Gregor Dallas
More To Him Than Vichy
The last time – it was around five years ago – I drove along the ‘Chemin des Dames’, on the high ridge overlooking Rheims, rusty old shells were still being piled at crossroads, where the local bomb-disposal squad would pick them up every fortnight or so like dustmen on their regular rounds. There were stories told, in cafés I drank in, of the odd tractor being blown up and of children playing in the limestone caves and being gassed to death when they accidentally kicked against phosgene bombs. It is the most terrifying old battlefield I know. During General Robert Nivelle’s disastrous offensive of 16 April 1917, French soldiers were mown down by hidden machine guns as they scrambled up that steep escarpment; fighting with hand-grenades and flame-throwers went on for days in the pitch darkness of the caves. The Chemin des Dames was, for the French, the turning point of the First World War. Mutiny followed, and the British took up the main burden of the Western Front – with their calamitous debut in Flanders that summer and autumn.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Give wisely this year. Give a Literary Review subscription.
Use the code 'GOODCHEER19', and you'll pay just £35 for a full year's print & online subscription, AND a free tote bag.
http://ow.ly/vC6p50xrtIo
'In their needling, selfish, dry-as-dust way, these three books are works of cumulative power and never less than consistent interest.'
@lieutenantkije weighs up the final novel in J M Coetzee's Jesus trilogy.
http://ow.ly/TuWo50xqrL0
'It remains a poem comprised of clay fragments, short and long, and though the desert delivers up occasional additional text, we are a long way from a whole poem.'
Michael Schmidt on the oldest surviving poem in the world.
http://ow.ly/7OLF50xqr91