“‘Marsels ’ ‘We have reached Marsels ’ ‘Hip Hip Hurrah ’ The sepoys were shouting excitedly on deck. Lalu got up from where he sat watching a game of cards and went to see Marseilles”.1

1The opening lines of Muluk Raj Anand’s well informed and celebrated novel Across the Black Waters (1940) offer us a striking snapshot of the way British Imperial troops first set eyes on a country where many were destined to shed their blood. Indeed, the harbor of Marseilles was the first French city most of these soldiers had ever seen. During the First World War, substantial numbers of British troops, be they South Africans, New Zealanders, Australians, Indians or West Indians, passed through Marseilles, France’s second largest city after Paris. Marseilles was and had always been cosmopolitan, founded by Greek traders in antiquity, hence it is sometimes known as the ‘Phocean city’. In France, it had come to be known from an early stage as ‘the door to the Orient’. However, as colonialists, soldiers, missionaries or traders left France’s shore from Marseilles in the nineteenth century, another influx of people from across the world entered France through what Matthew Graves calls the ‘gateway to the remembrance trails’.2 The landing of these foreign troops sparked off great enthusiasm amongst the Marseilles population. There was general consensus among the people that the arrival of the non-European soldiers was a unique event that merited a place in the collective memory of the city, in particular through the production and publication of iconographic documents, such as photographs. Indeed, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, images had become an increasingly fashionable source of preserving memory. While photographs had many other uses that shall not be discussed here, this article focuses on photographic postcards, souvenirs that people could keep and share with others. Such postcards were amongst the most attractive sources of memory, as they were a quick, simple and pleasant means of reviving and preserving memory in the shape of a souvenir object. Indeed, both the verb ‘to remember’ and the noun ‘souvenir’ share the same word in French, ‘ (se) souvenir’ and ‘un souvenir’, highlighting the direct and intimate link between the object as a token of memory, and the act of remembering.

2An example of such a connection is a French postcard dating from the First World War representing Indian red cross stretcher-bearers posing in front of the camera. The message on the back of the postcard, written by one Mr Chanchard, and addressed to a Mrs Marzoué, explains in simple terms the reason why he had bought this card: ‘These Indous (sic.) will remind you of these terrible times’ (private archives). Not only did this postcard of Indian soldiers remind the person looking at it that there were troops from the British Raj in France, but also, in a metonymical way, the document seemed to say that these soldiers stood for all soldiers and civilians who endured gruelling times during the world conflict. Hence, an intimate connection gradually came to be established between an object such as a photographic postcard and an event, a scene, or an individual. Such associations could include the memory of the person who had actually taken the picture, had asked for the photograph to be taken or was offered the photo. The photograph thus becomes a token of memory. Indeed, Becker argues that photographs are ‘an instrument of resurrection’, bringing back the past to the present.3 An image therefore can become a trace at the heart of the commemoration process: ‘A man with a camera once decided to freeze time by capturing the scene, and by doing so, he engaged in the difficult art of bringing memory and history together’.4 In this way, photographs, and thus souvenir photographic postcards, are not passive entities but social actors that play a part in human relations.5

3The ‘difficult art’ that Jay Winter mentions is indeed at the heart of how images work as both snapshots to preserve memory and as traces of history. Pierre Nora defines memory and history as being closely related, yet distinct: ‘Memory is life […] History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer’.6 Memory has to do with a single person embedded in a social group: ‘Collective memory is not history, though it is sometimes made of the same material. It is a collective phenomenon but it only manifests itself in the actions and statements of individuals’.7 According to Maurice Halbwachs, history only begins when social memory fades away and this is why the expression ‘historical memory’ is oxymoronic.8 This paper seeks to recall the subtle balance between memory and history as exemplified by the way the British Imperial troops in Marseilles were remembered and memorialized by the local population, the event standing at the intersection of these two notions.

