Letter of the French defense of Sevastopol Bashny.Net

Letter of the French soldiers from the Crimea, addressed to a certain Maurice Paris, a friend of the author:
"Our Major said that all the rules of military science they (Russian. - YD), it's time to surrender. At each of their gun - we have five guns per soldier - ten. And you should have seen their guns! Perhaps our ancestors who stormed the Bastille, and that was the best weapon. They do not have shells. Every morning, their women and children out into the open field between the fortifications and collect the bags of the nucleus. We start shooting. Yes! We shoot at women and children. Do not be surprised. But the core they collect, meant to us! And they do not go away. Women spit in our direction, and the boys showed languages.




They have nothing to eat. We see how they are small pieces of bread divided into five. And where once they take power to fight? For every attack they meet our counterattack and force us to retreat to the strengthening. Do not laugh, Maurice, of our soldiers. We are not cowards, but when Russian bayonet in hand-tree and so I would advise to leave the road. I, my dear Maurice, sometimes cease to believe Major.
I'm starting to think that the war will never end. Yesterday evening, before we the fourth time that day, went on the attack and retreated for the fourth time. Russian sailors (I'm writing to you, that they are descended from the ship and now defend the bastions) chased us. Ahead ran a stocky fellow with a black mustache and an earring in one ear. He knocked our two - one with a bayonet, another butt - and has already set his sights on a third when a pretty piece of shrapnel hit him in the face. Sailor's hand and flew, blood spurted a fountain. Heat of the moment he ran a few steps and fell to the ground at our very shaft. We dragged him to her, tied somehow wound and laid in the dugout. He was still breathing, "If you will not die until the morning, sent him to the hospital - said the corporal. - And now late. Why mess around with him? ».
At night I woke up suddenly, as if someone had pushed me in the side. The dugout was completely dark, pitch dark though. I lay a long time, I will not return, and could not sleep. Suddenly he heard a rustling in the corner. I lit a match. And what would you think? Russian sailor wounded crawled to the keg of gunpowder. In only his hand he held a tinder and flint. White as a sheet, with clenched teeth, he strained the rest of his forces, trying with one hand a spark. A little more, and we are all with him, with all dug would skyrocket into the air. I jumped to the floor, pulled out of his hand and shouted Flint voice not his own. Why I cried? The danger has passed already. Believe me, Maurice, for the first time during the war, I was scared. If wounded, bleeding man, who shot off his hand, not giving up, and trying to blow up themselves and the enemy - then you have to stop the war. With such people to fight desperately »
Source: "Nakhimov" Yuri Davydov, Young Guard, 1970

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