The Stages of Love: the Barometer of the Poilu, the French soldier. The soldier on active service burns. The soldier in the reserve is less passionate but shares a sacred love. The territorial home guard soldier and his wife share a tempered love, while the new recruit is candid and frank. Love, in this barometer, is ultimately extinguished, and the old soldier prefers the company of his pipe. The shoes at the top of the barometer illustrate the urgency of the active soldier and his mate.
Active: Amour ArdentRéserve: Amour DivinTerritorial: Amour TemperéBleuet: Amour CandideG.V.C.: Amour EteintActive: Burning LoveReserve: Divine LoveTerritorial: Love TemperedBleuet (young recruit): Ingenuous LoveG.V.C.: Love ExtinguishedE.M 197Reverse:Tirage Bromure G. Piprot, Boulogne-sur-Seine. Visé Paris Numéro au Verso
"On September 14 I had the great joy of obtaining my second home leave, seven months after my first one. In the night of the 16th–17th, having come on foot from the station at Moux, I had the pleasure of seeing my loved ones, once again, and forgetting for a few days, too quickly gone by, the hard reality, the primitive life of the trenches, so far from civilization.On the morning of the 24th I had to pull myself away from the sweetness of family life, to take the rough road back to the front lines."
Excerpt from the notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas, writing of his leave, September 14 to 24, 1916. Saying goodbye to his children, Barthas and his wife walked to Moux, a nearby village midway between Carcassonne and the Mediterranean coast, where he could catch a tram to begin his journey back to the front in Champagne. When he arrived he found his regiment had already left for the Somme.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 254–255, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
1916-09-14, 1916, September, leave, permission, home leave
