Cumieres le mort homme

When all is said and done, in Verdun it is difficult not to be reminded of wars. Indeed, since Douai, it is only a matter of time when one passes une cimitiere Americain before one meets une cimitiere Anglais or une cimitiere Canadien. However, not far north of Verdun lie a monument not to a man, or a group of men, but a monument to an entire community, which no longer exists. One finds this sort of thing in the 'New World' quite often when a group of settlers threw their lot in with a bit of land. It didn't quite work so they upped sticks and moved on. Not Cumieres le mort homme (that is its name and I know not whether the last three words have been added once it perished). Cumieres le mort homme was shelled out of existence. It seems that the ground on which it lay was so important as to be fought over and repossessed, so to speak, on a minimum of three occasions. I don't know if Hutin survived. Hutin was the community's cheesemaker. Hutin, then, must have had to find another town, without a resident cheesemaker to ply his trade. How many towns in France did not already have a cheesemaker? I wouldn't like to guess and I thank heaven that I do not have to find out. Although curiosity compels one to ask, exactly what do you do when the market for your merchandise is forced out of existence. So that I imagine is how war goes. Even if one is not a combatant, one is affected even so. And yet it remains so popular. Unless some bright spark can think of a way of distributing resources which sates everyone and still feed our grasping need to accumulate wealth, (which, I remind you, is exactly the same thing, unless you're an accountant), I'm afraid there are likely to be more. Hutin is not the last town's cheesemaker to have lost his town. If we're really lucky, it'll be the cheesemaker in the next town, in my case, Poplar. I do hope I never meet him. I know that sounds callous. However, when your 'tribe' goes to war, and it will, you will pray that it is the other side's cheesemaker who loses out.