Oh

macao |1952|

Idiots, fools and connoisseurs

Mahina Florence by Sam Feyen

https://www.instagram.com/likalinea/

Sunfilled path Ścieżka pełna słońca

* Birdwatch in poland *

📷 Aleksander/getty images

Hendersons Shooting Star..

Annette Drevon: cantinière, soldier

"In 1880, visitors to the markets of Les Halles in Paris might have noticed an especially striking woman sitting at her vegetable stall. In her mid-fifties, with black hair and unwrinkled skin, she had an expression of ‘courage and energy’, which was perhaps unsurprising, given her past. Annette Drevon was a cantinière in the French army, a woman officially deputised to sell food and drink to the soldiers. At the Battle of Magenta in 1859, Annette was attached to the second regiment of Zouaves. During the battle two Austrian soldiers seized the regimental flag. Annette got it back: she killed the first soldier with a sabre and the second with two shots from her revolver. The regiment’s colonel pinned his own Cross of the Legion of Honour to her chest in honour of her actions.

Annette was still serving during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, where she shot another soldier, this time a German who either insulted her or attempted to steal her Cross; she was sentenced to death but pardoned by Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, and returned to France. She later received a small pension from Marshal MacMahon, who had commanded the who had commanded the French troops at Magenta, which she used to set up her vegetable stall.

Annette Drevon’s story is a useful reminder that for well over 400 years the normal battlefield was full of ordinary women, who were not only essential to the conduct of war but also demonstrated bravery, physical strength and the ability to stand up to tough conditions – all the things military leaders of the late twentieth century fretted that women could not do."

Forgotten warriors: The long history of women in combat, Sarah Percy

Presidents St, Kingston, Staats Fasoldt

Mary J. Blige, New York, 2006. Markus Klinko. Chromogenic print.