Chapter 2

The author recognizes that this chapter is pure fiction. Don't gimmie no shit about it! I know it never happened ... but it should have.

The years passed. Barges on the canal were modernized. The horse drawn wooden barges gave way to riveted iron and steam engines which gave way to welded steel and diesel engines. The canals themselves were evaluated. Do they go where needed? Are they wide enough? Deep enough?

There was a little international competition involved; the Boche (Derogatory term for Germans) have ocean going ships on their canals. We must compete. French canals were expanded ... the useful ones.

The canals that went to places that closed or were ruined by corruption, sloth or avarice stagnated. Weeds, weak locks, uncooperative mayors, failed resources all contributed to the rerouting or abandonment of canals ... not that there were many; water transportation is cheap ... cheaper than rail, truck or air.

It is slow. Generally, the canals are quiet and clean. There's no sense in hurrying ... think of the next lock. Waiting for up bound traffic. No, don't rush.

The canal bottoms were stirred by the bronze propellors of the steel barges. The watch bounced along the bottom; upstream by downstream barges, downstream by upstream ones. Turtles nudged it, carp sucked it and spat it out.

The smaller canals became the home of frogs, turtles, fish and the businesses or playgrounds of boaters; sculls, rowboats, sand sellers, freshwater clam diggers, fishers.

The abandoned canals had their lock gates and machinery removed or left open if it was too old to be used elsewhere.

The years passed. What was new in 1888 became shopworn in 1900 and the shopworn became weed and trash infested by 1913.

The war! The canals became supremely important. As the battlefield foxholes stagnated into trenches and trenches into miles long excavations, the canals moved raw materials to the manufactories and the implements of war, the rifles, cartridges, shells, artillery, wood, airplanes, uniforms, food to the rear lines where the lorries took the mass to the units. The barge was cheaper than rail and petrol.

1918. It was over. The nations celebrated.

The manpower it took to dig the trenches!

The trenches stretched from the Swiss border to the North Sea. The French High Command thought that was the end of it. The Ministère des Transports (Department of Transportation) directed the Bureau des voies Navigables (Bureau of Waterways) to look into transforming the earthworks into a canal ... after all, the hard part was already done. It should be simple. Dig out the banks or sides of the trench. Unexploded munitions had to be recovered before the farm work could be restarted ... so why not?

The area for miles on either side of the trench system was denuded of woods and forests. Locks were simple ... Why Not?

"Where is the money to come from?" cried the Français Treasurie (French National Treasury).

"Where is the money to clean up the battlefield and restore the land?" replied the Bureau des voies Navigables (Already explained).

"Reparations from Germany," was the reply.

"Have the Germans do it." Well it seemed reasonable.