Abstract EN:

In 1984-1985, twelve french world war i veterans volunteered testimonies to that study. These were recorded and analyzed. The work aimed at understanding the main relationships linking these men with that important period of their lives. These relationships were described in terms of painstressing, events selections, and moral values enhancements. They tended to present them under the image of fighting men. The analysis of these statements showed that every interviewed veteran has tried to give a message, and to evaluate its participation to that conflict on a professionnal mode as well. Differences between the nature of the messages can be made either with respect to their egocentric construction, when they describe the influence of that war on the veteran himself, or with respect to their more altruistic content, when that period of tim is shown to influence a larger human group, whose size is ranging from the fighting unit to the whole human kind. More over, this study whows that the witnesses have built an inward individual memory of their past. Facts of their own lives have been inserted into it; these facts have been influenced by, or set aside with, events reported to the witnesses by brothers in arms at the time, or later with data proposed by history works.