Product Description: A pattern has been given to the history of the events between 1914 and 1918 which is called the ‘Great War’. To Henri Desagneaux and to thousands of others, there was no pattern to be seen from the trenches where he executed orders which ensured that dozens of men had to die attempting to achieve impossible objectives worked out at a headquarters in the rear...read more

Product Description: A graphic adaptation of a 100-year-old diary brings World War I history to lifeOne winter morning, Barroux was walking down a street in Paris when he made an extraordinary find: the real diary of a soldier in World War I. Barroux rescued the diary from the trash and illustrated the soldier's words...read more

Product Description: This graphic collection of first-hand accounts sheds new light on the experiences of the French army during the Great War. It reveals in authentic detail the perceptions and emotions of soldiers and civilians who were caught up in the most destructive conflict the world had ever seen...read more

Despite the huge contribution of the French Army towards the Allied war effort during the Great War, curiously little has been published in English concerning it. Thus, Helion are pleased to bring back into print one of the finest Great War memoirs by a soldier of any army, the journal of French gunner Paul Lintier, covering the tumultuous events of August and September 1914. A talented young writer (he had already had three small books published before the outbreak of war), Lintier served in the French 44th Artillery Regiment from 1913 until his death at the front in 1916. His account covers the outbreak of war, mobilization, his unit's first clash with the Germans at Virton on 22 August, the subsequent British and French withdrawal culminating in the 'miracle of the Marne', and the Battle of the Aisne, ending with his wounding during the latter battle on 22 September. Beautifully written, his account conveys, amongst other things, the little-known French experience of the discouraging and exhausting retreat from the advancing Germans, as well as the strains experienced by men and horses at the limits of their endurance. The fact that Lintier wrote it as a daily journal provides a fresh immediacy missing in many later accounts. A further posthumous volume of memoirs covering his service during 1915 and 1916 (until his death in action) was also published in French, and Helion hope to issue a translation of this in due course. Key sales points: Superb firsthand account of the French view of the opening months of the war on the Western Front 1914, The author was a published writer before the war, and his immediate and engaging writing convey the remarkable and unique atmosphere of the 'open warfare' fought during August and September 1914, Sheds much light on the hitherto-neglected French Army of the Great War. Helion Library of the Great War - a series designed to bring into print rare books long out-of-print, as well as producing translations of important and overlooked material that will contribute to our knowledge of this conflict.

Product Description: Memory of War in France examines France in the era of world war through the unconventional eyes of the veteran, activist and novelist, César Fauxbras. It encompasses the French navy at war, the naval mutinies of 1919, the experience of unemployment, interwar pacifism, French defeat in 1940 and Paris under the heel of German occupation...read more

Product Description: Echoing from the mountainous Vosges front of World War I come the rare accounts of an elite French foot soldier—a chasseur à pied. Robert Pellissier, born in France in 1882, had grown up in the United States and was teaching at Stanford when the Great War broke out in his homeland...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Comrades-in-Arms is a powerful and passionate account by a French cavalry officer of daily life on the Western Front from January 1915 to August 1916. Mobilized at the age of forty-six, Lecluse commanded an elite cavalry unit during campaigns in Artois, Champagne, and Alsace...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Great historians have seldom described the notable events in which they themselves participated. Marc Bloch - author of Feudal Society, the classic study of medieval social systems and co-founder of the influential French historical journal Annales - is an exception, In his powerful memoir The Strange Defeat, he analysed the fall of France in 1940 from the viewpoint of combatant as well as historian...read more

Product Description: This publication marks the long overdue appearance in English of Jean Norton Cru's controversial classic on the nature of war, as told in the words of witnesses, the French soldiers in the trenches of World War I. "War Books: A Study in Historical Criticism" is a translation, by the author himself, of his work entitled "Testimony (Du Témoignage," Paris, 1931)...read more