Oh, throw down your plow and hoe Rest not to lock your homes Side by side we wait the might of the darkest of them all - Page & Plant The low country around Melle was home to many men of furrows and harness lines who quietly toiled their fields. When the telegram reached Soupt that August morning of 1914, Amand Duchaigne was already a man of thirty-four with calloused hands of a seasoned farmer. The Republic called and he went without hesitation. He had already served time in the Army – two years from 1911 to 1913, from which he was discharged with a certificate of good conduct. This notice for reservists in 1914 was a recall to duty – one that would go on for four long years after the German invasion. He reported to the 32e Régiment d’Infanterie barracks at Châtellerault, where local soldiers gathered amid the confusion of horses, kitbags, and the scent of oilcloth and damp wool. They spoke of a quick war then, of a march through Alsace and a triumphant return before the harvest. By early August the 32e was on trains bound for the Lorraine front, the men packed in open carriages with rifles stacked between their knees. They fought near Mortviller and the approaches to Toul, where the first scent of burned powder filled the summer air and the fields still smelled faintly of cut hay. By September, Duchaigne had been named Caporal, and within weeks Sergent. The fighting was confused and costly, with the regiment shifting between defensive works and shallow assaults before the line became established and entrenched beind wire. The autumn brought no victory. The regiment was drawn back toward Paris and attached to the defensive formations guarding the Oise valley and Camp Retranché de Paris, holding ground around Villiers-Adam, Mériel, and Frépillon. It was there that the routines of static war settled in with long hours in trenchworks cut through clay and roots, patrols along the Oise, and nights under shellfire that echoed off the wooded ridges. The rain thickened, the nights grew longer, and the early frost took hold. From mid-October to the end of November, the battalions or the regiment fortified the defensive perimeter of the Paris entrenched camp, working through the sodden woods of Nerville, the Bois Carreau, and the Forêt de l’Isle-Adam to dig a continuous line along the ridges that overlooked the Oise. Men of the 31e Territorial Regiment held the opposite bank, exchanging shouted greetings and tools in quiet hours. They completed shelters and kitchens, laid parapets between Beaumont-sur-Oise and Noisy-sur-Oise, and continued to dig new trench lines toward Maffliers and the Bois de Bellay. The soldiers labored in waterlogged earth soaked to the waist, the rain freezing on their sodden greatcoats by morning. Frost took hold where the ground would not drain, and the musty smell of damp canvas and wet wool hung over every dugout. It was the kind of cold that worked into the joints and never left. In these final days of the year, frostbite spread among sentries and working parties alike. On December 5th, Amand was evacuated suffering from pieds gelés – both feet frozen after weeks of exposure in the flooded lines. The frost and the waterlogged fields of that first winter marked the end of his first campaign – a punishing season that left its ache in him long after. When Amand returned to the front on nearly a year later on November 24th, 1915 he rejoined the 80e Régiment d’Infanterie, a unit already seasoned in Champagne and tempered by the long grind after Yser. His service record marks him as at the ‘Armies’ from that date – his convalescence in the ‘interieur’ was over, and his second and longest campaign begun. The 80e’s winter of 1915–1916 was largely in the Champagne sectors held the previous autumn—between Perthes, Souain, and the works around Tahure. The front there meant watches in clay that took the imprint of a boot and kept it – slow drainage, sap lines, and a mining war that shook the parapets. Reliefs were at night under barrage and rations came forward in sacks that arrived as wet as the men who hauled them. The regiment absorbed losses from mines and shelling, rebuilt companies with drafts, and watched the front from grenade posts, behind light machine-guns, and sent out short but frequent and deliberate raids. A steady ‘sous-officier’, Sergent Duchaigne guided replacements on the small things that kept men alive. By August 1916 the 80e was thrown into Verdun, holding the broken ground around Fleury-sous-Douaumont. No continuous trenches laced the ground, only shell holes that brimmed after a rain. Grenade work and barrages that cut the runners to ground turned every crater into a sour cistern in the late summer heat. The regiment held and countered by short rushes for gains of a dozen meters paid for in blood. Duchaigne’s section lived under the smell that Verdun never lost – noxious fumes, turned earth, and the