This work of Genevoix glorifies our poilu: reveals him as a man, highly strung and impressionable, capable of panic—the work quotes instances of such panic—but, at the same time, patient despite his temperament, enduring well-nigh beyond the powers of human endurance; a grumbler against heaven and earth, desiring always to be able precisely to account for all things—in particular he wishes to know where he is going and why he is going!—A jester full of strange quips and cranks; but docile on the whole, loving those officers who show they care for him; familiar with those who permit it, with a familiarity purely deferential; in fine, possessed of attributes and virtues which defy precise definition, wholly admirable without the slightest consciousness of it.

On the 12th September, 1914, when Genevoix was perusing a notice attached to a wall, "printed in letters two hands high," announcing the victory of the Marne, he watched some soldiers approach to read the placard in their turn.

"The faces of all of them were mud-stained and hairy to the very lips … for the most part they were infinitely wearied and miserable. Nevertheless, these were the men who had just fought with a courage and energy more than human; these were the men who had proved themselves stronger far than German shells and steel; these men were the conquerors. I should have liked to have told each one of them of the glow of affection which suddenly surged through me; affection for these men who have now won for themselves the admiration and respect of the whole world, who have sacrificed themselves without ever uttering the word 'sacrifice,' without seeming conscious of the sublimity of their own heroism!"

The work is not altogether devoid of moments of gaiety; the conversation of the soldiers to which each contributes his particular patois; the distribution of rations to the various sections; the claims which rain down upon the corporal: "What—that sugar! Not a very fat lump, is it? Why, the pile you just handed the 3rd is almost double as much!" To which the corporal: "If you are not satisfied go and make your complaint to the Ministry!"; the cutting up of a quarter of beef by one, Martin, a miner from the North, armed with a knife "which had been given to him by a prisoner—a good enough piece of goods, too, which knife indeed has not its equal among the whole company for carving up a piece of tough meat"—and the task ended, a sufficiently difficult one, achieved as it were by the inch, Martin triumphant, proclaiming himself to be "Some Butcher." Then there is that lunch which our lieutenant orders on pay-day: an omelette, never to be forgotten; a slice of juicy ham; most wonderful of jams; hunches large and thick from a loaf of fresh bread; afterwards a pipe, the blue, fragrant smoke of which drifts slowly up to the rafters above us. And following these wonders, the night passed in a bed, with real sheets and blankets upon it! The memories of other nights are evoked—rough nights spent on heaps of stones in the fields, or on the débris of splintered trees which litter the woods, or amid the humidity and mud of the trenches, or the discomforting dryness of the stubble-fields—and now, to be covered from head to foot with bedclothes in a soft, real bed!

"Not yet was our amazement exhausted … in vain we sought with every inch of our bodies for some hard spot, for some lurking corner which would hurt; but no spot or corner was there which was not soft and warm!… And we lapsed into bursts of laughter; we expressed our delight and enthusiasm in burlesque, in jokes, each one of which provoked fresh outbursts of laughter…."

(Censored)

"We, that is to say Porchon and myself: Lieutenant Porchon and Lieutenant Genevoix."

There could be nothing more delightful than the comradeship existing between Genevoix of the Ecole Normale and the St. Cyrien, Porchon. They had been trained for widely different destinies, these two young men; the Ecole Normale on the one hand, Saint Cyr on the other! And if they both turned out to be excellent officers, with nothing to choose between them, that does not merely prove the value of the education obtained at the Ecole Normale. It proves something better and greater than that: the deep accord, the healthy unanimity which exists between French minds. So these two companions count the days gaily; they are young and they are French…. But Porchon is the gayer of the two; Genevoix envies him a little for his ready laughter, for the never failing and welcome good humour, to enter into the spirit of which, he says, "I compelled myself as though seeking the conquest of a virtue…."

I like, too, the melancholy underlying this work. This war, foreseen and predicted, but whose horrors completely transcend the imagination, this retrograde movement towards the almost forgotten barbarity of a humanity we thought was marching towards new horizons, was there ever equal cause for human sadness? And there where the Germans, hailing from all parts of Germany, of all professions and creeds, steep themselves to satiation in joys purely cannibalistic, how shall a soldier of France control his tears, or rather how shall he find heart to weep?…

I am pleased, too, that those superb sentiments which sustain courage in moments of superhuman fatigue, which exalt amid perils and horrors, should be touched upon, however lightly, in the following pages. They dwell in the inmost heart of us all, hidden by that timidity, that exaggerated sense of shame, which prohibits us from revealing what is best and most sacred in ourselves. A few words alone suffice, like those written after a reunion of officers when a Captain found himself in command of a Corps, because: