THE testimony to read about the Great War ...

Louis Barthas is a cooper 35 years old when the Great War broke out and he was mobilized as a corporal in the 80th Infantry Regiment.
His testimony is unique in several respects.
First, because it is relatively "old" at the time of mobilization. At 35, he is a much more mature man than Maurice Genevoix (24 years) or Lucien Laby (22) for example.
Then because he is a worker. Socialist, trade unionist and a Christian, he remains a soldier's rank does not seek any literary effect. It restores to us the daily life of the squad whose officers and NCOs are excluded. The war and its horrors, permissions, periods of relative lulls, mutinies of spring 17 is here ... All we returned on incredibly violent background, mud and rats.
Finally, and this is probably the most interesting, L. Barthas spent the whole of the Great War at the front. He experienced the Somme, the Argonne, Verdun, the German spring offensive 18 ... And he wrote his notes in "real time" as they say today, that is to say without hindsight (sometimes harmful) of memory.
On arrival, his notebooks are totally authentic, exciting and, somehow, unique and irreplaceable.
Still a must read in this centenary year ...