1914

1

Euntes: Some parish priests practiced trades to supplement their incomes, and Raphaël Vanni, the curate at Bourgneuf in the département of Charente-Maritime, produced a line of bicycles named after Matthew 28:19, euntes ergo docete omnes gentes: go ye therefore, and teach all nations.

2

Aures Habet et non Audiet: Victor Hugo took the title of chapter 2 in book 4 of his last novel, Ninety-Three, from Psalms 115:6, aures habent et non audient: they have ears, but they hear not. The novel appeared in 1874, soon after the bloody uprising of the Paris Commune, and deals with the equally ferocious Royalist rebellions that began in the Vendée region in 1793, midway through the French Revolution, and spread through twelve of the freshly created western départements of France. When Anthime goes off to war on a troop train to the Ardennes in 1914, he leaves from Nantes, which was the scene of major military engagements during the rebellion and such horrific Royalist reprisals against the populace that French universities today still debate the issue of un génocide vendéen. The excesses of the Terror are well known, but the appalling butchery of these revolts against the Revolutionary government still inspires revulsion and is the backdrop, perhaps most famously, of Balzac’s Les Chouans and Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites.

In his description of the alarm bells, Echenoz is making a clear allusion to a similar incident in Ninety-Three, the opening of the aforementioned chapter when the Marquis de Lantenac, a Royalist leader who has survived an attack at sea by Republican ships, is cast up on the coast of Brittany. There he experiences the same phenomenon: seeing the belfries of the villages spread out before him flashing white and black, white and black, he realizes that the wind is drowning out their sound. And recognizing the tocsin, he wonders for whom the alarm bells toll.

3

Iron rations: For a full illustrated description of these iron rations, including the origins of the terms “bully beef” and “monkey meat,” Google “Vivres de Réserve—France’s Iron Ration in World War 1,” and select the site of that name. The Standard Reserve Food ration included two tins of corned beef, twelve hardtack biscuits, two packets of dried soup, two coffee tablets, and two envelopes of ration sugar.

4

Albert Herter: The American painter Albert Herter lost a son in 1918, killed near Château-Thierry while fighting in the American Expeditionary Force commanded by General John “Black Jack” Pershing. In memory of his son, Herter gave Le Départ des poilus, août 1914 (The Departure of the Troops, August 1918) to France, where since 1926 it has hung in the Gare de l’Est. A fine image of this monumental painting may be seen by Googling “Le Départ des poilus, août 1914 | Clio-Photo” and selecting the site of the same name.

Christian Herter, the painter’s other son, became governor of Massachusetts and later served as secretary of state under Dwight D. Eisenhower.

5

bonnetière: The bigouden, the elaborate lace bonnet that was the traditional headdress of women in Normandy and Brittany during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is still sometimes worn today on festive occasions. Because of their impressive height, these bonnets were kept in bonnetières, tall, narrow cupboards with a single door, and they can be well over a foot high. A famous Paris Match cartoon by the great Sempé shows a Breton woman sneaking a nip from a wine bottle hidden under the towering lace tube on her head.

6

manille: Manilla, a Spanish trick-taking card game, spread in the late nineteenth century to France, where it remained popular until 1940, and it is still widely enjoyed in the northern and southwestern parts of the country. Manille is played with a thirty-two-card piquet deck, usually by four players in two partnerships, but two or three players can manage it in a pinch.

7

Byrrh: Created in 1866, this French aperitif—a blend of red wine, alcohol, grape juice, and quinine—was particularly popular in France in the early twentieth century. Byrrh was sold in the United States until Prohibition and reintroduced to America in 2012.

8

Ace of Diamonds: L’as de carreau means “the ace of diamonds,” but carreau is also the word for “square,” so this nickname is a play on words. The other popular name for the knapsacks was Azor, the French equivalent of “Fido,” because they were originally made of dog skin.

