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A French Soldier's War Diary 1914-1918
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.
Desagneaux's diary, one of the classic French accounts of the conflict, gives a vivid insight into what it was like to execute those orders, and to live in the trenches with increasingly demoralized, unruly and mutinous men. In terse unflinching prose he records their experiences as they confronted the acute dangers of the front line. The appalling conditions in which they fought and the sheer intensity of the shellfire and the close-quarter combat have rarely been conveyed with such immediacy."
Desagneaux's diary, one of the classic French accounts of the conflict, gives a vivid insight into what it was like to execute those orders, and to live in the trenches with increasingly demoralized, unruly and mutinous men. In terse unflinching prose he records their experiences as they confronted the acute dangers of the front line. The appalling conditions in which they fought and the sheer intensity of the shellfire and the close-quarter combat have rarely been conveyed with such immediacy."
- GenresWorld War IMemoir
128 pages, Hardcover
First published September 30, 2014
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January 23, 2025
This book is only 128 pages, plus thirty more of photos. It is a diary that starts with the author’s mobilization in August 1914 and ends with him being discharged in February 1919, but it is an irregular diary. Early in the war months pass with no entries, but in April 1918 he was transferred to a battalion staff position and, while he does not directly make the connection, seems to have had more time to write. The entries get more frequent and are longer. Half the book takes place between April and the end of the war.
French memoirs are usually different in tone than those of the British, which tend toward a detached perspective where the most gruesome events are mentioned in passing rather than described in detail, and so when they do get described the reader is suddenly taken aback. For instance, there is a passage in Max Plowman’s A Subaltern on the Somme where he describes the ghastly business of having to deepen a trench in which were buried the bodies of soldiers who had been killed earlier, which his men have to cut through to complete their task.
The French style is to force the reader to confront war by showing it in all its madness and horror. Battles are terrifying and incomprehensible: companies reduced to platoon size; soldiers standing in blood and corpses; shattered bodies begging for help or to be put out of their misery; incessant artillery barrages blowing men and trenches to bits; no food or water for days; poison gas; being fired on by their own artillery who could not judge friendly positions because of the smoke.
Every time Henri Desagneaux went into battle it was a charnel house of random death, of shattered bodies and shattered minds, and they all knew that sooner or later everyone’s number comes up.
He was a reserve officer when the war broke out, assigned to a transportation unit, and the initial entries capture the utter chaos of mobilization – no one knew how to get to their assigned location or when trains would arrive, or where they would sleep while waiting for transport. To no one’s surprise, administrative and rear-echelon units quickly grabbed the most desirable billets, leaving the fighting soldiers to shift for themselves out in the elements. Adding to the confusion were refugees streaming in from the front, not knowing where they were going or how they would get there.
And then, after a few days, trains full of wounded began arriving and never stopped coming. France began the war with its soldiers wearing the Napoleonic uniform of blue coats and bright red trousers, making them easy targets. They had been trained in the doctrine of attaque à outrance, to attack at all costs because they were told that l’esprit and le cran (guts) would be enough to carry the day. It meant sending men forward against machine guns, quick firing infantry rifles, and artillery loaded with shrapnel. It was slaughter, and France took 300,000 casualties in the first months of fighting. Over the course of the war 65 percent of the 8.4 million Frenchmen who had been mobilized were killed or wounded, including 1.4 million deaths. There were 4 million wounded, or 48 percent of the total mobilized. On average 900 soldiers died every day.
Desagneaux was transferred to the infantry and began the long bloody slog of trench life punctuated by failed offensives that repeatedly decimated his regiment. He was involved in every major battle from 1916 to the end of the war.
Almost the entire French army was rotated through Verdun during that ten month battle, including Desagneaux’s regiment, and he captures the nightmarish days of attack and defense, of constant bombardment and death. His entry for 26 June 1916 reads “There’s blood everywhere; the wounded have sought refuge with us, thinking that we could help them; the blood flows, the heat is atrocious, the corpses stink, the flies buzz – it’s enough to drive one mad. Two men of the 24th Company commit suicide.”
What was left of his regiment was finally relieved and reconstituted, and the next year was bled out again on the Chemin des Dames. This was the battle that broke the French army, leading to mutiny and widespread refusals to fight. Desagneaux describes the situation in several diary entries, where companies and entire battalions ignored orders, assaulted their officers, and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to force them to move. It was only with the promise of better treatment, more leave, and improved conditions when out of the line that discipline was eventually restored.
