And it is used so often, just everybody recognizes it.
Ever been to Camerone, in Mexico, near Puebla, in Veracruz?
Does the date 30.4.1863 ring any bells?
My altar-boy Latin's a bit rusty, but approximately:
They were hereWhen the 62 men and two other officers under the command of Capitan Danjou had been reduced to six badly wounded survivors with all but one officer and NCO killed, they did what they had promised their officer: the six fixed their bayonets and charged the 3000 Mexican troopers.
less than sixty
Against an entire army
Its mass crushed them.
Life, rather than courage
abandoned these French soldiers
on April 30, 1863To their memory,
this monument was erected
by their fatherland.
Folks down around Texas way sometimes wonder if those Frenchies had heard the story about the Texian stand at the Alamo 27 years previously, and tried to do as well as Travis and his boys did. But Danjou's patrol knew there was no relief coming to their aid, and chose to go out fighting for eleven hours rather than accept terms for an honorable surrender. All of them.
Don't mistake weak and corrupt French politicians for the Average French grunt or French ForeignLegionnaire. Today, a hundred and thirty-one years after that fight, the Mexican Army troops passing that monument salute their former foes buried there.
