1918 - 2018: A Story for My Granddaughter Alicette

1917: My father was 12 years old, and he had four sisters. Marie, the eldest, was 18. The family lived on a little farm close to Brest (12 cows, 2 pigs, 3 horses, poultry...), naturally with no electricity, water from the "puits," toilets in the garden, and cooking on a wood fire in the chimney...

Suddenly, the US Army's Engineer Corps arrived. They built a huge camp at Pontanezen but called it "Napoleon's barracks," with a train from the harbour and "trottoirs en bois": "we could walk in the camp and our shoes stayed clean." There were a lot of trucks and some Buicks for officers, five huge kitchens, and a hospital... Marie became the great friend of a young fair-haired nurse.

1918: It was the great arrival of troops; they stayed 5 or 6 days after 8 to 10 days of seasickness. About 1.5 million passed through this camp during 1918, nearly the same number in 1919 for going home after the war. But remember, the Spanish influenza killed more people than the war.

1944: Sons of these soldiers were in Brest for World War 2. I was 8, and I welcomed them with the song of 1918 learned from my father while keeping the cows:

Over there, over there, send the word, send the word over there

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming

The drums rum-tumming everywhere

So prepare, say a prayer, send the word, send the word to beware

We'll be over, we're coming over

And we won't come back till it's over, over there (verify the lyrics)

Their thanks was to eat with them. Whaoo, I had never seen these fruits in a sugar sauce, hum!!! My father says it was probably orange, pineapple, apricot, peach, unknown from 1939.