Early in the war his poor eyesight left him a stretcher-bearer on the battlefields of northern and eastern France.

He ended the war on the eastern front, and was discharged a year after the Armistice.

He earned a doctorate in letters in 1927, with a thesis entitled: "The images in the work of Corneille".

The Académie française awarded it the Saintour prize of literary history.

[clarification needed] His war memories inspired some of his earlier books: Our Father Trajan, Captain Conan, Lena, but the maritime world makes up the heart of his work.