“No, most of them fled before the worst of the fighting,” said Blondine. “But they were never able to return.”
“Something like eighty soldiers were buried alive when the town literally collapsed under a massive bombardment,” said Emma. “In addition to that, bombs and gases poisoned the earth, and so many bodies were left to rot—animals and human—that the groundwater was poisoned.”
“Quel dommage,”Blondine said. “I get frustrated with Cochet at times, but I can’t imagine if someone told me that I could never go back.”
André pulled to a stop, and they got out and walked the area, now curated as a historic site. There wasn’t much of the town left to see; a small chapel and memorial had been erected decades after the war, but otherwise all that was left of the village of Haumont-près-Samogneux was a few crumbling walls covered in vines, and small verdant mounds disguising the rubble of collapsed buildings. They passed by the metal hull of a huge reddish bomb sticking up out of the ground, the only tangible sign of the brutality that had been visited on these grounds.
Despite the violence the area had seen, birds chirped, and the damp earth smelled fresh and green.
Rosalyn was reminded of the remains of Mayan pyramids that she and Dash had toured in Yucatán, Mexico. But those ruins were thousands of years old; the once-thriving village of Haumont-près-Samogneux—which had been full of people and businesses, farmers and bakers, where people had fallen in love, had children, endured heartbreak, and lived their lives—had been reclaimed by the hungry forces of nature after only a century.
Here and there cardboard cutouts showed life-sized black-and-white photographs of former inhabitants, now long gone. Their faces beckoned eerily, ghostlike against the green backdrop of encroaching forest.
“Come on,” said Emma. “Enough fun for today in the town that died. Let’s go look at a cemetery.”
They continued on to Châlons-en-Champagne.
“At the American and Australian cemeteries, many of the graves have been adopted by local French families, who bring flowers and tokens of remembrance,” Emma said. “Which is about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Blondine nodded. “The Americans came into the war late, but they were an essential part of the victory. And of course the Australians were here all along. They bled for France, and people here don’t forget that.”
The cemetery consisted of thousands of white crosses marching in neat, orderly rows along the softly rolling hills. As Lucie had written, their parallel queues seemed to mock the grapevines.
At the reception center, Blondine looked up Émile Paul Legrand on a public computer database.
“He’s not listed,” she said, shaking her head.
“He must be,” said Emma. “Surely Lucie was notified correctly as to where her husband was buried.”
“Not necessarily,” said Blondine. “Didn’t you see the memorial outside for ten thousand unknown soldiers? Things were chaotic. There must have been many families who never learned the fates of their loved ones.”
“True, but Lucie mentioned this cemetery specifically,” Rosalyn pointed out. “Maybe it’s an oversight?”
“Let’s ask,” said Emma.
The man in charge, Monsieur Dervin, was a balding fellow in asweater vest and thick spectacles. They gave him Émile’s name and town of origin, and he had them wait for twenty minutes while he did some research.
When he emerged from his office, he declared: “There are scratch outs.”
“What does that mean?” Blondine asked.
“A lot of people were misidentified during the battles and immediately following the war,” said Monsieur Dervin.
“Didn’t they carry identification of some kind?” asked Blondine.
“Bien sûr.Soldiers wore aplaque d’identité, a bracelet with a metal disk that was engraved with the soldier’s name and rank. Unfortunately, many fell off or were switched. There was so much blood and mayhem, you see, and many of the bodies were not”—Monsieur Dervin lowered his voice—“complete. Other brave men died in a manner such that their bodies could not be retrieved for some time, and were thus rendered unrecognizable, even to their comrades. Injured soldiers were often misidentified, their papers lost or mixed up during a hurried evacuation, for example.”
He pointed to names that had been crossed out and replaced with other names. “Like this one, here—you see?”
The three women leaned in to study the handwritten records that had been scanned into the computer. A few of the names had lines through them along with notations.
“Émile Paul Legrand... Legrand... ,” Monsieur Dervin repeated, as he scrolled through the lists, searching the names. “Yes, here he is.... Émile Paul Legrand was a scratch out. He was at first believed to have been killed in action, but see here? Much later he was found among the wounded.”
“Wait—you mean he survived the war?” Emma demanded.
Monsieur Dervin nodded. “I have no idea howlonghe survived,but according to these documents, one Émile Paul Legrand from Reims was not killed in action as initially reported.”
“When was this?” Emma asked.
