July 25, 2025 • 11 mins
Embark on a journey through the past two centuries as you delve into the personal stories of twelve renowned soldiers. Discover their early lives and how their formative years influenced their extraordinary military careers. This podcast offers an intimate exploration into the making of these great soldiers, as compiled from the book’s preface. (Summary by philchenevert)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Section nineteen of Boy's Book of Famous Soldiers. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain,
but more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Boy's Book of Famous Soldiers by J. Walker mc spadden.
Joffra Part one Choffre, the Cooper's son who remade the
(00:26):
armies of France. Let's name him Joseph, said Giles Joffre
to his wife, as they viewed their first child with
much pride. That doesn't seem to be enough, responded Madame Joffre.
So unusual. A baby deserve better treatment, she thought. Then
how about Joseph Jacks. That's a good, sensible sounding name.
(00:50):
That sounds well, she admitted, But still it lacks something.
I'll tell you. Let's call him Joseph Jacques Cesaire. Sounds
like a soldier, said the father. Well, who knows, Perhaps
he'll be a general some day. Madame Joffre replied. So.
The infant, who lay quietly blinking on his natal day
January the twelfth, eighteen fifty two, was to be known
(01:13):
as Joseph to his friends, but tucked away in his
name for future reference was Cesaire as the French folk
pronounced the name of the great Roman conqueror. Truly, there
was nothing very auspicious in the start of Joseph Joffre.
His father was merely a cooper in a straggling hillside
town of the Pyrenees in southern France, Rivesaltez. But he
(01:34):
was a good cooper. His neighbors had a saying that
is preserved to this day, barrels are as good as
those made by good old Giles Joffre. The town itself
had some six thousand inhabitants and was situated on the
river Arghli, about nine miles from the city of Perpignan.
(01:55):
The Joffre home was a very plain and humble dwelling,
set alongside of the coopers shops, and neither better nor
worse than its neighbors. But the well to do workman
of to day would turn up his nose at it. Nevertheless,
in this home were born eleven children, the oldest of
whom was the future Marshal of France, and the father
continued to live there for thirty years or more. It
(02:17):
is related of him that even as a baby, Joseph
never cried, but endured his various troubles with silent stoicism.
As he grew older, this trait of silence became engrown.
It was allured to as Joffre's tight eternity, but as
a matter of fact, the gift of silence in him
(02:37):
as both a boy and man, did not indicate a
sullen or unfriendly disposition. It was merely that he had
his head in the clouds. He made a life job
of thinking, like the seated statue by Rodin. As one
result of this trace, little is reported concerning his childhood.
No antidotes are related of him at all, except one
(02:58):
doubtful story about a fight which he had with a schoolmate.
The latter wanted him to stop and take part in
some game. Joffre replied that he didn't have time. The
other fellow came back with a taunt, and then Joffre
waded in. He did not have any chums for the
same reason lack of time, and doubtless he missed a
great deal out of boyhood. From this fact. It is
(03:21):
said that in this study hall he would erect great
piles of books between himself and the next boy so
as not to be disturbed. Yet he didn't shine particularly
as a student, he was simply busy thinking. It was
not until he was sent to college at Perpignan that
he really began to take an interest in books, and
his favorites were the more solid studies algebra, descriptive geometry,
(03:45):
surveying and draftsmanship. His bent, even at this early day,
seemed to be civil engineering. The ambition of every middle
class French home in those days was to send a
son to the army, have him study to become an officer.
Mammo Joffre had not forgotten the caesar in her older
son's name, and in a family conclave it was decided
(04:06):
that he should be sent to Paris to try for
the entrance examination in the Acal Polytechnique. Giles Joffra accompanied
his son to the capital and left him in a
private school. Like his son, the Cooper was a man
of few words, but what he must have done at
parting was to clap the boy on the shoulder and say,
now go to it. Joseph Joffre did when he returned
(04:29):
to his boyhood home only four years later. He was
wearing the shoulder straps of a lieutenant and had seen
active service. But this is getting ahead of our story.
There was really nothing else for him to do but
go to it. Here in Paris. He was a big,
hulking lad of fifteen, with a bullet head set upon
a thick neck and broad shoulders. An awkward figure dressed
(04:50):
in ill fitting clothes all his life, Chofra paid little
attention to dress. Here at the awkward age, he looked
out of place with the well dressed city boys. They
tried to have fun at his expense, but he withdrew
into his shell more than ever, and they soon learned
to let him alone. It must have been a lonely
life that young Jaffra led, but we have no direct
(05:12):
evidence that he ever felt lonely. His books and his
day dreams seemed always to have made up for a
lack of human companionship. The other fellows contented themselves with
saying of him, he is too slow and methodical to
amount to much. He did not indeed make a specially
brilliant record in his entrance examins to the Polytechnique, But
(05:34):
his stumbling block was not mathematics or science. It was German.
