German Deserter's War Experience
New York: Huebsch, 1917




I
Marching Into Belgium


At the end of July our garrison at Koblenz was feverishly agitated.
Part of our men were seized by an indescribable enthusiasm, others
became subject to a feeling of great depression. The declaration of
war was in the air. I belonged to those who were depressed. For I
was doing my second year of military service and was to leave the
barracks in six weeks' time. Instead of the long wished-for return
home, war was facing me.

Also during my military service I had remained the anti-militarist I had
been before. I could not imagine what interest I could have in the
mass murder, and I also pointed out to my comrades that under all
circumstances war was the greatest misfortune that could happen to
humanity.

Our sapper battalion, No. 30, had been in feverish activity five days
before the mobilization; work was being pushed on day and night so
that we were fully prepared for war already on the 23rd of July, and
on the 30th of July there was no person in our barracks who doubted
that war would break out. Moreover, there was the suspicious
amiability of the officers and sergeants, which excluded any doubt
that any one might still have had. Officers who had never before
replied to the salute of a private soldier now did so with the utmost
attention. Cigars and beer were distributed in those days by the
officers with great, uncommon liberality, so that it was not surprising
that many soldiers were scarcely ever sober and did not realize the
seriousness of the situation. But there were also others. There were
soldiers who also in those times of good-humor and the grinning
comradeship of officer and soldier could not forget that in military
service they had often been degraded to the level of brutes, and who
now thought with bitter feelings that an opportunity might perhaps be
offered in order to settle accounts.

The order of mobilization became known on the 1st of August, and
the following day was decided upon as the real day of mobilization.
But without awaiting the arrival of the reserves we left our garrison
town on August 1st. Who was to be our "enemy" we did not know;
Russia was for the present the only country against which war had
been declared.

We marched through the streets of the town to the station between
crowds of people numbering many thousands. Flowers were thrown
at us from every window; everybody wanted to shake hands with the
departing soldiers. All the people, even soldiers, were weeping. Many
marched arm in arm with their wife or sweetheart. The music played
songs of leave-taking. People cried and sang at the same time. Entire
strangers, men and women, embraced and kissed each other; men
embraced men and kissed each other. It was a real witches' sabbath
of emotion; like a wild torrent, that emotion carried away the whole
assembled humanity. Nobody, not even the strongest and most
determined spirit, could resist that ebullition of feeling. But all that was
surpassed by the taking leave at the station, which we reached after
a short march. Here final adieus had to be said, here the separation
had to take place. I shall never forget that leave-taking, however old I
may grow to be. Desperately many women clung to their men, some
had to be removed by force. Just as if they had suddenly had a vision
of the fate of their beloved ones, as if they were beholding the silent
graves in foreign lands in which those poor nameless ones were to
be buried, they sought to cling fast to their possession, to retain what
already no longer belonged to them.

Finally that, too, was over. We had entered a train that had been kept
ready, and had made ourselves comfortable in our cattle-trucks.
Darkness had come, and we had no light in our comfortable sixth-
class carriages.

The train moved slowly down the Rhine, it went along without any
great shaking, and some of us were seized by a worn-out feeling after
those days of great excitement. Most of the soldiers lay with their
heads on their knapsacks and slept. Others again tried to pierce the
darkness as if attempting to look into the future; still others drew
stealthily a photo out of their breastpocket, and only a very small
number of us spent the time by debating our point of destination.
Where are we going to? Well, where? Nobody knew it. At last, after
long, infinitely long hours the train came to a stop. After a night of
quiet, slow riding we were at--Aix-la-Chapelle! At Aix-la-Chapelle!
What were we doing at Aix-la-Chapelle? We did not know, and the
officers only shrugged their shoulders when we asked them.

After a short interval the journey proceeded, and on the evening of
the 2nd of August we reached a farm in the neighborhood of the
German and Belgian frontier, near Herbesthal. Here our company
was quartered in a barn. Nobody knew what our business was at the
Belgian frontier. In the afternoon of the 3rd of August reservists
arrived, and our company was brought to its war strength. We had
still no idea concerning the purpose of our being sent to the Belgian
frontier, and that evening we lay down on our bed of straw with a
forced tranquillity of mind. Something was sure to happen soon, to
deliver us from that oppressive uncertainty. How few of us thought
that for many it would be the last night to spend on German soil!

A subdued signal of alarm fetched us out of our "beds" at 3 o'clock in
the morning. The company assembled, and the captain explained to
us the war situation. He informed us that we had to keep ready to
march, that he himself was not yet informed about the direction.
Scarcely half an hour later fifty large traction motors arrived and
stopped in the road before our quarters. But the drivers of these
wagons, too, knew no particulars and had to wait for orders. The
debate about our nearest goal was resumed. The orderlies, who had
snapped up many remarks of the officers, ventured the opinion that
we would march into Belgium the very same day; others contradicted
them. None of us could know anything for certain. But the order to
march did not arrive, and in the evening all of us could lie down again
on our straw. But it was a short rest. At 1 o'clock in the morning an
alarm aroused us again, and the captain honored us with an address.
He told us we were at war with Belgium, that we should acquit
ourselves as brave soldiers, earn iron crosses, and do honor to our
German name. Then he continued somewhat as follows: "We are
making war only against the armed forces, that is the Belgium army.
The lives and property of civilians are under the protection of
international treaties, international law, but you soldiers must not
forget that it is your duty to defend your lives as long as possible for
the protection of your Fatherland, and to sell them as dearly as
possible. We want to prevent useless shedding of blood as far as the
civilians are concerned, but I want to remind you that a too great
considerateness borders on cowardice, and cowardice in face of the
enemy is punished very severely."

After that "humane" speech by our captain we were "laden" into the
automobiles, and crossed the Belgian frontier on the morning of
August 5th. In order to give special solemnity to that "historical"
moment we had to give three cheers.

At no other moments the fruits of military education have presented
themselves more clearly before my mind. The soldier is told, "The
Belgian is your enemy," and he has to believe it. The soldier, the
workman in uniform, had not known till then who was his enemy. If
they had told us, "The Hollander is your enemy," we would have
believed that, too; we would have been compelled to believe it, and
would have shot him by order. We, the "German citizens in uniform,"
must not have an opinion of our own, must have no thoughts of our
own, for they give us our enemy and our friend according to
requirements, according to the requirements of' their own interests.
The Frenchman, the Belgian, the Italian, is your enemy. Never mind,
shoot as we order, and do not bother your head about it. You have
duties to perform, perform them, and for the rest, cut it out!

Those were the thoughts that tormented my brain when crossing the
Belgian frontier. And to console myself, and so as to justify before my
own conscience the murderous trade that had been thrust upon me, I
tried to persuade myself that though I had no Fatherland to defend, I
had to defend a home and protect it from devastation. But it was a
weak consolation, and did not even outlast the first few days.

