Title: Poilu : the World War I notebooks of Louis Barthas, barrelmaker, 1914-1918 /
Authors: Barthas, Louis, 1879-1952.
Year: 2014
Subjects: Barthas, Louis,; France. Biography.; France. Military life History; World War, 1914-1918 Personal narratives, French; Soldiers France Biography; World War, 1914-1918 Campaigns; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.; HISTORY / Military / World War I.; HISTORY / Europe / France.
Abstract: "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"--
Contents: Garrison Duty-August 2-November 1, 1914 -- To the Killing Fields-November 4-December 14, 1914 -- Massacres-December 15, 1914-May 4, 1915 -- Toward the Lorette Charnel House-May 4-June 2, 1915 -- The Lorette Charnel House-June 2-July 2, 1915 -- The Accursed War, the Charnel House of Lorette, the Slaughter of September 25, 1915-July I-September 27, 1915 -- The Bloody and Futile Offensive of September 25, 1915-September 27-November 15, 1915 -- The Neuville-Saint-Vaast Sector-November 15, 1915-February 29, 1916 -- Toward the Hell of Verdun-February 29-April 26, 1916 -- The Verdun Charnel House-April 26-May 19, 1916 -- The 296th Regiment in Champagne-July 13-August 29, 1916 -- The Somme Offensive: In the Blood-Soaked Mud-August 29-November 1, 1916 -- In the Blood-Soaked Mud of the Somme-November l, 1916-January 30, 1917 -- The 296th Regiment from Beziers in Champagne-January 30-April 26, 1917 -- The Killing Ground of Mont Cornillet, the 296th Regiment in the Argonne-April 26-July 1, 1917 -- The End of the 296th Infantry Regiment-July l, 1917-January 28, 1918 -- The Last Year of Martyrdom-January 29-August II, 1918 -- The End of the Nightmare-August II, 1918-February 14, 1919