Paris-Manchester 1918
Conservatoires in time of war

Burying friends

Though ever-present at the front, death never becomes a trivial event for soldiers. It is always traumatic and continues to be accompanied by rituals: the stretcher-bearers were responsible for recovering the bodies so that they could be identified and buried. In addition to serving the school gazette’s purpose of providing information, the account of a friend’s death made it possible to keep his memory alive and thus to attempt to assign a meaning (often a heroic one) to his death.

GAUBERT Philippe (Lenepveu), stretcher-bearer in the. . . Inf[antry][1]

10 April.[2]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unfortunately, news of the death of my great friend Girard[3] is all too true! He was killed at É[4] . . . . . . there he lies in the little cemetery – my poor friend! He was killed by a shell in one of the trenches furthest forward (a small post about 50 feet from the Huns).  . . . . . . . When I went to Paris on leave (in February) I gave the bad news to some of his friends from the Opéra . . . . . . . . . . Since the glorious death of our dear friend, we have lived through some very tragic days . . . . . . . . . . and I wonder how I came through all that unscathed! After a rest break . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . we went back into the trenches . . . . . . . . . . . We have the courage and the determination needed to block the road to Verdun for those damned Huns . . . . . .

 

[1]Infantry.

[2]1916.

[3]Marcel Girard (1891-† 1916), first medal for music theory in 1907.

[4]Les Éparges is a ridge in the Meuse department that was the scene of intense fighting, especially from February to April 1915 (battle of Éparges)

Philippe Gaubert, (10 April 1916) Letter to the Franco-American Committee, in: Gazette des classes du Conservatoire, No. 3, Paris, October 1916, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Music Department, Rés Vm Dos 88 (1), p. 17 [on line].

Document description: mimeographed document in violet ink, 21×27 cm.

Catalogue: http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb43639008g