Traveling in the fairly quick motor-cars we reached, towards 8 o'clock
in the morning, our preliminary destination, a small but pretty village.
The inhabitants of the villages which we had passed stared at us in
speechless astonishment, so that we all had the impression that
those peasants for the most part did not know why we had come to
Belgium. They had been roused from their sleep and, half-dressed,
they gazed from their windows after our automobiles. After we had
stopped and alighted, the peasants of that village came up to us
without any reluctance, offered us food, and brought us coffee, bread,
meat, etc. As the field-kitchen had not arrived we were glad to receive
those kindly gifts of the "enemy," the more so because those fine
fellows absolutely refused any payment. They told us the Belgian
soldiers had left, for where they did not know.

After a short rest we continued our march and the motor-cars went
back. We had scarcely marched for an hour when cavalry, dragoons
and huzzars, overtook us and informed us that the Germans were
marching forward in the whole neighborhood, and that cyclist
companies were close on our heels. That was comforting news, for
we no longer felt lonely and isolated in this strange country. Soon
after the troop of cyclists really came along. It passed us quickly and
left us by ourselves again. Words of anger were to be heard now; all
the others were able to ride, but we had to walk. What we always had
considered as a matter of course was now suddenly felt by us to be a
great injustice. And though our scolding and anger did not help us in
the least, it turned our thoughts from the heaviness of the "monkey"
(knapsack) which rested like a leaden weight on our backs.

The heat was oppressive, the perspiration issued from every pore;
the new and hard leather straps, the new stiff uniforms rubbed
against many parts of the body and made them sore, especially
round the waist. With great joy we therefore hailed the order that
came at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, to halt before an isolated farm and
rest in the grass.




II
Fighting In Belgium



About ten minutes we might have lain in the grass when we suddenly
heard rifle shots in front of us. Electrified, all of us jumped up and
hastened to our rifles. Then the firing of rifles that was going on at a
distance of about a mile or a mile and a half began steadily to
increase in volume. We set in motion immediately.

The expression and the behavior of the soldiers betrayed that
something was agitating their mind, that an emotion had taken
possession of them which they could not master and had never
experienced before. On myself I could observe a great restlessness.
Fear and curiosity threw my thoughts into a wild jumble; my head was
swimming, and everything seemed to press upon my heart. But I
wished to conceal my fears from my comrades. I know I tried to with a
will, but whether I succeeded better than my comrades, whose
uneasiness I could read in their faces, I doubt very much.

Though I was aware that we should be in the firing line within half an
hour, I endeavored to convince myself that our participation in the
fight would no longer be necessary. I clung obstinately, nay, almost
convulsively to every idea that could strengthen that hope or give me
consolation. That not every bullet finds its billet; that, as we had been
told, most wounds in modern wars were afflicted by grazing shots
which caused slight flesh-wounds; those were some of the reiterated
self-deceptions indulged in against my better knowledge. And they
proved effective. It was not only that they made me in fact feel more
easy; deeply engaged in those thoughts I had scarcely observed that
we were already quite near the firing line.

The bicycles at the side of the road revealed to us that the cyclist
corps were engaged by the enemy. We did not know, of course, the
strength of our opponents as we approached the firing line in leaps.
In leaping forward every one bent down instinctively, whilst to our right
and left and behind us the enemy's bullets could be heard striking; yet
we reached the firing line without any casualties and were heartily
welcomed by our hard pressed friends. The cyclists, too, had not yet
suffered any losses; some, it is true, had already been slightly
wounded, but they could continue to participate in the fight.

We were lying flat on the ground, and fired in the direction indicated to
us as fast as our rifles would allow. So far we had not seen our
opponents. That, it seemed, was too little interesting to some of our
soldiers; so they rose partly, and fired in a kneeling position. Two men
of my company had to pay their curiosity with their lives. Almost at
one and the same time they were shot through the head. The first
victim of our group fell down forward without uttering a sound; the
second threw up his arms and fell on his back. Both of them were
dead instantly.

Who could describe the feelings that overcome a man in the first real
hail of bullets he is in? When we were leaping forward to reach the
firing line I felt no longer any fear and seemed only to try to reach the
line as quickly as possible. But when looking at the first dead man I
was seized by a terrible horror. For minutes I was perfectly stupefied,
had completely lost command over myself and was absolutely
incapable to think or act. I pressed my face and hands firmly against
the ground, and then suddenly I was seized by an irrepressible
excitement, took hold of my gun, and began to fire away blindly. Little
after little I quieted down again somewhat, nay, I became almost quite
confident as if everything was normal. Suddenly I found myself
content with myself and my surroundings, and when a little later the
whole line was commanded, "Leap forward! March, march!" I ran
forward demented like the others, as if things could not be other than
what they were. The order, "Position!" followed, and we flopped down
like wet bags. Firing had begun again.

Our firing became more lively from minute to minute, and grew into a
rolling deafening noise. If in such an infernal noise you want to make
yourself understood by your neighbor, you have to shout at him so
that it hurts your throat. The effect of our firing caused our opponent
to grow unsteady; his fire became weaker; the line of the enemy
began to waver. Being separated from the enemy by only about 500
yards, we could observe exactly what was happening there. We saw
how about half of the men opposing us were drawn back. The
movement is executed by taking back every second man whilst
number one stays on until the retiring party has halted. We took
advantage of that movement to inflict the severest losses possible on
our retreating opponent. As far as we could survey the country to our
right and left we observed that the Germans were pressing forward at
several points. Our company, too, received the order to advance
when the enemy took back all his forces.

Our task was to cling obstinately to the heels of the retreating enemy
so as to leave him no time to collect his forces and occupy new
positions. We therefore followed him in leaps with short breathing
pauses so as to prevent him in the first place from establishing
himself in the village before him. We knew that otherwise we should
have to engage in costly street fighting. But the Belgians did not
attempt to establish themselves, but disengaged themselves from us
with astonishing skill.

Meanwhile we had been reinforced. Our company had been
somewhat dispersed, and everybody marched with the troop be
chanced to find himself with. My troop had to stay in the village to
search every house systematically for soldiers that had been
dispersed or hidden. During that work we noticed that the Germans
were marching forward from all directions. Field artillery, machine-gun
sections, etc., arrived, and all of us wondered whence all of this came
so quickly.

There was however no time for long reflections. With fixed bayonets
we went from house to house, from door to door, and though the
harvest was very meager, we were not turned away quite empty-
handed, as the inhabitants had to deliver up all privately owned fire-
arms, ammunition, etc. The chief functionary of the village who
accompanied us, had to explain to every citizen that the finding of
arms after the search would lead to punishment by court-martial. And
court-martial means--death.

