A brave Captain in the mud of Verdun
Through 39 wartime letters to his sister, Captain Léon Rohlfs de Sussex shares his descent from Saint-Cyr cadet to a wounded, weary soul in the trenches of Verdun. His final note, written in pain, becomes a haunting witness to the human cost of World War I.
It was in the frozen mud of Verdun, under a grey November sky in 1914, that Captain Léon Rohlfs de Sussex wrote to his sister:
I freeze when I do nothing, despite dressing like an Eskimo.
One of 39 letters in a remarkable collection, this sentence alone captures the physical and emotional crucible that was trench warfare. The letters, written in tight, meticulous French script - some barely decipherable due to their minute size- span from the optimism of early September 1914 to the unbearable agony of a wound suffered in May 1915. Each one is addressed to Marie, his beloved sister, who preserved not only his words but his humanity.
Trained at the elite military academy of Saint-Cyr, Léon’s early letters reveal a man shaped by discipline and duty.
The bed must resemble a rectangular parallelepiped.
he wrote in 1895, with a touch of dry humor. But the soldier who emerges in the trenches is no longer a cadet obsessed with order, but a weary officer navigating a world of mud, loss, and absurdity. In one letter, he describes managing six synchronized artillery pieces, drawing sketches of strategic crossings and “weapon stacks”, a grim technical term that earned him more criticism than praise. Yet what lingers is his voice, cracked with sorrow and fatigue:
The world is no better in war than in peace.
The final letter, dated May 25, 1915, is almost unbearable to read. Wounded and feverish, Léon confesses to Marie,
This is beyond anything I could imagine… The pain makes me scream in front of anyone.
It would be his last. This archive is not just a record of war—it is the intimate diary of a soul unraveling at the edge of history. And in a twist of fate, decades later, Marie would become a revered teacher to Antonio Candido, Brazil’s most respected literary critic. Through this thread of memory, Léon’s voice - fragile yet defiant - continues to echo.
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