During the third week in July 1914, war was far from the mind of Frances Wilson Huard, an American living in France and married to a French artist and estate owner. This book is her memoir of the short but eventful time from the end of July 1914 through late September 1914. During this time war was declared, her husband and many other men were called up for duty, her horses requisitioned and she left in charge of an estate, with “all employees under the age of 20.” Frances decides to set up the estate to be a hospital and goes through the necessary steps, but is forced to flee in early September with all of her dependents due to the oncoming German invasion. The Germans were defeated and driven back at the Battle of Marne (September 5 through 12). Frances returns to find her estate has been looted and defaced. She cleans it up and opens the hospital. In the ending paragraph she notes that they have kept the hospital going to care for injured soldiers for 15 months.

This book was published in 1916, before the war ended. We can look back now and know that the Allies won World War I. It’s fascinating to get a look at the village, estate, events and times through the eyes of a person who lived it. Madame Huard notes the wartime atrocities during her time away from her estate, but uses euphemistic language and glosses over the details.

As I read I noticed two things particularly: communication about events was pretty slow, and so people didn’t really know what was going on until they were in the thick of it. For example, Madame Huard doesn’t know the British have soldiers in France until she meets them while fleeing. (She helps translate for them.) The second thing was that there were many references to the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1871), which would have been in living memory at the time Madame Huard wrote her memoir.

This book was good reading. If you read it, have your encyclopedia handy. There are many geographical and political references that make more sense with a bit more background information. ( )