He could never abide the language. Joseph Joffre entered this
famous military training school in eighteen sixty nine, at the
age of seventeen. Within a few months the school course
was broken up by the German invasion, and Joffre, with
other cadets, promptly volunteered for service, much to the delight
(05:56):
of his family. He was made a second lieutenant attached
to the engineering courts. His first practical field work was
in throwing up fortifications in defense of Paris, but the
Germans were not to be stopped by Joffre in their
march on the French capital at this time. That was
reserved for a later day and another war, the short
but terrible Conflict of eighteen seventy over, Choffre returned to
(06:20):
college and graduated therefrom in eighteen seventy two with the
rank of full lieutenant. One of his classmates of this
time was Ferdinand Foch, but if the two future marshals
there became acquainted, no story of their meeting has come
down to us. Joffre's first work at fort building had
been so well done that immediately upon graduation the government
(06:42):
set him to work. The memory of the stinging German
defeat was with them, stirring them into action. They wanted
defenses everywhere Chioffre was employed upon them at Paris, Versilles, Montpellier,
and even in far away Brittany, until he was disposed
to grumble at his fate. This is all very fine,
(07:03):
he said, but I don't want to spend the rest
of my day's building forts. I want to command troops
and see some real fighting. It was the Caesar cropping
up in him again. Without question, he was a born
builder of fortifications. One day, the Great Marshall mac Mannon
came by on a tour inspection. He was much delighted
with a series of defenses he had built near Paris.
(07:27):
I congratulate you, monsieur le captaine, he said, by one sentence,
he had promoted the young lieutenant to a captaincy. It
was about this time that a fall from his horse
very nearly cut short his military career. He was so
severely injured that the doctors feared that his mind was affected,
and he was sent home for a complete rest. At home,
(07:51):
he did not complain, that was not his nature. But
he spent several days pacing back and forth in his
little upper room. Then came a day when he burst
into the downstairs room where sat his parents, his face
beaming showing the strain which he had overcome. It's all right,
mont Pierre, he cried, joyfully, I have salt it, I
will get well. What he had been doing was to
(08:14):
set himself an abstruse and difficult problem mathematics, in order
to see if his brain would respond. It did so,
he solved it, and thus had no more fears as
to his own ultimate recovery. Another story told by his
sister of these early army days shows further his power
of mental abstraction. My brother was always lost in thought,
(08:35):
says Madame Martus. No matter what he did, his thoughts
never left him. Once they caused his arrest as a spy.
It seems that at Vaubon, not far from his home
town of Rivesalta's, they were constructing a fort. Joffre sauntered
over to inspect it. He was clad in civilian dress,
and he evinced so much interest in what was going
(08:57):
on that the commanding officer promptly seized him for a
suspicious character. Did my brother protest? Not he? But when
they brought him before the military court, his Catalonian brogue
was enough to convince anybody as to where he was born.
Why didn't you tell them who you were, I asked,
too busy thinking about the fort, was his reply. One
(09:19):
other antidote of this time has come down to us
and is worth repeating. His father bought a piece of
farmland that was badly in need of ditching, in order
to drain it properly during the wet season and irregrate
it during the dry The sun sketched out a scheme
of cross trenches, but his father demurred. Then Joseph exploded, trenches.
What the devil, I know all about trenches. Trenches are
(09:42):
my speciality. The great war of later years was to
show whether or not this confidence in his own abilities
was misplaced. By the year eighteen eighty four, his reputation
as a builder of trenches and forts was firmly established,
although official promotion had come slowly. When Admirable corbet telegraphed
to the Home Office from the Isle of Formosa for
(10:03):
a reliable officer to place in charge of this work,
Shoffra was sent. He spent nearly a year there, and
it was a year of the hardest kind of work.
He could get only indifferent help, so he worked early
and late to make up the deficit. From there he
was sent on similar work to the province of Tonkin, Indo, China.
Here he practically rebuilt the town of Hanoi, clearing and
(10:26):
guttering the streets, draining the neighboring marshes which had made
the settlement to pest hale, and building permanent roads. The
town of Vitri was similarly cleaned up. For these important
labours he received the first recognition in nearly ten years.
He was given official thanks and decorated with the Cross
of the Legion of Honor. A fellow officer who knew
(10:49):
him at this time says Captain Shoffra was as solidly built, Perian,
calm and clear headed, with a firm walk and a
hard blue eye. He seldom smiled, and he spoke still
more rarely. He never punished, except in extreme cases, and
then hard. Natives feared him for his silence, but loved
him for his justice. This portrait of him, about a
(11:13):
quarter of a century before the Great War, is easily
recognizable in the Commander of the Later Day End of Joffre,
Part one recording by Adam Tomkins
Section nineteen of Boy's Book of Famous Soldiers. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain,
but more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Boy's Book of Famous Soldiers by J. Walker mc spadden.
