Some letters feel unnervingly modern, like this one from Louis Barthas, a French cooper turned infantryman.
“May the new year bring reason to men.”
It could have been written yesterday.
Barthas wartime notebooks are clear, compassionate, and furious at the waste of life he witnessed. He wrote to record it honestly, the boredom, the fear, the anger, and the longing for a world that might choose sense over slaughter.
If Barthas’ words resonate with you, I’d love to help you explore the French battlefields, places where history still speaks, quietly but insistently, to anyone willing to listen.