I am going to tell you about the latest book by Fabien Reymann, from Mulhouse, he notably wrote the story of the cruiser Mulhouse, and it is the boat that tells you its story in “Deux vies sur mer”… Change of scenery, but let’s stay in the history of the military vicissitudes, not necessarily Alsatian, since at that time, the black white red flag of the zweite Reich, the German Second Reich, floated on the Alsatian buildings. We follow here the adventures of Joseph, the character is not historical, in 1918.
Monday morning, 5:30 a.m., it’s cold, the fog is dense, almost bayonet-cut. I come out of my hole to go piss in the neighboring trench…” Joseph Devaux, sergeant of the 415th infantry regiment, is one of the company’s dinosaurs. With Achille and Augustin, they are the last of 1914!
For the past few days, rumors of a “cease fire” have been circulating in the trenches. “The armistice”, this word is becoming more and more present. Men dare not believe it. Life in the mud holes is absurd. We share our daily life with the vermin… Here is the last batch, a generation left to liquidate! It’s a quarter to eleven, they don’t know it yet, but in 15 minutes it will be over.
The last shell falls with an enormous crash, it buries Joseph under a ton of earth… After four years of fierce battles, of waiting, the weight of the war on this man has unbalanced the harmony of life. Will she be guided by the happy coincidences of fate? Many works deal with modern post-traumatic stress, but some historians believe that the horror of the First World War was its first manifestation.
Immerse yourself with Joseph in the state of mind of the soldiers of the First World War and trying to answer this question: what now? The novel A few moments before peace by Mulhouse resident Fabien Reymann was released by Edilivre, at €14 on paper, and €4.99 in digital version.