Posted on 04/20/2020 4:09:08 AM PDT by gattaca
Virtually time travel back to 1918.
Peering into this room in France is as if you are stepping into a time portal into the early 1900s. The bedroom, which belonged to a French soldier, hasn't been touched since 1918.
If you drive three hours southwest of Paris, you'll find Belabre, a quaint French village with a population of fewer than 1,000. That is where you will discover the home of the parents of Hubert Guy Pierre Alphonse Rochereau.
When World War I was ravaging Europe, a young Rochereau was deployed to the Belgian battlefield. Sadly, Dragoons' Second Lieutenant Hubert Rochereau died at the age of 21. Rochereau, who was a graduate of the elite French Saint-Cyr military school, passed away in an English field ambulance after fighting in the village of Loker, Flanders, on April 26, 1918. World War I would officially end a few months later, on Nov. 11, 1918.
Rochereau was buried in a British cemetery, and his family didn't track down his burial site until 1922. Rochereau's parents brought their son's body back to their home town of Belabre.
The parents made Rochereau's bedroom a makeshift shrine of sorts, refusing to alter the room. The only change they made was placing a small bottle of soil from the Belgian field where he lost his life. The vial is labeled: "The earth of Flanders in which our dear child fell and which kept his remains for four years."
The memorial to Hubert Rochereau still stands today, 102 years after he breathed his last breath on that WWI battlefield. Rochereau's bedroom is untouched, seemingly frozen in time.
Hubert's parents wanted to honor their son past their time here on Earth, so they included a request in the home's deed: Leave the bedroom exactly how it is for the next 500 years. In 1935, the parents bequeathed their home to a military friend, General Eugene Bridoux, under the condition that their son's room would remain untouched for 500 years.
A small twin bed sits in the unspoiled chamber, as well as a wood desk. Books are stacked up high as they collect dust and spider webs. Rochereau's medals, the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d'Honneur, sparkle in the achromatic room. Black and white photographs of friends who also died in the war decorate the somber walls.
Scattered about the room, you can see Hubert's blue uniform jacket, pistols, knife, keys, a notebook, military manuals, a filled pipe, and hand-rolled cigarettes. "I tried to smoke one," the current owner of the house, Daniel Fabre, said of the old cigarettes. "It wasn't very nice."
"He was young, a military officer, and I imagine him to be quite provincial, perhaps even narrow-minded," Fabre told the BBC. "But it's part of the history of the house, so I keep it."
"I like to say I live in his house, but not with him," Fabre said.
Fabre's daughter will inherit the house, and she too has agreed to never touch Hubert's room.
wow I would love to see that
I’ve studied WWII extensively, WWI is just too grim.
Is he Buck Rogers ?
Pics at the link and a link there to a Tweet with more pics.
Sadly there is a mlitary coat badly deteriorating from just time and air (and probably moths),
If they are to preserve that and other organic materials someone will have to “touch” it and put them in glass with nitrogen. Also no flash photography.
Buck LeRogers.
It killed roughly 10,000 men a day, 365 days a year, for over four years.
Yep. My grandfather was gassed in Argonne. He finally died from his injuries in 1958, a few months before I was born.
>>That is where you will discover the home of the parents of Hubert Guy Pierre Alphonse Rochereau.
they must be ancient today
I found your link did not work.
here is one that works
https://www.theblaze.com/news/wwi-soldiers-bedroom-untouched-1918
“Sadly there is a mlitary coat badly deteriorating from just time and air (and probably moths),”
That’s the contract, the word is “untouched”. I’m thinking they wont even wash the bed sheets after all this time?
So, you're saying it was almost as bad as COVID-19?
Unfortunately I was too young to appreciate him when he died and now I have so many questions I would like to ask him if he were still around.
Do a YouTube search of: ’hubert rochereau bedroom’
There are a few short videos there of his room.
Well they have clearly been dusting so there is some “touching” going on.
But there will be nothing left in 50 years, much less 500, if someone does not intervene to preserve.
These were greiving parents not museum curators.
Studied WWII most of my life. I learn new things all of the time. Very hard to read about WWI. War started by the bullet of a socialist assassin, trained by a secret service. The massive loss of life, the repeated command failures, the weapons far advanced of tactics, left a bloodbath that’s just hard to comprehend.
My Father was told from childhood never to go fight in a war. His father had gone AWOL and escaped conscription in the Italian army before WWII and fled across the new border to Austria and finally to the United States to avoid another European war. He was against any service for any army, although his brothers all participated in the Yugoslavian resistance against the NAZI’s. His brother, my great Uncle was caught, nearly died in captivity in a NAZI work ‘camp’. I was told in childhood to never voluntarily serve. I thought it was the Vietnam war, but the family history was far deeper....
My father was visiting a museum in now day Slovenia, he saw a picture of his Grandfather at the end of WWI. He did not know that he had been in the Austrian army. He had fought the entire White War in the mountains with the Austrian army. His photo, in his uniform, was the last exhibit in the museum. It wasn’t until my Father read about he White War, that he realized why the family was so against it all.
At this point, somewhere deep in my blood, I can smell a fascist. Hitler, Mussolini, modern Democrats (and their deep state operatives, you can just feel it. The ‘communists’ are really no better. I hope and pray that the voices of the dead scream out to people not to make the same mistakes and choices. War is hell.....but fascism and socialism are actually worse and always lead to War.
Sorry for the long ramble.
In 1930 a British author coined the term 'thankful village'. This was a city, town, village, or hamlet that did not lose any of their sons to the war. In all the United Kingdom, in all those thousands of incorporated area, only 53 were identified as Thankful Villages. All were in England, none were in Scotland or Wales or Ireland. Following World War 2 a second survey identified 17 of those as doubly thankful in that they also didn't lose anyone in World War 2.
A similar survey was conducted in France. The total number of Thankful Villages there? One.
Mine too but he came through the gas.
“I’ve studied WWII extensively, WWI is just too grim.”
Same with me.
I’ve studied WWII extensively, WWI is just too grim.
—
Too true. One of the best podcasts I’ve heard on WWI, its horrors, and its utter pointlessness in its origin was from the Hardcore History podcast series “Blueprint for Armageddon”.
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