Historical Information 

Memorial of the Great War in Thélus. Moulin Rouge, at the tip of the Artois front. This is also the exact location described by Corporal Louis Barthas in his notebooks.

FRATERNIZING AT THE “MOULIN ROUGE”

The Corporal Louis Barthas, the cooper of his station and a native of the Aude region, recounts several cases of this fraternization. He describes the daily exhaustion of soldiers, the deep division between the men within the troop, their hierarchy, the society behind the front line… to the point of feeling closer to the enemies who shared this daily life and against whom they were expected to fight. On 10 December 1915, Barthas’ unit was ordered to maintain the “Trench of the Moulin”, which was flooded by rain. As the soldiers fled the trench so as not to perish inside it, the two camps lowered their arms and exchanged words, handshakes, tobacco and alcohol. “Who knows! Maybe one day in this corner of the Artois we well erect a monument to commemorate this surge of fraternity among men who hated the war but were obliged to kill each other against their will”. This wish of Louis Barthas is at the origin of the first French monument in honor of fraternization, inaugurated on 17 December 2015 in Neuville-Saint-Vaast.