“The Lesser-Known Athletic Side of Alain Fournier: A History Buff’s Discovery”

Henry Broncan and Henri Calhiol, history buffs, met recently and evoked the memory of Alain Fournier. The writer, who was to die in September 1914 at the age of 28 in the uniform of the local regiment (the 288^e infantry regiment (RI), in which he had been mobilized as a reservist), had previously experienced the end of his military service in Mirande, as a junior officer, in 1909, within the battalion of the 88^e active infantry regiment, then in garrison in the bastide (he will return there as a reservist in September 1911 then during the general mobilization of August 1914).

The house where he occupied a room still exists, route de Tarbes: a plaque recalls him and the town’s high school bears his name, not to mention the Le Grand Meaulnes residence. He said that, a 22-year-old and athletic second lieutenant, he played tennis during his leisure time in Mirande, “on this ground where the wives and young ladies of officers go” whom he does not want to marry. .

Founder of a team

In 1901, rugby, already present in France since the end of the 19th^e century, had taken off in Mirande through L’Etoile Sportive mirandaise (a Mirandese engaged within the 88th RI, Roger Dabrin, will play an important role there). Alain Fournier does not mention the Mirandese rugby and yet, what we know less in Mirande, but which these accomplice history enthusiasts that are Henry Broncan and Henri Calhiol are not unaware of, is that Alain Fournier was already at that time a rugby player and for years since he had practiced this “combat sport” at the Lakanal high school in Paris, during his studies.

Later, in 1913 and before leaving to die under German grapeshot south of Verdun, he will be in Paris one of the founders of the Sports Club of Literary Youth (the CSJL), a rugby team in which rubbed shoulders with other future eminent figures such as Jean Giraudoux, Pierre-Mac Orlan and Gaston Gallimard. At the same time appeared his major and unique novel, “Le Grand Meaulnes”, the most translated literary work in the world after “Le Petit Prince”, by Saint-Exupéry. The sweet dreamer in love with Yvonne de Galais was therefore also a practitioner of this sport.