Antonine Maillet: War succeeding war

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Women writers on peace and war

Antonine Maillet: One day war got declared

Antonine Maillet: That’s enough to give you some idea of what war is

Antonine Maillet: When are the soldiers are dead, bombs dropped, maybe we’ll have some peace

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Antonine Maillet
La Sagouine
Translated by Wayne Grady

They came in their jeeps. One morning they cam right up to the houses. We didn’t exactly have a six-lane highway going past our place, so they had to come in jeeps. Two nice, shiny jeeps, so powerful they didn’t have to bother to stop and open the gates, they just rammed right through the fences like they was clotheslines. All the men came out of their shacks to see what the heck was going on and they came face to face against circumscription. They circumscripted them right there on the spot, right on their own doorsteps. Then they went around to all the houses to make sure no one was hiding anyplace. Me, I couldn’t see why anyone would bother hiding from a war that was taking place in the old country, which was at least a hundred miles away. That’s what Gapi said to them, but they went through all our places anyhow, right down to the last outhouse and caplin shack. They didn’t find no one, except for old Ferdinand-à-Jude, who’d stayed inside because he had his two legs cut off above the knee during the first war….

Sometimes on Sunday we’d go to watch the Home Guard practicing for the war behind the church. Oh yeah. You see, what they did was, they took all the men who were too young or too crippled for the real army , and put them into the Home Guard. The Reserves is what they called it, and they stayed behind to defend us in case the war came here. All the strong ones were in good shape, they sent them overseas to defend someone else.

They had a sergeant there to show them what to do and how to defend the country in case the Germans suddenly landed down on the beach. That was Telex, who’d been in the other war, the first one, but he couldn’t go back to the Front because he’d been gassed the first time, or something like that. Left him kind of bitter, Telex, kind of all shook up like.