I thought about putting this in the Small Talk forum but I can’t start a thread there. When I try, New Topic is greyed out and I get a no entry sign when I hover the pointer over that.
Maybe other people have similar stories, I’d love to hear them.
My grandfather was in the British army during WWI and was at the Battle of Mons. His war diaries are harrowing to read but one happy episode was when his unit was stationed in a village in northern France, near the border with Belgium.
One day he was walking around the village and saw a little girl sitting on her doorstep cuddling a ‘doll’ made up of a brush wrapped in a duster, which was all she had. Grandpa never seemed particularly sentimental but he organised a collection amongst the troops and at Christmas they gave a toy to every child in the village. The little girl, Lucille, that he had seen got a white rabbit, which he took to her.
They stayed in touch for the rest of Grandpa’s life by writing letters (in French) and I remember going to visit when I was a child; Lucille and her family treated us like royalty.
For the 60th anniversary of these events, Lucille came to England and Grandpa gave her a large white rabbit that he’d commissioned from Chad Valley. He even got a photo and short article into the local paper.
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Perhaps you were denied Small Talk because it isn’t small talk at all, but a really nice, touching story. Glad you managed to get it out here, by whatever means, thank you. 
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Lovely story, thank you @Jennifer11 !
Amazingly, I found a photo on my old laptop and with OH’s help have retrieved it from OneDrive.
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This is a more tenuous connection with France but still relevant, I hope.
Grandpa was in a Yorkshire unit that dealt with gas and because of this he was made an officer and given a horse. They also had very brave horses that pulled artillery. Grandpa’s horse was called Billy.
At the end of the war, Grandpa found out that army horses were being auctioned and Billy was being sold in York. He went along and won the bid, then rehomed Billy to a relative’s farm on the east Yorkshire moors. I think Billy may have worked a bit, but he spent the rest of his life on the farm where the family could visit him. Here he is with Grandpa, my father and his sister.
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Lovely pieces of history! It is also remarkable that both your grandfather and Billy survived the gas.
I have slightly tangential connections on both sides. My father’s aunt Lizzie left Garforth (yorkshire) in 1914 to study at the Sorbonne in Paris. She was 39 at the time. She completed her thesis in1918 on the 1st century Roman soldier/farmer Columella’s book on farming. Which is a fascinating book by the way - and still studied. Whatever possessed her to go to France to study during WWI we have no idea!
On my mother’s side, I have already posted somewhere about my Grandfather and his time in the German army in Lizzy sur Ourq in France, and being a prisoner of war here. He was court martialled, and later acquitted and returned to Germany by the Red Cross partly because he had treated injured French local people who stood up for him.
Geographically both sides of the family were present in France in 1914, which I find a bit weird.
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Thank you. Grandpa was tasked with letting off gas, AIUI. I’m sure it’s in his diaries which I haven’t read recently as they’re quite sad. I wept when I came to the entry where their bravest and strongest gun-pulling horse was killed in battle.
How did it happen that both sides of the family were here in 1914, Jane?
Completely coincidental I think! But then WWI made many odd things happen.
It did.
I don’t think my grandfather or his future wife’s brother had left the country until they joined the army.
Apparently that is why so many young men from rural areas signed up. Steady pay, chance to get out of their little village, and “adventure”.
That’s a really touching story. Small moments like that say so much about kindness in awful times, and it’s lovely that the connection lasted a lifetime — that white rabbit coming full circle is just perfect.
Hello and welcome to the forum. Please do tell us something about yourself and your connection to France.
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