His assignment to a battalion staff did not mean he was safe. He was moved to a battalion where he knew no one, and had to lead companies and detachments without knowing if he could trust his soldiers and NCOs. He records several incidents where he had to draw his revolver and force men back into the firing line after they started to pull back on their own. I was surprised that even this late in the war he advanced carrying his cane, a pre-War officers’ affectation. This would seem to have made him an obvious target for the Germans but he never comments on it. Since 1916 the British had been dressing their front line officers in privates’ uniforms for precisely this reason.
He does not directly mention the great German spring offensive of 1918, but picks up his narrative in the aftermath of it, when the Allies were trying to claw back the territory they had lost (in three days the British had lost all the ground they had taken in the four months of the Battle of the Somme at a cost of 400,000 casualties.) He had a low opinion of the British army at this stage of the war, “Everyone says the same: the English are hopeless, it’s the Scots, the Australians, and the Canadians who do all the work.” This mirrors the complaints of the Canadians and Australians, who said that the British army used them as assault troops whenever a difficult objective needed to be taken, both because they could no longer count on their own troops, who were largely draftees by this time, and to push the casualties off to the Dominion countries.
Another interesting comment about the British is, “Our route is scattered with huge English camps, teeming with vehicles, men, and horses. But these men are more interested in polishing and shining their equipment than in thinking about the trenches.” This too is something found in British memoirs. In Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That he complains about senior officers who could not shake their pre-War fixation with shined buttons and sharp salutes, and says, “But all this is childish. Is there a war on here, or isn’t there?” And in Frank Richards’s Old Soldiers Never Die he recounts an incident where even after three years of grim warfare, a battalion commander thought the best use of the men’s time was to spend three hours practicing saluting.
With the failure of the Spring Offensive the Germans were in retreat and would steadily fall back toward Germany until the Armistice in November. They were in retreat, but not beaten, and there was vicious, bloody fighting ahead for Desagneaux’s regiment. On 15 May 1918 he writes, “Our losses increase daily; about 200 per battalion, i.e. 600 for the regiment. Life is getting harder: no sleep, we are wallowing in mud and filth. We can neither wash nor lie down except on the ground itself and there is not a wisp of straw; our joints are stiff and we are itching all over.”
He also had to deal with senior officers who were more interested in saving their own skins than leading their men. In one hotly contested village his colonel set up in a cellar and refused to budge, but he still issued a steady stream of orders and demands for information. He called Desagneaux again and again, and every time that meant crossing two hundred meters of artillery and machine gun swept ground littered with corpses.
By late August the end of the war seemed to be in sight, but it had been a bloody road to reach that point. Since May the regiment had lost “54 officers and 2,200 men. The total strength of the regiment.” Casualty numbers like this were common in French army. In Robert Bracken’s The Verdun Regiment he summed up their total losses over the course of the war as 300 officers and 16,000 men, including 6100 deaths. This meant the regiment had been bled out and reformed five times in four years.
Peace finally comes and he spends a few months on occupation duty among sullen German civilians before finally being demobilized. This book was published in 1975, so Desagneaux had had almost half a century to reflect on his experiences, including having lived through another catastrophic World War. He had great praise for the courage and fortitude of the soldiers, and a low opinion of the competence of senior officers and the feckless politicians who stayed safe far behind the lines.
For those with an interest in World War One this book does a good job describing the lives of soldiers in and out of the line, and provides an unvarnished look at the true face of combat.
French memoirs are usually different in tone than those of the British, which tend toward a detached perspective where the most gruesome events are mentioned in passing rather than described in detail, and so when they do get described the reader is suddenly taken aback. For instance, there is a passage in Max Plowman’s A Subaltern on the Somme where he describes the ghastly business of having to deepen a trench in which were buried the bodies of soldiers who had been killed earlier, which his men have to cut through to complete their task.
The French style is to force the reader to confront war by showing it in all its madness and horror. Battles are terrifying and incomprehensible: companies reduced to platoon size; soldiers standing in blood and corpses; shattered bodies begging for help or to be put out of their misery; incessant artillery barrages blowing men and trenches to bits; no food or water for days; poison gas; being fired on by their own artillery who could not judge friendly positions because of the smoke.
Every time Henri Desagneaux went into battle it was a charnel house of random death, of shattered bodies and shattered minds, and they all knew that sooner or later everyone’s number comes up.
