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Sport in the Trenches: The New Deal for Masculinity in France

2011; Routledge; Volume: 28; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09523367.2011.544861

1743-9035

Arnaud Waquet,

Historical Gender and Feminism Studies

Abstract During the First World War, the life of a soldier was not just reduced to the trenches. In daily military life behind the lines, soldiers had recreational activities, some of which were seen as a test of virility, such as visiting brothels, and also, as we want to show in this paper, sport practices. For most of the French citizen-soldiers, who were working class and mainly from the countryside, the contact with allied soldiers has to be understood as a significant step in the social construction of gender. Educated in gymnastics, shooting and military exercises, French infantrymen (Poilus) and civilians saw allied sports and soldier-sportsmen as models of a modern masculinity. In a descriptive study of the development of football in the French army, our article tries to demonstrate firstly, that football learnt in the army by workers and the French rural society extended the influence of sport and its part in the construction of masculinity in France. Secondly, we show that the official recognition of sport in 1917 by the French army led to the definition of a modern French masculinity and to the recognition of the sportsmen-soldier as the model of hegemonic masculinity. Keywords: Great WarmasculinitysportFranceforeign influences Acknowledgements Special thanks go to my family and Magaly for their support; Julie Gaucher and Claire Waquet for their advice in the conception and writing of this article; as well as to Thierry Terret for directing me towards gender studies and inviting me to the International Journal of the History of Sport conference on 'Militarism, Sport, Masculinity: Martial Manliness and Armageddon' at the Centre for Research and Innovation in Sport (CRIS), University of Lyon, on 30 May 2009. Finally, this article forms part of a research programme financed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (French national research agency) (ANR-08-VULN-001/PRAS-GEVU). Notes 1. Sohn, 'Sois un homme!', 441. 2. Maugue, L'identité masculine en crise, 94. 3. Sohn, 'Sois un homme!', 199. 4. On this point, see Mosse, L'image de l'homme. 5. See Maugue, L'identité masculine en crise; Rauch, Crise de l'identité masculine. 6. Femina, first women's sports club set up in Paris in 1912. 7. On the subject of France's crisis in masculinity prior to the First World War, see Maugue, L'identité masculine en crise. For the United States, Kimmel, Manhood in America, or Mangan and Walvin, Manliness and Morality. 8. Maugue, L'identité masculine en crise, 216. 9. Rauch, L'identité masculine à l'ombre des femmes, 78. 10. See Sohn, 'Sois un homme!'. 11. See Capdevilla et al., Hommes et femmes dans la France en guerre, 254. 12. The First World War had a negative effect on the emancipation of women, since it subsequently reinforced the traditional gender order. The idea was particularly developed by Thébaud, 'La Grande Guerre. Le triomphe de la division sexuelle'. 13. Maugue, L'identité masculine en crise, 211. 14. Prost and Winter, Penser la Grande Guerre, 42–3. 15. See Warin, Artisanat de tranchée & briquets de poilus. 16. See Rousseau, La guerre censurée. 17. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture, 6. 18. Capdevilla et al., Hommes et femmes dans la France en guerre, 254. 19. According to the 1911 census, 56% of the French population was still rural prior to the First World War: Gégot, La population Française, 25. 20. In Terret, 'Sport et genre (1870–1945)'. 21. See Arnaud, Les Athlètes de la République. 22. In a memo from the Commissariat général des affaires de guerre (French state general commission for war affairs) on the military effort of allied powers, as at 26 March 1919, 5.7 million British soldiers, not counting those from the Dominions, and 3.8 million American soldiers. In Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre, Paris, 13 N 117. 23. Burstyn, The Rites of Men, 74. More details in Rotundo, American Manhood. 24. Burstyn, The Rites of Men, 74. 25. For American football see, for example, Carroll, American Masculinities; MacLennan and Yeates, 'Masculinity, Class and Sport in the Nineties', 22–3; Falk, Football and American Identity. For rugby in the nations making up the British Empire, see Nauright and Chandler, Making Men. For association football, see Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School. 26. Hegemonic masculinity is a concept defined by R. Connell, which refers to masculinity that is temporarily (since it is constantly contested) in a dominant position, a position that the different institutional or individual actors strive to maintain in the face of femininity and other forms of masculinity: subordinate or marginalised masculinity: Connell, Masculinities. 27. Rugby for the upper classes, association football for working-class men. See Mangan, Sport in Europe. 28. Such was the case, for example, in Chelsea where on the stadium walls in 1914, spectators could see a recruiting poster with the following message: 'Do you want to be a Chelsea diehard? Join the 17th battalion Middlesex regiment and follow the lead given by your favourite football players!' In Wickens, From Claret to Khaki, 63–4. 29. To measure the importance of football's development in Great Britain prior to the First World War, see Holt, Sport and the British. 30. Telegram dated 14 Jan. 1917, Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais. 31. L'Auto, 9 April 1917. 32. See Waquet and Terret, 'Ballons ronds, Tommies et tranchées', 454. 