Check out the book “Storm of Steel” by Ernst Junger. German soldier in WW1, it’s a good book. This may explain part of the drinking in France https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanettehurt/2018/11/12/who-was-the-drunkest-generation-the-lost-generation-in-paris-in-the-1920s/amp/ Big cultural center with Hemingway, Picasso, and other famous artists and writers. The place to be I suppose.