Wooden Crosses

Roland Dorgeles

ISBN 10: 1598186728 / ISBN 13: 9781598186727

Published by Alan Rodgers Books, 2005

About this Item

The young and patriotic student Demachy joins the French army in 1914 to defend his country. But he and his comrades soon experience the terrifying, endless trench war in Champagne, where more and more wooden crosses have to be erected for this cannon fodder. With a great pile of packets in front of him like a peddler's pack, the harassed quartermaster was calling out the post in the middle of a regular mob of soldiers, who were all plying their elbows and trampling on one another's feet. It was just at our door, between the communal washhouse -- so tiny that there would hardly have been room for three washerwomen under its sloping shelter roof -- and the notary's house, which wore a red scarf of virginia creeper crosswise on its front. We had clambered up on the stone seat and were listening attentively. Maurice Duclou, first section. Killed at Courcy, cried somebody. Are you sure? Yes, his mates saw him fall in front of the church. . . . He'd caught a bullet. Now, . . well, I wasn't there myself. On the corner of the envelope the quartermaster wrote in pencil, Killed. Edouard Marquette. He must be killed too, said a voice.

Seller Inventory # CIN1598186728G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Wooden Crosses
• Publisher: Alan Rodgers Books
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1598186728
• ISBN 13: 9781598186727
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

With a great pile of packets in front of him like a peddler's pack, the harassed quartermaster was calling out the post in the middle of a regular mob of soldiers, who were all plying their elbows and trampling on one another's feet. It was just at our door, between the communal washhouse -- so tiny that there would hardly have been room for three washerwomen under its sloping shelter roof -- and the notary's house, which wore a red scarf of virginia creeper crosswise on its front. We had clambered up on the stone seat and were listening attentively. "Maurice Duclou, first section." "Killed at Courcy," cried somebody. "Are you sure?" "Yes, his mates saw him fall in front of the church. . . . He'd caught a bullet. Now, . . well, I wasn't there myself." On the corner of the envelope the quartermaster wrote in pencil, "Killed." "Edouard Marquette." "He must be killed too," said a voice.

About the Author

Roland Dorgelès (1885 - 1973) was a French novelist and a member of the Académie Goncourt. Born in Amiens, Somme, under the name Roland Lecavelé (he adopted the pen name Dorgelès to commemorate visits to the spa town of Argelès), he spent his childhood in Paris. A prolific author, he is most renowned for the Prix Femina-winning Wooden crosses ("Les croix de bois"), a moving study of World War I, in which he served. It was published in 1919 (in English by William Heinemann in 1920). Dorgelès served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers and musicians.