Your Death Would Be Mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War

by Hanna

Paul and Marie Pireaud, a young peasant couple from southwest France, were newlyweds when World War I erupted. With Paul in the army from 1914 through 1919, they were forced to conduct their marriage mostly by correspondence. Drawing upon the hundreds of letters they wrote, Martha Hanna tells their moving story and reveals a powerful and personal perspective on war.

Civilians and combatants alike maintained bonds of emotional commitment and suffered the inevitable miseries of extended absence. While under direct fire at Verdun, Paul wrote with equal intensity and poetic clarity of the brutality of battle and the dietary needs (as he understood them) of his pregnant wife. Marie, in turn, described the difficulties of working the family farm and caring for a sick infant, lamented the deaths of local men, and longed for the safe return of her husband. Through intimate avowals and careful observations, their letters reveal how war transformed their lives, reinforced their love, and permanently altered the character of rural France.

Overwhelmed by one of the most tumultuous upheavals of the modern age, Paul and Marie found solace in family and strength in passion. Theirs is a human story of loneliness and longing, fear in the face of death, and the consolations of love. Your Death Would Be Mine is a poignant tale of ordinary people coping with the trauma of war.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War I, European History, Romance, Biography, War

352 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2006

Reviews

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fascinating and moving glimpse into life during WWI. Your Death Would Be Mine has an unusual and, perhaps, unique approach. It is about the relationship of a French married couple from 1914 through 1919. Paul Pireaud serves throughout the war, while his wife, Marie Pireaud, remains at home, and they stay in touch through a nearly daily routine of letter-writing. "Paul and Marie exchanged upwards of two thousand letters over the course of the war." (9)

So the book is almost an epistolary non-fiction novel, while also being the study of a romance/marriage, and a dive into French sociology, plus an unusual cross-cut into WWI. Martha Hanna carries us from top level strategic questions to minute details of daily life, then back again. Formally, the book is mostly narrative history and analysis, freighted with plentiful excerpts from the Pireauds' letters.

Quick "plot" summary: Paul lives through some of the war's most dramatic and terrible moments (First Marne, Verdun, the Somme) and its more obscure ones (the post-Caporetto Italian campaign), when he's not behind the lines, or enjoying relatively safe positions (as a messenger and personal attendant for a while (184). Marie negotiates small-town politics, gives birth (144ff), and raises an initially very sick, nearly dying child. All three survive the war and reunite at the end.

As a picture of French life in WWI Your Death Would Be Mine is very valuable. Hanna uses letters and her cultural analysis to tease out interesting details and tensions, from the very strong urban-rural divide to religious questions (Paul is militantly atheist, Marie a bit less so, while many soldiers and villagers are serious Catholics (117-8)).

The Pireauds are not unusual people for their time and place: farmers, not in the middle class (6), basically educated. They are literate, but Hanna preserves their letters' grammatical and typographical problems. She also argues for Paul and Marie as representatives of a French generation going through big changes. Yes, the war, but also that rural populations became more conscious of themselves as members of a nation, which they could access through business, politics, and culture. The Pireauds also live through the rise of science and its application in daily life. Marie, for example, deliberately chooses scientific documents and doctors to help with her child's woes, eliciting the opposition of older women suspicious of new-fangled ideas (161ff).

The profound experience of the war is, of course, central to Your Death Would Be Mine . We follow Paul from battle to battle, especially Verdun, which becomes the standard against which all other traumas are measured. We read through Paul's accounts of terrible events, like this one from the ill-fated Nivelle Offensive (1917):

[T]he heaviest French guns bombarded the entry to [a German-occupied] tunnel with poison-gas shells. A direct hit collapsed the underground galleries, blocked all exit paths, and asphyxiated the helpless troops caught inside. When the French infantry penetrated the tunnel, a grotesque sight confronted them: four hundred men had suffocated in the labyrinthine tunnels. The bodies of the dead, their faces contorted with pain, were piled one on top of the other: men desperate for air had hurled themselves in vain against the obstructions that sealed the escape routes. It was, the witnesses concurred, "one of the worst spectacles of the war, a nameless horror." (208-9)

Paul records this in a letter to his wife, just a few hundred miles away. Hanna helps us imagine what it must have been like to have been Marie, reading this kind of letter between child care and farming. It makes the war seem domestic.

There are some surprises, or at least unusual perspectives on the WWI experience. Interestingly, while Paul suffers horribly at times, and desperately misses Marie, he doesn't lose faith in the French cause. From the guns of August through the implementation of Versailles he remains steadfast, especially focused on defending France (rather than expanding it) and his community (17). This differs greatly from the classic (especially British) story of bitter disillusionment.