The postcard industry and the First World War

4Photographed memories came to be preserved on a large scale when professionals did business through their commercialisation. Regularly throughout the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, technical devices were invented or developed to enable a wider audience to gain access to iconography found in books, newspapers, magazines, stereoscopic views, collectible cards (included with packets of cigarettes and chocolates), and of course postcards. The latter’s commercial success led to a ‘postcard craze’.9 Millions of consumers not only bought them for their intended use – to send a message to someone – but also because the illustrations that adorned them made postcards collectible. They became such a popular new media that they even turned into an unavoidable instrument of propaganda: ‘The turn-of-the century pictorial postcard which functioned like a cross between the modern print and communication media, something like CNN, People, Sports Illustrated, and National Geographic, all rolled into one, was… a forerunner of these lighter modes of social control’.10 During the period referred to as ‘La Belle Époque’, the statistics relating to both the publication and exchange of postcards reached astronomical proportions: 2,360,000,000 postcards were sent each year in the world, according to the French illustrated newspaper Le Monde Illustré, 13 July 1901.11 French historian Laurent Gervereau writes that 140 billion postcards were sent between 1894-191912 while Jeanne Menjoulet estimates that 2.2 million postcards were published every day in France in 1914;13 800 million postcards were produced annually in France just before the First World War and, during the same period, more than a billion came out in Germany, making this country the premier postcard producer of that time.14 The number of individual postcard designs published in France during the First World War is estimated at 80,000, and between one hundred thousand and five hundred thousand copies were made.15

5Immediate history and memory are intertwined in a postcard, and even before an event was over (for example, when the British troops left Marseilles to travel to the Western Front), the memory process had already begun. Postcard editing – the commercial choice of which images to make and reproduce – was just as concerned as written messages with preserving the moments that a person had witnessed or experienced. In this chapter, I conceptualize photographic postcards as comprising a ‘first circle of memory’, constructed during wartime that continues to influence how we understand and remember the First World War at its centenary. I will argue that it is within the very commercialization of postcards (the processes of editing and selling) that we find this first circle of memory, or what is recorded in order to satisfy the customer who wishes to preserve the memory of the event they have witnessed. The questions I raise here are what is preserved, how this is achieved, and what the implications of these choices are for future processes of memory.

British Imperial troops and the people of Marseilles

6The preservation of the memory of the passage of British Imperial troops through Marseilles between 1914 and 1918 is linked to several social actors who played their part to foreground that event. This included the press, which had an important role in stimulating the desire of the inhabitants to be part of an event that they would then wish to preserve. The arrival of the Indian troops is a good example of such a phenomenon: it was illustrated in the press with comments such as that they were well known for their ‘beautiful traditions of energy and courage’.16 A few years later the departure of Anzac and South African troops accompanied by an escort of Indian Cavalry was also an opportunity for journalists to stimulate the interest of the population of Marseilles: ‘four squadrons of Bengal lancers preceded the British troops which paraded in the streets of Marseilles in front of a cheering crowd; the magnificent turbans, the rich trappings, the lances of these wonderful horsemen gave the revue an exotic look’ and when referring to white troops ‘which fought at Gallipoli’, they were described as ‘these magnificent soldiers’.17 According to the Excelsior ‘these magnificent volunteer contingents from the Dominions’ were ‘elite troops happy to answer the mother country’s call’.18 Marseilles’ journalists were not always able to distinguish between troops from the Union of South Africa, and that of Australia and New Zealand. Very often ANZAC troops were reported as one nationality and would either be referred to collectively as Australian troops (as by Le Radical, 8 May 1916) or troops from New Zealand (as by the Excelsior, 10 May 1916).19

