There are books which we feel well before they have been completed, they will stay us. The "Fear" From Gabriel Chevallier, published in 1930, in fact certainly part for me. Autobiographical, the book by G. Chevallier (which we will follow in the guise of John Dartemont) out of the box. A sort of firebrand whose iconoclastic episode taking place during the convalescence of the "hero" pretty much sums up the whole: his way to his father's company bistro with all friends (too old to be mobilized and veterans 70) the throng of questions like "so how's it going to the front?" "What are you doing to them Boches?" ... Dartemont invariably responds "we are afraid, always afraid ..." This answer had already cast a chill among nurses at the hospital where he was initially seen yet. And this is one of the great strengths of the book: the offset (the word is weak) between the experiences, feeling the soldiers and the stories behind imagines or would like to hear, helped by a disgusting propaganda .. . The Artois, Champagne, the Chemin des Dames ... Dartemont has seen, was injured, went through terrible periods of depression, self-loathing. He is conscious, instructed, he probably thinks too much to hope to get by. It measures the cowardice and incompetence of some leaders but is also able to recognize their courage. It describes the everyday environment of the soldiers of the Great War with a sometimes confusing realism. It is sublime. "I write to my sister. There is no truth in it [...] We write for rear full correspondence agreed lies [...] We tell them their war, that which their will satisfy [...] In all the concessions we have already granted to war, we add that of our sincerity. Our sacrifice that can not be valued high, we feed the legend, chuckling. I like the others, and others like me ... " We leave upset reading this book I recommend you to (re) discover.
