In Memoriam: A Frenchman's Recollections of the Great War

Abstract

Like most of the readers of this journal, I study French history at a distance, separatedfrom my subject by aforeign language, two centuries, and three thousand miles of ocean. Last year, however, I received a letter that made me see French history from a different perspective. It came from a retired civil servant, Francois Carlotti. He had stumbled upon something I had written; and as I seemed to be interested in his country, he thought I might want to read an essay that he had composedfor his family andfriends. It arrived a few weeks later, carefully written out in a small, round hand, which had beenformed in the schoolrooms of the Belle Epoque. After reading a few lines, I found myself swept up in an intensely French vision of French history, one marked above all by the trauma of the Great War. That view of events may be as important in its way as the events themselves. In any case, I think it worth reproducing here, even though it is only an old man's recollections of what he saw as a small boy, rather than a report written from the trenches. Monsieur Carlotti informed me that he was born in Auneau, a small town fifteen kilometers west of Chartres, on May 15, 1907. His father, a doctor, had immigrated from Corsica. His mother was the daughter of a notary. He attended local schools until 1917, then studied for his baccalaureat at the College Stanislas in Paris. After a stage as a clerk for a notary in Chartres, he did his military service in Morocco from 1927 to 1929. He worked for an insurance company in Paris and completed his