33. Ibid. 34. For further details concerning the matches held in garrison towns during the war, see ibid. 35. See Campbell, 'Training for Sport is Training for War'. 36. See Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture. 37. Alphonse Steinès, 'Les footballeurs au feu', L'Auto, 21 Nov. 1914. 38. For Berck and Boulogne-sur-Mer, see Le Télégramme du Pas-de-Calais, 8 Nov. 1917 and 26 Dec. 1918: Pas-de-Calais archives, G9/28 and G9/30. For Montreuil-sur-Mer, in Journal de Montreuil, 10 Feb. 1918: Pas-de-Calais archives, G 224/9. 39. Concerning the metaphor of the Grand Match, see Dietschy, 'La guerre, ou le grand match', 45–54. 40. See Pope, Patriotic Games. 41. For baseball in the United States of America, see Kimmel, 'Baseball and the Reconstitution of American Masculinity'. For rugby in Australia, see Adair et al., 'Playing Fields through to Battle Fields'. And for hockey in Canada, see Wilson, 'Skating to Armageddon'. 42. Cornebise, Stars and Stripes, 145. 43. Nickname used to refer to French soldiers in the First World War. 44. See Wahl, Les Archives du football. 45. See Holt, 'L'introduction des sports anglais en France'. 46. How football was learned and developed in the French army is described in Waquet, 'Le football chez les poilus'. 47. Fuller, Troop Morale and Popular Culture, 88. 48. During the summer of 1917, King Albert I had 500 pairs of football boots delivered to association football players in the Belgian army: Sporting, 11 July 1917. 49. Sport featured in a new physical education manual from Joinville as the result of military physical education. It was intended for those men who were the most physically able and thus corresponded to the model of manliness during the war period, i.e. masculinity based on traditional values of strength and stamina, but which also included those of modernity which required self-control, decision-making ability and dexterity. 50. The study of how football developed throughout the French army is an integral part of a thesis research programme and has already been published in a paper: Waquet, 'Le football chez les poilus'. 51. Letter dated 24 Sept. 1917 from the Director of Infantry, referring to the decision of Paul Painlevé, council president and minister of war, to promote football playing within the army: Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre, Paris, 7 N 1989. 52. L'Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques, the major sports federation in France prior to and during the First World War. 53. L'Auto, 28 and 30 Sept. 1917 and Sporting, 31 Oct. 1917. 54. The number of international sports meets increased during the conflict and led to an unprecedented rise in the number of spectators in stadiums. See Waquet, 'World War I and Sport Evolution'. 55. According to Annelise Maugue, the First World War brought old myths concerning manliness back to life: 'L'homme retrouve ses certitudes et la femme son humilité': Maugue, L'identité masculine en crise, 215. 56. See Maugue, L'identité masculine en crise. 57. Tasnier, L. (Major, 5ème Chasseur à pied, armée belge), in Silhouettes du front belge, 74. 58. Sporting, 22 Oct. 1914. 59. Sporting, 12 July 1916. 60. Sporting, 3 May 1916. 61. Sporting, 1 Dec. 1915. 62. Wakefield, Playing to Win, 14. 63. La Vie au Grand Air, 28 Jan. 1915. 64. Kimmel, 'Baseball and the Reconstitution of American Masculinity', 56. 65. Lecture pour Tous, 1 Jan. 1917. 66. A few examples of journals from the trenches: Le Poilu du 37, Le Poilu du 6–9, Le Filon, Le Gafouilleur, La Musette, L'Esprit du Corps, le TacaTacTeufTeuf. On account of its nearness to soldiers and the front, the press in the trenches was less subject to censorship. For this reason, it reflected more precisely soldiers' real life and their sports habits, as well as lending itself more readily to the analysis of soldiers' daily life at war. 67. Tous les Sports, 10 March 1916. 68. Although this article focuses on examples concerning football, it should be pointed out that the military qualities of all sportsmen were acknowledged during the conflict. Special attention was paid to the case of Jean Bouin, who died in the field of honour at the beginning of the war (29 Sept. 1914) and who established himself during the war, and particularly in the press, as a sports model to be followed if one was to be considered as a sports and military hero. 69. See, Rosol, 'Le sport vers le féminisme'. Also Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin. 70. Kimmel, 'Baseball and the Reconstitution of American Masculinity', 64. 71. In Silver, 'Canada Fit for War', 8–9. 72. Ibid. 73. Extract translated from Berliner Tageblatt of 1916 and cited in Lecture pour Tous, 1 Jan. 1917. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Extract of the text engraved on the base of the statue erected in Dax in 1919, in honour of Maurice Boyau, who died in action during a flight on 16 Sept. 1918. 77. Cited from the French Legion of Honour. The Legion of Honour was awarded to M. Boyau on 28 Aug. 1918. He died a few days later after being hit by a bullet. He had just obtained his 35th victory. Citation translated from the website http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/france/boyau.php, accessed 2 Oct. 2009. 78. See, Gaucher, 'Le héros olympique des années 20'. 79. La Vie au Grand-Air, 15 June 1916. 80. Sporting, 19 Jan. 1916. 81. Ibid. 82. See Audoin-Rouzeau, Les combats des tranchées. 83. Le Rabiot, 29 Jan. 1916. 84. As a result of its importance during the First World War, the relationship between sport and aviation would require separate study. As soldiers of modern times, pilots were true athletes, and many of them became international sportsmen or members of major sports clubs. 85. See Gaucher, 'Sport et Genre'.