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Verdun
Meuse Lorraine Rue des Frères Boulhaut |
Hommage au monde rural et aux agricultrices en particulierTribute to the Rural World and Farmer's Wives in Particular |
Denis Mellinger
2016 |
Scupture group depicting two rural women, one sowing and one with a milk bucket, between them a sitting boy with a baby, and surrounded by farm animals (chicken), sheaves of corn and agricultural objects.
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1914-1918 1939-1945 |
Bronze badge of the ordre du mérite agricole.
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TRIBUTE TO THE RURAL WORLD AND FARMER'S WIVES IN PARTICULAR For the centenary of the Battle of Verdun 1916 - 2016 Two world wars resulted in heavy casualties in our countryside and vast expanses of ruined rural landscape. Farmers had started the harvest and ploughing without suspecting that artillery and machine guns would finish digging the furrows on the land of our battered countryside. The men of our villages were forced to replace their work overalls with military uniforms. So much fervour for a war that was supposed to be short, but alas turned out to be a never-ending battle... Men left their farms without warning, the world turned upside down, and women quickly understood that an enormous workload was about to fall on their shoulders. Caring and brave women, and unsung female workers were called upon to take up the challenge of working the land. Imbued with a shared feeling of solidarity, the war forced these women to perform everyday agricultural tasks. With courage and dignity, they rolled up their sleeves to milk animals, dig the land, and sew, plant and harvest the agricultural produce necessary for the daily life of a French population in turmoil. Caring women and often poverty-stricken women, they brought up children, watched over elderly parents and each day put all their energy into the family, into keeping food on the table, and running the family farm while their men were subjected to waves of deadly shells flying over their heads... This sculpture honours those millions of women farmers, farmworkers and wives of farmers, courageous and dignified women who, in that period of sacrifice and pain, unfailingly ensured the survival of French agriculture, with the will to go on living to make a better future possible. For many of them the war was painful. The death or physical and mental wounds of a husband, son, or brothers and uncles forced these courageous women to assume the heaviest of workloads for many long years. Denis Mellinger Sculptor |
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