Rapreax
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Can't find a place called Rapreax. All the others I could find, but not that one.
Posted
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Maybe this reads ...sent 3 ambulance wagons to Regimental Aid Post, Reux to collect wounded... (RAP) = Regimental Aid Post, Entry 7pm.
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by
cyngast
moderator
I can't find it either. I've checked Rapreux and Rapreaux, too, as those are typical French spellings. I also looked substituting f for the p. It may have been a farm or very small place of two or three farms that is now within one of the towns' boundaries. Or it may now be one of those places where Google Earth now shows big metal barn-like buildings. My guess, and it's just a guess based on the other places the ambulance personnel went to pick up casualties, is that it was north of the River Aisne, maybe north of Venizel.
I also looked for a place called Reux, as Marie suggested, but the only one I could find is in the north of France near the English Channel.
Of course, another possibility is that the name is totally misspelled in the diary.
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by
cyngast
moderator
I did a bit more searching and found that the McMaster trench map website does have a map of Soissons at the 1/100,000 scale, but it doesn't show anything with a name remotely like that.
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by
ral104
moderator, scientist
I like Marie's Regimental Aid Post suggestion, but unfortunately I don't think it's right in this case. The way Rapreax is written is consistent with other place names, so I think we have to assume it did refer to somewhere which was either so wildly misspelled we now can't find it, or simply doesn't exist anymore - although as Cynthia can't find it on a trench map, I tend to favour the misspelling option.
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by
cyngast
moderator
The map I looked at didn't actually have any trenches marked on it, but was a map used by the Army. It did note several farms and "ancient windmills" but without any kind of proper name, so it might have been one of those places. I did also wonder if it might have been a section of Soissons or Bucy-le-Long.
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