After another hour had passed we were alarmed again by rifle and
gun firing; a new battle had begun. Whether the artillery was in action
on both sides could not be determined from the village, but the noise
was loud enough, for the air was almost trembling with the rumbling,
rolling, and growling of the guns which steadily increased in strength.
The ambulance columns were bringing in the first wounded; orderly
officers whizzed past us. War had begun with full intensity.

Darkness was falling before we had finished searching all the houses.
We dragged mattresses, sacks of straw, feather beds, whatever we
could get hold of, to the public school and the church where the
wounded were to be accommodated. They were put to bed as well as
it could be done. Those first victims of the horrible massacre of
nations were treated with touching care. Later on, when we had
grown more accustomed to those horrible sights, less attention was
paid to the wounded.

The first fugitives now arrived from the neighboring villages. They had
probably walked for many an hour, for they looked tired, absolutely
exhausted. There were women, old, white-haired men, and children,
all mixed together, who had not been able to save anything but their
poor lives. In a perambulator or a push-cart those unfortunate beings
carried away all that the brutal force of war had left them. In marked
contrast to the fugitives that we had hitherto met, these people were
filled with the utmost fear, shivering with fright, terror-stricken in face
of the hostile world. As soon as they beheld one of us soldiers they
were seized with such a fear that they seemed to crumple up. How
different they were from the inhabitants of the village in which we
were, who showed themselves kind, friendly, and even obliging
towards us. We tried to find out the cause of that fear, and heard that
those fugitives had witnessed bitter street fighting in their village. They
had experienced war, had seen their houses burnt, their simple
belongings perish, and had not yet been able to forget their streets
filled with dead and wounded soldiers. It became clear to us that it
was not fear alone that made these people look like the hunted
quarry; it was hatred, hatred against us, the invaders who, as they
had to suppose, had fallen upon them unawares, had driven them
from their home. But their hatred was not only directed against us, the
German soldiers, nay, their own, the Belgian soldiers, too, were not
spared by it.

We marched away that very evening and tried to reach our section.
When darkness fell the Belgians had concentrated still farther to the
rear; they were already quite near the fortress of Lige. Many of the
villages we passed were in flames; the inhabitants who had been
driven away passed us in crowds, there were women whose
husbands were perhaps also defending their "Fatherland," children,
old men who were pushed hither and thither and seemed to be
always in the way. Without any aim, any plan, any place in which they
could rest, those processions of misery and unhappiness crept past
us--the best illustration of man-murdering, nation-destroying war!
Again we reached a village which to all appearances had once been
inhabited by a well-to-do people, by a contented little humanity. There
were nothing but ruins now, burnt, destroyed houses and farm
buildings, dead soldiers, German and Belgian, and among them
several civilians who had been shot by sentence of the court-martial.

Towards midnight we reached the German line which was trying to
get possession of a village which was already within the fortifications
of Lige, and was obstinately defended by the Belgians. Here we had
to employ all our forces to wrench from our opponent house after
house, street after street. It was not yet completely dark so that we
had to go through that terrible struggle which developed with all our
senses awake and receptive. It was a hand to hand fight; every kind
of weapon had to be employed; the opponent was attacked with the
butt-end of the rifle, the knife, the fist, and the teeth. One of my best
friends fought with a gigantic Belgian; both had lost their rifle. They
were pummeling each other with their fists. I had just finished with a
Belgian who was about twenty-two years of age, and was going to
assist my friend, as the Herculean Belgian was so much stronger
than he. Suddenly my friend succeeded with a lightning motion in
biting the Belgian in the chin. He bit so deeply that he tore away a
piece of flesh with his teeth. The pain the Belgian felt must have been
immense, for he let go his hold and ran off screaming with terrible
pain.

All that happened in seconds. The blood of the Belgian ran out of my
friend's mouth; he was seized by a horrible nausea, an indescribable
terror, the taste of the warm blood nearly drove him insane. That
young, gay, lively fellow of twenty-four had been cheated out of his
youth in that night. He used to be the jolliest among us; after that we
could never induce him even to smile.

Whilst fighting during the night I came for the first time in touch with
the butt-end of a Belgian rifle. I had a hand to hand fight with a
Belgian when another one from behind hit me with his rifle on the
head with such force that it drove my head into the helmet up to my
ears. I experienced a terrific pain all over my head, doubled up, and
lost consciousness. When I revived I found myself with a bandaged
head in a barn among other wounded.

I had not been severely wounded, but I felt as if my head was double
its normal size, and there was a noise in my ears as of the wheels of
an express engine.

The other wounded and the soldiers of the ambulance corps said that
the Belgians had been pushed back to the fortress; we heard,
however, that severe fighting was still going on. Wounded soldiers
were being brought in continuously, and they told us that the
Germans had already taken in the first assault several fortifications
like outer-forts, but that they had not been able to maintain
themselves because they had not been sufficiently provided with
artillery. The defended places and works inside the forts were still
practically completely intact, and so were their garrisons. The forts
were not yet ripe for assault, so that the Germans had to retreat with
downright enormous losses. The various reports were contradictory, 
and it was impossible to get a clear idea of what was happening.

Meanwhile the artillery had begun to bombard the fortress, and even
the German soldiers were terror-stricken at that bombardment. The
heaviest artillery was brought into action against the modern forts of
concrete. Up to that time no soldier had been aware of the existence
of the 42-centimeter mortars. Even when Lige had fallen into
German hands we soldiers could not explain to ourselves how it was
possible that those enormous fortifications, constructed partly of
reinforced concrete of a thickness of one to six meters, could be
turned into a heap of rubbish after only a few hours' bombardment.
Having been wounded, I could of course not take part in those
operations, but my comrades told me later on how the various forts
were taken. Guns of all sizes were turned on the forts, but it was the
21 and 42-centimeter mortars that really did the work. From afar one
could hear already the approach of the 42-centimeter shell. The shell
bored its way through the air with an uncanny, rushing and hissing
sound that was like a long shrill whistling filling the whole atmosphere
for seconds. Where it struck everything was destroyed within a radius
of several hundred yards. Later I have often gazed in wonderment at
those hecatombs which the 42-centimeter mortar erected for itself on
all its journeys. The enormous air pressure caused by the bursting of
its shells made it even difficult for us Germans in the most advanced
positions to breathe for several seconds. To complete the infernal row
the Zeppelins appeared at night in order to take part in the work of
destruction. Suddenly the soldiers would hear above their heads the
whirring of the propellers and the noise of the motors, well-known to
most Germans. The Zeppelins came nearer and nearer, but not until
they were in the immediate neighborhood of the forts were they
discovered by our opponents, who immediately brought all available
searchlights into play in order to search the sky for the dreaded flying
enemies. The whirring of the propellers of the airships which had
been distributed for work on the various forts suddenly ceased. Then,
right up in the air, a blinding light appeared, the searchlight of the
Zeppelin, which lit up the country beneath it for a short time. Just as
suddenly it became dark and quiet until a few minutes later, powerful
detonations brought the news that the Zeppelin had dropped its
"ballast." That continued for quite a while, explosion followed
explosion, interrupted only by small fiery clouds, shrapnel which the
Belgian artillery sent up to the airships, exploding in the air. Then the
whirring of the propellers began again, first loud and coming from
near, from right above our heads, then softer and softer until the
immense ship of the air had entirely disappeared from our view and
hearing.

