ARTICLE: WW1 Through the Eyes of Mrs de Gaulle

Seeing as how I recently gave you a three-parter on the WW1 service of Charles de Gaulle, I thought it might be fun to also tell you the First World War story of Yvonne Vendroux. Not because she’d one day have a famous husband, or because she was exceptional. She was still a teenager, but I think her story is important because she gives us a window into conflict through the eyes of one French family born and raised in the battle zone, and more specifically a girl who came of age in 1914-18.

The Vendrouxs weren’t quite everyday people. They had money, and rather than tighten the family finances, a contract to produce biscuits for the army meant that money was just about the one thing they didn’t have to worry about during the war. Illness, bombs, German bullets; they had all that coming for them. Coming from Calais, there was no limiting the catastrophic impact of the First World War for the Vendroux family. And yet, it also gave young Yvonne and her sister Suzanne a level of independence that they would never have otherwise encountered…

(Maison Charles de Gaulle de Lorraine)