Author: American Ouvroir Fund

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-07-17

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 9780282337483

Excerpt from French Soldiers' Letters If the letters received by the American Ouvroir in Paris may be taken as types representing the average state of mind of the French soldier, then it would appear that the French soldier does not look upon himself in any sense as a hero, but merely as a man who in the simplest way possible is doing his' duty. The courageous way in which most of these men take their hard lives at the front, surrounded as they are continually by danger and discomforts, with death or maiming a daily possibility, is in itself worthy of admiration. When considered in conjunction with the fact that their homes are in the invaded portions of France, that these soldiers have not heard from their wives, children or par ents since the war started, these otherwise simple letters should increase our respect for a nation which produces such men by the million. When one gets to personally know these men on their short leaves and sees how they take what would appear to us a great tragedy in such a simple and, unaffected. Manner, one feels that it is a rare privilege to be able to help them. I would be grateful if you could send me a pair of socks, ' a soldier will write, and then adds that he has not heard from his wife and three children since the war started and does not know whether they are starving, or even alive. The smallness and humbleness of the request, coupled with the real tragic posi tion in which the man is placed, constitutes something that onehas to have actually lived with to appreciate. And then the vast majority of these French soldiers are such a gentle lot, so kindly and genial, that it seems almost impossible to realize that they have just come on leave from the first line of trenches, where they have been engaged in throwing bombs and hand grenades at the enemy and engaging in fierce night attacks with the bayonet. I remember seeing one such gentle creature - perhaps I might say gentle-man - lying in a bed in one of the French hospitals with a very pale, delicate face and. A long beard, while on the lapel of his bed jacket was pinned the cross of the Legion of Honor. This man, who was small in stature and delicate in build, had held up a German armor-plate automobile, armed with a rapid-firing gun and a crew of several Germans. The result of this hold up was that the armor-plated automobile was captured, although the man in question almost lost his life in doing so, and will probably be a human wreck for the remainder of his life. This man's face was almost ascetic in its spirituality, and yet back of all this gentleness lay the moral courage which makes the French soldier one of the best in the world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.