Book Reviews

Fear by Gabriel Chevallier — indictment of “heroic” warfare

Cover of Fear by Gabriel Chevallier, a novel that challenges the view of war as a heroic endeavour.

The decades following the end of World War 1 saw a boom in publication of war literature and memoirs as survivors sought to make sense of the conflict and devastation.

From the side of the perpetrators came the book that seemed to perfectly capture the extreme physical and mental stress felt by soldiers on the front line. Erich Maria Remarque, a veteran himself, became viewed as a spokesman for his generation with his realistic depiction of trench warfare in All Quiet on the Western Front. Told from the perspective of young German soldiers, it struck a chord with those who had experienced the same conditions and the feelings of depression on return to civilian life. Within 18 months of publication it had been translated in 22 languages.

A few years later, when Gabriel Chevallier, an infantryman in the French army, published his own account in Fear, the reaction was rather different. The novel drew upon Chevallier’s  own experiences to present a damning indictment of the war that challenged the view it was a heroic, redemptive endeavour.

Chevallier was decorated for his services on behalf of his country; receiving both the Croix de Guerre and Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. But in his novel he admits he was afraid. “To have written about the war without writing about fear, without emphasising it, would have been a farce. You do not spend time in places where at any moment you may be blown to pieces without experiencing a degree of apprehension,” he explained later.

Fear challenged French citizens to rethink their collective attitude to the war. Instead of depicting a hero, Chevallier presents a soldier who openly admits he shirked his duties whenever he could.  

Jean Dartemont is no patriotic warrior. He is a student who was rushed into a uniform and swiftly despatched to the front with little training and inadequate weapons. On the front line in some of the worst battlefields of the war, he huddles in a trench trying to avoid anything that would bing him into direct engagement with the enemy. His over-riding feeling is one of fear that he will be killed or wounded. For a nation wanting to hear only of brave feats,  fear is an incomprehensible reaction. Dartemont sees it not as a weakness however, but a natural response.

Fear isn’t something to be ashamed of; it is a natural revulsion of the body to something for which it wasn’t made. … Soldiers know what they’re talking about because they have often overcome this revulsion, because they’ve managed to hide it from those around them who were feeling it too. … For even when our bodies are wriggling in the mud like slugs and our mind is screaming in distress, we still sometimes want to put on a show of bravery…

Dartemont partly ascribes this desire to keep up the pretence to a need to maintain public morale. Writing to his sister, he admits however that everything he commits to paper is false because those back home would simply not understand the truth:

… we write letters filled with suitable lies, lies to ‘keep them happy’. We tell them about their war, the one they will enjoy hearing about, and we keep ours secret.

This admission of the inadmissible is what makes this novel so different.  For much of the novel, Chevallier follows the trajectory we’ve seen in many other works depicting the war: the call up, the carnage at the front, injury, recovery and a return to the front. 

Dartemont begins the novel as a naive young man, rather inept as a solider and particularly bad at marching. As he digs trenches and runs orders from commanders safely ensconced in headquarters far behind the front line, he has ample time to reflect on the ineptitude of the officers. His injury and hospitalisation provide a welcome, though temporary respite from the carnage he witnesses every day. By the end of the novel he has lost all hope.

I have fallen to the bottom of the abyss of my self, to the bottom of those dungeons where the soul’s greatest secrets lie hidden, and it is a vile cesspit, a place of viscous darkness….I am ashamed of the sick animal wallowing in filth that I have become.

Chevallier said in the preface to a 1951 edition that his novel was not written to serve as propaganda. But in lifting the veil on the reality of war and the effect on the individual of decisions made in pursuit of idealogy, it still resonates today.

Fear by Gabriel Chevallier: Footnotes
Fear was first published in 1930 as La Peur. In 1939, Chevallier voluntarily withdrew the book from circulation because he felt it was not the right time, with the world on the bring of another conflict, to warn that war was “a disastrous venture with unforeseeable consequences.”. It was not published in English until 2011. My edition, with translation by Malcolm Imrie, was published by Serpent’s Tail  in 2014 to coincide with the centenary of the start of World War 1.

