Marching to Captivity

Gustave Folcher's story is that of an ordinary peasant from the Languedoc, called up into the French Army in September 1939, forced to endure the confusion and incompetence of his superiors during the 'Phoney War' and the disastrous battles of May-June 1940, captured by the Germans and subsequently removed to a labour farm in north-eastern Germany for the rest of the war. Finally released by the advancing Allies, Folcher found his way back, through the chaos of war-torn Europe, to his beloved village of Aigues-Vives, near Nimes, on 12 May 1945. Throughout the six years of war, bored by the endless card games of his comrades, Gustave Folcher kept a record of his experiences in old excise-books. These were eventually discovered by Remy Cazals and the Federation audoise des oeuvres laiques and published in France in 1981. They provide a unique and fresh account of a soldier at war, of the disintegration of French and German peasant life and finally - and most dramatically - of the breakdown of German society as the defeat of Nazism approached. This is a dramatic story told by a clear-eyed observer of a side of the Second World War little known to English readers.