7The parade itself was anticipated as being ‘extremely brilliant’ and was reported the following day as ‘an imposing ceremony’ and ‘a wonderful parade […] the most beautiful and festive show’.20 The journalists describe the keenness of the public who even had a day off to see the parade. Serge Bourreline recalls that they cheered the troops with great enthusiasm and cried ‘Vive l’Angleterre’ while British soldiers shouted ‘Vive la France’ and that the people from Marseilles were so excited that they broke through the military security line and invaded the square of the Prefecture.21 Another journalist wrote: ‘This afternoon, Marseilles will write one of the most grandiose pages of its history to celebrate the Entente Cordiale’.22 Suggestions were made by the journalists themselves, and not by the town authorities, such as when they asked the population to decorate the streets of Marseilles with English flags,23 or when they hoped that employees would be allowed to leave their jobs to go and cheer the British Imperial troops as they paraded the streets of Marseilles on 8 May 1916, possibly pressuring the administration to allow this. The press was thus a major agent of the construction of a local event and therefore likely contributed to the desire to keep a souvenir of that event. However, censorship at the time means that there was little in the press about the landing and the brief stay of Imperial troops. All military evidence and testimonials were kept secret; Marseilles had become a ‘city of mystery’.24

8Indeed the press in Marseilles (Le Petit Marseillais, Le Petit Provencal, le Radical, and Le Soleil du Sud, amongst others) asserted that they were subjected to censorship that was normal, as they saw it, since the German information division in Strasburg was doing everything possible to get hold of French newspapers to obtain precious military details. There were examples of the omnipresence of censorship in Marseilles: ‘What we can say, without infringing the orders to remain discrete which is imposed upon us, is that the landing of these allied troops is close at hand’.25 Later, in an article entitled ‘HINDUTROOPS IN MARSEILLES’, a journalist from Le Petit Provencal expressed his irritation at his newspaper being subjected to censorship while a newspaper from Paris was allowed (or took the liberty) to reveal forbidden or sensitive material: ‘While we were only authorized by the censorship to publish the very few details we know of, our colleague Le Temps, from Paris, was allowed to publish in his issue which arrived yesterday in Marseilles the following retrospective account that we reproduce for the sake of documentation’.26

9This is of great importance for the memory of these events in Marseilles, as very seldom do we find in modern publications attempts at giving accurate dates of the arrival of the British troops. In fact, there were no press articles or postcards showing the disembarkation of the Indian troops in Marseilles in 1914 or that of the Anzac and South African troops in 1916, nor the distribution in Marseilles of modern weapons to both Indian divisions, which had been equipped with outdated weapons since the Indian Mutiny/First War of Independence.27 Whatever the reasons of these discrepancies, they suggest that there was no free access to all the aspects of the stay of these troops in Marseilles, which necessarily had an influence on the memory of the people of that city. On the one hand, the Indians had pictures taken of their camp life, which were then published as postcards. On the other, it seems that some people were allowed to visit the white troops of the British Empire (Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans) as at least one photograph album exists at the Archives Départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône in Marseilles, in which we see the Australians during Service (22 March 1917) or the 4^th South African ‘Highland’ Regiment performing Highland Games.28 Yet none of these pictures were ever turned into postcards. The only postcards we have of these white troops were published in Marseilles, from pictures taken on 8 May 1916, the day they left the city, but there were very few other postcards of these troops at the front, in contrast to the Indian soldiers, who remained a favorite topic of French postcard editors.

Editing postcards in Marseilles

10Given that postcards are a material trace of the attitudes and interests of the time when they were produced, was the Marseilles postcard production representative of what the people witnessed and experienced with British Imperial troops? The answer is complex, of course, as individual experience varied enormously. Yet, we may assume that if people bought postcards of the various parades they had witnessed, it is because for most of them, they recognized in the document what they had seen, as shown by the numerous manuscript texts written by postcard senders who stated ‘this is what I saw’. Furthermore, if we consider the photographer to be the first ‘filter’ of memory (as they encapsulate the scenes they want to preserve with their camera, but also might lose some thought to be worth keeping), the postcard editor, who chooses the images for reproduction, would be a second ‘filter’, by selecting from the pictures taken those images considered attractive enough for sale to customers before turning them into postcards. The criteria of selection could have been based on the ‘representativeness’ of the event, on aesthetics or on the editor’s personal interest in the documents. It is a common issue for all archival records that they only represent one version of the past; what is interesting here is that we can understand some of the factors that contributed to the disappearance of sources from the past. A third ‘filter’ was the censorship to which postcards were submitted.29 A fourth and vital memory agent or ‘filter’ was the customer who chose what to preserve or not from the available postcards produced, along with the addressee who could choose to destroy the card immediately, could hand it to a collector, or could keep it in an album if he or she was a collector and liked the postcard. The successful sale of a postcard (or a series of postcards) would encourage the editor to publish a second print run or increase the number of copies, in the same way as books are treated when they are out of print. As mentioned, some First World War postcards were reproduced 100,000 times, and even up to 500,000, while others were only printed in a few thousand copies. Modern collectors know that the rarity of a postcard is often linked to the cards that were either not published in great numbers or were not a commercial success. Thus, it is often the postcards that were admired and sought after that are most commonly found today.

