A Soldier Unafraid - Letters From The Trenches On The Alsatian Front
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Captain André Cornet-Auquier
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A Soldier Unafraid - Letters From The Trenches On The Alsatian Front - Captain André Cornet-Auquier
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Text originally published in 1918 under the same title.
© Pickle Partners Publishing 2013, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
A SOLDIER UNAFRAID
LETTERS FROM THE TRENCHES —ON THE ALSATIAN FRONT
BY
CAPTAIN ANDRÉ CORNET-AUQUIER
OF THE 133rd REGIMENT OF INFANTRY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 2
Translator’s Note 3
PREFACE 4
LETTERS FROM THE TRENCHES ON THE ALSATIAN FRONT 7
L'ENVOI 40
Translator’s Note
This translation is dedicated to the Young Officers of our National Army now hastening to France to aid in the Great Contest in which Captain Cornet-Auquier fell. May this youthful French hero be their model and their inspiration both in life and, if needs be, in death, T. S.
Show me the way to make a gallant fight;
Help me to love whate'er is just and right,
To face whate'er shall come without a sigh!
And when the Last Great Rest shall come to me,
Guide me, O Starlight, to Eternity.
ELIZABETH STORY GLEASON.
PREFACE
AT an early age André Cornet-Auquier, author of the letters which follow, was noticeable for his expansive and affectionate nature, for his studiousness and a deep respect for his teachers and superiors. At school, he was never punished, and for nine successive years at college received the annual prize for excellence in studies. Yet he was neither a grind
nor a goody-goody.
He was ardently attached to his family and was never so happy as when at home. But he knew the world and its ways. As a young man
, his father writes, one of his favorite pleasures was to stretch himself out at full length at his mother's feet, put his head in her lap, as he used to do when a child, and thus participate in the conversation of the family circle. One of his college professors says of him:
His soul gave quick response to everything that was right and he was interested in all the grand problems which agitate modern society. Though pious, he never paraded his piety or intruded it, but revealed it by his acts rather than by words. He prayed in the trenches, in his dugout bed, even on horseback; and when suffering at the front from insomnia, he tells us he would sometimes pray himself to sleep.
He held, his father writes me,
that prayer is a permanent state of the soul, rather than a momentary act. In a word, in religion, Captain Cornet-Auquier was a broad-minded
muscular Christian."
His physical life was as clean as was his intellectual and spiritual existence. He detested obscene stories and everything of a double-entendre nature, and at twenty-eight could say of himself: If I am killed, I shall hand back my body to God as pure as I received it from him at my birth.
The Reverend Mr. Gambier, who officiated at his burial, said of him: He did not admit that there were two systems of morals, — one for men and another for women
; and one of his professors wrote to the bereaved parents: We will never again find at the college the like of that boy for the moral influence which he exerted on his classmates.
But he was an enthusiast not only of moral beauty and purity; he loved also artistic and natural beauty. He was passionately fond of poetry, music and song
, his father says, and in more than one passage of the following letters this fact comes out. The grand works of God, — the sea, lofty mountains, lakes and sunsets ravished him to the point of ecstasy.
If he had not been an ardent Christian, he would surely have become a pronounced pantheist. The letters abound in evidences of this.
The French Protestants, like the Jews in general, are very international, one of the happy consequences — perhaps the only one — of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This internationalism, which, however, does not preclude fervent patriotism — some of these letters contain the most glowing tributes to country I have ever read — is very marked in the case of the Cornet-Auquier family. In the United States they have cousins, one of these being Irene Charlesworth, well known in Tennessee as a sculptress, while the young captain, who was professor at Glasgow University, mentions several times in the following pages those dear British uncles.
One of his sisters married in England during the present war and the first letter in the series is dated from Wales.
Perhaps the most significant testimony to this young man's worth are the letters which the family received after his death, from the non-commissioned officers and common soldiers of his company. A sergeant writes: It is not a spectacle often witnessed, — that of soldiers, accustomed to face death, weeping like children as they stood round his bier.
This is from a corporal: We esteemed him and loved him as though we were his sons.
We often speak of him,
says the company's cook, but always try to check ourselves because such a loss makes us sad.
The following letters, selected from a collection of some four hundred, will take a high place, I think, in the wonderful epistolary contribution, on the part of the French, to the literature of this war. I say intentionally, on the part of the French, for the home correspondence of the soldier boys of France will, it seems to me, be given first rank in this department of contemporary writing. There are at least three good reasons why this should be so.
In the first place, the excellent instruction in composition given in the French schools, which has often been remarked upon by foreign educators, has taught the average French boy how to write, and the élite of the youth is past master in the art.
In the second place, the system of universal military training which has prevailed in France for the past half century