Poilu

Poilu was the generic name for the French foot soldier in World War I. Early in the war it supplanted the name Piou-Piou and emerged as descriptive of the bearded, unkempt, hairy appearance of the majority of early reservists as they arrived to join their regiments. It made its first appearance in Balzac's Le medecin de campagne (1833), where it had the meaning "intrepid," used with reference to the French pioneers at the Passage of the Beresina in Napoleon's Moscow Retreat of 1812. A tall pointed stone, bearing the words in French "Here triumphed the tenacity of the poilu," has been placed at Chaudroy, at the exact spot where the Germans crossed the French line on November 7, 1918, to negotiate the armistice.

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