Great War Centenary news from France

One element of the Great War centenary celebrations in France will be a six-episode dramatisation of Maurice Genevoix's Ceux de 14 on channel France 3. The producers are Chantal and Jean-Luc Michaux; casting is taking place at the moment, and filming will begin in April.

Maurice Genevoix served as an officer with 106th Infantry in the battle of the Marne, and in the Eparges, where he was wounded in 1915. His wounds were of such severity that he lost the use of a hand, and after a seven-months' convalescence, was discharged from the Army.

Following his discharge, he produced a series of five fictional works which drew heavily on his own experiences: Sous Verdun (1916), Nuits de Guerre (1916), Au seuil des guitounes (1918), La Boue (1921) and Les Éparges (1921), known collectively under the title Ceux de 14 (ie The Men of 1914).

In his critical bibliography of Great War memoirs, Témoins (Paris, Les Etincelles, 1929), Jean Norton Cru (pp.142-54) accorded Genevoix the highest praise, calling the tetrology 'incomparable' for its honesty and accuracy in describing the front-line soldier's experience (which, for Cru, puts Genevoix miles ahead of Barbusse's Le Feu). Unfortunately, unlike Barbusse, Ceux de 14 does not appear to have been translated into English.

Edit: Bernard Puchulu has produced some wonderful work for a new illustrated edition of Ceux de 14 here. And while you're there, check out the illustrations for Exupery's Vol de Nuit.

Kings of the Air: A Matter of Reputation

When dealing with the history of the development of the French Air Force before and during the Great War, you cannot go far without coming across the name of Charles Tricornet de Rose. A dragoons officer, he was the first man to get his military wings. He was immediately snapped up to work at Estienne's research establishment at Vincennes, where he worked on aircraft armament (even though the Minister of War thought it a waste of time), coming to the conclusion that the gun had to placed in the nose, firing forwards. The problem was the firing through the arc of the propellor, and, with Roland Garros, he was working on a synchronizer system when war broke out. Garros went his own way, towards the dead end that were his deflector plates. Meanwhile, de Rose, the commander of Fifth Army's aviation, created the first all-fighter squadron, MS12, and filled it with the best pilots he could lay his hands on, including Jean Navarre. Until a viable synchronizer system was work...

Kings of the Air: 'War, German style' 1

The first German air raid on Paris was at 12.45pm on 30 August 1914, when a Taube overflew the city at a height of 1,000 metres and dropped five bombs, killing one civilian and wounding four others, before flying off untouched by the guns of the Camp Retranché de Paris (CRP). Four armed Farmans operating as HF28 were immediately allocated to the CRP, but they too proved ineffective and the raids continued over the next three months, killing eleven and wounding fifty. On 2 September one Farman managed to get within range, but its machine gun jammed on the tenth round and the intruder escaped unscathed. Better defences were required. Lack of available chassis made the mobile motorized AA units favoured by General Gallieni (the commander of the Paris garrison) unviable; instead an outer ring of listening posts was set up about a hundred kilometres from the city, with an inner ring of fifteen fixed batteries – each deploying two 75mm field guns, four machine guns...

Kings of the Air: Clément Ader

This is the first of a series of biographical sketches based on the research I am doing for my new book Kings of the Air: French aces and airmen of the Great War , to be published by Pen & Sword. Clément Ader (1841-1925) was a French inventor, whose attempt at heavier-than-air flight some years before the Wright brothers was so nearly successful. Ader had a restless mind, and his inventions covered a wide range of fields. In 1868, he began as a velocipede manufacturer. Instead of conventional iron tyres, his machines used a rubber tubular tyre of his own invention, resulting in a much lighter frame, and a much more comfortable ride. The war against German in 1870 brought an end to his work. He then began working for a railway company in the south-west of the country, the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer du Midi. In 1875, he designed an engine that laid rails, that saw service for several years. He then turned to the new telephone, commercialising the inventions ...

Ian Sumner

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