11One example of a popular publication of postcards on Indian troops became a form of advertisement. This example looks like a small newspaper article written by a journalist, but its promotional purpose is clear; some versions are reproduced extensively with several editions or issues, suggesting that the repetition of the same piece of information is meant for commercial purposes. This is all the more obvious as it was produced in a joint operation between a photographer, Jules Bosmian, and an editor Louis Simon, whose address is mentioned in the advertisement. The article reads:

THE INDIAN ARMY. Everybody will be keen on keeping an interesting souvenir of the passage through Marseilles of the brave Indian Army which, as reported in dispatches, is held in so much dread amongst German ranks. What more interesting a collection could one assemble than that composed of the various series of the postcard set ‘L’Armée de l’Inde’ which is for us also a way of helping our glorious wounded soldiers? Four successive editions of the first series of this beautiful collection soon went out of print. Collectors should hurry if they want to possess the whole collection, as it will not be printed again. The last sets of the first series are on sale at tobacconists, postcard dealers’ or street vendors for a price of 50 centimes for six cards. Ask for the kit with the caption in red ‘sold for the benefit of wounded soldiers’. The second series can be purchased today. Orders are to be forwarded to M. Simon, 2 Glandeves Street, Marseilles. They will be delivered as orders arrive.30

12Bosmian and Simon evidently wished to make the most of a successful sale of postcards to advertise it and literally fabricate another ‘craze’ for their production. This ‘article’ was published on 19 October 1914 for the first time. It stipulated that the success of the set of postcards entitled ‘L’Armée de l’Inde’ had gone beyond what M. Jules Bosmian, referred to as ‘our collaborator’, had expected. It is also stated that the whole of the 6,000 postcards were sold on the first day. The author of the ‘article’ adds that: ‘M. Bosmian and his editor M. Simon pray us to forward their excuses to the numerous persons who were not able to purchase their interesting collection’ and that they had planned to publish new copies that would be sold the following day. Then another ‘article’ was published on 2 November and from then on, it was extensively reproduced nearly every day in the same newspaper.31 This commercial attitude may have had an impact on the construction of memory as the more of these postcards went on the market, the more people from Marseilles would see the landing of British Imperial troops through L. Simon’s looking-glass.

13Of course Simon was not the only postcard editor to take such an approach. Postcard editors ranged from professional postcard publishers, to occasional producers according to the whim of the moment.32 This is why there were high quality postcards and mediocre publications as seen with the Llorca postcards printed with poor quality ink, giving a messy overall impression [Figure 1]. This also explains why, when a photograph was printed in a newspaper or a magazine and drew praise from the public, it was subsequently made into a postcard to profit from the success. Hence, imitators and plagiarists seized the opportunity and published the same image continuously for their own benefit.33 We have such an example of the ‘success story’ of a photograph of smiling Indian troops landing and parading in Marseilles in 1914. The picture was first published in the French illustrated magazine L’Illustration in October 1914.34 It was then reproduced on postcards by at least seven different editors who either mention that the parade took place in Marseilles or not (so as to reach a wider audience) [Figure 2].35 While the picture is identical, the caption varies in different postcards. Although we may wonder what makes a photograph such a public triumph as to prompt seven different editors to reproduce it, this appealing photograph became an important element of the first circle of memory. Local photographers in Marseilles also participated in the circulation of images by selling their pictures to national newspapers, while at the same time they were printed on postcards, such as those of J. Bosmian and L. Simon, who probably sold the picture of their postcard no 4 representing the music of the Indian army to the Petit Provencal (7 October 1914) and to Le Miroir, (no 46 and 47, 11 and 18 October 1914), the latter newspaper reporting that the music was ‘strange’ for the people of Marseilles. This suggests that the reason this picture was widely used was because it was intriguing, unusual and exotic.

