commune
A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to:
Administrative-territorial entities
* Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township
** Communes of ...
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
.
Population
The Iron 12
On 25 February 1915 during the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
there was a
massacre
A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when per ...
of British soldiers in Iron. The soldiers' regiment had gotten cut off from the rest of the army, causing the regiment to split up and wait until the other British regiments came back. A French civilian named Vincente Chalandre and his family let eleven soldiers shelter in their attic, and the mill owner let them stay in the town's mill. A neighbour tipped them off to nearby German soldiers. The mill owner's daughter saw forty German soldiers entering the town and warned the soldiers they needed to leave. The soldiers hid outside the mill and thus were not captured.
Clovis, Chalandre's son, was having an affair at the time with the 22-year old woman named Blanche Griselin, whose husband, a member of the French military, was not in Iron at the time. Griselin was actually holding a double affair involved with her husband Clovis, and a Franco-Prussian War veteran named Louis Bachelet. Bachelet became aware of Clovis and how the Chalandre family was hiding British soldiers in their attic. He tipped off the German military, which arrested all eleven soldiers and Vincente Chalandre. The Germans burned the mill owner's mill to the ground to punish the mill owner for helping Chalandre, and Chalendre's daughter was ordered to burn down their family home. On 25 February Chalandre and the eleven soldiers were forced to dig their own graves, and they were shot by firing squad. Three riflemen were sent to kill each soldier, two of which aimed for the heart and the third for the legs. Of the eleven soldiers who died, five were English and the other six Irishmen. The remaining members of the Chalandre family were rounded up and sent to jail in Germany, except for the three youngest children, who were forced to live homeless by themselves, where they grew weak and neglected. When the war ended Mrs. Chalandre came back to Iron, weak and very sick with
Tuberculous meningitis
Tuberculous meningitis, also known as TB meningitis or tubercular meningitis, is a specific type of bacterial meningitis caused by the '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' infection of the meninges—the system of membranes which envelop the central ...
. Her three young children caught the disease from her and all four died in 1919, too weak to survive. Clovis, struck by grief, turned to
alcoholism
Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomi ...
, which eventually killed him in 1948, when he was 50 years old.