Thus the forts were made level with the ground; thousands of
Belgians were lying dead and buried behind and beneath the
ramparts and fortifications. General assault followed. Lige was in the
hands of the Germans.

I was with the ambulance column until the 9th of August and by that
time had been restored sufficiently to rejoin my section of the army.
After searching for hours I found my company camping in a field. I
missed many a good friend; my section had lost sixty-five men, dead
and wounded, though it had not taken part in the pursuit of the
enemy.

We had been attached to the newly-formed 18th Reserve Army
Corps (Hessians) and belonged to the Fourth Army which was under
the command of Duke Albrecht of Wurttemberg. Where that army,
which had not yet been formed, was to operate was quite unknown to
us private soldiers. We had but to follow to the place where the herd
was to be slaughtered; what did it matter where that would be? On
the 11th of August we began to march and covered 25-45 miles
every day. We learned later on that we always kept close to the
Luxemburg frontier so as to cross it immediately should necessity
arise., Had it not been so oppressively hot we should have been quite
content, for we enjoyed several days of rest which braced us up
again.

On the 21st of August we came in contact with the first German
troops belonging to the Fourth Army, about 15 miles to the east of the
Belgian town of Neufchteau. The battle of Neufchteau, which
lasted from the 22nd to the 24th of August, had already begun. A
French army here met with the Fourth German Army, and a
murderous slaughter began. As is always the case it commenced
with small skirmishes of advance guards and patrols; little after little
ever-growing masses of soldiers took part and when, in the evening
of the 22nd of August, we were led into the firing line, the battle had
already developed to one of the most murderous of the world war.
When we arrived the French were still in possession of nearly three-
quarters of the town. The artillery had set fire to the greatest part of
Neufchteau, and only the splendid villas in the western part of the
town escaped destruction for the time being. The street fighting lasted
the whole night. It was only towards noon of the 23rd of August, when
the town was in the hands of the Germans, that one could see the
enormous losses that both sides had suffered. The dwelling-places,
the cellars, the roads and side-walks were thickly covered with dead
and horribly wounded soldiers; the houses were ruins, gutted, empty
shells in which scarcely anything of real value had remained whole.
Thousands had been made beggars in a night full of horrors. Women
and children, soldiers and citizens were lying just where death had
struck them down, mixed together just as the merciless shrapnel and
shells had sent them out of life into the darkness beyond. There had
been real impartiality. There lay a German soldier next to a white-
haired French woman, a little Belgian stripling whom fear had driven
out of the house into the street, lay huddled up against the "enemy," a
German soldier, who might have been protection and safety for him.

Had we not been shooting and stabbing, murdering and clubbing as
much and as vigorously as we could the whole night? And yet there
was scarcely one amongst us who did not shed tears of grief and
emotion at the spectacles presenting themselves. There was for
instance, a man whose age it was difficult to discover; he was lying
dead before a burning house. Both his legs had been burnt up to the
knees by the fire falling down upon him. The wife and daughter of the
dead man were clinging to him, and were sobbing so piteously that
one simply could not bear it. Many, many of the dead had been burnt
entirely or partly; the cattle were burning in their stables, and the wild
bellowing of those animals fighting against death by fire, intermingled
with the crying, the moaning, the groaning and the shrieking of the
wounded. But who had the time now to bother about that? Everybody
wanted help, everybody wanted to help himself, everybody was only
thinking of himself and his little bit of life. "He who falls remains where
he lies; only he who stands can win victories." That one learns from
militarism and the average soldier acts upon that principle. And yet
most soldiers are forced by circumstances to play the rle of the good
Samaritan. People who could formerly not look upon blood or a dead
person, were now bandaging their comrades' arms and legs which
had been amputated by shells. They did not do it because they were
impelled by the command of their heart, but because they said to
themselves that perhaps to-morrow already their turn might come
and that they, too, might want assistance. It is a healthy egotism
which makes men of mercy out of those hardened people.

The French had formed their lines again outside the town in the open.
At the moment when the enemy evacuated the town an error was
made by the Germans which cost many hundreds of German soldiers
their lives. The Germans had occupied the rest of the town with such
celerity that our artillery which was pounding that quarter had not
been informed of the changed situation, and was raining shell upon
shell into our own ranks. That failure of our intelligence department
caused the death of many of our comrades. Compelled by the firing
of the enemy and our own artillery we had finally to give up part of our
gains, which later on we recovered, again with great sacrifice.
Curiously enough, the residential quarter with the villas I mentioned
before had not suffered seriously; the Red Cross flag was hoisted on
the houses in which temporary hospitals were established.

It is here that the Belgian citizens are said to have mutilated some
German wounded soldiers. Whether it was true, whether it was only
rumored, as was asserted also many times by German soldiers who
had been in the hospitals, I do not know. But this I know, that on the
24th of August when the French had executed a general retreat, it
was made known in an army order that German soldiers had been
murdered there and that the German army could not leave the
scenes of those shameful deeds without having first avenged their
poor comrades. The order was therefore given--by the leader of the
army--to raze the town without mercy. When later on (it was in the
evening and we were pursuing the enemy) we were resting for a
short time, clouds of smoke in the east showed that the judgment had
been fulfilled. A battery of artillery that had remained behind had
razed house after house. Revenge is sweet, also for Christian army
leaders.

Outside the town the French had reformed their ranks, and were
offering the utmost resistance. But they were no match for the
German troops who consisted largely of young and active men.
Frenchmen taken prisoner explained that it was simply impossible to
withstand an assault of this war-machine, when the German columns
attacked with the bayonet and the cry of "Hurrah! hurrah!" which
penetrated to the very marrow. I can understand that, for we
sometimes appeared to ourselves to be a good imitation of American
Indians who, like us, rushed upon their enemies with shrill shouts.
After a fight lasting three hours many Frenchmen surrendered, asking
for quarter with raised hands. Whole battalions of the enemy were
thus captured by us. Finally, in the night from the 23rd to the 24th of
August, the ranks of the enemy were thrown into confusion and
retreated, first slowly, then flying headlong. Our opponent left whole
batteries, munition columns, ambulance columns, etc.

