It Was the War of the Trenches

by Jacques Tardi

This is a stunning book.  Tardi's graphic novel of the First World War is really a collection of short pieces concerning French soldiers on the front lines of that horrible conflict.  The stories stand alone, yet when read together they create a compelling portrait of life in the trenches, made more impressionistic by the fact that there is no visible border between one story and the next.

Tardi's soldiers lack many of the standard tropes of war fiction.  His privates care nothing for the war, and often cannot express why they are there.  They would rather befriend the German Boches who usually are hunkered down only fifty metres from them in equally miserable states than murder them.  They have no animosity towards their enemy except in immediate response to brutality, and usually reserve their most piercing hatred for their officers or the military police that urge them forward at the point of a rifle.

Tardi's soldiers frequently get lost in No Man's Land or behind the lines, and are almost as frequently executed for desertion or dereliction of duty.  Tardi has a very bleak view of the way the war was managed and fought, a view informed by his own grandfather's experiences, some of which are grist for Tardi's mill here.

It is this existentialist view of the war that places this beautifully designed book in the ranks of the great war memoirs and fiction written by the soldiers who actually served.  Looking at Tardi's fantastic establishing shots and detailed backgrounds brings to mind the etchings of Otto Dix or the murkier of FH Varley's war paintings.

This is a beautiful and haunting piece of work.  I love reading about the Great War, and place this book among the best that I've read on this topic.