English · Chapter 12
Study notes aligned to the official NEB syllabus.
"Two Little Soldiers" is a short story by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), one of the masters of the modern short story. Maupassant was born in Normandy, served briefly in the Franco-Prussian War, and was trained in writing by Gustave Flaubert. In a career of barely a decade he produced about three hundred stories and six novels, including "The Necklace", "Boule de Suif" and "Bel-Ami". He wrote in the realist tradition: ordinary people, plain language, sharp observation, and endings that arrive quietly but strike hard. He distrusted sentimentality and preferred to show human weakness without moralising about it.
"Two Little Soldiers" was first published in French in 1885. It is a story about two homesick peasant boys from Brittany who are serving as soldiers in Paris. In only a few pages Maupassant traces how a friendship that is the whole world to both of them is quietly destroyed by love, jealousy and silence. In the NEB Grade 11 course it is read as a study of friendship, loneliness, betrayal and the tragedy of feelings that cannot be spoken.
Luc Le Ganidec and Jean Kerderen are two young soldiers from Brittany garrisoned in Paris. Both are simple peasant boys, shy and awkward in the great city, and they cling to each other because they share the same home, the same dialect and the same longing. Every Sunday, as soon as they are free, they set out together. They march quickly through Courbevoie as if on parade, then slow down on the dusty road towards Bezons as the houses thin out and the countryside begins. They always go to the same place, a quiet spot beside a little wood on the bank of the Seine, which they have chosen because something in it reminds them of home.