I found myself in the first pursuing section. The roads we used were
again literally covered with corpses; knapsacks, rifles, dead horses
and men were lying there in a wild jumble. The dead had been partly
crushed and pounded to a pulp by the horses and vehicles, an
indescribably terrible spectacle even for the most hardened mass-
murderer. Dead and wounded were lying to the right and left of the
road, in fields, in ditches; the red trousers of the French stood out
distinctly against the ground; the field-gray trousers of the Germans
were however scarcely to be noticed and difficult to discover.

The distance between ourselves and the fleeing Frenchmen became
greater and greater, and the spirit of our soldiers, in spite of the
hardships they had undergone, became better and gayer. They joked
and sang, forgot the corpses which were still filling the roads and
paths, and felt quite at ease. They had already accustomed
themselves to the horrible to such a degree that they stepped over
the corpses with unconcern, without even making the smallest
detour. The experience of those first few weeks of the war had
already brutalized us completely. What was to happen to us if this
should continue for months--?




III
Shooting Civilians In Belgium



At 11 o'clock all further philosophizing was put a stop to; we were
ordered to halt, and we were to receive our food from the field
kitchen.

We were quite hungry and ate the tinned soup with the heartiest of
appetites. Many of our soldiers were sitting with their dinner-pails on
the dead horses that were lying about, and were eating with such
pleasure and heartiness as if they were home at mother's. Nor did
some corpses in the neighborhood of our improvised camp disturb
us. There was only a lack of water and after having eaten thirst began
to torment us.

Soon afterwards we continued our march in the scorching midday
sun; dust was covering our uniforms and skin to the depth of almost
an inch. We tried in vain to be jolly, but thirst tormented us more and
more, and we became weaker and weaker from one quarter of an
hour to another. Many in our ranks fell down exhausted, and we were
simply unable to move. So the commander of our section had no
other choice but to let us halt again if he did not want every one of us
to drop out. Thus it happened that we stayed behind a considerable
distance, and were not amongst the first that were pursuing the
French.

Finally, towards four o'clock, we saw a village in front of us; we began
at once to march at a much brisker pace. Among other things we saw
a farm cart on which were several civilian prisoners, apparently
snipers. There was also a Catholic priest among them who had, like
the others, his hands tied behind his back with a rope. Curiosity
prompted us to enquire what he had been up to, and we heard that
he had incited the farmers of the village to poison the water.

We soon reached the village and the first well at which we hoped to
quench our thirst thoroughly. But that was no easy matter, for a
military guard had been placed before it who scared us off with the
warning, "Poisoned"! Disappointed and terribly embittered the
soldiers, half dead with thirst, gnashed their teeth; they hurried to the
next well, but everywhere the same devilish thing occurred--the
guard preventing them from drinking. In a square, in the middle of the
village, there was a large village well which sent, through two tubes,
water as clear as crystal into a large trough. Five soldiers were
guarding it and had to watch that nobody drank of the poisoned
water. I was just going to march past it with my pal when suddenly the
second, larger portion of our company rushed like madmen to the
well. The guards were carried away by the rush, and every one now
began to drink the water with the avidity of an animal. All quenched
their thirst, and not one of us became ill or died. We heard later on
that the priest had to pay for it with his death, as the military
authorities "knew" that the water in all the wells of that village was
poisoned and that the soldiers had only been saved by a lucky
accident. Faithfully the God of the Germans had watched over us; the
captured Belgians did not seem to be under his protection. They had
to die.

In most places we passed at that time we were warned against
drinking the water. The natural consequence was that the soldiers
began to hate the population which they now had to consider to be
their bitterest enemies. That again aroused the worst instincts in
some soldiers. In every army one finds men with the disposition of
barbarians. The many millions of inhabitants in Germany or France
are not all civilized people, much as we like to convince ourselves of
the contrary. Compulsory military service in those countries forces all
without distinction into the army, men and monsters. I have often
bitterly resented the wrong one did to our army in calling us all
barbarians, only because among us--as, naturally also among the
French and English--there were to be found elements that really
ought to be in the penitentiary. I will only cite one example of how we
soldiers ourselves punished a wretch whom we caught committing a
crime.

One evening--it was dark already--we reached a small village to the
east of the town of Bertrix, and there, too, found "poisoned" water.
We halted in the middle of the village. I was standing before a house
with a low window, through which one could see the interior. In the
miserable poverty-stricken working man's dwelling we observed a
woman who clung to her children as if afraid they would be torn from
her. Though we felt very bitter on account of the want of water, every
one of us would have liked to help the poor woman. Some of us were
just going to sacrifice our little store of victuals and to say a few
comforting words to the woman, when all at once a stone as big as a
fist was thrown through the window-pane, into the room and hurt a
little girl in the right hand. There were sincere cries of indignation, but
at the same moment twenty hands at least laid hold of the wretch, a
reservist of our company, and gave him such a hiding as to make him
almost unconscious. If officers and other men had not interfered the
fellow would have been lynched there and then. He was to be placed
before a court-martial later on, but it never came to that. He was
drowned in the river at the battle of the Meuse. Many soldiers
believed he drowned himself, because he was not only shunned by
his fellow soldiers, but was also openly despised by them.

We were quartered on that village and had to live in a barn. I went
with some pals into the village to buy something to eat. At a farmer's
house we got ham, bread, and wine, but not for money. The people
positively refused to take our money as they regarded us as their
guests, so they said; only we were not to harm them. Nevertheless
we left them an adequate payment in German money. Later on we
found the same situation in many other places. Everywhere people
were terribly frightened of us; they began to tremble almost when a
German soldier entered their house.

Four of us had formed a close alliance; we had promised each other
to stick together and assist each other in every danger. We often also
visited the citizens in their houses, and tried to the best of our ability
to comfort the sorely tried people and talk them out of their fear of us.
Without exception we found them to be lovable, kindly, and good
people who soon became confidential and free of speech when they
noticed that we were really their friends. But when, at leaving, we
wrote with chalk on the door of their houses "Bitte schonen, hier
wohnen brave, gute, Leute!" (Please spare, here live good and
decent people) their joy and thankfulness knew no bounds. If so
much bad blood was created, if so many incidents happened that led
to the shooting by court-martial of innumerable Belgians, the
difference of language and the mistakes arising therefrom were
surely not the least important causes; of that I and many others of my
comrades became convinced during that time in Belgium. But the at
first systematically nourished suspicion against the "enemy," too, was
partly responsible for it.

