In fact, the unfinished novel about the First World War, which was published by the Folio publishing house under the title "Slaughterhouse", was originally called "The Trench" - it was published in 1948 in a collection, and a year later - as a separate publication. The novel is so short because most of it was lost during the looting of the writer’s Parisian apartment during the liberation of Paris in 1944 (Céline was accused of collaborating with the occupation authorities, and fled to the south of Germany, to Sigmaringen, where the Vichy government had moved at that time led by Marshal Pétain, and then to Denmark, where he was arrested, convicted and imprisoned. Subsequently, the imprisonment was replaced by exile, and in 1951 Celine returned to France under an amnesty). Subsequent editions (since the novel is autobiographical) are usually supplemented by the “Diary of the Cuirassier Detouch” (the real name of the writer is Detouch). This is the story of a regimental convoy, which in 1914 was commanded by a senior non-commissioned officer. About a hundred people with regimental property and assorted weapons wander along the roads, following at random the movements of their regiment. Soon the detachment loses contact with the regiment. And he finds himself in a chaotic whirlpool of an army, forced to either advance or retreat in the heat of battle. Disoriented, exhausted, left without leadership, without supplies, without intelligence data, these soldiers in an endless forced march gradually lose their human appearance; drinking, gambling, looting...