Word: armenti
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...Armentières is a nondescript town in northern France with but one claim to fame: its mademoiselle, heroine of hundreds of World War I ditties, most of them dirty. For 50 years, it was a fame that Armentières preferred to leave unclaimed, but recently the town fathers have had a change of heart. Hoping for a tourist boom that might stimulate its sagging farm economy, Armentières last week began a fund-raising campaign for a statue in mademoiselle's, uh, honor...
...those hinky-dinky ditties about her were untrue. She was not a mademoiselle at all, but a tall, slim widow named Marie Lecoq who worked as a waitress at the Café de la Paix. Furthermore, during the four years that British and Commonwealth troops were stationed in Armentières, she was more virtuous than many of her unsung sisters. The ditty got its start, in fact, when she roundly slapped a British officer who tried to kiss her in the café. Its first verse, written by a sergeant who watched the action...
TIME errs in stating that "Mademoiselle" from Armentières was an invention . . . The little French girl who slapped a general's face and thus inspired the famous war song was as virtuous as she was pretty. She was employed at a café early in World War I when Armentières was a resting place for troops . . . Entertainment was organized by a London music-hall actor, "Red" Rowland, and the Canadian songwriter Lieut. Gitz-Rice...
...place names of Flemish towns ring like bugles. They tell of bloody and costly battles in wars over the centuries: Courtrai, Passendale, Ypres ("Wipers" to the Tommy of World War I), and Armentiéres (whose "Mademoiselle" was invented to wipe out the memory of grimmer realities). In World War II, the tragedy and heroism of Dunkirk were played out on a Flemish beach...
...next decade the Donald Merretts, or the Ronald Chesneys as they liked to call themselves, lived high, wide & handsome, spending most of their time touring the Mediterranean in a luxury yacht, the Armentières. They were often joined in their cruising by Mrs. Chesney's mother, who called herself "Lady" Mary Menzies. When Donald's fondness for gay company and Isobel's fondness for gin at last drove them apart in 1937, Lady Mary and her daughter went back to London, bought a large house in Ealing, and opened a boardinghouse for genteel elderly ladies...