In a small town in eastern France, a bridge crosses a narrow river joining two communities.

Fem and Fismet are footnotes in the story of the Great War, but for American doughboys in August

1918,

this is where they first encountered the sharp end of the war on the Western Front.

On an overcast day in May 1940, a group of car key-clad French engineers peered from behind the sandbags in a side street of Femm, a small town on the Aine, and which overlooked a bridge across the river

Vela. These men had been fighting hard for days as the German blitzkrieg cast its dark shadows across the French Ardennes.

This attack had mirrored the Schleifen plan of a generation before, but this time the Germans had seemed unstoppable.

Yet now here, at this point, this bridge, there would be some account. Here they would be halted.

Infantry and world reconnaissance units were nearing the bridge. The rumble of their engines grew near.

The turrets turned, looking for for targets it was now or never an order was given and the charges

which these french sappers had placed under the stonework of the bridge erupted sending rubble and debris into the air

as the dust dispersed it was clear that the bridge span had been dropped into the Vela River.

There would be no crossing here, at least not for now.

And there at Femes, perhaps the French soldiers hadn't noticed it,

but amongst the chaos of battle and the thud,thud-thud of the 20-millimeter cannons

from the armoured cars,

maybe, just maybe,

they could see two figures still standing close to the bridge,

not fellow soldiers, but stone-carved women

mounted on narrow columns.

These were the symbols of liberty, of hope, perhaps, of a better world yet to come,

and beneath them they could just make out the carved faces of soldiers too.

...