My Years With Proust - Day 666

The end of the letter was absolutely truthful. "You have no idea what this war is like, my dear friend, or of the importance that a road, a bridge, a height can assume.  How often have I thought of you, of those walks of ours together which you made so delightful, through all this now ravaged countryside, where vast battles are fought to gain possession of some path, some slope which you once loved and which we so often explored together! Probably, like me, you did not imagine that obscure Roussainville and boring Meseglise, where our letters used to be brought from and where the doctor was once fetched when you were ill, would ever be famous places.  Well, my dear friend, they have become for ever a part of history, with the same claim to glory as Austerlize or Valmy.  The battle of Meseglise lasted for more than eight months; the Germans lost in it more than six hundred thousand men, they destroyed Meseglise, but they did not capture it.  As for the short cut up the hill which you were so fond of and which we used to call the hawthorn path, where you claim that as a small child you fell in love with me (whereas I assure you in all truthfulness it was I who was in love with you), I cannot tell you how important it has become.  The huge field of corn up which it emerges if the famous Hill 307, which you must have seen mentioned again and again the bulletins.  The French blew up the little bridge over the Vivonne which you said did not remind you of your childhood as much as you would have wished, and the Germans have thrown other bridges across the river.  For a year and half they held on half of Combray and the French the other."

Marcel Proust, Time Regained, p. 778

Gilberte writes a letter to Marcel explaining what is happening in the part of France where she was staying, and which was captured by the Germans during World War I.  A few pages ago we found out that the Germans had arrived and took control of the house where she was staying.  She reports, "As for the short cut up the hill which you were so fond of and which we used to call the hawthorn path, where you claim that as a small child you fell in love with me (whereas I assure you in all truthfulness it was I who was in love with you), I cannot tell you how important it has become." Their shared memory, much like the French countryside itself, was violated by the war. Gilberte continues, "You have no idea what this war is like, my dear friend, or of the importance that a road, a bridge, a height can assume.  How often have I thought of you, of those walks of ours together which you made so delightful, through all this now ravaged countryside, where vast battles are fought to gain possession of some path, some slope which you once loved and which we so often explored together!" Their cherished private memory has now been erased by the official collective memory.