The Deadly Paternity of a Deserter from the Great War

This article draws on archived documents and press reports to recount the tragic history of an unorthodox couple and their young child in the aftermath of the Great War. Having married Louise Landy, Paul Grappe was mobilized in 1914. Wounded and disaffected, he deserted from the army and for the next ten years, until the amnesty, lived as a woman in order to evade arrest, leading a sexually adventurous life into which Louise was drawn. But the birth of their only child in 1925 altered relations between the couple, leading to Paul's alcoholism and violence. The article starts from the conventional and idyllic family photograph of the couple and their baby, in order to explore the tensions seething behind the façade of this apparently happy family.