Letters of a French Soldier by Reymond Molle – Book Review

Backround: Peace Palace, The Hague - where the letters are stored today

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Note: I read this book in French

In the Champs Elysées in Paris, at Arc de Triomphe, you have the eternal flame commemorating the ‘unknown soldier’ who lost their lives during the several wars (mainly the First and the Second World wars). However, the term ‘unknown’ might be pejorative as each of them had their own story, their own emotions during those darks times which we have unfortunately not yet uncovered. Reymond Molle is one such ‘unknown’ soldier, whom we get to know through the letters he wrote to his wife during the war.

Reymond’s family comprised him, his wife Emma and their son Georges who was three years old when the war had started. In this anthology, we have letters starting from November 1914, when he was posted in Villefranche-sur-Mer next to the border of Italy in the south of France till he was moved to the trenches in the north of France. He wrote several times during the war to his wife and most of them were regarding his concern over the health of his wife and son.

Several films and books have romanticised war and the heroism of the soldiers to the extent that we have developed an image where soldiers have been trained to lose all their emotions, develop a hatred towards the enemy and are ready to die for their country. However, the reality of a frontline soldier is very different and most of them are merely longing for the day when the war is over, and they could return to their families.

In the letters in this book, Reymond wrote more about farming and was giving advice on how to go about the job as his wife was now managing their farm alone, than about the war and the politics surrounding it. He never expressed any hatred towards Germans in these letters and in fact, prayed for the dead of both the sides. While writing about villages occupied by German forces, he did not write on how he was longing to take it back for France but wrote more about his concern for the families that were split by this and had no news of their members in the occupied villages.

This is a sad story – Reymond had a young doting family and at the start, he was expressing hope for the day when the devastation would be over and could return to normalcy but as it progressed, he lost hope and I could sense that he was beginning to foresee his own death.

Wars achieve nothing, for example, this particular war started with a political conflict between Austria and Serbia but then, more Germans, Russians and the French died than Austrians and Serbians put together (not that a statistic otherwise would have given a meaning to the war). It is a cliché but true – that war is a game played by old politicians where the young lose their lives. And in the end, what did this war achieve? Another war, a bigger one where there was more loss of life.

This book gives a personal angle of a soldier during a war and gives us a new perspective of wars different from what we might have had based on what we have seen and read in popular culture. Sometimes, it feels like invading a personal space while reading these letters, but the stories of war are best told through personal stories, like the diary of Anne Frank.

It would be a good experience if we are able to collect all the stories of unknown soldiers around the world to understand the redundancy of war. For this experience, I give this book a rating of eight on ten.

Rating – 8/10

Have a nice day,
Andy