Mankind, overnight it seemed, embraced barbarity, rage and death, that universal blight that affects all species. In the space of four years, generations of men were wiped out, along with millions of horses, oxen and mules, and as many dogs, pigeons and donkeys. And that’s without counting all the game mown down in the insanity of gunfire, all the wild animals caught unawares by bombardment, all the deer and foxes slaughtered without even having the honour of being hunted, and the hares obliterated in scorched earth. Other animals were poached by shadowy figures desperate for something to eat.

Sheep, cows and goats were requisitioned from farms and dragged off to combat zones for meat. Every day trainloads of trembling animals were taken to the front to feed soldiers exhausted by fear and fighting. Thirty-five thousand cows a day had to be killed to keep the troops going. And even that was barely sufficient for the millions of hungry soldiers who were served soup, cold by the time it reached them, in which there was no sign of meat, only kidney beans, which were starchy but unsatisfying. The cows or sheep which had been sacrificed to assuage the hunger of the troops had been boiled in stock and broken down so much that they were almost useless.

Men who were fit and healthy had left for Gramat or Cahors to cram themselves onto trains for the front, but it was still necessary to get the harvest in before the weather worsened or the crops spoiled, so it had to be managed without them. According to the newspapers, in big cities men were proud to go and fight, so fired up by the idea of killing the Boches that they climbed onto the trains singing. But, in villages, men departed downcast and in tears. The women left behind also had to give up their horses and oxen, and even their mules and donkeys, if they were any use, because until factories were working at full capacity, the war effort needed horsepower. Their precious pigeons reared high up in the dovecotes were all recorded or set free; sometimes gendarmes killed them on their own initiative, for fear that they would be used to help the enemy.

The one thing in Orcières’s favour was that it was hidden in the hills, and gendarmes did not normally go there. So the mayor, Fernand, hid the flocks that were grazing up on the summer pasture from the requisition committees. He hid two hundred sheep, keeping them safe, away from prying eyes, in the meadows beyond Mont d’Orcières. And he also, a week later, said nothing about the five lions and three tigers which arrived in his village, eight large wild beasts hidden away behind the yellow and red panels of Pinder’s Circus wagons. Eight deadly dangerous animals, roaring and enraged.

August 2017

August 2017