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Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918


by Louis Barthas

To the left, caricatures of a fallen King Albert of Belgium, Tsar Nicholas of Russia, President Poincare of France, generic (?) caricatures of an English man and a Japanese soldier, Kings Peter of Serbia, and Nikola of Montenegro engaging in a tug of war, the rope being held on the right by a German (in gray) and an Austro-Hungarian soldier. Between the teams and behind the rope stands the diminutive caped figure of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, all hat, mustache, and chin.

To the left, caricatures of a fallen King Albert of Belgium, Tsar Nicholas of Russia, President Poincare of France, generic (?) caricatures of an English man and a Japanese soldier, Kings Peter of Serbia, and Nikola of Montenegro engaging in a tug of war, the rope being held on the right by a German (in gray) and an Austro-Hungarian soldier. Between the teams and behind the rope stands the diminutive caped figure of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, all hat, mustache, and chin.

Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 Translated by Edward M. Strauss with a Foreword by Robert Cowley and Introductions and Afterword by Rémy Cazals

Corporal Louis Barthas, a reservist in the French Territorial Army, served for the duration of the War, fighting in the Second and Third Battles of Artois in May and September, 1915, at Verdun in the spring of 1916, in the Battle of the Somme, in Champagne and the Argonne. A barrel-maker by trade, a socialist in his politics, Barthas leads men and later boys throughout the war.

Barthas on himself, p. 170, after he is demoted from corporal to private: 'Take away my stripes because I lack military spirit, for my socialist and antimilitarist opinions—so be it. . . . But the words "setting a bad example" were just too much.'

Barthas is humane. He longs to see young men and women working, laughing, and flirting at harvest time, as he would have done. In the war, he is an older man. And when he and his men have an opportunity to help harvest, he assists and elderly couple who have no one else.

Barthas would be a man well worth meeting.

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2014

Copyright: 2014 by Yale University