The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale that was published by Phot-Express.
The card. which was printed by Baudinière of 40, Rue du Caire, Paris has a divided back.
The destroyed bridge over the Saint-Quentin Canal is being replaced with a footbridge, presumably using timber salvaged from the many destroyed buildings nearby.
Chauny
Chauny is a commune in the Aisne département in Hauts-de-France in northern France. There has been a settlement on the site, more or less continuously, since at least the Carolingian era.
Chauny is roughly equal distance from Soissons (34 km) and Saint-Quentin (30 km) and is right at the heart of Picardy.
Built on the banks of the Oise and the Saint-Quentin Canal, the town still retains its port to this day. The Saint-Quentin Canal was built as a junction between the Somme and the Oise in 1738. It is popular with barges.
Chauny in the Great War
The town was occupied by German forces for part of the Great War, and was close to the front lines for much of the war. It was extensively destroyed during the process of its recapture by Allied forces in 1917. Many important buildings were destroyed, including the Hôtel de Ville and the Palais de Justice.
It is disputed whether, or to what degree, the destruction was caused by Allied bombardments, aerial and artillery, versus demolition by retreating Germans, which was a common practice.
The community was rebuilt after the Great War, largely in a traditional French "châteaux" style; in particular the municipal buildings, done in red brick with stonework. Most of the existing structures date from this time or later, especially those in the town centre.
Chauny in World War II
A chemical factory in the town was bombed by Allied aircraft on the 8th. August 1944. This was completed as part of an attack on the industrial infrastructure of Chauny. The town was liberated by American forces on 2 September 1944.
Abba Eban
"History teaches us that men and
nations behave wisely when they
have exhausted all other alternatives".
This was said during a speech in London UK on 16th. December 1970 by Abba Eban (1915-2002), an Israeli diplomat and writer.
Visé Paris
The reference to 'Visé Paris' means that the image has been inspected by the military authorities in the French capital and deemed not to be a security risk.
'Visé Paris' signifies that the card was published during or soon after the end of the Great War.
The Use of Artillery in the Great War
Artillery was very heavily used by both sides during the Great War. The British fired over 170 million artillery rounds of all types, weighing more than 5 million tons - that's an average of around 70 pounds (32 kilos) per shell.
If the 170m rounds were on average two feet long, and if they were laid end to end, they would stretch for 64,394 miles (103,632 kilometres); the line would go round the equator over two and a half times. If the artillery of the Central Powers of Germany and its allies is factored in, the figure can be doubled to 5 encirclements of the planet.
During the first two weeks of the Third Battle of Ypres, over 4 million rounds were fired at a cost of over £22,000,000 - a huge sum of money, especially over a century ago.
Artillery was the killer and maimer of the war of attrition.
According to Dennis Winter's book 'Death's Men' three quarters of battle casualties were caused by artillery rounds. According to John Keegan ('The Face of Battle') casualties were:
- Bayonets - less than 1%
- Bullets - 30%
- Artillery and Bombs - 70%
Keegan suggests however that the ratio changed during advances, when massed men walking line-abreast with little protection across no-man's land were no match for for rifles and fortified machine gun emplacements.
Many artillery shells fired during the Great War failed to explode. Drake Goodman provides the following information on Flickr:
"During World War I, an estimated one tonne of explosives was fired for every square metre of territory on the Western front. As many as one in every three shells fired did not detonate. In the Ypres Salient alone, an estimated 300 million projectiles that the British and the German forces fired at each other were "duds", and most of them have not been recovered."
To this day, large quantities of Great War matériel are discovered on a regular basis. Many shells from the Great War were left buried in the mud, and often come to the surface during ploughing and land development.
For example, on the Somme battlefields in 2009 there were 1,025 interventions, unearthing over 6,000 pieces of ammunition weighing 44 tons.
Artillery shells may or may not still be live with explosive or gas, so the bomb disposal squad, of the Civilian Security of the Somme, dispose of them.
The Somme Times
From 'The Somme Times', Monday, 31 July, 1916:
'There was a young girl of the Somme,
Who sat on a number five bomb,
She thought 'twas a dud 'un,
But it went off sudden -
Her exit she made with aplomb!'