Soldiers on postcards and Marseilles’ lieux de mémoire

14Two types of British troops became favorites of the people in Marseilles. This popularity is imputable not just because a war had started, but because their exoticism and curiosity stimulated French people’s interest: the Indian troops and the Highlanders (1st Battalion Seaforth Highlanders, Meerut Division in 1914 and the 4^th South African (Scottish) Infantry Regiment, 1^st South African Infantry Brigade in 1916). The first British troops to arrive were part of the Indian Expeditionary Force formed by the Lahore and the Meerut Division and the Indian Cavalry Corps. Both Infantry divisions were composed of Anglo-Indian troops that included Highlander regiments [see Figures 1 and 11] as well as Gurkhas, all complete with a band that included bagpipes which they shared [Figure 3].

15The diversity of these troops must have been quite an amazing display of exoticism to the population of Marseilles. One common adjective often used on postcards or in the press to describe Indians and their country is ‘mysterious’. A postcard without any mention of an editor indicates that ‘Mysterious India is siding with loyal England to defend civilization’ [see Figure 4]. Mystery, curiosity and fascination were also factors that caused people to visit the Indian camps where the troops were stationed prior to their onward journey. Many postcards show the people of Marseilles observing a camp scene which the photographer is capturing with his camera. These visually recorded scenes were either related to a host of everyday activities such as preparing a meal, baking bread [Figure 5], killing goats for meat, smoking, playing games, doing the washing up, praying (for Muslims), or swimming at the Prado beach [Figure 6]. There were also Sepoys standing at attention, drilling troops, soldiers holding the hand of a child from Marseilles, and of course soldiers and cavalrymen engaged in marching or parading [see Figure 7]. Surprisingly there are several postcards showing partially dressed Indians helping each other to wash, as if that intimate activity could be performed in public. The Gurkha and his Khukuri (knife) or Sikhs combing their long hair were other subjects that captured the imagination of contemporary photographers. A corpus of 250 postcards exists today bearing pictures of British Imperial troops identified as having been taken in Marseilles. A more detailed survey of these reveal only two postcards showing New Zealanders and five representing Australians [see Figure 8]. Twenty-nine postcards portray South Africans (including ten Highlanders) while thirty postcards depict Anglo-Indian troops (wearing their easily recognizable pith helmets) [see Figures 1 and 9]. Ten postcards are in fact bird’s eye views of the camps [see Figure 10] and 182 show Indian soldiers. A far greater number of Indian troops landed in Marseilles compared to ‘white troops’, so it follows that the former should outnumber the latter within the postcard production. Yet the overall impression is that it is the Indian troops’ exoticism that accounts for the more numerous postcards, not their number. It is also possible that their success with the Marseilles population underpins their predominance in the first circle of memory.

16Obviously the ‘White soldiers’ were no match for the Sepoys who turned out to be potential bestsellers in the Marseilles postcard scene during the First World War. Interestingly this finding can be confirmed by the substantial number of French First World War postcards that show Indian troops in other French towns, published by local editors such as Toulouse, Orléans, Dijon, Nantes, Paris, Le Mans, Nancy, and Limoges who had realized that the Indian exotic power of attraction would sell well. On the other hand, Anzac and South African troops almost completely disappeared from French postcard racks, as mainly English and Scottish troops were published on postcards. Yet if we consider only the ‘White troops’ in Marseilles (fifty postcards), the South African Scottish troops are proportionally overrepresented with eighteen postcards. The kilt is one of the explanations for this success, as it brings to the fore the lighter side of war. Many First World War caricature postcards poke fun at Highlanders in French, German and even British postcards. A postcard published by ELD shows marching South African highlanders in Marseilles on 8 May 1916 and puts the emphasis on their kilt through the caption: ‘A parading Scottish regiment whose outfit triggers curiosity’ [see Figure 11]. This is echoed by the press which, for example shows a young French girl with a short dress above the knee (while her mother has a long dress) who says ‘Look, Mum, you can clearly see that skirts can be worn above the knees’ as she points at a Highlander walking the streets of Marseilles wearing a kilt that looks more like a mini skirt.36