He was a reserve officer when the war broke out, assigned to a transportation unit, and the initial entries capture the utter chaos of mobilization – no one knew how to get to their assigned location or when trains would arrive, or where they would sleep while waiting for transport. To no one’s surprise, administrative and rear-echelon units quickly grabbed the most desirable billets, leaving the fighting soldiers to shift for themselves out in the elements. Adding to the confusion were refugees streaming in from the front, not knowing where they were going or how they would get there.
And then, after a few days, trains full of wounded began arriving and never stopped coming. France began the war with its soldiers wearing the Napoleonic uniform of blue coats and bright red trousers, making them easy targets. They had been trained in the doctrine of attaque à outrance, to attack at all costs because they were told that l’esprit and le cran (guts) would be enough to carry the day. It meant sending men forward against machine guns, quick firing infantry rifles, and artillery loaded with shrapnel. It was slaughter, and France took 300,000 casualties in the first months of fighting. Over the course of the war 65 percent of the 8.4 million Frenchmen who had been mobilized were killed or wounded, including 1.4 million deaths. There were 4 million wounded, or 48 percent of the total mobilized. On average 900 soldiers died every day.
Desagneaux was transferred to the infantry and began the long bloody slog of trench life punctuated by failed offensives that repeatedly decimated his regiment. He was involved in every major battle from 1916 to the end of the war.
Almost the entire French army was rotated through Verdun during that ten month battle, including Desagneaux’s regiment, and he captures the nightmarish days of attack and defense, of constant bombardment and death. His entry for 26 June 1916 reads “There’s blood everywhere; the wounded have sought refuge with us, thinking that we could help them; the blood flows, the heat is atrocious, the corpses stink, the flies buzz – it’s enough to drive one mad. Two men of the 24th Company commit suicide.”
What was left of his regiment was finally relieved and reconstituted, and the next year was bled out again on the Chemin des Dames. This was the battle that broke the French army, leading to mutiny and widespread refusals to fight. Desagneaux describes the situation in several diary entries, where companies and entire battalions ignored orders, assaulted their officers, and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to force them to move. It was only with the promise of better treatment, more leave, and improved conditions when out of the line that discipline was eventually restored.
His assignment to a battalion staff did not mean he was safe. He was moved to a battalion where he knew no one, and had to lead companies and detachments without knowing if he could trust his soldiers and NCOs. He records several incidents where he had to draw his revolver and force men back into the firing line after they started to pull back on their own. I was surprised that even this late in the war he advanced carrying his cane, a pre-War officers’ affectation. This would seem to have made him an obvious target for the Germans but he never comments on it. Since 1916 the British had been dressing their front line officers in privates’ uniforms for precisely this reason.
He does not directly mention the great German spring offensive of 1918, but picks up his narrative in the aftermath of it, when the Allies were trying to claw back the territory they had lost (in three days the British had lost all the ground they had taken in the four months of the Battle of the Somme at a cost of 400,000 casualties.) He had a low opinion of the British army at this stage of the war, “Everyone says the same: the English are hopeless, it’s the Scots, the Australians, and the Canadians who do all the work.” This mirrors the complaints of the Canadians and Australians, who said that the British army used them as assault troops whenever a difficult objective needed to be taken, both because they could no longer count on their own troops, who were largely draftees by this time, and to push the casualties off to the Dominion countries.
Another interesting comment about the British is, “Our route is scattered with huge English camps, teeming with vehicles, men, and horses. But these men are more interested in polishing and shining their equipment than in thinking about the trenches.” This too is something found in British memoirs. In Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That he complains about senior officers who could not shake their pre-War fixation with shined buttons and sharp salutes, and says, “But all this is childish. Is there a war on here, or isn’t there?” And in Frank Richards’s Old Soldiers Never Die he recounts an incident where even after three years of grim warfare, a battalion commander thought the best use of the men’s time was to spend three hours practicing saluting.
With the failure of the Spring Offensive the Germans were in retreat and would steadily fall back toward Germany until the Armistice in November. They were in retreat, but not beaten, and there was vicious, bloody fighting ahead for Desagneaux’s regiment. On 15 May 1918 he writes, “Our losses increase daily; about 200 per battalion, i.e. 600 for the regiment. Life is getting harder: no sleep, we are wallowing in mud and filth. We can neither wash nor lie down except on the ground itself and there is not a wisp of straw; our joints are stiff and we are itching all over.”
