ARTICLE: Don't Forget the Wounded

Also, Vive la France

Frankly it’s a miracle it’s taken me this long to get out a French flag and start waving it in all your faces.

Since we founded the Great War Group (go check it out, we learn a lot, and have a lot of fun doing it www.greatwargroup.com) I have drifted further and further away from an anglocentric view of the First World War. To do that, I’ve had to work really hard on my French (Basically a walking advert for what Duolingo can do in a lockdown) and my Italian (Vanda Wilcox probably wishes I’d work harder so I didn’t keep bugging her) in order to open up a whole new world of sources and points of view that give everyone a say, not just using what happens to be available in English. (On another note, this means I have paired up with fellow GWG trustee Nicolai Eberholst, who has the German and the Russian and way more on top of that, to write a book about the outbreak of war. It’s going to be called Ring of Fire and it’s a peoples, world history of 1914, out next year).

Anyway, what this all means is that I am one of a very small determined crew banging on about the French in English constantly. So you can expect French/Belgian/French Colonial stories of WW1 from me. Starting with this one…

This is a story of one doctor, in one hospital in Bordeaux at the beginning of the war. To understand the scale of what happened to France in 1914-1915, you have to multiply his efforts by thousands.