The memoir lies somewhere at the crossroads between literature and document, offering a look into a shared past, but a very subjective one for that matter, obeying the voice of one author, who cannot write without creating some form of literature. As such, it becomes a very interesting literary genre: free to play with perspectives and with the senses of the reader, borrowing literary devices from fictional works, it is still deeply anchored in real life. The current article focuses on Blaise Cendrars' experience on the battlefields of the First World War as depicted in his memoir The Bloody Hand. First a writer, then a soldier, Blaise Cendrars could not escape the artist's natural instinct to turn his life into art, inviting the reader into his chaotic, fragmented, dirty, nostalgic, cruel, at times unbelievable experiences in the trenches. In order to better understand this intricate process of reviving memories and turning that very process into literature, the article proposes a look at the writer's use of literary devices-humour, surrealist elements, irony, metaphor or foreshadowing-to recreate an authentic, yet highly aestheticised war narrative.