French 75

2 oz. Sour mix & Cognac, Chilled Champagne

Stir Sour mix & Cognac in a Collins glass with just a bit of ice, Fill with Champagne, Garnish with a tricolour Flag

It may or may not have been malaria. The vivacious red-head I had last seen on Friday was back in the office, sitting in front of the big window that overlooks New York Avenue. She had come to the office straight from the Press Conference that had closed out the Congressional Delegation her husband had led. A CoDel, as they are known here.

She looked tired. I had talked to her on Friday, at noon. She was headed for the Rayburn Horshoe, the entrance to the big House office building, and then Andrews Air Force Base to catch a plane. She had been in Sudan over the weekend, talking to refugees from the savagery in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

There was the night lost in the air headed east, and the five o’clock wake-up in the what passed for the best hotel in the Chadian capital of Ndjamena, but there were mosquitoes in the room, and they did not care if they were biting a US Congressman and his wife.

The window framed the gray obelisk that held the clock that once marked the Bus Station and the construction across the little triangular square. ”I took the pills every day. I hope it isn’t malaria.”

”It might just be fatigue. I felt that way after we got out of Haiti on that trip in ”95 and went right to the Press conference. After it I was wiped out. You are entitled to feel lousy.”

”I got something for you like you asked,” she said. ”I think you will like it. The Deputy Chief of Mission helped me pick it out. He knew just the place.”

”Was this in Chad?”

”No, Algiers. It is a little hard to sort out. I missed the luncheon meeting with the President. But it was the only time we had to go shopping.”

”I’m sorry I asked you to get me something. I just remember how exciting it was to be on a delegation. The people treat you pretty well. The shopping can be quite unique.”

”Everyone treated us great. Except the Sudanese. The refugees said that they attack the villages in three waves. First, the Air Force bombs them with the Russian planes. That makes the people flee. Then the Army shoots at them. Then the Janjui come through on horseback. With machetes.” She shivered, and it could have a malarial chill or something else.

”Paul Rusesabagina and Don Cheadle were on the trip. Paul was the real guy from the story of the Hotel Rwanda. He was the manager of the Hotel des Milles Collines in Kigali. Don played him in the movie. They were collecting interviews with the refugees. They are going to do a story for Nightline about the situation in Darfur.”

”How was the food?” I asked, changing the subject. Darfur and Rwanda had something in common. The machete.

”Paul had an ethereal presence. I don’t remember much about the food. The other Congressional spouse on the trip said she had the best croissant of her life at breakfast there. I think it was the second morning, the one with the six-o’clock wake up.” She screwed up her face. ”I think it was the second day. She was a red-head, too. Really pretty.”

”It is not surprising they have good croissants,” I said. ”It was all French once. The town you were in used to be called Fort-Lamy. It was the French spear in the side of the British Lion, when Sudan was British and the Empire ran from Cairo to the Cape.”

She was running on adrenaline and her eyes were luminous. ”It was awful. There are 250,000 refugees on the border. We went across to see them. They are a half hour away from the nearest water. They are issued three gallons a day per family. The women wait in line all the time.”

”What did you get me?” I asked.

”I hope you like it. The Major General who does plans and policy for the American Headquarters came down from Germany to talk to us.” She told me his name, and I whistled. I knew him, and when I looked him up, I found that the time I knew him had been expunged from his public record. Go figure.

“He stayed in the meeting with the President, and they bumped the Defense Minister from the schedule. The Agenda was a little chaotic. That is when the DCM took me to an antique store he liked. “She reached down into her desk and brought up a shiny brass cylinder, perhaps eighteen inches long and three in diameter.

”Was it in the Casbah?”

”No. They wouldn’t let us go there. They could not guarantee our safety, not even with the four cute Air Force guys they sent to escort us. They had a code name. They called themselves the Phoenix Ravens. I thought they might be football players, since they were in civilian clothes. They must have been part of the Armani Air Force. They looked good. All the women noticed.”

”That is the way the Air Force works,” I said. ”They like to put their best face forward for the CoDels they host.” The brass cylinder was an artillery shell that had been completely worked with an intricate lattice pattern of flowers, except for the numbers ”1917” and the word ”Reims.”

”It is World War One. This was the best of four in the shop. The DCM thought you would like it since you are retired military.”

I turned the shell over in my hands, feeling the weight of the brass. From the diameter I estimated that it was a shell from the famous French 75 artillery piece, officially known as the Model 1897 75 mm Field Gun.

”It is a nice piece of brass” she said. “It must have cost a lot of money back then.”

”They made millions of these, filled with high explosive and tipped with steel that could penetrate concrete or burst into shrapnel.” I turned it over in my hands, feeling the weight. They don’t make quality like this anymore.

”I’m going to look up what happened at Reims in 1917,” I said.” I don’t think it was decisive. I know that the cathedral was destroyed.”

”So how do you think it got to Algiers?” she said.

”Algeria wasn’t a colony then. It was considered part of Metropolitan France. Some soldier took it home as a souvenir of his service. He could have been a Frenchman or an Arab, or a Legionnaire.”

”Well, it’s here now. I’m glad you like it. I think I need to go to the Doctor. I don’t feel very well.”

”Did you get the sense that we are going to do anything about Darfur from the press conference?”

”I don’t know. Wait and see the reaction to the Nightline story. We have to get people to pay attention to it.”

”You should go to the Doctor and you should get some rest,” I said. ”And thanks for the souvenir. I’ll get you a check.”

I walked back to my office, hefting the shell. I made out a check and Googled up the terms ”Reims” and ”1917.”

The engraving commemorated the Second Battle of the Aisne, an unmitigated disaster for the French. The offensive involved 7,000 pieces that fired this kind of shell, and more than a million troops. The ”creeping barrage” was introduced there to shock the Germans. It had been devised to ensure victory, but failed coordination resulted in the wholesale slaughter of friendly troops.

The first armed Americans were at the Reims front- volunteer ambulance drivers of the American Field Service who were pressed into hauling ammunition for the French 75s on the line.

The French took 187,000 casualties and the ensuing disillusion and mutiny nearly put them out of the war. It wasn’t Verdun, but it was the last straw. Cautious Henri-Philippe Petain was elevated to High Command, and was able to restore order only by refraining from committing his forces to offensive operations. Henri later surrendered to the Germans in 1940, and was President of Vichy France.

The light in my office glinted off the warm brass. You could argue that this shell came from the moment the French Empire began to fall, from Ndjamena to Algiers.

Cool piece. I think it will be a perfect vase for dried flowers.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

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