A century ago France – and all of Europe - was engaged in a
war of tragic and epic proportions, the consequences of which we are still
dealing with today if you look to the Middle East. Even though the man in
uniform was like an anonymous being (where no one effectively belonged to
themselves) one still finds an intense “freedom to criticize” in a number of war
narratives.
One of the most profound such narratives,
written from the French perspective, is the recently translated World War I
Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas –
Poilu
(a derisive term for the common soldier). The writings of Louis Barthas, a
barrelmaker by trade, can be read in conjunction with the autobiographical novel
of Englishman Siegfried Sassoon,
Memoirs
of an Infantry Officer, and with Richard Stumpf’s World War One diary of a
German seaman.
Each of these accounts deals with the loss of the individual,
the sense of war community (which occurred sometimes across the lines and
rather often in opposition to the officer class) and the recovery of “independent
action”.
In some cases independence was achieved by the mere act of keeping a diary in
the face of a seaman’s “undeviating routine” only to be lost in the midst of malnourishment,
naval mutiny and revolution.
Or in Sassoon’s case independence was achieved by “
acting on behalf of soldiers” and by publishing his objections to war
in
The Times of London – for which he
received treatment for “shell shock”.
Here is an excerpt from the Notebooks of Corporal Louis
Barthas which also gives ample voice to “moral distress,” the spirit of searing
war criticism, and action taken on behalf of other soldiers. It is a good example of freedom of expression
in France in the year 1915, maintained in the muddied and miserable trenches of
war – and against orders.
To my physical
distress was added moral distress. This
order to put men to work, to throw them out of their shelter, into the mud, the
gloom, the storm, the icy water, these forty men already frozen right through,
filled my head with storms of rage, of hate-filled anger against these inhuman
orders.
My decision was made. I would defy the
captain’s and the commandant’s orders.
The men would stay in their shelter.
But maybe tomorrow I would be arrested for refusing to obey an order,
and dragged before a court–martial. They
could even be scoundrels enough to have me shot, as an example.
No, not that. They won’t get me. Crazy thoughts invaded my
brain. Before dying I would go back to
the captain’s lair and skewer him with my bayonet like an ill-behaved beast.
Then I thought about how, at the bottom of the staircase, candles wouldn’t stay
lit, and no one dared go sleep down there, preferring to pile up on the stairs. Well I would go down there, and by tomorrow I
would likely be asphyxiated. That would
be a nice, painless death, the end of this cruel life. The thought of my loved
ones did not hold me back. I had long
given up any hope of seeing them again.
