Poilu

Walu.

Poilu.

Poilu.

We are all Poilu.

I shit you not, when I came out of Ukraine, I looked like Captain Haddock from Tintin.

I had a big...

And I was like, "Damn, that beard works in Paris," only with a suit.

Prior to that, I looked like I'd come out of the trenches of fucking Verdun in 1916.

This recording is in the public domain.

Poilu by Stuart M. Emery, Private, MP.

Read by John Greenman for LibriVox.org. Poilu.

You're a funny fellow, Poilu, in your dinky little cap and your war-worn faded uniform of blue, with your multitude of haversacks a-bulge from heel to flap, and your rifle that is most as big as you.

You were made for love and laughter, for good wine and merry song.

Now your sunlit world has sadly gone astray, and the road today you travel stretches rough and red and long, yet you make it, petit soldat, brave and gay.

B. N.

Read by John Greenman for LibriVox.org.

Lines on Leaving a Little Town Where We Rested by Russell Lord, Corporal, F.A. Lines on Leaving a Little Town Where We Rested we with the war ahead you who have held the line laughing have broken bread and taken wine we cannot speak your tongue we cannot fully know things hid beneath your smile four years ago things which have given us grimly a common debt now that we take the field we won't forget RUSSELL LORD CORPORAL F.A. poppies in the wheat fields on the pleasant hills of france reddening in the summer breeze that bids them nod and dance over them the skylark sings his lilting liquid tune poppies in the wheat fields and all the world in june poppies in the wheat-fields on the road to montieres hark the spiteful rattle where the masked machine-guns play over them the shrapnel song greets the summer morn poppies in the wheat-fields but ah the fields are torn see the stalwart yankee lads never ones to blench poppies in their helmets as they clear the shallow trench leaping down the furrows with eager boyish tread through the poppied wheat fields to the flaming woods ahead poppies in the wheat fields as sinks the summer sun broken bruised and trampled but the bitter day is won yonder in the woodland where the flashing rifles shine with their poppies in their helmets the front files hold the line poppies in the wheat-field how still beside them lie scattered forms that stir not when the star-shells burst on high Gently bending o'er them Beneath the moon's soft glance, Poppies of the wheat-fields On the ransomed hills of France.

Poilu Poilu You're a funny fellow, Poilu, in your dinky little cap, and your war-worn faded uniform of blue, with your multitude of haversacks, a bulge from heel to flap, and your rifle that is most as big as you.

you were made for love and laughter for good wine and merry song now your sunlit world has sadly gone astray and the road to-day you travel stretches rough and red and long yet you make it petit soldat brave and gay though you live within the shadow fagged and hungry half the while and your days and nights are racking in the line there is nothing under heaven that can take away your smile oh so wistful and so patient and so fine you are tender as a woman with the tiny ones who crowd to upraise their lips and for your kisses pout still we'd hate to have to face you when the bugle's sounding loud and your slim steel sweetheart rosalie is out you're devoted to mustaches which you twirl with such an air or a cigarette with a nigh an inch to run and quite often you are noticed in a beard that's full of hair but that heart of yours is always twenty-one.

No, you do not parler English, and you find it very hard, for you want to chum with us, and words you lack.

On either side of the 2nd Battalion were elements of the French 333rd Infantry Regiment, also a part of the 157th Division.

The Black Doughboys and their Poilus brothers on either side were to assault towards the village of Montois once the 2nd Moroccan Division on their left

flank was ready.

Montois was going to be a challenge.

For some people, it did seem for a time that what the French were saying about the mission civilisatrice, the civilizing mission, might actually, in fact, be true.

But for many of these people, World War I was a revelation During the war, nearly half a million colonial subjects were conscripted or even volunteered, and many of them did, to don the blue uniform of the Poilus and to fight for France.

Many others came to the metropole to work in shipyards or in factories.

Those who came, saw poverty, they saw deep rifts in French society over the place of religion, over politics, and most importantly they saw their omnipotent colonial masters in a war that was literally ripping French civilization apart.

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Of greater interest is the spirit of the French soldier, the Poilu, from whose soul speaks the ardent voice of France.

Our guide is explaining the difficulties of the attack up the valley, past concrete machine-gun emplacements hidden in the marshes.

We hardly hope to succeed here, he says, but it is a demonstration in aid of our advance further south.

"'That is the perfect word, monsieur,' he says with a grin.

One takes away a sense of what the French army has suffered and endured.

Compared with ourselves, they lack deplorably all manner of material and equipment, their guns worn out, ammunition depleted, their horses emaciated, and with few lorries for transport, the Poilu himself a pack-mule on the march.

But after all these long years, when they have borne the brunt in defeat and in victory, their men are incomparable, their spirit unquenched.

Tommy's term for a small German shell which makes a pip and then a squeak when it comes over.

Poilu.

French term for their private soldier.

Tommy would use it and sometimes does, but each time he pronounces it differently, so no one knows what he is talking about.