The harrowing first-person account of a French foot soldier who survived four years in the trenches of the First World War
Along with millions of other Frenchmen, Louis Barthas, a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from a small wine-growing town, was conscripted to fight the Germans in the opening days of World War I. Corporal Barthas spent the next four years in near-ceaseless combat, wherever the French army fought its fiercest battles: Artois, Flanders, Champagne, Verdun, the Somme, the Argonne. Barthas' riveting wartime narrative, first published in France in 1978, presents the vivid, immediate experiences of a frontline soldier.
This excellent new translation brings Barthas' wartime writings to English-language readers for the first time. His notebooks and letters represent the quintessential memoir of a "poilu," or "hairy one," as the untidy, unshaven French infantryman of the fighting trenches was familiarly known. Upon Barthas' return home in 1919, he painstakingly transcribed his day-to-day writings into nineteen notebooks, preserving not only his own story but also the larger story of the unnumbered soldiers who never returned. Recounting bloody battles and endless exhaustion, the deaths of comrades, the infuriating incompetence and tyranny of his own officers, Barthas also describes spontaneous acts of camaraderie between French poilus and their German foes in trenches just a few paces apart. An eloquent witness and keen observer, Barthas takes his readers directly into the heart of the Great War.
The harrowing first-person account of a French foot soldier who survived four years in the trenches of the First World War
Along with millions of other Frenchmen, Louis Barthas, a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from a small wine-growing town, was conscripted to fight the Germans in the opening days of World War I. Corporal Barthas spent the next four years in near-ceaseless combat, wherever the French army fought its fiercest battles: Artois, Flanders, Champagne, Verdun, the Somme, the Argonne. Barthas' riveting wartime narrative, first published in France in 1978, presents the vivid, immediate experiences of a frontline soldier.
This excellent new translation brings Barthas' wartime writings to English-language readers for the first time. His notebooks and letters represent the quintessential memoir of a "poilu," or "hairy one," as the untidy, unshaven French infantryman of the fighting trenches was familiarly known. Upon Barthas' return home in 1919, he painstakingly transcribed his day-to-day writings into nineteen notebooks, preserving not only his own story but also the larger story of the unnumbered soldiers who never returned. Recounting bloody battles and endless exhaustion, the deaths of comrades, the infuriating incompetence and tyranny of his own officers, Barthas also describes spontaneous acts of camaraderie between French poilus and their German foes in trenches just a few paces apart. An eloquent witness and keen observer, Barthas takes his readers directly into the heart of the Great War.
Louis Barthas (1879–1952) was a cooper in a small town in southern France. Edward M. Strauss is a fundraising director in higher education and former publisher of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. He lives in New York City.
"A century after the guns of August first boomed, World War I has
lost none of its power to boggle the mind. . . . Louis Barthas, an
enlisted man from southwestern France, managed to reduce the
conflict to human scale with a pen and 19 notebooks. . . . With
Edward M. Strauss’s translation of Poilu, English-language readers
now have access to a classic account of the war, a day-to-day
chronicle of life in the trenches and a richly detailed answer to
the seemingly unanswerable question: What was it like?"—William
Grimes, New York Times
"Barthas was an ordinary working man, a barrel maker of socialist
inclinations, and there was nothing about him to suggest he
harbored literary gifts or genius. But his notebooks, assembled
under the title Poilu, are among the great works of the war,
deserving a place of mention with memoirs like Guy Chapman’s A
Passionate Prodigality and Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel."—Geoffrey
Norman, Wall Street Journal
"Nothing ever written provides a more accurate, raw and close-in
account of the beastly life of the common soldier. . ."—Marc
Wortman, Daily Beast
"One wonders why it took so long for an English translation—this is
clearly one of the most readable and indispensable accounts of the
death of the glory of war."—Nicholas Mancuso, Daily Beast
"This translation of the diaries and letters of a French corporal
on the Western front in World War I brings the gritty reality of
trench warfare to an English-speaking audience in a manner
unparalleled even in the best soldier writings from that war. The
reader feels and smells and hears the mud, the blood, the fear, the
deafening noise of exploding shells, the clatter of machine guns,
the cries of the wounded and dying. Here is the war as the
men in the trenches experienced it."—James McPherson, author of
Battle Cry of Freedom
"An exceptionally vivid memoir of a French soldier's experience of
the First World War."—Max Hastings, author of Catastrophe 1914:
Europe Goes to War
"Louis Barthas, cooper, citizen, cynic and reluctant reservist, is
one of the truly authentic voices of the Great War. A classic in
France from its first publication, his account of the fighting (and
he saw more of it than most) speaks not only for the 'poilu' but
for all solders of the conflict."—Hew Strachan, author of The First
World War
"A revelatory book that brings the French experience of the Great
War to life as you read. However much we may think the British and
Americans suffered, their agony was shorter and less intense than
the tragedy that overwhelmed the French nation in 1914-1918."—Peter
Hart, author of The Great War: A Combat History of the First World
War
"Ah, the notebooks of Louis Barthas! This book has profound
historic value. It is also a genuine work of literature."—François
Mitterrand, former president of France
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