My four weeks in France — Text and Context

The Breeches and the Puttees

Lardner's physical discomfort becomes a running joke. After acquiring a uniform, he writes that his knees were "fairly groaning to be free of the breeches." He resists advice to wear them all day, preferring to keep them neat for the next day. The puttees—cloth leggings—require help from fellow correspondent Mr. Gibbons, and Lardner oversleeps, needing assistance again. He notes that regular correspondents and British officers "are obliged to wear canes," adding dryly that the wonder is they don't use crutches. This focus on the mundane indignities of military dress undercuts any romantic notion of the correspondent's life, grounding the narrative in physical reality.

A Feast of Languages

On a train to the British front, Lardner finds standing room among Australian and Canadian soldiers returning from leave. He describes himself as "a glutton for languages," and the day becomes a feast of six kinds: Australian, Canadian, British, French, Chinese, and Harvard. He claims to have acquired "an almost perfect understanding" of the first three and Harvard, which he studied back home. French and Chinese prove more difficult; French, he says, is pronounced "as if a goat were saying it." This playful taxonomy of dialects reveals Lardner's ear for speech and his ability to find humor in cultural collision, even as he stands among men returning from the front.

The Red-Headed Captain's Tale

An Australian captain shares a story: his best pal, a small man, captured a boche lieutenant over six feet tall. When asked if he spoke English, the German shook his head; asked if he spoke French, he lost his temper and, in English, insulted the entire continent of Australia. The captain's little pal then marched him off, making him remove his helmet as punishment. Lardner presents this anecdote without commentary, letting the absurdity speak for itself. The story encapsulates the war's strange codes—where a prisoner's linguistic deception is punished by a hat—and Lardner's method of letting small incidents reveal larger truths about conflict and character.

Candlelight and Château Rules

Writing by candlelight in a château once occupied by a queen, Lardner notes the household rule: downstairs lights are doused at eleven. After that, one can sit in darkness or retreat upstairs to "bask in the brilliant rays of a candle." He admits he might be sleepy enough for bed but fears forgetting something if he postpones the day's record. This moment captures the diarist's compulsion—the need to set down events before they fade. The contrast between the grand setting and the meager light, between the queen's former room and the correspondent's makeshift office, underscores the war's transformation of spaces and routines.

Lardner's narrative never reaches the front in a dramatic sense; instead, it circles the edges of combat, recording the logistics, language lessons, and minor humiliations that fill a correspondent's days. Readers should approach this memoir as a comedy of manners set against a backdrop of global conflict, where the most telling details are often the smallest. The diary form rewards attention to dates and locations, which mark a journey that is as much about the absurdities of travel as about war.

I remember when My Four Weeks in France found its shelf-mate here, that old war correspondent chuckling at the muddle of languages, the proud nonsense of armies. It put me in mind of The Sequel of Appomattox: A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States — Reading Companion, for both whisper how hard it is to mend what war unravels—one in laughter, one in quiet stitching. They sit closer now.