Meeting Soldier Ploumen: From the Yser to Central Africa

During the First World War, soldier René Ploumen kept his campaign notebooks. He bequeathed them to his daughter Micheline, who took them back in their entirety and enriched them on the occasion of this publication. ©Electre 2023

Throughout the 14-18 war, soldier René Ploumen kept his campaign notebooks. He bequeathed them to his daughter Micheline, hoping that she would make some something.

Micheline Ploumen took up the challenge. She completely reworked the text of the two notebooks, written day by day on the tiny Belgian front of the Yser first, then in the vastness of Central Africa, from July 1917.

She has abundantly supplemented it with notes, comments and illustrations, in order to illuminate passages obscured by time and to situate her hero on the map of the conflict.

His comments also shed revealing light on the immediate pre-war period and on life in occupied Belgium.

Along the way, she focused on people, events and sites that are worth a visit, in Europe and around the world.

René Ploumen had also kept some 300 unpublished photos, taken by him or his comrades on the Yser front. The book includes the most readable and most telling ones.