Louis Bastien (Esperantist) occupation military officer
Louis Marie Jules Charles Bastien (December 21, 1869 in Obernai, near Strasbourg – April 10, 1961) was a French Esperantist and a quartermaster in the French army. In 1899 he married Marguerite Pfulb (1879–1941); the couple had three daughters and two sons. In school he learned mathematics, classical French literature, Latin and Greek and learned to compose Latin verse. After a year of preparatory studies at l'Ecole Sainte-Geneviève in Versailles he entered l'Ecole Polytechnique in 1887 at the age of 17. Not having the maturity of his older classmates, he did not excel in his studies and, on graduation in 1889, had to content himself with a military career.French Army Quartermaster
After Madagascar was proclaimed a French colony in 1896, Bastien returned to France, to be stationed at Amiens, where he completed his fr:Licence en droit (Bachelor of Laws) to qualify for l'Intendance (the Army's Supply Corps). He used to say: "Being a soldier in the army without a trade, I could only choose the least militaristic specialty." Bastien was accomplished in several fields — a man of letters, a mathematician, a thinker and administrator — everything but a warrior, though a dutiful patriot and a man of conscience. Admitted to l'École Supérieure de l'Intendance (now fr:École militaire supérieure d'administration et de management) and having received his fourth stripe as a Commandant (a rank equivalent to Major — every quartermaster is a senior officer), he followed a trajectory that led him through the ranks successively to Besançon, Lons-le-Saulnier, Épinal, Valenciennes, Commercy and Châlons-sur-Marne.When World War I broke out, Bastien was at Saint-Brieuc, and his five stripes indicated his rank of lieutenant-colonel. He followed the events of the war with a mixture of hope and anguish. By the end of the war, he was a Quartermaster-General, Second Class in Paris, and in 1919 he went to Strasbourg to serve as director of the Supply Corps for the Alsace district.
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