Gueules noires et tristes mines / Black faces and sad expressions

Twenty years before May 68, this cry would spring forth from the fighting mining villages.The coal miners have voted to strike and are blockading the mine shafts, which the police are tasked with clearing. Behind the barricade at the Fanchon shaft, they are waiting for them, sometimes with fear in their hearts, but determined to retaliate.The reader is invited to join the picket line to find: the "culs-à-gaillette" (a local term for the poor, often working-class women)