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

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “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“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”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“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“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“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 About the Author 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.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Naturally eloquent and poignant account of one man’s experience in war. So witty as well. Feel like I was there with him. Loved it.

⭐Amazing story of what happened on the front lines of the Western Front of ww1. The story is amazing and Louis Barthas is so… Human, how he tells everything. It’s a truly compelling read.

⭐Poilu is an extraordinary account of life in the trenches from the perspective of a French corporal in the infantry who was a perceptive, talented and succinct writer. Unlike other memoires written sometime after the war, Barthas kept a detailed journal during the war. In fact, his squad members encouraged him to write down everything so that someone, somewhere in the future might know what they experienced. Barthas writes about the things that are in his face day to day. Which means he has a lot to say about his and his comrades’ condition in the wet, cold, rat and lice infested trenches and rear areas at the hands of marginally competent officers, self-serving NCOs, and the ridiculousness of life in the army fighting a war he believed was for the benefit of rich people and politicians. He was not a military historian, and at one point he mentions that his regiment changed hands from one division to another, and he estimated that 80% of the troops had no idea what division they had ever been in. Battalion commanders play a bit part, incompetent captains are more prominent, and he acknowledges and describes in more detail some variation in platoon leaders (Lts and warrant officers or “adjutants”). Barthas describes the horror of war, but what was more striking to me was the familiar absurdity of military life. Any reader who has served among the enlisted ranks will recognize his attitude as a long-suffering grunt in the field or deck-ape at sea, and the authenticity he and his attitude bring to his account of life in the trenches is a rare treat for WWI buffs.

⭐Louis Barthas, a middle aged man drafted into the french infantry at the beginning of ww1, tells the grim reality of life in the trenches. He spent nearly the entire war there and offers readers a first hand account of the horrors of trench warfare. What makes it even more interesting is that Louis is a staunch socialist and a pacifist at his core. He never failed to perform his assigned duties, led by example, and hoped that humanity would one day find peace.As for the text itself, it’s written expertly. A very smooth, direct, and easy to read book.His comrades told him that he must tell their story; he didn’t spare any details.

⭐All accounts of WWI speak to the incompetence of leadership, the horrors of the trenches, and the camaraderie of the soldiers. A cynic could page through this book and offer a “yeah, been there, done that.” In some respects, I agreed. The themes are similar. There is an element of outright cruelty on the part of some officers, which I have not encountered in first-person accounts from British or American authors. The translation, says the preface, is quite accurate in tone. The author was both brave and lucky, and it was interesting to see the differences between the Northern and Southern French troops. Glad I wasn’t a poilu…

⭐Poilu is best understood not as a war book, but as a narrative explaining how and why people willingly march to their own slaughter at the bidding of sadistic, power-mad commanders who obviously care nothing whatever for them. In that sense, the book is about human psychology, and has universal import. It is one of the very few narratives written by an ordinary soldier, whose plight, as the author says, is simply unknowable to their officers. Barthas, a self-professed socialist, internationalist, and pacifist, willingly obeys orders he fully understands are insane and murderous, issued by people he views with incandescent hatred and contempt. Almost all his friends die senselessly, even assuming the justness of the war itself [which the author does not]. Not only are soldiers sent in heaps to almost certain death; they also suffer constant torture and abuse by haughty officers who appropriate the best food and most comfortable quarters for themselves while forcing their men to freeze and starve. Death and mutilation seem also the least of the common soldiers’ worries. At every lull in the carnage, brutal officers force their charges to endure meaningless, degrading, and unending drudgery; shivering, starving, manure-covered and lice-infected poilu suffer humiliating marches, parades, and drills to fulfill the sadistic pleasures of their superiors, who sacrifice legions for their own glory and promotion. How do they get away with this? Why do the victims obey? Why do commoners march into certain mutilation or death rather than shoot those who sacrifice them? This question is one of the most important faced by our species; answering it explains, if not everything, than almost everything. Theoretical discussions of this issue abound; this narrative puts us in the place of one who survived and let’s us comprehend his thoughts and emotions. Laid bare are the mechanisms of totalitarian control not only over the bodies, but the hearts, minds, and souls of the victims–which is almost all of us who are asked or allowed to serve. Coincidentally, I read this just after finishing *Seductive Poison*, a survivor’s account of life [and death] with Peoples Temple, culminating in the mass murder/suicide of over 900 devoted followers in Jonestown. Jim Jones is widely considered a pathological cult leader; yet Deborah Layton and hundreds of other sane and idealistic persons voluntarily adjusted themselves to his rule, and suffered humiliation, privation, and death in fulfilling his commands. The methods of social control, the myriads of ways in which followers accustom themselves in participating in great atrocities [including those inflicted on themselves], even as they extenuate, justify, and deny to the grave, are the same in murder/suicide cults public and private–in national armies as well as Jonestown in Guinea or the Brach Davidian compound at Waco. Understanding the armed forces of nations as officially-sanctioned murder/suicide cults is essential for us to recognize their true natures.