Joffra Part one Choffre, the Cooper's son who remade the
(00:26):
armies of France. Let's name him Joseph, said Giles Joffre
to his wife, as they viewed their first child with
much pride. That doesn't seem to be enough, responded Madame Joffre.
So unusual. A baby deserve better treatment, she thought. Then
how about Joseph Jacks. That's a good, sensible sounding name.
(00:50):
That sounds well, she admitted, But still it lacks something.
I'll tell you. Let's call him Joseph Jacques Cesaire. Sounds
like a soldier, said the father. Well, who knows, Perhaps
he'll be a general some day. Madame Joffre replied. So.
The infant, who lay quietly blinking on his natal day
January the twelfth, eighteen fifty two, was to be known
(01:13):
as Joseph to his friends, but tucked away in his
name for future reference was Cesaire as the French folk
pronounced the name of the great Roman conqueror. Truly, there
was nothing very auspicious in the start of Joseph Joffre.
His father was merely a cooper in a straggling hillside
town of the Pyrenees in southern France, Rivesaltez. But he
(01:34):
was a good cooper. His neighbors had a saying that
is preserved to this day, barrels are as good as
those made by good old Giles Joffre. The town itself
had some six thousand inhabitants and was situated on the
river Arghli, about nine miles from the city of Perpignan.
(01:55):
The Joffre home was a very plain and humble dwelling,
set alongside of the coopers shops, and neither better nor
worse than its neighbors. But the well to do workman
of to day would turn up his nose at it. Nevertheless,
in this home were born eleven children, the oldest of
whom was the future Marshal of France, and the father
continued to live there for thirty years or more. It
(02:17):
is related of him that even as a baby, Joseph
never cried, but endured his various troubles with silent stoicism.
As he grew older, this trait of silence became engrown.
It was allured to as Joffre's tight eternity, but as
a matter of fact, the gift of silence in him
(02:37):
as both a boy and man, did not indicate a
sullen or unfriendly disposition. It was merely that he had
his head in the clouds. He made a life job
of thinking, like the seated statue by Rodin. As one
result of this trace, little is reported concerning his childhood.
No antidotes are related of him at all, except one
(02:58):
doubtful story about a fight which he had with a schoolmate.
The latter wanted him to stop and take part in
some game. Joffre replied that he didn't have time. The
other fellow came back with a taunt, and then Joffre
waded in. He did not have any chums for the
same reason lack of time, and doubtless he missed a
great deal out of boyhood. From this fact. It is
(03:21):
said that in this study hall he would erect great
piles of books between himself and the next boy so
as not to be disturbed. Yet he didn't shine particularly
as a student, he was simply busy thinking. It was
not until he was sent to college at Perpignan that
he really began to take an interest in books, and
his favorites were the more solid studies algebra, descriptive geometry,
(03:45):
surveying and draftsmanship. His bent, even at this early day,
seemed to be civil engineering. The ambition of every middle
class French home in those days was to send a
son to the army, have him study to become an officer.
Mammo Joffre had not forgotten the caesar in her older
son's name, and in a family conclave it was decided
(04:06):
that he should be sent to Paris to try for
the entrance examination in the Acal Polytechnique. Giles Joffra accompanied
his son to the capital and left him in a
private school. Like his son, the Cooper was a man
of few words, but what he must have done at
parting was to clap the boy on the shoulder and say,
now go to it. Joseph Joffre did when he returned
(04:29):
to his boyhood home only four years later. He was
wearing the shoulder straps of a lieutenant and had seen
active service. But this is getting ahead of our story.
There was really nothing else for him to do but
go to it. Here in Paris. He was a big,
hulking lad of fifteen, with a bullet head set upon
a thick neck and broad shoulders. An awkward figure dressed
(04:50):
in ill fitting clothes all his life, Chofra paid little
attention to dress. Here at the awkward age, he looked
out of place with the well dressed city boys. They
tried to have fun at his expense, but he withdrew
into his shell more than ever, and they soon learned
to let him alone. It must have been a lonely
life that young Jaffra led, but we have no direct
(05:12):
evidence that he ever felt lonely. His books and his
day dreams seemed always to have made up for a
lack of human companionship. The other fellows contented themselves with
saying of him, he is too slow and methodical to
amount to much. He did not indeed make a specially
brilliant record in his entrance examins to the Polytechnique, But
(05:34):
his stumbling block was not mathematics or science. It was German.
