Word: poilus
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...Germans," says one Frenchman. Says another: "I saw too many." Former Premier Pierre Mendès-France flashes on-screen recalling, in 1969, that during the 1939 "phony war," Paris ladies actually raised money for planting rose bushes along the Maginot Line-to reduce the ennui of the poilus stationed there. German newsreel footage switches from scenes of fresh, blond Wehrmacht soldiers swinging through France in 1940 to captured black French colonial troops, as a Nazi propaganda sound track mockingly quotes Neville Chamberlain: "We and our allies are the guardians of civilization against barbarism." What was your profoundest concern...
...most engrossing may well be a little biography for children, complete with charming drawings and simple text. Yet the unknown author, writing under the pseudonym Xavier Arito-marchi, laces his pabulum with Tabasco. "La France est a moi," says young Charles as he plays soldiers, grabbing the French poilus for himself, while forcing his brothers to take the Ger man and English sides. There is another happy scene of Charles playing pyramid-standing on a shield held by his playmates. And on and on. The caption, beside a picture of De Gaulle nestled in a huge Mexican sombrero, announces that...
Late Thursday afternoon, Colonel Freeman's perimeter got an iron cavalry rescue. Twenty-two 1st Cavalry Division tanks crashed through from the south, scattered the remnants of the Communist attack. Exhausted G.I.s and poilus climbed out of their foxholes. Around them they counted 1,747 enemy dead. At least 2,000 others had been captured, wounded, or buried by Communist troops in shallow graves on the mountainsides...
...only a small bonus, but it would help. To many a G.I. it appeared to be quite a lot when he heard later that France had tightened up on its own poilus. The French soldier's pay was summarily cut from 800 to 180 francs a month, just about $1 a month at the black-bourse rate...
...Vichy press release claimed that figures, not yet divulged in open court, would show that on May 10, 1940 France had only seventeen 90-mm. anti-aircraft guns, that there were boots for only 3,000,000 French poilus, when 4,500.000 pairs were needed. This was recrimination with a snarl. It was no news to stricken France. Over their rationed wine the oldsters nodded their heads at an editorial in Le Temps...