazebrouck flash past the windows of the TGV trains like places not really seen. The very speed of passage mocks the unmoving behemoth that once lay
over the countryside. No-man's-land is crossed in seconds, as coffee is poured and another Eurobun buttered. The Chunnel shall
one day fog the British memory of war, for much of their national myth-making is tied up with going abroad to fight, with
sailing out to meet the foe. What meaning "fair stood the wind for France" or "there's some corner of a foreign field / That
is for ever England," when making the once fateful trip takes less time than crossing London on the Underground? The notion
of France will have been rendered domestic. Wogs no longer start at Calais, Wogs 'R' Us.
Somewhere in this land rich in anachronistic borders and fronts is yet another invisible line, the shared boundary of Flanders
and Artois. The current departements are Nord and Pas de Calais, but the long-standing regional names serve the purposes of this account better, for they conjure
up a history, a sense of the past. Roughly speaking, Artois is the upland separating the forests of Picardy and the basin
of Ile-de-France from the great northern European plain beginning in Flanders and continuing through the Netherlands, Germany,
and Poland. Yet the boundary that matters most, I tell myself as I study my maps in puzzlement, is the line of the Front.
To be more precise: the Front as it was in 1916, the
O N THE WAY into the deputy mayor's town, Armentieres, I see a directional road sign pointing to nearby Bailleul. During the
Race to the Sea in 1914, the townspeople of Bailleul fled in terror, and the retreating German army let the inmates of an
insane asylum run free in the deserted streets. This incident, which inspired film director Philippe de Broca'sclassic pacifist
farce, King of Hearts, is not difficult to dredge up from memory after spending time in the Bizet customs post. Inmates still run a few asylums in
French Flanders.
I walk into the large town square of Armentieres, a paved expanse used as a parking lot. Somewhere a reconstructed belfry
chimes out the time. A few cafés give out onto the square, the clings and clangs of their pinball machines adding to the late-afternoon
carillon. The city, once famous as a party town for British troops, was leveled in the fighting of 1918 and hastily reconstructed
afterward. A song, " Mademoiselle from Armentiéres, " became an anthem for soldiers in this sector, its countless verses —
raunchy or polite, depending on the audience—always concluding with the chorus, " Hinky-dinky (or " Inky pinky") parlay-voo.
" There are worse ways to end a visit to Flanders:
“Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parlay-voo?
Mademoiselle from Armentieres, parlay-voo?
Your eggs and frites, they give us the squits.
Hinky-dinky parlay-voo.
••••• author's route
C HAPTER
3
Artois
i. Lille to Aubers to Neuve Chapelle
T HE RAIN FALLS. Armentieres becomes a puddle in search of the hole in my shoe. I take a commuter train to the capital of French
Flanders, Lille, and put off for a day my journey south to the slag heaps of Artois. I bring a book with me, Pride and Prejudice, and read it in a restaurant. Elizabeth tells Darcy to take a hike just as it's time for me to go back to the Front and do
the same. I forget to look at Lille.
Ten years later Lille will be an aspiring Europolis, a showcase of shiny technology parks and shopping centres. The high-speed
train that goes under the Channel will stop at a glitzy, glassy station in the middle of town. Lille as a satellite of Brussels,
a suburb of London, a city in eastern Kent—all notions that would cause its most famous son, Charles de Gaulle, to turn over
in his tank. Expressways and express rail lines stream west of Lille toward England. The tiny cemeteries and memorials in
the fields near Armentieres, St. Omer, Bailleul, and Hazebrouck flash past the windows of the TGV trains like places not really seen. The very speed of passage mocks the unmoving behemoth that once lay
over the countryside. No-man's-land is crossed in seconds, as coffee is poured and another Eurobun buttered. The Chunnel shall
one day fog the British memory of war, for much of their national myth-making is tied up with going abroad to fight, with
sailing out to meet the foe. What meaning "fair stood the wind for France" or "there's some corner of a foreign field / That
is for ever England," when making the once fateful trip takes less time than crossing London on the Underground? The notion
of France will have been rendered domestic. Wogs no longer start at Calais, Wogs 'R' Us.
Somewhere in this land rich in anachronistic borders and fronts is yet another invisible line, the shared boundary of Flanders
and Artois. The current departements are Nord and Pas de Calais, but the long-standing regional names serve the purposes of this account better, for they conjure
up a history, a sense of the past. Roughly speaking, Artois is the upland separating the forests of Picardy and the basin
of Ile-de-France from the great northern European plain beginning in Flanders and continuing through the Netherlands, Germany,
and Poland. Yet the boundary that matters most, I tell myself as I study my maps in puzzlement, is the line of the Front.
To be more precise: the Front as it was in 1916, the
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