In the night we continued our march, after having been attached to
the 21-centimeter mortar battery of the 9th Regiment of Foot Artillery
which had just arrived; we were not only to serve as covering troops
for that battery, but were also to help it place those giants in position
when called upon. The gun is transported apart from the carriage on
a special wagon. Gun-carriage and guns are drawn each by six
horses. Those horses, which are only used by the foot artillery, are
the best and strongest of the German army. And yet even those
animals are often unable to do the work required of them, so that all
available men, seventy or eighty at times, have to help transport the
gun with ropes specially carried for that purpose. That help is chiefly
resorted to when the guns leave the road to be placed in firing
position. In order to prevent the wheels from sinking into the soil,
other wheels, half a yard wide, are attached round them.

These guns are high-angle guns, i. e., their shot rises into the air for
several thousand yards, all according to the distance of the spot to be
hit, and then drops at a great angle. That is the reason why neither hill
nor mountain can protect an enemy battery placed behind those
elevations. At first the French had almost no transportable heavy
artillery so that it was quite impossible for them to fight successfully
against our guns of large caliber. Under those conditions the German
gunners, of course, felt themselves to be top-dog, and decorated
their 21-centimeter guns with inscriptions like the following, "Here
declarations of war are still being accepted."

We felt quite at ease with the artillery, and were still passably fresh
when we halted at six o'clock in the morning, though we had .been
marching since two o'clock. Near our halting place we found a broken
German howitzer, and next to it two dead soldiers. When firing, a
shell had burst in the gun destroying it entirely. Two men of the crew
had been killed instantly and some had been seriously wounded by
the flying pieces. We utilized the pause to bury the two dead men, put
both of them in one grave, placed both their helmets on the grave,
and wrote on a board: "Here rest two German Artillerymen."

We had to proceed, and soon reached the town of Bertrix. Some few
houses to the left and right of the road were burning fiercely; we soon
got to know that they had been set alight because soldiers marching
past were said to have been shot at from those houses. Before one
of these houses a man and his wife and their son, a boy of 15 or 16,
lay half burnt to cinders; all had been covered with straw. Three more
civilians lay dead in the same street.

We had marched past some more houses when all at once shots
rang out; they had been shooting from some house, and four of our
soldiers had been wounded. For a short while there was confusion.
The house from which the shots must have come was soon
surrounded, and hand grenades were thrown through all the windows
into the interior. In an instant all the rooms were in flames. The
exploding hand grenades caused such an enormous air pressure 
that all the doors were blown from their hinges and the inner walls
torn to shreds. Almost at the same time, five men in civilian clothes
rushed into the street and asked for quarter with uplifted hands. They
were seized immediately and taken to the officers, who formed
themselves into a tribunal within a few minutes. Ten minutes later
sentence had already been executed; five strong men lay on the
ground, blindfolded and their bodies riddled by bullets.

Six of us had in each of the five cases to execute the sentence, and
unfortunately I, too, belonged to those thirty men. The condemned
man whom my party of six had to shoot was a tall, lean man, about
forty years of age. He did not wince for a moment when they
blindfolded him. In a garden of a house nearby he was placed with his
back against the house, and after our captain had told us that it was
our duty to aim well so as to end the tragedy quickly, we took up our
position six paces from the condemned one. The sergeant
commanding us had told us before to shoot the condemned man
through the chest. We then formed two lines, one behind the other.
The command was given to load and secure, and we pushed five
cartridges into the rifle. Then the command rang out, "Get ready!"

The first line knelt, the second stood up. We held our rifles in such a
position that the barrel pointed in front of us whilst the butt-end rested
somewhere near the hip. At the command, "Aim!" we slowly brought
our rifles into shooting position, grasped them firmly, pressed the
plate of the butt-end against the shoulder and, with our cheek on the
butt-end, we clung convulsively to the neck of the rifle. Our right
forefinger was on the trigger, the sergeant gave us about half a
minute for aiming before commanding, "Fire!"

Even to-day I cannot say whether our victim fell dead on the spot or
how many of the six bullets hit him. I ran about all day long like a
drunken man, and reproached myself most bitterly with having played
the executioner. For a long time I avoided speaking about it with
fellow-soldiers, for I felt guilty. And yet what else could we soldiers do
but obey the order?

Already in the preceding night there had been encounters at Bertrix
between the German military and the population. Houses were
burning in every part of the town. In the market place there was a
great heap of guns and revolvers of all makes. At the clergyman's
house they had found a French machine-gun and ammunition,
whereupon the clergyman and his female cook had been arrested
and, I suppose, placed immediately before a court-martial.

Under those conditions we were very glad to get out of Bertrix again.
We marched on in the afternoon. After a march of some 3 miles we
halted, and received food from the field kitchen. But this time we felt
no appetite. The recollection of the incidents of the morning made all
of us feel so depressed that the meal turned out a real funeral repast.
Silently we set in motion again, and camped in the open in the
evening, as we were too tired to erect tents.

It was there that all discipline went to pieces for the first time. The
officers' orders to put up tents were not heeded in the slightest
degree. The men were dog-tired, and suffered the officers to
command and chatter as much as they liked. Every one wrapped
himself up in his cloak, lay down where he was, and as soon as one
had laid down one was asleep. The officers ran about like mad
shouting with redoubled energy their commands at the exhausted
soldiers; in vain. The officers, of course had gone through the whole
performance on horseback and, apparently, did not feel sufficiently
tired to go to sleep. When their calling and shouting had no effect
they had to recourse to personal physical exertion and began to
shake us up. But as soon as one of us was awake the one before
had gone to sleep again. Thus for a while we heard the exhortation, "I
say, you! Get up! Fall in line for putting up tents!" Whereupon one
turned contentedly on the other side and snoozed on. They tried to
shake me awake, too, but after having sent some vigorous curses
after the lieutenant--there was no lack of cursing on either side that
evening--I continued to sleep the sleep of the just.

For the first time blind discipline had failed. The human body was so
exhausted that it was simply unable to play any longer the rle of the
obedient dog.




IV
German Soldiers And Belgian Civilians



The march had made us very warm, and the night was cold. We
shivered all over, and one after the other had to rise in order to warm
himself by moving about. There was no straw to be had, and our thin
cloaks offered but little protection. The officers slept in sleeping bags
and woolen blankets.

Gradually all had got up, for the dew had wetted our clothing; things
were very uncomfortable. The men stood about in groups and
criticized the incidents of the preceding day. The great majority were
of the opinion that we should tell the officers distinctly that in future it
would not be so easy for them to work their deeds of oppression. One
of the older reservists proposed that we should simply refuse in future
to execute a command to shoot a condemned man; he thought that if
all of us clung together nothing could happen to us. However, we
begged him to be careful, for if such expressions were reported they
would shoot him for sedition without much ado. Nevertheless all of us
were probably agreed that the reservist had spoken exactly what was
in our minds. The bitter feeling was general, but we would not and
could not commit any imprudent action. We had learned enough in
those few days of the war to know that war brutalizes and that brutal
force can no longer distinguish right from wrong; and with that force
we had to reckon.

