War Service
Unlike North American Mennonites, who emigrated in the 18th century, French Mennonites had largely abandoned the principle of non-resistance or pacifism. It was not unusual then that Widmer enrolled in the Ecole des Sous-Officiers, a military academy at Saint Maixent.
Afterwards, he became a primary school teacher near Montbéliard but remained in the Army reserves. When France declared war on Germany in September 1939, Widmer was called back to the Army. He was serving on the front along the Rhine when Germany invaded France in June 1940. His unit was beaten back to the Vosges mountains. Widmer was taken prisoner by the Germans at Masevaux in the Haut Rhin.
Read more about this topic: Pierre Widmer
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or service:
“It is the women of Europe who pay the price while war rages, and it will be the women who will pay again when war has run its bloody course and Europe sinks down into the slough of poverty like a harried beast too spent to wage the fight. It will be the sonless mothers who will bend their shoulders to the plough and wield in age-palsied hands the reaphook.”
—Kate Richards O’Hare (1877–1948)
“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)