9

Ardennes and the Somme: For hundreds of years the European powers have fought over the strategically valuable region of the Ardennes, although by the turn of the twentieth century the difficult terrain there was considered unsuitable for modern warfare. Nothing daunted, in both world wars Germany struck swiftly through the Ardennes to attack where France was poorly defended. The Battle of the Ardennes (August 21–23, 1914) was one of the opening battles of World War I, while in World War II, the Battle of France and the Battle of the Bulge devastated the region once again. In the Battle of the Ardennes, the French counted on their light, rapid-firing artillery to dominate the small German forces they anticipated encountering in wooded terrain favoring their firepower, but the unexpectedly significant German forces, strengthened by their advanced tactical positioning, turned the tables on the French, who retreated in disorder with heavy casualties and were kept essentially on the defensive until the Battle of the Marne.

The Battle of the Somme (July 1–November 18, 1916), one of the biggest and bloodiest battles of the war, was also one of the most deadly confrontations in history, with a butcher’s bill of more than a million casualties. The French and British armies, supported by troops from British imperial territories, mounted a joint offensive against the German army, which had by then taken considerable French territory at great cost to both sides and was pressing France hard in its siege of Verdun. Specifically developed to break the deadlock of trench warfare on the Western Front, tanks were first used in combat by the British in the Battle of the Somme, but by the time the Germans withdrew to their fortified Hindenburg Line, the French and British forces had managed to penetrate only a few miles into German-occupied territory.

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shelter: In the forward trenches, officers often had better quarters than the enlisted men, but even the best dugouts were small, muddy rooms, while others were simply rectangular caves cut into the walls of the trench. Some were cubbyholes that could hold only one man, while deep dugouts might extend more than ten feet underground, but unless they were raised at least a foot above the lowest level of the trench, they could be flooded with filth and dangerous debris.

11

Verdun: The German hope for a swift victory when they invaded France had been stymied by Russian offensives on the east and the French victory outside Paris in “the Miracle of the Marne,” the desperate counterattack in September 1914 that broke the monthlong German offensive. After the invaders withdrew to the northeast, the Western Front solidified into a four-year war of attrition in the trenches. Hoping to end this stalemate, the Germans mounted a massive offensive at Verdun, which was now a salient on the front lines, open to attack from three sides. The Battle of Verdun (February 21–December 18, 1916) found the French initially unprepared, but German gains were slowed by French reinforcements, and both sides incurred heavy losses as the German advance bogged down. Partly to relieve German pressure on Verdun, the Allies launched their own offensive on the Somme on July 1, forcing Germany to divert men and matériel there. The Battle of Verdun dragged on until the end of the year, as the French clawed back their lost ground.

Modern estimates put the number of dead and wounded at close to a million men. After eleven months, the longest and bloodiest battle of World War I ended with no real advantage to either side.

12

Suippe: Le Cimetière militaire français de La Ferme de Suippe, a French National Necropolis, contains the remains of more than nine thousand combatants killed during both world wars.

At five a.m. on March 10, 1915, the French soldiers of the 21st Company of the 336th Infantry Regiment, exhausted by fighting and losses sustained during two months of fruitless combat in their sector, were ordered to launch a fresh attack on the enemy’s position north of the village of Souain. The terrain in front of them was strewn with the corpses of their comrades, cut down by withering German machine-gun fire in several recent abortive attacks or fatally enmeshed in the barbed wire both sides deployed to protect their positions. French artillery fire, intended to soften up the enemy, was instead pounding no-man’s-land and its own trenches. A witness would later claim that General Réveillac, who ordered the attack, was trying to drive his men out into the open. The French soldiers refused to budge. (During the ensuing court-martial, one of the defendants insisted that “whoever went over the top would have been literally mowed down by either our fire or the German machine-gunners.”)

