At best they will be scarred for life, at worst paying with their own life-blood for the sins of the nation. It is our lack of precise knowledge of the scene that makes it all the more painful as we recall that this might not represent a single child but the many pained by the atrocities of war. This painting depicts no one little girl. Has L’Enfant lost her hand? Has she been badly wounded? Will she recover? We might never have these questions answered for they belong to an uncertain place and an uncertain time.
Her little hand wrapped in bandages makes us hope for the best while preparing for the worst. However, it is wartime now and even the youth are liable to pay the high price of being on “the wrong side of the war.” Gone are the days when children could sleep in peace on a warm bed and be cuddled by their mother’s embrace. There she is, beautiful and innocent as can be on a cold tomb of marble, a soldier’s coat the only giver of warmth. Struck is the heart when the realization that the young girl in the foreground lays wounded on a tomb as a war rages outside the place where she sleeps.
L’Enfant du Regiment by Sir John Everett Millais
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