poilu

"It was an overcast night, but the poilus ' faces were daubed with black so the faint light would not gleam on their white features.

In his 1916 novel, Under Fire, Henri Barbusse's poilus (French slang for the "hairy ones" of the French infantry), on leave in Paris, immediately discern among the crowd the "aviators (who can be recognized from a distance by their trim elegance and their decorations)." The pilot's distinctive appearance also impresses Lucy Maud Montgomery's women on the Canadian home front in the novel Rilla o Ingleside, who remark that Anne of Green Gables' youngest son has joined up and become a pilot.

Lloyd has Petain warning Foch that the poilus were "bled white, anaemic." Pershing was keen to fight but hobbled by an army barely trained in trench or open warfare.

And so it was, yet the need to ease the dreadful pressure on Petain's weary, bloodshod Poilus meant Haig had to commit Tommies to their own Calvary of the Somme, by far the costliest battle in British and Commonwealth history.

C'est a s'arracher les cheveux de la tete, de la barbe, de la poitrine et d'autres endroits poilus du corps humain !

And moreover, the South African Department of Education should pay particular attention to the recommendations made in this research so as to sufficiently and expeditiously address the educational needs and expectations of the African poilus.

The letters Lyons examines to and from France's poilus reveals many of the social and regional fractures that belie the argument that France's army was unified in a sense of patriotism and attachment to Alsace and Lorraine.