He could never abide the language. Joseph Joffre entered this
famous military training school in eighteen sixty nine, at the
age of seventeen. Within a few months the school course
was broken up by the German invasion, and Joffre, with
other cadets, promptly volunteered for service, much to the delight
(05:56):
of his family. He was made a second lieutenant attached
to the engineering courts. His first practical field work was
in throwing up fortifications in defense of Paris, but the
Germans were not to be stopped by Joffre in their
march on the French capital at this time. That was
reserved for a later day and another war, the short
but terrible Conflict of eighteen seventy over, Choffre returned to
(06:20):
college and graduated therefrom in eighteen seventy two with the
rank of full lieutenant. One of his classmates of this
time was Ferdinand Foch, but if the two future marshals
there became acquainted, no story of their meeting has come
down to us. Joffre's first work at fort building had
been so well done that immediately upon graduation the government
(06:42):
set him to work. The memory of the stinging German
defeat was with them, stirring them into action. They wanted
defenses everywhere Chioffre was employed upon them at Paris, Versilles, Montpellier,
and even in far away Brittany, until he was disposed
to grumble at his fate. This is all very fine,
(07:03):
he said, but I don't want to spend the rest
of my day's building forts. I want to command troops
and see some real fighting. It was the Caesar cropping
up in him again. Without question, he was a born
builder of fortifications. One day, the Great Marshall mac Mannon
came by on a tour inspection. He was much delighted
with a series of defenses he had built near Paris.
(07:27):
I congratulate you, monsieur le captaine, he said, by one sentence,
he had promoted the young lieutenant to a captaincy. It
was about this time that a fall from his horse
very nearly cut short his military career. He was so
severely injured that the doctors feared that his mind was affected,
and he was sent home for a complete rest. At home,
(07:51):
he did not complain, that was not his nature. But
he spent several days pacing back and forth in his
little upper room. Then came a day when he burst
into the downstairs room where sat his parents, his face
beaming showing the strain which he had overcome. It's all right,
mont Pierre, he cried, joyfully, I have salt it, I
will get well. What he had been doing was to
(08:14):
set himself an abstruse and difficult problem mathematics, in order
to see if his brain would respond. It did so,
he solved it, and thus had no more fears as
to his own ultimate recovery. Another story told by his
sister of these early army days shows further his power
of mental abstraction. My brother was always lost in thought,
(08:35):
says Madame Martus. No matter what he did, his thoughts
never left him. Once they caused his arrest as a spy.
It seems that at Vaubon, not far from his home
town of Rivesalta's, they were constructing a fort. Joffre sauntered
over to inspect it. He was clad in civilian dress,
and he evinced so much interest in what was going
(08:57):
on that the commanding officer promptly seized him for a
suspicious character. Did my brother protest? Not he? But when
they brought him before the military court, his Catalonian brogue
was enough to convince anybody as to where he was born.
Why didn't you tell them who you were, I asked,
too busy thinking about the fort, was his reply. One
(09:19):
other antidote of this time has come down to us
and is worth repeating. His father bought a piece of
farmland that was badly in need of ditching, in order
to drain it properly during the wet season and irregrate
it during the dry The sun sketched out a scheme
of cross trenches, but his father demurred. Then Joseph exploded, trenches.
What the devil, I know all about trenches. Trenches are
(09:42):
my speciality. The great war of later years was to
show whether or not this confidence in his own abilities
was misplaced. By the year eighteen eighty four, his reputation
as a builder of trenches and forts was firmly established,
although official promotion had come slowly. When Admirable corbet telegraphed
to the Home Office from the Isle of Formosa for
(10:03):
a reliable officer to place in charge of this work,
Shoffra was sent. He spent nearly a year there, and
it was a year of the hardest kind of work.
He could get only indifferent help, so he worked early
and late to make up the deficit. From there he
was sent on similar work to the province of Tonkin, Indo, China.
Here he practically rebuilt the town of Hanoi, clearing and
(10:26):
guttering the streets, draining the neighboring marshes which had made
the settlement to pest hale, and building permanent roads. The
town of Vitri was similarly cleaned up. For these important
labours he received the first recognition in nearly ten years.
He was given official thanks and decorated with the Cross
of the Legion of Honor. A fellow officer who knew
(10:49):
him at this time says Captain Shoffra was as solidly built, Perian,
calm and clear headed, with a firm walk and a
hard blue eye. He seldom smiled, and he spoke still
more rarely. He never punished, except in extreme cases, and
then hard. Natives feared him for his silence, but loved
him for his justice. This portrait of him, about a
(11:13):
quarter of a century before the Great War, is easily
recognizable in the Commander of the Later Day End of Joffre,
Part one recording by Adam Tomkins
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