The Forgotten Battles n°20 - Lobbes 1914 (in French)

On July 31, 1914, at 5 o'clock in the morning, the notary Duquenne, mayor of Lobbes, was ordered to display the military mobilization in his town. Like the entire population of the neighboring villages of Haute-Sambre, he will experience requisitions, the deployment of Red Cross units and the return of expatriates from belligerent countries. After the multiple passages of French regiments, a violent and very deadly fight will bloody the pretty valley of Thudin. He will be the witness before becoming the hostage in the service of the German staffs during the siege of the fortress of Maubeuge. This encounter battle did not allow, by its suddenness, the evacuation of all the inhabitants, they left the following generations with many written and sometimes material memories. These first pages of the Great War written by civilians describe well the horror lived, the suffering endured and the efforts to survive in the turmoil. In those days of barbarism, these non-combatants were the Third Actor, suffering and reborn to more humanity.