Meanwhile the time had come to march on. Before that we had to
drink our coffee and arrange our baggage. When we were ready to
march the captain gave us a speech in which he referred to the
insubordination of the night before. "I take it," he said, "that it was the
result of your stupidity. For if I were not convinced of that I should
send you all before a courtmartial, and all of you would be made
unhappy for the rest of your lives. But in future," he continued after a
short reflection, "I will draw the reins so tightly that incidents like these
can never happen again, and the devil must be in it if I can not
master you. An order is an order, even if one imagines himself too
tired."

We joined the mortar battery again, and continued our march. The
country we were passing was rather dreary and monotonous so that
that part of our march offered few interesting changes. The few tiny
villages we came through were all abandoned by their inhabitants,
and the poverty-stricken dwellings were mostly devastated. However,
we met long lines of refugees. These people had as a rule fled with
the French army, and were returning now, only to find their homes
destroyed by the brutal hand of war. After a lengthy march broken by
rests and bivouacs we neared the fairly large village of Sugny on the
Belgo-French frontier just inside Belgian territory.

It was about noon, and though the steadily increasing thunder of
guns pointed to the development of another battle, we hoped to be
able to stay at the place during the night. We entered it towards one
o'clock, and were again quartered in a large barn. Most of the soldiers
refused the food from the field-kitchen, and "requisitioned" eggs,
chicken, geese, and even small pigs, and soon general cooking was
in full swing.

He was on his way with bread for a hungry poor family, and had in his
arms six of those little army loaves which he had begged from the
soldiers. He was met by that same Lieutenant Spahn who was in
company of some sergeants. When Spahn asked him where he was
taking the bread the sapper replied that he was on his way to a poor
family that was really starving. The lieutenant then ordered him to
take the bread immediately to the company. Thereupon he
overwhelmed the soldier with all the "military" expressions he could
think of, like, "Are you mad?" "Donkey!" "Silly ass?" "Duffer!" "Idiot!"
etc. When the soldier showed nevertheless no sign of confusion, but
started to proceed on his way, the lieutenant roared out the order
again, whereupon the soldier turned round, threw the bread before
the feet of Lieutenant Spahn, and said quietly: "The duffers and idiots
have to shed their blood to preserve also your junker family from the
misery that has been brought upon this poor population."

That the sapper got only two weeks of close confinement for
"unmannerly conduct towards a superior" with aggravating
circumstances, was a wonder; he had indeed got off cheaply.

According to martial law he had to work off his punishment in the
following manner: When his company went to rest in the evening, or
after a fight or a march, the man had to report himself every day for
two weeks at the local or camp guard. While the company was
resting and the men could move about freely, he had to be in the
guard room which he could only leave to do his needs, and then only
by permission of the sergeant on guard, and in company of a soldier
belonging to the guard. He was not allowed to smoke or read or
converse or speak, received his rations from the guard, and had to
stay in the guard-room until his company marched off. Besides that
he was tied to a tree or some other object for fully two hours every
day. He was fettered with ropes and had to spend those two hours
standing, even if he had marched 30 miles or had risked his life in a
fight for the same "Fatherland" that bound him in fetters.

The resentment continued to grow and, in consequence of the many
severe punishments that were inflicted, had reached such a height
that most soldiers refused to fetter their comrades. I, too, refused,
and when I continued my refusals in spite of repeated orders I was
likewise condemned to two weeks of close confinement as an
"entirely impenitent sinner," for "not obeying an order given" and for
"persistent disobedience."




V
The Horrors Of Street Fighting



We left Sugny the next morning, and an hour later we crossed the
Belgo-French frontier. Here, too, we had to give three cheers. The
frontier there runs through a wood, and on the other side of the wood
we placed the 21-cm. mortars in position.

Our troops were engaged with the rear-guard of the enemy near the
French village of Vivier-au-Court. We were brought in to reinforce
them, and after a five hours' fight the last opponents had retired as far
as the Meuse. Vivier-au-Court had hardly suffered at all when we
occupied it towards noon. Our company halted again here to wait for
the mortar battery.

Meanwhile we walked through the village to find some eatables. After
visiting several houses we came upon the family of a teacher. Father
and son were both soldiers; two daughters of about twenty and
twenty-two were alone with their mother. The mother was extremely
shy, and all the three women were crying when we entered the home.
The eldest daughter received us with great friendliness and, to our
surprise, in faultless German. We endeavored to pacify the women,
begging them not to cry; we assured them again and again that we
would not harm them, and told them all kinds of merry stories to turn
their thoughts to other things.

One of my mates related that in a fight in the morning, we had lost
seven men and that several on our side had been wounded. That
only increased the women's excitement, a thing we really could not
understand. At last one of the girls, who had been the first one to
compose herself, explained to us why they were so much excited.
The girl had been at a boarding school at Charlottenburg (Germany)
for more than two years, and her brother, who worked in Berlin as a
civil engineer, had taken a holiday for three months after her
graduation in order to accompany his sister home. Both had liked
living in Germany, it was only the sudden outbreak of war that had
prevented the young engineer from returning to Berlin. He had to
enter the French army, and belonged to the same company in which
his father was an officer of the reserve.

After a short interval the girl continued: "My father and brother were
here only this morning. They have fought against you. It may have
been one of their bullets which struck your comrades down. O, how
terrible it is! Now they are away--they who had only feelings of
respect and friendship for the Germans--and as long as the
Germans are between them and us we shall not be able to know
whether they are dead or alive. Who is it that has this terrible war, this
barbaric crime on his conscience?" Tears were choking her speech,
and our own eyes did not remain dry. All desire to eat had gone; after
a silent pressing of hands we slunk away.

We remained in the village till the evening, meanwhile moving about
freely. In the afternoon nine men of my company were arrested; it
was alleged against them that they had laid hands on a woman. They
were disarmed and kept at the local guard-house; the same thing
happened to some men of the infantry. Seven men of my company
returned in the evening; what became of the other two I have not
been able to find out.

At that time a great tobacco famine reigned amongst us soldiers. I
know that one mark and more was paid for a single cigarette, if any
could be got at all. At Vivier-au-Court there was only one tobacco
store run by a man employed by the state. I have seen that man
being forced by sergeants at the point of the pistol to deliver his whole
store of tobacco for a worthless order of requisition. The "gentlemen"
later on sold that tobacco for half a mark a packet.

