The Shells Played Pigeon-Vole

1916: a first-line trench at a place called Bois des Buttes. On March 17, around four in the afternoon, Second Lieutenant Kostrowitzky—nicknamed Guillaume Apollinaire—is struck in the temple by a shell fragment. A ruthless countdown retraces the twenty-four hours leading up to the impact.

Comradeship, fear, fleeting moments of calm, the music of bombs, a scent rising in the dusk, hunger, the awaited peace, death hovering, memories of love—this is the strange alchemy captured in Jérusalmy's narrative, showing Apollinaire as artist, fighter, soldier of art, tracing poetry even amid battle.

War could at least serve this purpose: living each minute as if there were no tomorrow, writing each line as if it were the last.