Paris had fallen two days earlier, and the French army was preparing a new defensive position on the Loire River. Establishing bridgeheads on the left side of the Loire was therefore a high German priority. A French sapper team, however, blew up an arch of the bridge when German motorcyclists appeared, and thirty French soldiers opened fi re from the island. The reconnaissance regiment guarded the bridges without incident until it was relieved by advance sections of the th Infantry Division in the evening of June In the evening of June 19, German construction specialists made the destroyed arch of the bridge passable again.
Some of the soldiers from Bourges were black Africans. One of them reported that the Germans, after gathering the prisoners, selected the black soldiers and lined them up against a wall to massacre them. Frontstalag was the term for German POW camps near the front and in occupied countries. From this moment on, an anonymous report by Senghor from June , which I identi fi ed, gives a fuller picture of his captivity experience.
The food rations were insuf fi cient and of poor quality rutabagas and half-rotten potatoes , and the prisoners — predominantly French colonial soldiers — were housed in drafty hangars without heat in a camp that turned into a vast swamp after every rain. It is a huge village of mud and branches, a village cruci fi ed. Hatred and hunger ferment there in the torpor of a deadly summer. It is a large village surrounded by the immobile spite of barbed wire.
Download the full excerpt here. Keep up with the latest from Cambridge University Press on our social media accounts. It is a large village surrounded by the immobile spite of barbed wire A large village under the tyranny of four machine guns Always ready to fi re. And the noble warriors beg for cigarette butts, Fight with dogs over bones, and argue among themselves Like imaginary cats and dogs.
Enjoyed reading this article? Share it today: Tweet. About The Author. Find more articles like this:.
