Tu es un fusillé pour l'exemple à Verdun — et c'est toute ta vie.

This video tells the first-person account of the reconstructed biography of a Norman schoolteacher born in 1887 in Caen, mobilized in August 1914, assigned to the 321st Infantry Regiment, and executed on July 22, 1916 in a ravine east of Fleury-devant-Douaumont for refusing to obey orders in the face of the enemy. The narrative follows every stage of his life: a childhood in a modest family that believed in education, his training at the teacher training college in Caen, nine years of teaching in Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives where he taught children the difference between an argument and an order, the mobilization of August 1914, two years at the front in Alsace, Champagne, and Artois, his arrival in the Verdun sector in March 1916, the death of Rouillard, a carpenter in Lisieux, after holding his hand for eleven minutes, the attack of July 16th which failed due to intact barbed wire, the warning given to Ferrière on July 18th, his refusal to leave at 5:30 a.m. on July 19th, his arrest, the two days of waiting in a cellar, the court-martial of July 21st, Bisson, the carpenter from Chartres, appointed as his defense attorney two hours before the hearing, Viriot's phrase: "It's not up to the soldier to calculate," the verdict in eight minutes, the letter which It will never happen, and on July 22nd at dawn, a man refuses to kneel. The central theme is the bureaucratic machinery of French military justice in 1916: how a refused order led to an execution within forty-eight hours, what the right to a lawyer was worth when that lawyer was appointed two hours beforehand, why available mitigating circumstances were not included in the case file, and what it demanded of all those who kept this machine running—Laforest, who turned his back; Benoist, who was told that appointments were non-negotiable; Bisson, who didn't sleep normally for six months; and Pierre, the ten-year-old student who became a schoolteacher himself, who never learned. According to the work of historian Antoine Prost, published in 2013, approximately 740 soldiers were executed during the First World War, between 600 and 650 for acts of military disobedience. The law of April 27, 1916, reformed the procedure in the midst of the Battle of Verdun by introducing, for the first time, mitigating circumstances and the appointment of a defense attorney. In 2012 and again in 2023, proposals for a general rehabilitation were submitted to the Senate. They were not adopted. France has still not collectively decided whether the difference between an order and reason is a matter of jurisprudence or a matter of reality, with barbed wire visible to the naked eye from the trenches. Sources: Soldiers Shot as an Example — General History and Statistics: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldat_... https://ftm-cgt.fr/1457-2/ https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dy... https://www.senat.fr/rap/l22-286/l22-... Military Justice 1914-1918 — Procedure and Reform : https://memoire.avocatparis.org/14-18... https://www.village-justice.com/artic... https://journals.openedition.org/lerh... https://books.openedition.org/pucl/2960 Archives of the Courts Martial: https://www.memoiredeshommes.sga.defe... https://www.servicehistorique.sga.def... 321st Regiment Infantry — Verdun, July 1916: http://www.chtimiste.com/regiments/li... http://www.chtimiste.com/batailles141... https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_de... Execution procedure — modus operandi: https://forum.pages14-18.com/viewtopi...