On the eve of this great day, which
may be my last, I want to recall to you your promise....
Comfort my mother. For a week she will have no news. Tell
her that when a man is in an attack he can not write to
those he loves. He must be content with thinking of them.
And if time passes and she hears nothing from me, let her
live in hope. Help her. And if you learn at last that I have
fallen on the field of honor, let the words come from your
heart that will console her, my dear Jeanne.
This morning I attended mass and communion with faith. It
was held some yards away from the trenches. If I am to die,
I shall die a Christian and a Frenchman.
I believe in God, in France and in Victory. I believe in
beauty and youth and life. May God guard me to the end. But,
Lord, if my blood is useful for victory, may Thy will be
done.
Finally, here is a priest, Father Gilbert de Gironde, second
lieutenant in the 81st infantry, who was killed on the seventh of
December, 1914, at Ypres, writing his last letter.... For of the
twenty-five thousand priests who went off at the beginning of the
mobilization, three hundred were called military chaplains, the rest
were officers, stretcher-bearers, or common soldiers--and note the
4,000 citations in the army orders which the "Journal Officiel" has
published, which report the acts of courage and of bravery done by
these priests on the battle field:
To die young.
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