⭐Corporal Barthas was not an eighteen year old kid who was filled with visions of glory and adventure. He was a married man and a father. He had a trade that he enjoyed and was proud of. He was jerked out of his happy existence and thrown into the misery of a meat grinder war of attrition. He existed at the bottom of the war machine pyramid. The front line infantry “poilu” were considered totally expendable. By some miracle this man survived over four years of artillery shells, machine gun bullets, snipers, poison gas and the worst that nature could throw at a person living perpetually outdoors. I have read hundreds of books centered on war with only a few written from the perspective of the lowliest troops. His is the most literate and readable. I would love to go back in time 100 years and share a meal and glass of wine with this humble man of vision.

⭐I’ve read quite a lot of WW1 first hand accounts and some fail to convey the true horrors and hardships (if that’s what you want from a WW1 book). This cannot be said of this book, for me the first reading of the vividness and detail resulted in initially failing to comprehend what I had read because of the inhumanity and shock. I found myself re-reading to truly try to take in what the battles were really like. Whilst he mostly conveys in depth the actions involved in an attack, a defence or a counter attack, throughout the book the horrific death’s of soldiers is sometimes contained in single sentences – that’s not a criticism, that’s capturing how eventually the life of a fellow soldier was ended and death seems to have become so regular and so familiar that it seems to have lost any feeling. A true reflection of the impact of war on this and many soldiers in WW1.

⭐I’ve read alot of book on WW1, I’m abit of a nerd who just wants to absorbe more and more information on this topic. I can honestly say that this book and Robert Graves – Goodbye To All That, are the BEST accounts on the first world war.Its a big book with so much information but just an absolute page turner. I was so ingrosed. It makes alot of other books on WW1 that I thought where brilliant seem just mediocre in comparison.This book is an absolute must own. Just gripping from start to finish. I can’t recommend this book highly enough

⭐I have not finished this book, and may not. I have read nearly two hundred pages and it is a devoted description of discomfort, hunger and inequality between officers and men. It is quite revealing in the level of encounter with the Germans which is negligible in terms of actual conflict. There is a sense of his (and his fellow soldiers) being willing to accommodate German occupation of France for a quiet life and better grub. As a social document it follows many other French Army memoirs which concentrate on mud, food, and bad officers. As such it is worthy, but very dull, humourless and repetitive.

⭐I am glad I found and read this book not having heatd of it before the account of the authors and his comrades experiences and sufferings is unforgettable.Lucky to survive the war both by escaping death, privations and the squalor of the trenches along with the actions and stupidity of his own army in the lack of care and humanity meted out by many officers the account at times enrages the reader.Possibly the best anti war book: written by a reluctant socialist participant. I would recommend it be read by everyone.

⭐corporal Barthas gives the most complete account of the suffering of the ordinary French soldier on the Western Front and the inhuman attitude of so many of their so called Superiors. Whilst I had read about the Battles and those who planned and executed the slaughter on all sides, this book shows the sheer cynicism of the French military machine with a few honourable exceptions at the lower levels towards those they lead to their deaths.

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