All those I wish to thank here bear no responsibilities for any infidelities in my “true history” novel.
The war memorial swindle is, to the best of my knowledge, a fiction. The idea occurred to me while reading the famous essay by Antoine Prost about war memorials. On the other hand, Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle’s misappropriation of funds draws, in large part, on the “military exhumations scandal” that broke in 1922, presented and analyzed in the magnificent studies by Béatrix Pau-Heyriès. So one of the plot threads is real, the other is not; the reverse might easily have been true.
I read many books by Annette Becker, Stéphane Audouin-Rouzeau, Jean-Jacques Becker, and Frédéric Rousseau, whose insights I have found invaluable.
I owe a more particular debt to Bruno Cabanes and to his fascinating book La Victoire endeuillée.
The Great Swindle owes much to the novels of the immediate postwar period, from Henri Barbusse to Maurice Genevoix, from Jules Romains to Gabriel Chevallier. Two novels were particularly useful to me: Le Réveil des Morts, by Roland Dorgelès, and Le Retour d’Ulysse, by J. Valmy-Baysse.
I don’t know what I would have done without the invaluable services of Gallica, the Ministry of Culture’s Arcade and Merimée databases, and especially the librarians at the Bibliothèque Nationale Française, to whom I offer my profound thanks.
I also owe a particular debt to Alain Choubard, whose fascinating inventory of war memorials proved very useful; I am grateful to him for his help and support.
It is only right that those who helped me throughout the long process be thanked here: Jean-Claude Hanol for his early readings and his encouragement; Véronique Girard, who always gets to the heart of the matter with such gentleness; Gérald Aubert, for his perceptive reading, his advice, his friendship; and Thierry Billard, an attentive and magnanimous editor. My friends Nathalie and Bernard Gensane, who have been unstinting in their time, and whose observations and comments have always been so constructive, deserve a special mention. As does Pascaline.
Throughout the book, I have borrowed here and there from various writers: Émile Ajar, Louis Aragon, Gérald Aubert, Michel Audiard, Homère, Honoré de Balzac, Ingmar Bergman, Georges Bernanos, Georges Brassens, Stephen Crane, Jean-Louis Curtis, Denis Diderot, Jean-Louis Ézine, Gabriel García Marquez, Victor Hugo, Kazuo Ishiguro, Carson McCullers, Jules Michelet, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Antoine-François Prévost, Marcel Proust, Patrick Rambaud, La Rochefoucauld, and one or two others.
I hope they will consider my borrowing a homage.
The character of Joseph Merlin, freely inspired by Cripure,15 and that of Antonapoulos, inspired by the character of the same name, are a sign of my affection and admiration for Louis Guilloux and Carson McCullers.
I would also like to thank the whole team at Albin Michel. I am grateful to everyone, first and foremost my friend Pierre Scipion, to whom I owe much.
It is perhaps understandable that my most poignant thoughts are for the unfortunate Jean Blanchard, who quite unwittingly provided the French title for this novel. He was shot for treason on December 4, 1914; his name was cleared on January 29, 1921.
These thoughts extend to all those, of every nationality, who died in the war of 1914–18.