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

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 Ar...