Louis Barthas

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Louis Barthas Born in Homps on July 14, 1879 was the son of Jean Barthas, cooper, and Louise Escande seamstress (Barthas xix). Barthas only went to primary school which he graduated first of his regions (Barthas xix). He was cooper and owner of a few acres of vine (Barthas xix). Very involved in politics as member of the socialist party and secretary of his party local branch (Barthas xix). Barthas was a Corporal during the Great with an impressive longevity for non-com of four years of service. He died in Peyriac-Minervois May 4 1952 (Barthas xxi). Barthas wrote an extensively during his years of service, those original notes had been lost and deteriorated but Barthas copied them and collected a total of 19 hand written notebooks (Barthas …show more content…

The notebooks contain events, discussions and feelings of the corporal. The work emphasizes the horror of the war and bad treatment that the soldiers who were victim of starvation, hunger and fatigue. The book is a collection of primary source with as implicit focus on the life of French soldiers during WWI. The book contains military tactics description, soldiers work description, detailed aspect of the trenches and how they were built, soldiers treatment, and various cultural aspect of regions of France, Spain and the people living …show more content…

We already had cover in through the book “All Quiet on the Western Front” the very high degree of humanity that certain soldiers had during WWI toward their enemies, but those notes had totally surprised me. An incredible anecdote refer to when the French soldiers were playing and let the ball go toward no man land Germans by courtesy wont fire at them. “The Germans would have been blind to not see the ball fly into the air and sometimes land way out ahead of the front line, in the barbed wire where bold player would go out to get it, testing the courtesy of the Germans, who never fired on the players” (Barthas

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