sickly odor of corpses that shells brought back to the surface. The next year, 1917, the 80e took its turn on Côte 304 and the Mort-Homme for five months of keeping the enemy in check and perfecting ‘coups de main’ that became a signature of the regiment. In the autumn the regiment shifted east, passing through Vesoul–Lure–Belfort to hold the Turenne sector in Alsace where on February 23rd, 1918 the 2e Bataillon attacked Pont d’Aspach – a village turned to blockhouses – reducing concrete nests with grenades under heavy trench mortar fire. In that action, Sergent Duchaigne was cited at Division level – on March 5th, when his section leader fell, Amand took command and repelled a German counter attack. Despite their own losses, his section held their position. In late April the regiment moved again. On May 3rd, 1918 the 80e relieved a British regiment before the Kemmel. No trenches cut across the area, only open craters with water to mid leg and gas shells working both front and rear. Five days later, in liaison with the 15e Régiment d’Infanterie, a Amand’s company advanced over swampy ground and gained the front line before being pressed by a strong counter attack. That same morning the enemy seized Hill 44 from the 143e Régiment d’Infanterie, forcing a slight withdrawal on the 80e’s left. At 1600 hours, his battalion of the 80e counter attacked to retake the height, only partly achieving its aim. The days that followed teetered with ground lost and regained, but eventually at great cost to the French, they held on to Hill 44. The Regimental Order citing his regiment noted that “despite violent machine gun fire,” they led attacks twice against a strongly organized house. The 80e was regarded as an elite regiment and praised for the five months at Hill 304 and exceptional bravery throughout all ranks during the battle for Hill 44 during those three days in May. After Kemmel, the regiment withdrew to Lorraine to reconstitute before Nancy in mid May and then the quieter Nomeny sector in June. Duchaigne remained with the regiment until, at the end of the July, he transferred to the 3e Régiment d’Artillerie de Campagne, his years-old frostbite of 1914 cited in his papers as reason for the change to a less grating branch of service. The gunners, armed with the French 75mm, had already been blooded from the very first weeks of the war from Lorraine and the Yser to Champagne and Verdun. His transfer came as the regiment moved north from Alsace toward the heavy fighting around Flanders and then into Lorraine, where it remained in reserve before being drawn into the final advance. The men spent their days tending the horses, maintaining the guns, and digging fresh positions in the chalky soil. On the night of August 20th, 1918 the regiment entrained at Nancy for Compiègne, joining the concentration for the Allied counter-offensive across the Aisne. After several night marches through the Villers-Cotterêts forest, the guns reached Chavigny Farm, where the regiment bivouacked under shellfire. Orders arrived at midnight that the batteries were to be in position by dawn. At first light on August 28th, the 3e opened fire in support of the attack on Soissons, pounding the enemy’s lines across the Aisne and Ailette. The opening day met stiff resistance, but by the following week, after hard fighting through Crouy and Coucy-le-Château, the French had forced the Germans back into the Saint-Gobain forest. The regiment’s fire pummeled the way with concentrated barrages along the ridges and crossroads where German columns attempted to regroup. By September 7th, Amand’s old 80e Régiment d’Infanterie was among those who entered Coucy-le-Château under the cover of the 3e Régiment’s rolling fire. The guns moved by exhausted horses along the Serre River, advancing under constant fire through terrain broken by flooding, felled trees, and shattered villages. Each battery position had to be carved out of mud with ammunition hauled over ruined bridges and flooded causeways. In these conditions, it often took twenty hours to advance less than twenty kilometers. The pursuit quickened in early November as the regiment pushed north of Vervins, crossing the Thon on an improvised footbridge. By November 10th, their guns were deployed at Brognon, shelling the German positions near Signy-le-Petit. The next morning at 0700, the regiment received the message announcing the armistice. Their advance did not halt immediately – the regiment continued forward, firing its last shells moments before the ceasefire. Duchaigne was reassigned that December to the 16e Escadron du Train des Équipages Militaires, responsible for transport and supply in the occupied zones of Germany. His demobilization came on August 2nd, 1919 exactly five years after his recall to duty, and he returned home to Melle, walking a bit more stiffly than when he left, to find his plough and farmland waiting.