Full transcript of the letter from the Sub-Lieutenant Maurice ROUGIER to his sister Louise at the beginning of the Great War:
D.........p 24 Sept.1914.
My dear Lou,
I received your letter from the current on the return of a 5 day-old man I'm going to tell you. At midnight last Saturday, we left D. at 5 o'clock in the morning; we waited for the final orders for a few hours in a village, we took advantage of it to break a crust. At 10 o'clock we received information about the mission entrusted to us: we had to raise battalions of fighters to cover the withdrawal of the no.... Corps of army to allow them to retreat in their turn; and with few people make a lot of noise even in contact with the enemy to mask the retreat --
This mission was made easy because everything had to happen in the forest of S., which was very thick (which had to hide the weakness of the troops that would cover this retreat), but also dangerous because this same weakness of the staff, given the width of the front to be kept (for my section, that is, 50 men, 1200m wide), and the lack of reinforcements and reserves behind the line of surveillance, made possible a watch-agent.
We arrived on the lines at about 10 a.m., crossing muddy layons in which we met either stretchers carrying some wounded, or wounded French and Germans who could walk and also a prisoner who jumped like a goat with a big smile on his lips and who, by the way, made me the pig!, a superb military salvation to the French, it was for this man the end of the deprivations and almost the guarantee to find his life in this war that would give him so much pleasure.
My section provides two small posts, one under the supervision of my little comrade S. who was detaching himself from the quantities of small posts of four men and one corporal at the exit of each of the layons leaving the wood towards the enemy lines located 500m away.
My installation was quite difficult, I was untying two small positions of 1 Corporal 4 men, liaison with the nearby Company and I was settling in trenches made by the fighter battalion. I spent the day, buried in my trench, I saw a patrol appearing at 1200m at the edge of the wood but she did not approach enough to shoot him.
Our night went without incident, lying on the cold ground under shelter made of branches that let the rain pass; I will always remember terrible screams pushed all night by wounded people lost in the woods and the grim glows that the fire of a village was projecting behind the forest.
The day after that happened, without moving trenches, eating, sleeping, watching over it, hearing the shooting sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, and the shells whistled over our heads.
One of my little posts on the right was surprised by a patrol, one of my men, sentinel at the moment was killed, his name was Lefèbvre. As I was preparing to spend another night in my trench, the order happened to me to retreat to the village of M. 5km. from there; after raising my posts, I operated my withdrawal leaving a rearguard to protect myself. I was very worried about how I could orient myself in the forest in the middle of the night when I came across the rest of the Company. We returned to Mr. where we slept.
The next day, September 22, we arrived to take over our locations the day before; we had to stop around 10am. Because our artillery, which had opened a hellfire on the forest side where we thought the Germans were, began to shoot at us; order we had just joined M. and organized it defensively. The cannon was thundering hard to our right, we had also folded in haste the day before because of a German attack that had pushed down our right. At 9am. order to reach our old sites. After a careful walk through the woods, we came to work; I saw my unfortunate man killed the day before, he had a bullet over his right eye and had eyes wide open and full of death, his bag had been opened and looted, his pockets turned, he had been taken away, only his watch had been left to him.
The trickiest thing was to occupy the W. farm, which could have been taken by the Prussians while I left, so I was sending a wooden patrol on the farm and when that patrol told me the house was empty, I came out of the woods with the rest of my 1/2 section, at this point I heard a terrible noise, it was from the German arti that spotted me and started a shooting; I made my men take the race step, and we get the farm in the middle of the bursts of shells. I thank God for saving me from the losses I was stunned not to suffer; 60 shells fell over a length of 100m and on a width of 200 without hurting a man; it is true that it was field artillery whose shooting setting is very long and whose effectiveness is considered to be quite weak.
I then stayed in my farm, under the threat of a new bombardment, without moving my finger, simply putting to all the windows that were facing the enemy a few men ready to fire. I was then ordered to evacuate the farm at night to occupy the edge of the wood.
I was carrying out this order when a new order of withdrawal arrived; I had to search for my posts in the wood on a black night, in inextricable paths; I managed after an hour to gather all my half section and part of the section of another company and I could guide myself through the forest, thanks to the knowledge that all those coming and going had given me.
When I arrived at 10:00 p.m. on the point of withdrawal, I was sent to sleep on the cold and soaked ground at the outposts. My 1/2 section went there with another Lieutenant(?) of the Company and his section, while I was going to bed in a cabin in Robinson Crusoë.
On Wednesday 23rd at noon, the company was ordered to occupy new outpost locations; at 21h. the order to retreat arrived, my section was in the main watch, shots had just been delivered by the small posts. We managed to fold carefully on Mr. that we were going over and at 23h. the company was left in a wood to take the outposts. This was the worst night I had spent, lying in the ditch of a muddy road, forced to rise every 1/2 hours to warm up.
Finally Thursday 24, after having been able to drink coffee by lighting all small fires in the middle of the woods in the grand guard, order came to us to return to our quarters and D....p. It was with joy that all men, excessively tired and all having stomach aches, learned the news.
Of these four days, here's the record:
1 death Lefèbvre,
3 evacuees Marliot, Maillot, Prazard
Who had terrible colic with slamming teeth.
My dear Lou, war is not a very cheerful thing, it is evident when, after a day of fatigue, one has to lie down the cold ground and eat a little bit of bread with water; one sees it by seeing the unfortunate ones brought back in so many with some shrapnel of shells in the body that will make them forever disabled, or by seeing those deaths so young that mothers, sisters or wives will cry.
During the two days that the corps ambulance spent here, we buried four unfortunate regiments who suffered a lot (he was on cover): his staff was replaced twice, his officers almost all died.
In thinking about all this, it seems to me that God has privileged me so far and that he seems to want to keep me to you; I thank him and I draw a lot closer to him; perhaps he listens to the prayers that all those like me have gone away from theirs. When the hostilities are over, I will see you again when they are over, I will rely on Divine Providence.
NB-- Keep this letter, I put some details in it because it's a page of my daily impressions that I untie to send it to you.