the Use of Caves in Northern France
from a German propaganda magazine for the occupied territoires 'Album de la Grande Guerre'
from a German magazine 'Illustrierte Weltschau' - French civilians living in caves near Laon
from a Dutch-language German magazine 'Oorlogskroniek' - a German regiment housed in a quarry
a view of French quarries near Soissons
a German camp in a quarry near Soissons
a drawing from a French magazine : British troops making use of a quarry
"They lived in a world which is as different from this known world of ours as though they belonged to another race of men inhabiting another planet, or to an old race far back behind the memory of the first civilization. For in this district of Champagne, the soldiers of France were earth-men or troglodytes, not only in the trenches, but for miles behind the trenches. When the rains came last autumn they were without shelter, and there were few villages on this lonely stretch of country in which to billet them. But hère were soft, chalky ridges and slopes in which it was not difficult to dig holes and caverns. The troops took to picks and shovels, and very soon they built habitations for themselves in which they have been living ever since when not in the trenches.
I was invited into some of these subterranean parlours, and ducked my head as I went down clay steps into dim caves where three or four men lived in close comradeship in each of them. They had tacked the photographs of their wives or sweethearts on the walls, to make these places "homelike," and there was space in some of them for wood fires, which burned with glowing embers and a smoke that made my eyes smart, so that by the light of them these soldiers would see the portraits of those who wait for them to come back, who have waited so patiently and so long through the dreary months.
But now that spring had come the earth-men had emerged from their holes to bask in the sun again, and with that love of beauty which is instinctive in a Frenchman's heart, they were planting gardens and shrubberies outside their chalk dwellings with allegorical designs in cockle-shells or white stones.
"Très chic!" said the commandant to a group of soldiers proud to their handicraft"
- by Philip Gibbs
- from his book 'The Soul of the War' 1915