Bones and stones

Right now I'm in Long-Pres Les Corps Saints, France, staying with my father in law and his wife.

The only way for me to accurately describe this town is "French" which, I am aware, is not a good description at all. But it's French, as in, perfect stereotype of a French village, exactly what you'd see in the movies (as an American) and the type of place you want to get away to when you actually think of France. The bread baker is next door, a bell chimes in the town center every hour, five chimes for 5pm, etc, you can walk to the doctor, tailor, pub, post office. I like it a lot, although there isn't much going on. I'm still not sure what the hell the kids around here do for fun, actually, aside from driving their god damned loud scooters through the town non-stop. If this were a small American town I would take the usual guess as to their nightlife and say it's probably lots of premarital screwing and getting plastered, but if that's what they do I'm not seeing it. Then again I didn't see much of it when I was a teenager either. I'll never be a cool kid.

The weird thing about observing the area is that I don't see any poor, druggie looking people walking around, which is strange to me as an American. When I first got to Belgium and France, walking around at night I constantly had my guard up, waiting for some sort of fight or something. But it doesn't normally work like that over here. It's relaxed.

This place, though -- it's as quiet and innocent as you're going to get. I've been in small Mayberry towns before but there seems to always be some seedy rednecks around addicted to [whatever] who are trashy and loud and uneducated and have a litter of kids following them around in dirty diapers. That's life... except not here, apparently. The houses are beautiful, the people look happy, the women are hot (I'll leave it at that), and the area itself has beautiful rolling hills, little forests, babbling brooks. Yes, I actually saw a "babbling brook" running through the town with a cute little bridge running over it, don't gimme any crap.

And of course, everything in France is historical. Outside of my window is a fairly ancient church, and by fairly ancient I mean it is older than my own native country. The other day I found bones laying in the yard where workers had dug a hole to put in a gas line. There was a human femur and clavicle lying in the pile of dirt. It's Europe, you know, there are lots of bones. So what do they do? They throw it in the dirt pile and leave them to throw back in the hole later. I got to check out the old bones and snap a photo, because I found it all pretty neat. I can't see something like that happening in the States or Canada, though. If you find bones there it's either "sacred" Indian remains, a murder victim, or someone's grandpa. People would tell you to fuck right off and leave them alone for the "authorities" to take care of.

Speaking of historic areas, today I was helping cut wood for winter in a little forest owned by Marine's dad. In those woods there are multiple trenches, one of which I got to dig up last time I was here. Over the years the trenches were filled in, but you can still see the indentation in the gruond. When you're digging them you come across very light colored soil which means you've hit the walls where they stopped digging. Makes it easy to recreate the thing and look for artifacts. I found some metal crap, looked like a tin for food, etc. It was very interesting for a WWII geek like me. That's the type of stuff I dreamt about doing years ago when I was planning a trip to Europe. Now it happens when I have no intentions of looking for it. There are still huge holes in the ground from artillery and maybe stuka bombs - it's pretty rad. Marine's dad once found a couple tins of food out there that were unopened. He was curious one day and made the mistake of opening one. Apparently it wasn't a nice smell, but the meat was still inside. Disgusting, reeking ZOMBIE NAZI MEAT.

Anyway, it turns out a regiment of Senegalese infantry under French command fought in those woods, thusly the trenches and such. Rommel had attacked with panzers, of which 12 or so got knocked out, before the Germans captured the woods.

Next to the woods is a town called Airaines - I had a beer there today while we took a break and watched horse races. It's odd casually sipping a beer in a small town that you know was completely obliterated in WW2 - everything except the church which looks old as balls (and coincidentally is old as balls) - which was used as an infirmary for both sides. A Gabonese officer was executed by the Germans and there is a monument for him in the town. For those interested:

When World War II broke out, he came out of retirement and took command of a battalion of Gabonese volunteers at Bordeaux, then later was captain of a company in the Infanterie Coloniale Mixte Sénégalaise, which fought Germans on the Somme River. After three days of resistance, the company was left with only ten Africans and five Europeans, and they surrendered near Amiens. But the German officer would not treat N'Tchoréré as an officer, and when N'Tchoréré refused to fall in line with the black enlisted soldiers, the German shot him.

N'Tchoréré's son Jean-Baptiste was killed in action in the same area a week later.

Charles N'Tchoréré has a memorial in Airaines, and in 1962 he was honored on a postage stamp of Gabon

Horse races... gotta explain that one. The French fucking love horse races. It makes me feel like I'm back in the 40s or something, the idea of sipping a beer at the local pub with the townfolk, everyone nervously waiting to hear that their horse as won . It seems pretty confusing, though, what with keeping track of the numbers and this and that. They have races in the day, in the night, and then they have more, bigger races on the weekend. They're all about bettin' on those horses. If I had any money to burn I'd probably try it just to say I've done it, but I have to stop myself and think: What's 1 Euro? The answer is: 1 euro saved is 1 euro closer to a kebab with samurai sauce and that's more important to me than any horse. My kebab addiction is all consuming, but I'll cover that one later.