He also had to deal with senior officers who were more interested in saving their own skins than leading their men. In one hotly contested village his colonel set up in a cellar and refused to budge, but he still issued a steady stream of orders and demands for information. He called Desagneaux again and again, and every time that meant crossing two hundred meters of artillery and machine gun swept ground littered with corpses.
By late August the end of the war seemed to be in sight, but it had been a bloody road to reach that point. Since May the regiment had lost “54 officers and 2,200 men. The total strength of the regiment.” Casualty numbers like this were common in French army. In Robert Bracken’s The Verdun Regiment he summed up their total losses over the course of the war as 300 officers and 16,000 men, including 6100 deaths. This meant the regiment had been bled out and reformed five times in four years.
Peace finally comes and he spends a few months on occupation duty among sullen German civilians before finally being demobilized. This book was published in 1975, so Desagneaux had had almost half a century to reflect on his experiences, including having lived through another catastrophic World War. He had great praise for the courage and fortitude of the soldiers, and a low opinion of the competence of senior officers and the feckless politicians who stayed safe far behind the lines.
For those with an interest in World War One this book does a good job describing the lives of soldiers in and out of the line, and provides an unvarnished look at the true face of combat.
January 23, 2020
Captain Desagneaux's diary is a compelling read giving graphic details on battle and trench warfare in World War One. This is my first WW1 book from a French perspective. It was fascinating to see how the war wore on the soldiers after so many years. I also felt Desagneaux's frustration with the officers making decisions and giving orders without coming anywhere near the real front lines. It's a short read and well worth the time. I recommend.
May 2, 2020
An insightful account of the life of a French junior officer and the ordinary men in the trenches during the Great War.
The sections in 1917 covering the French mutinies are particularly fascinating, and there is a real sense of a change in the spirits of the men and the officers relationships after this point.
As with accounts from all sides of the front there is a clear disdain for senior officers and the staff - a lack of willingness to come into the line - drawing a clear distinction between those in trench service and those who are not. This is perhaps the more striking given the author spent the first year of the war behind the lines.
My only issue is with the way the diary has been edited - large chunks are (presumably) not included, this removes many of the more mundane / routine aspects of trench service. It also leaves the impression that all spells in the line involved offensive action - almost akin to Blackadder without the humour.
A short, striking, account of the war including many of the major battles for France, well worth a read.
The sections in 1917 covering the French mutinies are particularly fascinating, and there is a real sense of a change in the spirits of the men and the officers relationships after this point.
As with accounts from all sides of the front there is a clear disdain for senior officers and the staff - a lack of willingness to come into the line - drawing a clear distinction between those in trench service and those who are not. This is perhaps the more striking given the author spent the first year of the war behind the lines.
My only issue is with the way the diary has been edited - large chunks are (presumably) not included, this removes many of the more mundane / routine aspects of trench service. It also leaves the impression that all spells in the line involved offensive action - almost akin to Blackadder without the humour.
A short, striking, account of the war including many of the major battles for France, well worth a read.
June 27, 2020
For a long time now, I searched for a first hand account of the Great War. What Desagneaux provides is a gritty, real, and bloody tale of his four and a half years on the Western Front. There were times when I had to put the book down because the burden these men willing faced, the certain death they marched to was overwhelming. The men of the 359th Regiment lived, fought, died under a near constant blanket of machine gun fire, gas attacks, and 120 to 150 artillery shells; to which they virtually had no cover. They would wait to attack and die in mass at Verdun, the Somme, and Vosges. Forced night marches, attacks in broad daylight, and battalion numbers erased to mere platoon sizes, was a reoccurring reality. Being ordered to attack after seeing wave after wave of French soldiers cut down, blown to pieces, and burned alive was daily life. It was slaughter by the thousands and enough to drive men to breakdown and walk aimlessly into the machine guns just to be free of war. Henri Desagneaux wrote a brutal tale of the wars men wage in both physical and mental capacities, how far we are willing to go for those we love, and the what it truly costs to claim even a few meters during the Great War. Anyone who is a fan of military literature should definitely read this piece. I won’t soon forget it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 25, 2023
This isn't a bad book, but it's not a great one, either. It's rather short and very repetitive. Generally it consists of accounts of time spent in the trenches at various places and the suffering endured at each. One reads pretty much like the last half a dozen.
This book would have been improved with some maps and also a few notes from the editor giving a greater context to the various actions that Desagneaux was involved in.
This book would have been improved with some maps and also a few notes from the editor giving a greater context to the various actions that Desagneaux was involved in.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews