'Souvenir des tranchèes de CHAMPAGNE 1914 - 1915, 1916'

Depicts the protagonist of the story, a French soldier, in full uniform in the foreground standing on a decorative sprig of leaves. He is leaning with his right arm on a shield upon which is written: 'Souvenir des tranchèes de CHAMPAGNE 1914 - 1915, 1916'. With his left arm, he is pointing to a valley in the distance, in which a scenic town nestles. In the middleground is a warren of trenches. Trenches were built with many contours and diversions; never in a straight line. This was done so that a shell could not decimate the population in the trench, or give a shooter a clean line to pick off those in the trench. Written on the soldier's collar is the number '320'.
He is wearing a metal helmet, which was a relatively new part of the uniform in 1915. The French were the first to introduce wearing metal liners in their cloth caps (these were called 'casque Adrian'), which later developed into helmets. It was probably a light blue in colour and modelled on Imperial Roman helmets.
Sketchbook belonging to Paul Prangère. Found on the WWI battlefields in France by Private Charles Edward Goldspink M.M., 17 Infantry Battallion. Depicts life in the trenches during the first two costly battles of Champagne. The first battle took place between 10 December 1914 - 17 March 1915 and 90,000 French were injured. The second battle occurred between 22 September 1915 - 6 October 1915. It probably does not depict the thrid battle of Champagne (16 - 20 April 1917) because Prangere states the date of creation as being 1916. Many of the illustrations are of a jovial and gentle life in dugouts. The second half of the sketchbook portrays the soldier on leave with his wife or girlfriend after being injured. Despite the grim nature of life in the trenches, the artist largely portrays a lyrical existence, with his simple and humourous illustrative style anticipating Hergé's Tintin (which was first published in 1929).