17If there is no collective memory that does not unfold in a spatial frame,37 the presence of the British Imperial troops were embedded in different spots of the city of Marseilles and its surroundings. As the press was submitted to tougher censorship, only the postcards give account of the places the soldiers were located. In 1914 we see birds-eye views of the camps and many postcards refer to their names: Parc Borély, la Valentine, la Penne, la Barasse, St Marcel and others [see Figure 12]. In 1916, the camp of the ‘White troops’ was not easy to access. One of the reasons for such secrecy around the white British Imperial troops could be because they were camped eight kilometers from downtown Marseilles at the Valentine Camp due to discipline incidents in Cairo for which some Anzac soldiers had been held responsible.38 Yet it was through their parade in the street of Marseilles that their presence was felt: they paraded on the Square Castellane and drank champagne offered by the city authorities before leaving at the St Charles railway station [see Figure 13]. These lieux de mémoire of the presence of the troops are gone now, and it is unlikely that anyone from Marseilles associates these places with British troops as there are no reminders, such as monuments, of their passage. Hence postcards provide commemorative traces when the caption is clear enough to show what the people of Marseilles saw and when and where they saw it. The only lieux de mémoire that remains as a tribute to the memory of the suffering of British Imperial troops in Marseilles is the Commonwealth War Cemetery at Mazargues, where the remains of nearly 1,500 Commonwealth soldiers lie. The graves are permanent reminders of the presence of British Imperial troops in Marseilles, linking the postcards’ ‘first circle of memory’ with this lieu de mémoire ‘last circle of memory’ (as long as the graves are preserved).

Postcards between text and image

18Halbwachs wrote that a group that lives first and foremost for itself aims at perpetuating the feelings and images that form the substance of its thought.39 The postcards may have been the expression of a simple feeling on the part of the French population: that they loved their allies. We can imagine that the more foreign troops poured into Marseilles harbour, the better the morale of the population became. Buying and sending postcards was a way to cheer the arrival of allies. Sometimes the caption of the postcard is not enough to convey the message of the sender who adds his or her own comment, such as with this example of the ‘best-selling postcard’ mentioned earlier [see Figure 2]. Edited by L.C.H., it had a manuscript inscription on the picture stating ‘Hurrah for France and its allies’ (private archives). Manuscript texts which refer or not to the picture of the postcard are therefore important elements of the understanding of the postcard as an object; cultural historians never fail to read the manuscript texts on postcards, as Schor remarks: ‘but of course what constitutes the specificity and the fascination of the modern illustrated postcard, is that it has, as we have noted, two sides, two faces, the pictorial and the scriptural… the message side records the millions of exchanges between the men and women of that time, which often refer quite explicitly to the choice of the image, for the sides are not sealed off from one another anymore than are the signified and signifier’.40

