Adieu La Vie (La Chanson de Craonne)

DESCRIPTION: French. "Quand au bout d'huit jours le r'pos terminé On va reprendre les tranchées." The singer bids "Adieu La Vie." The soldier is returning to the trenches. He is leaving the women at home. He bids "farewell to life." They are dying for the rich
AUTHOR: Music: Paul Vaillant-Couturier (source: Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar)
EARLIEST DATE: 1917 (source: Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar)
KEYWORDS: war soldier death money hardtimes
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar, pp. 279-291, "Adieu La Vie (Chanson de Craonne)" (1 French text, with literal English translation on pp. 381-382)
NOTES [693 words]: Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar lists this as composed by Paul Vaillant-Couturier, but the Wikipedia article on the song says that he merely preserved it during the many years when the French banned it. (It did not become legal to play it until 1974. At one time, a reward of one million francs was offered if the author could be found; no one ever collected.) The tune is said to be "Bonsoir M'Amour" by Charles Sablon, and the text was probably compiled by many hands.
And, yes, the song was banned, because the French did not wish to remember the mutinies of 1917.
By 1916, with the war two years old and stalled, with the French army having been bled white at Verdun, the French government t last fired Joseph Joffre, the man who had commanded the French military since the start of the war. In his place, in December 1916, they appointed Robert Nivelle as commander-in-chief. Nivelle has had some success as a corps and army commander, and he promised vigorous new ideas, so he was promoted over the heads of less optimistic and energetic generals.
Energetic Nivelle was, but he didn't know what he was doing. In April 1917, he launched the "Nivelle Offensive." The Germans were not surprised, and easily turned back the offensive; the Allies suffered 350,000 casualties (Wheal/Pope, p. 344). Nivelle was fired on May 15, and the French government tottered and finally fell in September. In the trenches, the French soldiers mutinied. All or part of some 54 divisions refused to fight (Wheal/Pope, p. 176), beginning in late April and not ending until June 10.
Keegan, pp. 329-330, says, "Almost immediately after the faulure of the offensive of 16 April, there began what its commanders would admit to be 'acts of collective indiscipline and what historians have called 'the mutinies if 1917.' Neither form of words exactly defines the nature of the breakdown, which is better identified as a sort of military strike. 'Indiscipline' implie a collapse of order. 'Mutiny' usually entails violence against superiors. Yet order, in the larger sense, remained intact and there was no violence by the 'mutineers' against their officers. On the contrary, a strange mutual respect characterized relations between private soldiers and the commissioned rankes during the 'mutinies,' as if both sides recognised themselves to be mutual victims of a terrible ordeal, which was simply no longer bearable by those at the bottom of the heap.... They simply refused to 'return to the trenches.' That was an extreme manifestation of dissent. The general mood of those involved -- and they comprised soldiers in fifty-four divisions, almost half the army -- was one of reluctance, if not refusal, to take part in fresh attacks.... There were also specific demands: more leave, better food, better treatment for soldiers' families, an end to 'injustice' and 'butchery,' and 'peace.'"
According to Keegan, p. 330, there were actually five phases: initially scattered outbreaks (April), mass meeting (May), some hostile encounters (June), and then a slow fading out as the demands for better conditions were addressed (and Nivelle was sacked).
In the aftermath, Henri-Philippe Pétain, the one French general who recognized at the start of the war that "fire kills," was appointed commander-in-chief in Nivelle's place.
The main response to the mutinies was the carrot, but the stick was also used. 3427 soldiers faced courts-martial (often of men who were singled out by their own officers and N.C.O.'s), with 554 condemned to death and 49 actually being shot (Keegan, p. 331); others faced life imprisonment.
Pétain managed to get the troops fighting again, but it would be a long time (July 1918) before the French could take the offensive, "Defend the homeland the soldiers of France would; attack they would not" (Keegan, p. 332). The men knew perfectly well that they had been slaughtered because incompetent generals cared nothing for their suffering. This song expresses some of the contempt and despair they felt. The despair reached so deep that it even influenced how France prepared for World War II, resulting in the great French defeat of 1940. - RBW
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File: PsoS279

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