Paul Lintier was a promising French writer. In 1913 he joined the French army and was thus involved in the fighting on the Western Front from the very start of the war. This diary covers the first two months of the war, a period in which Lintier took part in the advance to the French frontiers, entered combat just inside southern Belgium, then took part in the long French retreat, the move to the Marne, the battle of the Marne itself and the stalemate on the Aisne. There are very few works that cover the French experience of this period. This ranks as one of the finest Great War memoirs by a soldier of any army.