Poilu

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 -- James McPherson This book shows clearly and viscerally what were the origins of French soldiers' pacifism... Barthas's voice is unlike any other I know in the vast literature on the First World War. The translation is excellent; the grittiness of the text is captured beautifully, and so is the humanity of the man who wrote it. -Jay Winter, Yale University -- Jay Winter 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 -- Peter Hart Ah, the notebooks of Louis Barthas! This book has profound historic value. It is also a genuine work of literature. -Francois Mitterrand, former president of France -- Francois Mitterrand Louis Barthas' stunningly honest, graphic and gripping narrative has rightly made Poilu a classic trench memoir. -Douglas Porch, author of The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force -- Douglas Porch There is nothing like this for the French experience of WWI, almost nothing from equivalent British and German perspectives... I believe this will be a major contribution to the study of Third-Republic France, the French army, and the First World War: regularly cited, regularly assigned. -Dennis Showalter, Colorado College -- Dennis Showalter In Barthas' telling, the fighting men on both sides of No Man's Land shared a more natural bond with their fellows than with those career officers who pitted them against each other. Barthas' detailed real-time reportage captures instances of informal truces and slowdowns between combatants, as they tacitly aid one another in their shared struggle to survive the madness. -David Wright, The Seattle Times -- David Wright The Seattle Times Among World War I books being published in this centennial year of that conflict's start, none likely can connect readers more directly or vividly to the experience of those who fought it. -Alan Wallace, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review -- Alan Wallace The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review