19Thanks to the comments left on the postcards we sometimes have hints of the objective of the sender, such as on one representing the arrival of Indian troops in Marseilles. The author J. Buisson sends the card on 10 November 1914, from Marseilles to his ‘dear Jeannette’. He writes on the picture: ‘Memory [or souvenir] of the European War from 2 August 1914 till… 1914’ [see Figure 14]. We may infer from that comment that he wanted the postcard to be his contribution to the preservation of the memory of this ‘European conflict’. This is confirmed on the back when he writes ‘I send you this postcard in order to give you an idea of what is happening and to make you meet the Indous [sic]’. This also suggests that he expects the war to be over soon, as for him the war started on 2 August and would probably end before the close of 1914, as shown by the dots followed by the year. Another postcard was sent from Marseilles by a woman named Germaine and depicts Anglo-Indian artillery parading in Marseilles (edit. L.R.). It seems Germaine had sent several postcards of the same series as she states ‘I believe these 5 cards will present nicely on a page [of his postcard album] for Etienne’. Unfortunately, the cards were probably sent inside an envelope and Germaine wrote on the back of the five cards as if writing a letter, so as a consequence we just have the end of the message. It is, however, still interesting: ‘It is through the Square of the Bourse and Paradise street [in Marseilles] that the artillery parades. They don’t lack anything, they bring what they need from India and this seems extraordinary. What an incredible amount of ships. They arrive on a daily basis’ (private archives). The admiration of the people of Marseilles can also be felt with the physical description of the Sepoys, which demonstrates their exotic appeal, as for ‘M.’ who writes on 16 November 1914 on a postcard representing Indian soldiers on a wagon transporting ammunition in Marseilles (Gaguine Editor): ‘Since the end of September (look at the other side) here is what we meet in the streets of Marseilles. Endless parades until now particularly in the rue de Rome and the Prado. These men all look vigorous – healthy – in short good soldiers. Determined to walk. They arrive on a regular basis. Jacques says a 100,000 are expected here and in Cette’ (private archives). Another woman also named Germaine sends a postcard representing partially clothed Sikh soldiers washing in their camps (L.R. editor) to Monsieur Etienne Jay in Bernin (Izère) and devotes all her correspondence to the picture: ‘A great part of the Hindous are characterized by their long hair. They comb their hair like women do. Look at the bun of the one that is undoing his turban!! ’ (Private archives) [see Figure 15].

20The soldiers’ physical appearance undoubtedly explains the attraction of some French women for these soldiers.41 Although there is no evidence that Franco-Indian babies were born in Marseilles while Indian troops were stationed there, a hundred such babies were reported as born in the north of France, in the areas where the Sepoys rested before they returned to the front. Someone wrote on several postcards from Marseilles on 6 September 1914 to several young women addressed as ‘Mesdemoiselles’. The no 19 of Rose Roure’s edition represents Indian lancers coming back from parade in the streets of Marseilles. The manuscript text at the back leaves no doubt as to the admiration of the writer: ‘I think I have too weak a heart! When I saw the Sepoys I nearly forgot my Jap [sic]; Japan’s bright colors faded away in front of those sons of the sun. That is, the Hindus [sic] are very handsome soldiers, very tall, slender, with a suntanned complexion, very thin articulations and above all magnificent eyes and teeth. It is decidedly a fine race, with absolute eminence and elegance. In their beautiful khaki uniforms they give the impression to be very clean, as well [?] as our troupions [nickname for French ‘troupe’ soldiers] and nearly as much as their English officers’ (private archives).

21These postcards and manuscript texts are but representative samples of what exists. The time-consuming work of reading all First World War postcards when they become available is a challenging task, especially when the vast majority of written postcards are in the hands of private collectors. Yet detailed research can reveal what is at the core of collective memory: ‘In order to reconceptualize collective memory and show that it is not simply a historical artifact, I will suggest relocating the collective back to the individual who articulates it – the individual who disappeared in the occlusion of personal historical consciousness by the culture of preservation’.42 Halbwachs also affirms that each individual memory is a point of view on collective memory.43 The manuscript texts of these postcards modestly participate in the elaboration of a collective memory, and as such, each writer has his or her own focus of interest: some see in the Gurkhas a formidable enemy of the Germans, others admire the Sikh Sepoys’ long hair. Others just look at the influence of the presence of these troops, giving a broader perspective to the presence of British Imperial troops in Marseilles, as with the Indian Music postcard already mentioned (Edition L. Simon). An unknown sender of this postcard writes to ‘dear Madame’ that ‘It has been a while since I had the intention of sending you a few cards of these famous Indians, of whom we have here all the specimens. The city is full of them, as well as Englishmen who are going to embark for Serbia, and this provokes a great fuss in Marseilles which is already so animated’ (private archives). But if we can assume what is privately written corresponds to what the writer believed, the next section considers how the postcards could lead the recipient and the historian astray. This might lead us to conclude that collective memory as a source of information for the historian should be critically examined. One might also wonder whether elements from a first circle of memory are primary sources or should be considered as secondary sources (the postcard publisher might not have been present in Marseilles when the picture was taken); one could consider that even though they were produced almost instantly, they were only one person’s perception and thus are biased.

