"Dead pals", mutilated, lice, rats, frozen fingers, trench life in excrement. Returning from the hell of Verdun, Alban Lavenot, grandfather of Vannetaise Danielle Simon, did not confide in his granddaughter until 50 years later. A story that marked him for life.
Vannetaise Danielle Simon has put down on paper the Verdun memoirs of her grandfather Alban Lavenot. She will integrate them into a book-testimony that she will release at the author's expense.
"One evening, perhaps a little more fragile than usual, he (my grandfather Alban Lavenot) brings from the bottom of his secrets, an envelope, or at least what remains of it. Maybe she was white one day? Full of dark spots, black fingerprints, it is disgusting, closed by a rusty needle. He unfolds it carefully and pulls out a very bruised photo and rags of wrinkled paper, white or gray, indefinable.
Grandmother turns her back on calling the envelope "crap", a word that surprises me in her mouth. "You see that your grandfather has drunk too much! ". He looks at the picture absently. I'm sitting in front of the map. On the back you can read: "Dear parents, I write to you to give you my news which is always good for the moment. I want you to be the same. In my package, put noodles, smoked bacon, coffee and tobacco to smoke and chew [...]. The rest is indecipherable.
"What butchery. Why ? "
Grandpa goes back to his story. We are in 1917 in Rathenow, Germany. Prisoners since 1916, with the friends of Paris we shared the parcels. It was thirst that made us go out. Now, the more infernal noise, this black. No more thirst, the smell of death, the mud, the stench, the jitters ... Alive! I'm alive ! "
He pulls on his pipe, his eyes lost in the void. I hold my breath. Will he continue his story? Tell, finally! I'm 12 years old. I want to know. I understand his pains, his mutism, his eyes misted. "The war ..." I write feverishly on my notebook. " The rain. Mud. Cold. The freeze. The jackets soaked to the bone that one does not leave any more. Pumps soaked with mud that make walking difficult. Frozen fingers. Lice. Rats. We wade in the water where rubbish, excrement, corpses float. It stinks.
We sleep on the ground, huddled, curled up in cellars made in the sides of the trenches, rat holes, because we have become rats. Only the hooch, the harbinger of an attack, makes us stick. I feel sacrificed. Always more efforts. We go to the assault by routine. Disillusioned. One idea: to finish with those opposite. The Boche. But there are dead mates in the "field of honor"! Bullshit! What butchery. Why ? "
"I listen, dumb, troubled by his emotions"
Difficult for me to follow the flow of words. Everything comes out at high speed, without a real chronology. "The shrapnel (shells), the forks (bayonets), the barbed wire, the pots that we do not even hear happen, the noise is infernal, the trenches constantly to be redone, the dead pals, shredded, mutilated, the gases, the flamethrowers, the dying who delirium, the daring for a bottle, a rabbit, the letters, which one expects, that one writes and the waiting ... Interminable! We were given a new chef: "Petain".
He says, "They will not pass." Of course ! If we go back, it's the firing squad. So die to die! To save your skin, you have to risk it! Douaumont had been taken. The trenches fall one by one. We take refuge at Fort Vaux. It's not better.
For Petain, I come back to what I said. He was not so bad. He had set up the reliefs: ten days at the front, ten days in the second line and ten days in the back. So, we are waiting for the "relief". It's hope. A luxury. One day, after 15 days, the next generation arrives. An eternity. Barely gone the bell announces the gas. Fuck, guys! We were hot ! This is also the war. Fatality. "
Grandfather tells the same story over and over again, as if thinking aloud, suddenly stops his wet eyes, relives the film with a truth that chills me. Has he forgotten me? I listen, dumb, troubled by his emotions that annoy me so much. Not always understanding everything. But I am impregnated, like a sponge, to testify and tell in my turn. "