This is the remarkably powerful and moving true story of a soldier who lost his memory and identity, and of a people in mourning, who found in him the symbol of their lost generation. With no memory of his name or his past life, and no documents or distinguishing marks to identify him, he was renamed Anthelme Mangin, and sent to an asylum for the insane. With the end of the Great War, a newspaper advertisement placed in the hope of finding his lost family found instead a bereaved multitude ready to claim him as the father, son, husband or brother who had never come home. With humane sympathy and the skill of a novelist, French historian Jean Yves Le Naour meticulously recreates the twenty-year court battles waged over the Living Unknown Soldier, Poignant, psychologically penetrating, and profoundly revealing of the human cost of war, this remarkable book portrays not just the fate of one individual but of a nations inconsolable post-war grief.

The Living Unknown Soldier : A Story of Grief and the Great War

History

LE NAOUR, Jean-Yves

World

Metropolitan Books

The powerful story of a soldier who lost his memory and identity, and of a people in mourning who found in him their own missing men In February 1918, a derelict soldier was discovered wandering the railway station in Lyon, France. With no memory of his name or past, no identifying possessions, marks, or documents, the soldier-given the name Anthelme Mangin-was sent to an asylum for the insane. When, after the Great War ended, the authorities placed the soldier's image in advertisements to locate his family, hundreds of "relatives" claimed him-as their father, son, husband, or brother who had failed to return from the front. Marshaling a vast array of original material, from letters and newspaper articles to accounts of battlefield deaths, hospital reports, and police files, French historian Jean-Yves Le Naour meticulously re-creates the long-forgotten story of the single soldier who came to stand for a lost generation. With humane sympathy and the skill of a novelist, Le Naour recounts the twenty-year court battles waged by the families competing to take the amnesiac soldier home. In the process, he portrays not just the fate of one individual but the rank and file's experience in the trenches and an entire nation's great and inconsolable grief following a war that consumed the lives of one million men. Dramatic, taut, and powerfully relevant to our own times, this heartrending history depicts the pain and turmoil of a society that, without bodies to bury, is caught between holding on and letting go.

The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War

Americas

The powerful story of a soldier who lost his memory and identity, and of a people in mourning who found in him their own missing men In February 1918, a derelict soldier was discovered wandering the railway station in Lyon, France. With no memory of his name or past, no identifying possessions, marks, or documents, the soldier-given the name Anthelme Mangin-was sent to an asylum for the insane. When, after the Great War ended, the authorities placed the soldier's image in advertisements to locate his family, hundreds of "relatives" claimed him-as their father, son, husband, or brother who had failed to return from the front. Marshaling a vast array of original material, from letters and newspaper articles to accounts of battlefield deaths, hospital reports, and police files, French historian Jean-Yves Le Naour meticulously re-creates the long-forgotten story of the single soldier who came to stand for a lost generation. With humane sympathy and the skill of a novelist, Le Naour recounts the twenty-year court battles waged by the families competing to take the amnesiac soldier home. In the process, he portrays not just the fate of one individual but the rank and file's experience in the trenches and an entire nation's great and inconsolable grief following a war that consumed the lives of one million men. Dramatic, taut, and powerfully relevant to our own times, this heartrending history depicts the pain and turmoil of a society that, without bodies to bury, is caught between holding on and letting go.

Military

Holt Paperbacks

Halimi à la plage: La femme engagée dans un transat

Valenti, Catherine

Dunod]

Pétain

1914 la grande illusion

Europe

PERRIN

1917, l'année-charnière.1917 est une année de rupture. Le peuple épuisé, las de la guerre, doute et réclame la paix. Chacun cherche une porte de sortie honorable : le gouvernement français hésite, la Grande-Bretagne s'effraie, le chancelier allemand Bethmann-Hollweg, qui voudrait en finir, est congédié, tandis que la Russie renverse le tsar. L'empereur d'Autriche-Hongrie, Charles Ier, et le pape Benoît XV élaborent quant à eux des projets de paix. En vain, personne n'étant prêt à en payer le prix. 1917 est aussi l'année décisive du conflit qui marque la véritable naissance du XXe siècle, avec ces deux tremblements de terre que sont la révélation de la puissance américaine et la révolution bolchevique. La guerre, non plus nationale mais idéologique, échappe aux Européens et fait apparaître un monde nouveau, coincé entre deux messianismes : l'idéalisme wilsonien et le communisme. Après 1914. La grande illusion, 1915. L'enlisement et 1916. L'enfer, Jean-Yves Le Naour continue de mettre son talent narratif au service de l'histoire et raconte avec brio cette année charnière. Se fondant sur des archives inédites et mêlant les expériences du peuple à celles des hauts fonctionnaires, il dresse un tableau complet qui n'épargne aucune grande figure. De l'échec de Ribot, alors président du Conseil, lors des négociations avec l'Autriche, aux basses manœuvres de Clemenceau pour parvenir au pouvoir, tout est révélé.

1917

1918

1929-1935 - La crise

La grande guerre à travers la carte postale ancienne

HERVE CHOPIN ED

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