ARTICLE: Dear God, Anything But Between the Legs

I almost did my MRes thesis on the manpower cost of STDs to the BEF. But then I realised I’d have to spend two years literally obsessing over manky male appendages and so I went for self-inflicted wounds during the Battle of the Somme instead. I tell you this, because it makes this next bit sound less weird. I was trawling through the many WW1 publications that have been digitised by the French national library last week, when a title caught my eye: CONSIDÉRATIONS SUR QUELQUES BLESSURES DE GUERRE DU PÉNIS OBSERVÉES DANS LES HOPITAUX LYONNAIS. Now, in nearly five years no penises (or peni?] have come up on Duolingo, and my first thought was, it’s probably about something else, but I checked, and nope. It is 100% a thesis written by a medical student in July 1916 about war wounds effecting a man’s most precious body part. So to partly atone for wimping out on the STDs I thought I’d translate. Also, after thousands of years of gender inequality, if you thought I wouldn’t relish the idea of making my predominantly male audience squirm for a few minutes then you grossly underestimate my vindictive side. In all seriousness though, this is my family history. My late great aunt once told me what happened to my great great uncle during the First World War. Bayonet, in through the back door and out through the testicle. She rounded off the tale with ‘he never ‘ad any kids.’ No sh*t, Auntie Renie. I’ve read multiple accounts of the war when men have articulated that their very worst nightmare is not death; it’s not their face being maimed, or losing a limb, it’s a shell going off between their legs. So what did this medical student find when he went delving into a particularly unpleasant subject looking to assess this very unique type of wound…

The medical student in question was 27 year old Louis Berliat, of Mâcon in Saône-et-Loire. As well as his parents, he dedicated his work to his mentor, who was unsurprisingly a urologist, and his brother, Ernest. The photo could be either brother. L’Illustration claims that it is Louis, who was shot in the forehead on 14th December 1914, but that was the fate of Ernest. Both were serving in the 334th Regiment in Alsace at the time. For his part, Louis lasted until October 1915, before he was evacuated from the front and then subsequently invalided out of the army. Which is how he came to resume his studies and finish his qualifications in the middle of the war. The reason behind Louis’s choice of subject, he explained like this:

At a time when so many young people are shedding their blood every day for France, the question of the future of our race appears distressing. It seemed particularly interesting to [me] to consider, among so many maimed people, the possible severity and consequences of genital injuries.

I wonder if he had some penis-shaped skin in the game to, for he was a patient at one of the hospitals and I couldn’t find any specifics about the nature of the injury that saw his army stint end. ‘Evacuated from the front in October 1915 and assigned, after convalescence, to Saint-Pothin Hospital, [I] used this stay to complete [my] studies.’So he seems to have spent a lot of time hanging round urology clinics. But we’ll spare his crotch any further interrogation and concentrate on his findings.

(I’ve simplified all of the language for a general reader, if anyone would like the original translation with all of the medical terminology, drop me a line):