Incensed, General Réveillac ordered the company commander to submit the names of eighteen soldiers and his six youngest corporals, who were brought before a court-martial. Meeting on March 16 in a room of the city hall in Suippe, the court-martial acquitted the soldiers and two corporals and condemned to death corporals Louis Girard, a watchmaker; Lucien Lechat, a café waiter; Louis Lefoulon, a railroad worker; and Théophile Maupas, a teacher. On the following day, March 17, two hours before the camp was informed that their sentences had been commuted to hard labor, the condemned were shot at the Suippe Farm.

Upon receiving the news of her husband’s execution, Blanche Maupas began her long battle seeking justice for the corporals of Souain with great courage and perseverance. In 1934, the four men were at last rehabilitated by the Special Military Tribunal for the Review of Court-Martial Convictions, and their names were cleared.

In 1957 Stanley Kubrick made Paths of Glory, based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb, which told the story of the corporals of Souain. Starring Kirk Douglas, the film was released to critical acclaim but was not shown in France until 1975.

13

Chemin des Dames: The Chemin des Dames is nineteen miles long, running east and west along a ridge between two river valleys. “The Ladies’ Path” was the carriage road taken in the eighteenth century by the daughters of Louis XV when traveling between Paris and the Château de Boves, but in World War I it lay in a strategic sector held by the French army on the Western Front. Pushing the invaders back after the Battle of the Marne, the Allied armies were finally halted on the ridge in September 1914 in the First Battle of the Aisne River, and by the end of January 1915 the Germans controlled that plateau. The front line remained essentially static—but not without casualties—until the Second Battle of the Aisne (April 16–25, 1917), when in what had been presented as a final French offensive for victory, General Nivelle threw seven army corps against the Chemin des Dames ridge, where the Germans were well dug in and had the high-ground advantage. After twelve days of fighting, the attackers had gained little and suffered such high casualties that the French public, kept informed by the newspapers, was outraged. After the massive losses in the battles of Verdun and the Somme, the toll taken at the Chemin des Dames shattered the morale of the disillusioned French troops. By early 1917, almost a million French soldiers had been killed in the war; those still alive were sick of the suicidal attacks demanded by their high command.

The French Army Mutinies of 1917—the startling extent of which was hidden from the public at the time—began after the debacle of the Second Battle of the Aisne: French troops at the Chemin des Dames had been deserting in increasing numbers, but deserters became mutineers as soldiers refused to obey orders for further futile assaults. Revolution was in the air: Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, had abdicated on March 2, 1917, and a month later, units of Allied Russian soldiers among the Chemin des Dames troops were singing “The Internationale.” In the end, almost half the French infantry at the Western Front may have taken part in insubordination at some point, encouraged at times by the stunning example of the Russian Revolution, news of which was spread by socialist newspapers and the infantry rumor mills.

14

Mons: Mons is the capital of the Belgian province of Hainaut, where the British Expeditionary Force fought its first battle of the Great War on August 23 and 24, 1914, against the advancing German First Army. Outnumbered by three to one, and left vulnerable when the sudden retreat of the French Fifth Army exposed their right flank, the British withdrew in good order for more than 250 miles, hard-pressed by the Germans, all the way to the outskirts of Paris. There, together with six French field armies, they were at last able to reverse the Allies’ fortunes at the last-ditch Battle of the Marne and begin driving the Germans back to what would become the infamous trenches of the Western Front.

During the Hundred Days Offensive (August 8–November 11, 1918), beginning with the Battle of Amiens, a series of Allied attacks forced the Central Powers to retreat behind the “impregnable” Hindenburg Line—permanently breached in September—and ultimately to accept an armistice. As part of this offensive, the Canadian Corps of the British First Army fought a number of battles along the Western Front from Amiens to Mons, where a memorial plaque in the city hall bears the inscription: MONS WAS RECAPTURED BY THE CANADIAN CORPS ON THE 11TH NOVEMBER 1918: AFTER FIFTY MONTHS OF GERMAN OCCUPATION, FREEDOM WAS RESTORED TO THE CITY: HERE WAS FIRED THE LAST SHOT OF THE GREAT WAR.