AUDOIN-ROUZEAU, S. And BECKER, A. 1914-1918. Understanding the Great War Profile Books, 2002 280 pp., £15.00, ISBN 1 86197 352 7 This is a translation of 14-18, retrouver la guerre (Gallimard, 2000). It is a powerful book written by authors with long experience the topic and of the creation of the Historial at Peronne in the Somme. This museum-cum-documentation and research centre occupies a fine building within the confines of the chateau at the heart of a town that suffered severe devastation. While setting matters in an international context, 1914-1918 is presented in a Francocentric way and with particular reference to Frenchlanguage sources. Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker do not focus on leaders, battles or encounters, rather they privilege the human experience of, and reaction to, four years of conflict. They even venture into some of the covert aspects of survival on the front line to do with masturbation and homosexuality; the soldiers were young men like any others. The text is organised around three main themes: violence, crusade, and mourning. The death toll of the Great War is well known, but I had not realised that while France lost 16 per cent its mobilised men, Serbia lost 37 per cent. On average, almost 900 Frenchmen and 1,300 Germans died every day of the war. Death was one thing; physical mutilation and mental torment were others. Misery and loss spread among the close family of those morts pour la France' and into the wider entourage of relatives and friends. Quotations from a selection of letters dating from the wartime years capture the wretchedness of the times in the very words of those who suffered.
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