[The injured of the summer of 1914 and their stories].

Abstract

The situation of the French Military Health Service was particularly precarious at the beginning of the Great War. Contemporary novelists wished to expose the lies of propaganda and described without any complacency the disorganisation, the improvisation and the mistakes of the first weeks of the conflict. In this context they show the initiatives taken by civilians, especially the ladies from the aristocracy, to help the wounded. From the battlefield to the hospitals they describe the stations of the cross of the soldiers, those hoping for "la bonne blessure" and those who end up being amputated when alternatives could have been possible.