Paths of Glory

This novel, published in 1935, is a fictional account of an incident during the French campaign on the Western Front. The actual event was the execution in March 1915 of four randomly-selected corporals of the 136th Regiment of the French army. They were executed as examples (supposedly to encourage the other soldiers to be more courageous). The measure was taken following the failure of an attack against a hill near Souain in the Champagne region. In this novel, the experience of three soldiers is examined in relation to the unsuccessful attack and how they come to be chosen as the ‘examples’ to face a court martial for cowardice. The narrative style is peculiar: rather than there being a reliable narrating character to testify to what happened, there is instead a virtual narrator who imagines what the men facing the firing squad are feeling. The novel was adapted for the stage in 1935 and later adapted by Stanley Kubrick into an acclaimed film released in 1957.

The author, Humphrey Cobb (born 5 September 1899), whose parents were from Massachusetts, grew up in Tuscany. He was educated in England and the United States. In September 1916, having been expelled from high school, he went to Montreal and enlisted for service in the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force (he claimed to be 18 but was actually a year younger). He served on the Western Front  from October 1917 in the same company as Charles Yale Harrison, author of Generals Die in Bed. After the war he returned to the United States and eventually pursued a career in advertising. His first novel (this one) appeared in 1935 and a second novel was published in 1938. From 1935 to 1940 he worked as a screenwriter and is best known for his 1937 screenplay San Quentin. He died in 1944.

The author describes the atmosphere among the men before they launched an attack:
“Langlois looked at the men around him. Some of them were condemned to be dead within the half hour. Perhaps he was one of them. The thought passed through his head, a strangely impersonal one, as if it had not been a thought of his at all, but some story he was reading. He noted the unusual self-possession of these men but he had seen it before and accepted it as granted. The thought kept returning: this one or this one or that one would actually, inevitably be dead in a few minutes. He tried, half-heartedly, to guess which.”