Conclusion: an incomplete and mistaken memory

22Some troops that landed in Marseilles are, I would argue, ‘missing in representation’ in the collective memory of Marseilles. Although they landed in Marseilles and some of them even paraded in the city, their memory was not preserved through public iconographic or written documents. This is the case for the Canadian 1^st Newfoundland Regiment who, coming for Gallipoli and Egypt, landed in Marseilles in March 1916. It is also the case for troops from the West Indies who can be seen parading with their rifles in the streets of Marseille on film.44 These examples show that postcards only provide a partial vision of the presence of British Imperial troops in Marseilles. Why they were not commemorated can only be guessed at, but without any iconographic trace of their passage, they are not mentioned in contemporary commemoration in the same way as Sepoys, South Africans or Anzacs.

23Misrepresentations also affect collective memory, and many mistakes can be found on postcards. The name ‘Hindu’ is used instead of ‘Indian’, when Indians are not all Hindus, they can be Muslims, Jaïns, Sikhs or Buddhists [see Figures 5, 6, 7, 12, 14, 15]. In the same way, on an Arragon postcard entitled ‘Canadians and Hindus in Marseilles’, the Gurkhas are mistaken for Canadians because of their slouch hats, while in other instances Gurkhas are taken for Sikhs, or are called Malays (card no 10 L. Simon edition). There are also shortcuts when a caption states the picture represents a ‘Scottish Regt.’ instead of a ‘South African Scottish Regt.’ It might seem that these mistakes and misrepresentations are not important, yet these postcards are taken out of their albums when they are needed for publication, such as for the centenary of the First World War. As the pictures on the postcards have been carefully selected by the editor, they often depict appealing pictures meant to attract the buyer. And as these images are often nicely printed on a postcard, they are often selected by modern history book editors who reproduce them as suitable illustrations to the text of their books. This helps to explain why past mistakes are repeated and accounts for the reasons why collective memory is biased from the beginning. The question raised here is what comprises the first circle of memory? How close are we to the ‘reality’ of the people from Marseilles of that era, and whose reality are we considering, for we know the same event will be seen differently by different people? Paul Ricœur describes postcards as a ‘reminder’, which he defines as protection against oblivion,45 yet the way the postcards were made is what memory is about.

24There are other aspects of the study of postcards that could not be tackled in this article, such as the social and economic networks that enabled postcards to spread in society,46 or the fact that through postcards, events can become a ‘shared memory’ as shown by postcards edited for use by the Indian troops. Postcards, because they are attractive and collectable, have survived over time. They were more treasured than newspapers and the quality of the reproduction of a photograph on a postcard could not be matched by illustrated newspapers. Postcards are a gateway to the past, a trail to wander back in time and remember, archeological evidence of bygone days. Just as Nora reminds us that ‘memory is transformed by its passage through history’,47 Halbwachs asks ‘how did we move from the first memory, which is immediate, to the second, which is indirect?’48 I would argue that amongst all the documents and accounts that have been preserved through time, postcards are at the root of Marseilles’ memory of the passage of British Imperial troops in the Phocean city and they constitute what I have termed ‘the first circle of memory’. The postcard record, like all archival records is imperfect not just because it is incomplete, but also because it was selective, right from the beginning. Only the iconographic tastes of the photographer, the editor (and the censorship he or she was submitted to), the buyer/sender and the addressee/collector account for the preserved images of the passage of British imperial troops in Marseilles. These elements of the first circle of memory are what remains after the death of the eyewitnesses. To an uncritical eye, these documents might not only perpetuate a misleading commercial representation of the passage of the troops through Marseilles, but also the mistakes the editors involuntarily bequeathed to posterity through their captions. Can, then, the first circle of memory ever be relied upon to faithfully record events? Not without precaution, but when judiciously used the postcard evidence gives an account close to the lived experience of the people.