Chevallier was born in Lyon in 1895. He was called up at the beginning of the war, wounded, and after convalescing returned to the front as an infantryman or the remainder of the war. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur for his services. Following the war, he held several jobs including art teacher, journalist and a commercial traveller before starting to write in 1925.

His other fictional works were significantly different to Fear. Between the mid 1930s and the mid 1960s he published “Clochemerle” and “Clochemerle-Babylon”; both gently satirical works about life in a French village.

This review was published at Bookertalk.com in 2017. This is an updated version with formatting changes to improve readability and upgrade to the WordPress block editor platform. It is re-published in support of #throwbackthursday hosted by Davida @ The Chocolate Lady’s Book Review Blog.

BookerTalk

What do you need to know about me? 1. I'm from Wales which is one of the countries in the UK and must never be confused with England. 2. My life has always revolved around the written and spoken word. I worked as a journalist for nine years then in international corporate communications 3. My tastes in books are eclectic. I love realism and hate science fiction and science fantasy. 4. I am trying to broaden my reading horizons geographically by reading more books in translation

17 thoughts on “Fear by Gabriel Chevallier — indictment of “heroic” warfare

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  • I have heard so many good things about this one, I can’t believe I haven’t tried it yet. Great review, thanks

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  • I’ve just reserved this from the library. Maybe not a great Christmas read?

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  • Thanks for revising and reposting this review. It’s the first I’m hearing about this book. Years ago a friend and I had our own WWI book group. Both of our grandfathers had fought in the war, his for England and mine for Germany. So I’ve read a fair number of WWI memoirs, novels, and histories, but I don’t recall one that was from a French soldier’s perspective. Writing this, it seems odd that I/we never sought one out! I will add Fear to my TBR.

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    • I think that’s what drew me towards this Chris, the fact that it was written from a French perspective which I hadn’t come across previously. My gt grandfather was in WW1 also – France, then Salonika and finally Egypt where he took loads of photos of camels and a very odd burial

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      • How wonderful to have some of his photos, even if they’re mainly camels. Was it a military burial?

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  • This was a book that I started in 2020 and ended up putting back on the shelf. No fault of the book, but the timing was all wrong. Definitely one I’ll go back to though.

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    • I do think think this is one of those books that you have to be in the right mood to read. It’s not a straightforward narrative and obviously some of the content can be challenging

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      • This is definitely one for the TBR. I’m quite well versed in British accounts, but not at all in French ones.

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  • This wasn’t on my radar before, but certainly is now. Sounds as if a true and genuine recounting of war and its effects…

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  • A very timely post, and an excellent review. I must seek this one out. Rather like Primo Levi, it sounds like essential reading.

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    • Levi is another author (one of many) that I have not really got into. I will at some point though

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  • Excellent review. I really want to read this novel at some point. It’s been on my radar for a year or so ever since I noticed a couple of reviews by other bloggers (I think it may have been part of a readalong). Thanks for the very timely reminder.

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    • I have a feeling I saw it mention on Winstons Dad’s blog but it was before the time I got super organised and made a note of where I had seen a book mentioned I wanted to read 🙂

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  • Jonathan

    …oops! I accidentally sent the message while I was trying to scroll up….

    I read this last year and found it to be a powerful novel. I found the bit where the main character returns to his family, whilst the war is still continuing, and realises he has nothing to say to them very sad in a way.

    I have some of his Clochemerle books to hand that I mean to read soon.

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    • The scene you mention resonated with me too. He couldnt say anything because what he wanted to tell them would have undermined this little wall they had built around themselves that the guys at the front were having a right old jolly. I wonder whether they really believed that or create the artifice to protect them from the truth

      Reply

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