Memories of a soldier in the trenches during the First World War, in Verdun, France.

• 39 letters and drawings by French army captain Léon Rohlfs De Sussex recounting his daily life as a soldier in the trenches during the First World War, in northeastern France, near Verdun.
• 1914-1915.
• Excellent condition of conservation.
• Single set.

The recipient is his sister, Marie. The general condition of the documents is good, only some letters are undated or difficult to decipher because the soldier wrote in very small letters.

The lot also includes Léon's birth announcement written by his parents in 1875, and two letters he wrote as a student at the prestigious Saint Cyr military school. In French. Good condition. Unique set.

Translated excerpts

1895 - Léon explains the discipline imposed by the military school: "I have been in this new type of boarding house for fifteen days (...). We must make the bed very well, to give it the shape of a rectangular parallelepiped, then polish the boots, clean the top of the wardrobe, arrange it well so that we do not see any folds in the clothes (...). Then we go to training or to classes (topography, fortifications, literature, law) depending on the week."

02/09/1914 - Léon thinks that victory will not be long in coming: "The Bavarians have been decimated."

09/21/1914 - Léon ponders: "I'm fine, but my battalion has suffered a lot of losses."

11/16/1914 - Léon recounts the routine and the fighting: "Our men are up to their necks in the trenches during the day and work at night, digging, to advance. It is positional warfare; we bomb the German camps and they retaliate. Yesterday afternoon, their first bombs knocked down the bell tower of the village that is furthest north (Malancourt) and killed 3 men from the 173rd battalion."

11/21/1914, at night - Léon suffers from the cold: "My dear Marie, I thank you very much for the balaclava you sent me. (...) But it's my feet that I can't warm, until someone invents heated shoes. I freeze when I do nothing, even though I dress like an Eskimo. You must have seen in the papers that the Germans blew up the St Michel barracks and killed 1,683 men."

11/25/1914 - Léon explains, with a drawing, a mission he had undertaken: "Yesterday I went with General Berg to the Béthancourt trenches which had been attacked during the night. Dead Germans were still on the ground."

12/26/1914 - On his birthday, Léon thanks Marie for her congratulatory letter and writes that he is very busy: "My job is to have 6 guns fired at once, by a single man, at certain points, intersections, water points, etc... This is called gun piles and draws criticism to me and little consideration: the world is no better in war than in peace."

13/01/1915 - Léon's morale is low: "The environment in which I live is not friendly, with a few exceptions. I am physically well, my mood is not (...). The war is now of little interest, things are at a standstill and we are discouraged. There is much friction between us, conversations are stupid or ill-intentioned; there are few calamities like this."

02/13/1915 - Léon's morale does not improve: "The general discouragement affects me more than the fights, I'm depressed."

05/25/1915 - Wounded, Léon writes a last letter: "I have suffered so much since you saw me; this is beyond anything I could have imagined. The doctors say my leg is fine, but I still have a fever. The continuous pain I feel in my wound makes me scream in front of anyone."

The First World War (1914-1918) is the most tragic moment in European history. Its outcome - the humiliation of Germany - partly motivated the Second World War and, ultimately, the creation of the European Union to put a definitive end to the Franco-German rivalry. The Battle of Verdun is particularly emblematic of this horrific war that claimed the lives of millions of terrified soldiers and innocent civilians on both sides.

The famous Brazilian philosopher Antonio Candido was a student in 1929 of Marie Rohlfs De Sussex, sister and main recipient of the soldier's letters. I then contacted the scholar's daughter, Marina, a professor at USP, who got back to me:

Hello Mathias, I just called my father and he was amazed! He said that Madame de Sussex was very important in his life, a person he venerates. She was his teacher in 1929 and she had a brother, a lawyer, who was badly wounded in the war, as they were called then. He doesn't remember exactly, but he thinks he was missing an arm or a leg. What a coincidence! Hugs, Marina.

This exchange of letters between Léon, the captain, and Marie, his sister, is both moving and educational. Many human feelings are expressed by this soldier: fear, pride, anger, sadness, love, longing, friendship, contempt, optimism, pessimism, loneliness, solidarity, suffering, compassion, etc. Reading these lines from Léon in the trenches, we try to imagine the hell that this young, brilliant man lived through. One feels like a man completely powerless in the face of the climate, history and human nature.