GAULLE Charles de. L. A. S., 15 January 1916, to his mother Jeanne de Gaulle; 8 pages in-12 (small stains, slight marginal loss, 2nd leaf with hole in centre). Long letter from the trenches in which the young officer ridicules the position of his staff. He reassures his "dearest Mum" about a letter he had sent earlier, which was perhaps too alarming about his condition: "Above all, do not think that I am doing badly or even mediocrely. I am really as well as can be [...]. The only thing is that I have had eight days of fatigue and fever, which is the price I have to pay for this second winter of war. Wondering every evening whether I was going to agree to be evacuated the next day, I put off writing to you until I knew where I stood. Now I'm completely recovered and very happy to be even with nothing at all. Review of the military situation: "For the moment events are of little interest. We evacuated Gallipoli, and we did well. It would have been better if we had never gone. One day we will evacuate Salonika to come and attack here or defend there, and I will say the same thing. For the moment, I don't want to say anything more about it except this: Remember that the people who are making us stay there are the same ones who made us go to Serbia, on the pretext of preventing the Germans and Bulgarians from joining forces and saving the Serbian army. Because you need to have enough memory to remember now the aim that our absurd government gave to this lamentable expedition a short while ago. They did not, of course, prevent a single link-up or save a single Serbian battalion; they inflicted on us the useless slap in the face of this retreat from Serbia, which they now agree could very well have ended in disaster. So today, in order not to have to admit that they are asses, they are keeping 20,000 good and fine troops in Salonika and how many millions of shells, which, I still maintain, are absolutely useless and do not kill a single German. The French, who nevertheless have some military common sense in their souls, try to torture their own reason and persuade themselves that it is a superb coup to be in Salonika doing nothing, and as no valid strategic reason can be found for pouring so many men and so many shells into Salonika, they console themselves by trying to think that at least it annoys the enemy! First of all, I don't believe a word of it! Secondly, what a strategy! What principles in the conduct of war that consist of depositing six army corps in cities ... where it is assumed that it will annoy the enemy to see them there! May we, at the next and decisive assaults on the German positions in France and Belgium, not wring our hands as we have done several times already - I have seen it - in front of a last line of trenches, shouting "Ah! if we had another 20,000 fresh infantrymen and 3 million more shells to throw at them, we would break them in!" And these 20,000 men, and these 3 million shells are in Salonika! Containing at this moment, I don't mind the assaults of a few Bulgarians or Turks that the Germans will then oppose them to amuse them, while they themselves, as reasonable people, will bring back to our front to contain us all the troops and cannons they have available! One last time, there are not several strategic truths, there is only one, which is not to annoy the enemy, but to defeat him at the most sensitive point, i.e. at home"... LNC, I, p. 247. Attached is No. 1 (Numéro-Programme) of the newspaper Le Lion d'Arras, 1 January 1916. Plus a mimeographed document, Prescription in the event of a gas attack, 15 January 1916 (a letter on this subject from A. Buquet?).