France in World War I in The Mansion (Location)

Bitterly evoking the idea of the war that would end all wars, Gavin Stevens describes World War I as an event that "killed eight million human beings and ruined a forty-mile wide strip down the middle of western Europe" (178). This location represents the various places in England and France that appear in the novel in the context of the war. Bayard and John Sartoris are trained in England to fly in the "Royal Flying Corps" (204). Though no combat is depicted, six French battlefields on which U.S. soldiers fought are mentioned in the text: Montdidier (199); Château-Thierry and Saint Mihiel (309); and, in his garbled fictional account of his military experience, the character who calls himself Captain Strutterbuck lists "Argonne, Showmont, Vymy Ridge, Shatter Theory" (84) - the first and third are real battles, Showmont may be his attempt to refer to Soissons, and Shatter Theory is obviously supposed to be Château-Thierry. There is also a reference to "a base hospital in France" where a woman who is related to "a Jefferson family" worked as an Army nurse (199).