Masterpiece 41

Both say right away, that's a great story. Which at times is reminiscent of Journey to the End of the night of Celine. And besides, it is well written. Normal, the author is none other than that of Clochemerle. Mobilized in 1914 at age 19, injured a year later, he will return to the forehead and the Vosges, the Chemin des Dames, Champagne, Alsace and the Argonne firstfruits of the armistice. Reissued in 2008 () that war story shows no pieces of bravery from soldiers convinced patriots and whose own life pass after the country ... No, Chevallier presents the war, true, at least the one that we imagine more easily: endless marches, the waiting in the trenches, the lack of information or on the contrary the wildest rumors, and then the contempt of those leaders who do not feel accountable for human lives and in sacrifice with a vengeance after a few stone of a village without strategic interest. It's terrible, terrifying, and accuser. Small excerpt:

"The anger of the guns is increasing. Day and night, we hardly moral rest. Day and night the frantic dig picks on us, ever deeper. Day and night the missiles are attacking it field flap that we must defend. We understand that an attack is coming, it takes an ending to this fury. We understand that two staffs have begun on these trays a struggle that involves their vanity and reputation military, that this conquest depend advancing one and the disgrace of the other, that this determination, which is only despair among soldiers is ambitious calculation of some German generals, that measure on a daily map how many centimeters still separate them from that goal they have boasted to achieve, they are indignant trampling we impose them and blame the lack of value of their troops. We understand the need of both sides, the dead and the dead for one who has taken the initiative of battle scares losses and cease its thrust. But we know that really takes a lot to scare victims of a general, and he that persists in front of us is not yet close to giving "

We often feel this writing Chevallier, private, willingness to fraternize with the German soldier, as if the enemy, the only one, was the class of the rich and wealthy. A rare permission of the author, which prefigures Clochemerle in the description scalpel, shows a bourgeois society that demands sacrifice, but not to his own son; then where they are in the back, away from the bombs and machine guns. It is also a time unconscious of the butchery of modern warfare where all civilians to demand the endianness. The demand without knowing the fear of not fighting against enemy troops, but against chance and waiting. Little has been written on this period, much less realized films (you should see the paths of glory!), Perhaps because deep the wound is still not closed and that the truth comes to light small to endorse the small versions of Knight or Barbusse, that of a massacre for which he would have had to judge some generals Nivelle (disgraced but rehabilitated by Maginot) Gamelin, Joffre (whose name still means large avenues of our cities) All supporters of the war to the death, in defiance of human lives. Four million dead ... Not to mention the "shot as an example" and summary executions ... A war story then, but also a inplacable indictment against war and capitalism (Negro's diatribe at the end of narrative and clear: "I will draw you the outcome of this war: fifty great men in the history books, millions of death he will be no question, and a thousand millionaires that will make the law" The worst c. is that the wars in the world continue with the same strings and the same victims.