One cannot imagine what the simple phrase of an official statement like we have recaptured a trench really means.

Captain Henri designeur, 359th Infantry Regiment, French Army, from Verdun, 1916.

The United States I'm ...

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... The Hey folks, welcome to the battles of the First World War podcast.

So, in the spirit of trying to knock out a quick episode on a topic of interest,

I undertook reading Henri de Signon's A French Soldier's War Diary, 1914 to 1918.

Back in December, when Alex Lyons came on the show to talk about his great-grandfather's experiences. As a French soldier in

World War I, he mentioned the opening quote of this episode in the course of our conversation.

I remembered that I already had Desaigneur's book on the shelf, and of course, that reference

inspired me to read it.

A couple of random thoughts.

I bought Henri de Signeur's memoir back when I bought my last big hall

of naval and military press books.

I just buy books,

knowing that someday they'll come in handy

for the podcast.

For this one, that someday became March,

2003.

I was just wondering, do any of you folks out there do the same thing with books?

At the beginning of this month, I had several podcasts lined up for timed releases

and was thinking, man, this one's short,

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