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Wartime Football, a Remedy for the Masculine Vulnerability of Poilus (1914–1919)

Although in historiography, the First World War was a period where gender identities were reasserted, the study of soldiers' football during the Great War calls for a nuancing of the dual history of representations and construction of French masculinity throughout the period. In the continuity of the works of James Mangan and Thierry Terret, who show that preparation for war and the modernity of the First World War represented a time of construction of men and destruction of bodies, research undertaken highlights the importance of the 1914–1918 period in France in the questioning of traditional representations of French masculinity, as well as in the recognition of sport in the modernisation of its construction modalities among Poilus. Indeed, despite wearing a uniform and using weapons, which reinforced the representations of virility of mobilised men, the situation of extreme vulnerability which French soldiers had to face during the fighting, as well as direct and permanent contact with Allied soldiers embodying sporting masculinity, brought into question the gymnastics model of masculinity that Frenchmen had shared prior to the war. Based on previous research and on the archives of the French Army, as well as on the press and films of the Great War period, the work undertaken aims to show that football was not only a remedy for the vulnerability of Poilus but also a test of virility which contributed, as the conflict progressed, to the modernisation of the model of French masculinity.