We also see the classic gap between veterans and civilians break down a bit, as Paul constantly describes much of his experience to his wife, and Marie depicts her life in great detail for her serving husband. Indeed, when Paul's in France their letters transit in only a few days, making the conversations nearly real-time (and an interesting antecedent to our time's use of social media and mobile devices). For instance, Paul sketches battlefield dispositions around Verdun through copious text and a hand-drawn map (101), which somehow evaded the censors.

Paul experiences the end of the war in Italy, rather than France, as he was part of an Allied expeditionary force sent there after the Caporetto disaster. He's in Italy when the war ends, which makes for an unusual perspective for readers accustomed to the western from. The battle of Vittorio Veneto is the climactic event (263.)

There are also simply fascinating or entertaining details, like the mention of Claire Ferchaud, a peasant mystic who urged the French nation to recommit to Catholicism in order to win the war. I admired one nickname the French give a certain type of shell: "prunes, for their ability to loosed one's bowels". (211)

The relationship between Marie and Paul is central to the book, and there is nearly a novelistic feel to tracking how they maintained a marriage through horrendous stresses. Mostly they shoot each other fervent and loving notes, Marie keeps sending very French care packages (tons of food, including fruit and meat), and Paul ships presents from Paris or northern Italy. They also argue and work through differences, like suspicions of infidelity and disagreements about child-rearing. I felt for them in this separation; personally, I especially felt for Paul as he had to imagine his child growing without him.

So what's not to love about this book? I was surprised at some omissions for a work so carefully attuned to the Great War's narrative. While Paul is away in Italy during 1918 the Germans launch the biggest offensive to date on the Western Front. The Second Battle of the Marne threatens Paris and raises the specter of French collapse, but we don't hear from Marie, nor anything about the battle, beyond a quick mention on 243. Paul and Marie repeatedly expressed fears of what could happen to their family and community should the Germans win; it's a little odd to skip what might have been Berlin's best chance for victory. Similarly the great flu pandemic of 1918 receives short shrift (257-8), which is weird, given its own brand of massive death and suffering, and which linked the battlefront to the home front.

At a larger level Your Death Would Be Mine is repetitive. The text likes to repeat points, possibly for pedagogical reasons, and that becomes annoying over time. Some of the letters sound identical to each other; some of that would have done better as an appendix.

Overall, I recommend this to anyone interested in France, in WWI, or marriages.

[Dynasti · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first WWI read, good and descriptive almost a little too much at times the author was really repetitive which made it much longer than it needed to be. But an interesting twist at the end. Great for a history class.

[Kylie Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives an inside look of a relationship between a husband and a wife separated due to World War 1 in France. I really enjoyed this (quick) read because it gave a woman’s perspective on how the war affected her and her farming town. It was an insightful look into the intimate relationship and feelings of this young couple. If you’re into historical books, this is a must!

[Elyse · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is arranged by alternating chapters which focus on Paul, who serves in the French military for 5 years during WWI, and Marie, his beloved wife who remains at home, taking on the tasks of farming, raising their son, and encouraging her husband.

It's not a book about military strategies, or even many details about life on the front. Paul served as a baker at the beginning of the war, but was sent with a heavy artillery unit to both Verdun and the Somme. He was also sent to the Italian front with an expeditionary force.

Information is redundant within many of the chapters and there weren't enough military details for me. But their story was interesting and a broad picture is painted about how those at home and those in military service communicated with each other.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exceptionally interesting because the source material for this micro-history of World War I is one of the few complete collections of letters written by peasants during the war. The correspondence spans the duration of the war (and beyond the armistice) because Paul was fortunate enough to survive the entire war. The Pireauds do not speak for every French peasant couple, but thanks to their letters surviving largely intact we know much more about what life was like for one couple caught in the circumstances of many others of similar background.

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for non-history and history buffs alike. It is based off of letters written between a husband and wife during WWI giving insights to both the battle and home fronts. Out of the many books I have read on WWI this one has touched my heart.

[Kati Polodna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for my college thesis; the author was my professor. Enjoyed the book, though felt sluggish at times. Worth reading if you're interested in primary sources--and because this one is a love story.

[Jason Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant. Hanna weaves Paul and Marie's letters seamlessly into a narrative of French history and vast social changes the Great War wrought through the eyes of two French peasants. You don't need to love history or war to appreciate this book.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting perspective on war from the first generation of literate peasants. War is usually told from the point of view of army officers or politicians, so it was so interesting to read actual letters and excerpts from a soldier in the artillery and his wife at home in a country at war.

[Zen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting look at World War I through the letters of one couple in France trying to keep their relationship alive, while trying to simply stay alive.

[Lashonda Slaughter Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Micro-history with a huge narrative, wonderfully written...
A ton of insight on French countryside during war and how people changed, loved it.

[Yunis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The timeless true story of a French family during the Great War. The author did an incredible job to put this story together.