The Ones From ’14

“Ceux de 14” or “The Ones From ’14” is actually made up of personal notebooks written by Maurice Genevoix, a young man from Normandy, when the war begins. These notebooks are a source of precious information to learn more about the life of the Poilus (average French foot soldiers). Maurice Genevoix fought in the Somme, in Verdun and at the Crête des Eparges. Between the summer of 1914 and the spring of 1915, he lived the daily life of an infantryman. He lived in the mud, the blood, and the death, while the command still believed the war would end quickly.

The book “The Ones From ’14” is a decisive and masterful work, a heated, beautiful, and accurate account written during the war and just after. It paints the image of a bruised, decimated, broken France, but beyond that, the account of a heroic France.