Sam’s recounting of the innocence of “Dear Annette” refers to a character in the literary classic The Peasants (Sons of the Soil) by Honore de Balzac in 1826. Fittingly, this story is about the failure of an agrarian utopia. Like the Maine farm boys and fishermen of the 103rd, Annette was a hard-working peasant laborer who was physically attractive; blond, sweet, delicate and lovely, yet paid only 30 francs a year. As Sam states, after going on a pay-day drinking binge, the loud mix of English, French and Acadian voices certainly must have sounded like the Tower of Babel in the billet. Indeed, the multi-lingual character of the 103rd Infantry remained alive more than 20 years later during World War II when commands in some Companies were still occasionally given in French.

Regards,
REL