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The 13 Hours newspaper teams met 96-year-old Odette. She found her father’s personal notebook, dating from World War I, thanks to the magic of the internet.
At the age of 96, Odette Robisson received an unexpected gift: the surprisingly preserved notebook from her father Robert Baccart, when he was a soldier during the First World War. Inside you can find sketches, notes or even lyrics to songs from Le Poilu. Her daughter claims to have it right away “recognized his handwriting”. Incorporated at the age of 19 into the 84th Infantry Regiment in April 1917, Robert Baccart became a bricklayer after the war, and never spoke of his life as a soldier to his family.
His notebook was found in a former café in Audruicq (Pas-de-Calais), which has now become a grocery store. It was the grandson of the keeper, deputy mayor of Moulle (Pas-de-Calais), who discovered it ten years ago. “I said to Florian, that’s a marvel. Above all, take care of him, and we will have to take care one day to try to find the descendants of this brave man”, confides Marc Thomas, the mayor of Moulle. The family was found thanks to a message relayed on the internet by an association of history buffs. Florian, the deputy mayor, hand delivered the notebook to Odette on November 11, 2021.