Episode list

August 1914. The countryside is green, the soldiers in blue, and the pants madder. The armies are in motion. War is young, like men. "Here we are!" Our two lieutenants, Porchon and Genevoix. Yes, they are happy to be there; Yes, when we are young and we are 20 years old, in the France of 1914, we are happy to be there.

The illusion does not last long, neither for Genevoix nor for the band of soldiers under his command. The first clashes are violent. The French must constantly withdraw. Genevoix killed his first Germans. The group loses its first man. Morale is at its lowest.

Now the war has become petrified. Each of the belligerents entrenched. It's another battle that begins. We get bored, we freeze, and we play as much as we can, we fish crayfish, we prepare the New Year's Eve, and we do not forget to die, from time to time, under the bombardments. The blue soldiers do not sing anymore. We send them to the fires.

Les Éparges is a village in the Meuse next to a strategic hill. Seen from below, it is a frightening rocky peak. The Germans are up on the hill. An attack will have to go up to dislodge them. "And madness wanders in our blood," write the German soldiers. This is what the French soldiers are preparing to live through.

The attacks are redoubled against the piton held by the Germans. We're almost there, but we're not there, we'll never be there. One dies cowardly or heroically - one can only die - and Lieutenant Porchon, a friend of Genevoix, the one with whom he shared everything, is killed.

This is the last battle for Genevoix. They thought they had finished, but the Germans were counter-attacking. Tthis ridge, they will never have it. Maurice Genevoix will not have it. Seriously hit by three bullets, he is evacuated on a stretcher with his blue kepi planted crooked. For him, the war, so absurd, is finally over.