Paladru is a village in southeastern France, not far from the Alps and the Italian border. It sits on the northern tip of the long and pretty Lac de Paladru, site of some pioneering underwater archaeological excavations. The findings are detailed in an elegant little museum, Musée archéologique du lac de Paladru (MALP), on the lakeshore. They show that people have settled in this area going back to the Neolithic era.

As interesting as that history is, something else in the village is even more so, especially on a day that India and Pakistan are growling war at each other.

That's a low wall that takes me back not to Neolithic times, but only a century ago. Under the title "Commune de Paladru", that wall has carved into it a number of names. To be precise, 43 names. To be more precise still, under separate headings, 41 and 2 names.

Paladru today has about 1300 residents. A century ago, its population was about 500 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladru). Those 41 names on the wall - among them, Claude Vinay, Seraphin Gaget, four Garins, two Pilots, two Girins - are men from Paladru who died in the first World War. Think of that. 41 men is nearly ten percent of this town, and if we assume the genders were equal in number, nearly 20 percent of the men of this town. (The remaining two died in the second World War.)

One in five men of Paladru, killed in a savage war. In yet another war in which each side thought the absolute worst of the other, and that hatred drove their young men to their deaths by the millions. Filter those millions down to these 41 names from Paladru. Nearly one of every five men in this village, killed. For those who lived, what was that slaughter like?

Paladru is no kind of exception. In these parts, nearly every village, town or city has lists of names like these. Our host here lost his grandfather in that war. A few years ago, he located his grave, took a clipping from a bush growing over it and brought it home to his yard. There, it has now itself grown into a bush: a small bit of the grandfather he never knew.

That's what that war did. Men from nearly everywhere in this country and several others - India included - killed. Families from nearly everywhere, devastated. (Were the four Garins related?)

That's what I am fearful of, with the growling I mentioned above. When I said as much to a friend, this was the reply: "None of us are worried, we feel we are safe and nothing will happen to us."

Yet this wall in Paladru reminds us of the truth about war: when it happens, it happens to us. To us all.