Towards the evening we marched off, and got the mortar battery in a
new position from where the enemy's positions on the Meuse were
bombarded.

After a short march we engaged the French to the northeast of
Donchry. On this side of the Meuse the enemy had only his rear-
guard, whose task was to cover the crossing of the main French
armies, a movement which was almost exclusively effected at Sdan
and Donchry. We stuck close to the heels of our opponents, who did
not retreat completely till darkness began to fall. The few bridges left
did not allow him to withdraw his forces altogether as quickly as his
interest demanded. Thus it came about that an uncommonly
murderous nocturnal street fight took place in Donchry which was
burning at every corner. The French fought with immense energy; an
awful slaughter was the result. Man against man! That "man against
man!" is the most terrible thing I have experienced in war. Nobody
can tell afterwards how many he has killed. You have gripped your
opponent, who is sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger than
yourself. In the light of the burning houses you observe that the white
of his eyes has turned red; his mouth is covered with a thick froth.
With head uncovered, with disheveled hair, the uniform unbuttoned
and mostly ragged, you stab, hew, scratch, bite and strike about you
like a wild animal. It means life or death. You fight for your life. No
quarter is given. You only hear the gasping, groaning, jerky breathing.
You only think of your own life, of death, of home. In feverish haste,
as in a whirlwind, old memories are rushing through your mind. Yet
you get more excited from minute to minute, for exhaustion tries to
master you; but that must not be--not now! And again the fight is
renewed; again there is hewing, stabbing, biting. Without rifle, without
any weapon in a life and death struggle. You or I. I? I?--Never! you!
The exertion becomes superhuman. Now a thrust, a vicious bite, and
you are the victor. Victor for the moment, for already the next man,
who has just finished off one of your mates, is upon you--. You
suddenly remember that you have a dagger about you. After a hasty
fumbling you find it in the prescribed place. A swift movement and the
dagger buries itself deeply in the body of the other man.

Onward! onward! new enemies are coming up, real enemies. How
clearly the thought suddenly flashes on you that that man is your
enemy, that he is seeking to take your life, that he bites, strikes, and
scratches, tries to force you down and plant his dagger in your heart.
Again you use your dagger. Thank heavens! He is down. Saved!--
Still, you must have that dagger back! You pull it out of his chest. A jet
of warm blood rushes out of the gaping wound and strikes your face.
Human blood, warm human blood! You shake yourself, horror strikes
you for only a few seconds. The next one approaches; again you
have to defend your skin. Again and again the mad murdering is
repeated, all night long

Finally, towards four o'clock in the morning, the rest of the French
surrendered after some companies of infantry had occupied two
roads leading to the bridges. When the French on the other side
became aware of this they blew up the bridges without considering
their own troops who were still on them. Germans and Frenchmen
were tossed in the air, men and human limbs were sent to the sky,
friend and foe found a watery grave in the Meuse.

One could now survey with some calm the scene of the mighty
slaughter. Dead lay upon dead, it was misery to behold them, and
above and around them all there were flames and a thick, choking
smoke. But one was already too brutalized to feel pity at the
spectacle; the feeling of humanity had been blown to all the winds.
The groaning and crying, the pleading of the wounded did not touch
one. Some Catholic nuns were lying dead before their convent. You
saw it and passed on.

The only building that had escaped destruction was the barracks of
the 25th regiment of French dragoons. However, we had not much
time to inspect things, for at seven o'clock the French artillery began
already sending shell after shell into the village. We intrenched
behind a thick garden wall, immediately behind the Meuse. Our side
of the Meuse was flat, the opposite one went up steeply. There the
French infantry had intrenched themselves, having built three
positions on the slope, one tier above the other. As the enemy's
artillery overshot the mark we remained outside their fire. We had
however an opportunity to observe the effects of the shots sent by
our own artillery into the enemy's infantry position on the slope in front
of us. The shells (21-cm. shells) whizzed above our heads and burst
with a tremendous noise, each time causing horrible devastation in
the enemy's trenches.

The French were unable to resist long such a hail of shells. They
retreated and abandoned all the heights of the Meuse. They had
evacuated the town of Sdan without a struggle. In fact, that town
remained completely intact, in contrast to the completely demolished
Donchry. Not a house in Sdan had suffered. When the rallying-call
was sounded at Donchry it turned out that my company had lost
thirty men in that fight. We mustered behind the barracks of the
dragoons, and our company, which had shrunk to ninety men, was
ordered to try and build a pontoon-bridge across the Meuse at a
place as yet unknown to us. Having been reinforced by eighty men
of, the second company we marched away in small groups so as not
to draw the enemy's attention to us. After an hour's march we halted
in a small wood, about 200 yards away from the Meuse, and were 
allowed to rest until darkness began to fall.

When it had become dark the bridge transportation column--it was
that belonging to our division--came up across the fields, to be
followed soon after by that of the army corps. All preparations having
been made and the chief preliminaries, like the placing of the trestle
and the landing boards, gone through, the various pontoon-wagons
drove up noiselessly, in order to be unloaded just as noiselessly and
with lightning speed. We had already finished four pontoons, i. e.,
twenty yards of bridge, without being observed by our opponent.
Everything went on all right. Suddenly the transportable search-lights
of the enemy went into action, and swept up and down the river.
Though we had thrown ourselves flat upon the ground wherever we
stood, our opponents had observed us, for the search-lights kept
moving a little to and fro and finally kept our spot under continual
illumination. We were discovered. We scarcely had time to consider,
for an artillery volley almost immediately struck the water to our left
and right. We were still lying flat on the ground when four more shots
came along. That time a little nearer to the bridge, and one shot
struck the bank of the river.

Immediately another volley followed, and two shells struck the bridge.
Some sappers fell into the water and two fell dead on the bridge;
those in the water swam ashore and escaped with a cold ducking.
One only was drowned. It was the man of whom I told before that he
was despised by his fellow-soldiers because he had hurt the child of a
poor woman with a stone he had thrown through the window into her
room.




VI
Crossing The Meuse



In spite of the continual and severe cannonading of the artillery we
succeeded in fetching away the two dead soldiers and bringing them
on land. The bridge had been much damaged so that we could do
nothing but replace the ruined pontoons by new ones. When the firing
of the artillery had died down somewhat we began the difficult task for
the second time. But we had scarcely begun when another salvo
found its mark and damaged the bridge severely; fortunately no
losses were inflicted upon us that time. We were now ordered to
retire, only to begin afresh after half an hour.

The enemy's searchlights had been extinguished, and we were able
to take some ten pontoons into line without being molested. Then,
suddenly, we were again overwhelmed by the fire of the artillery; the
enemy's patrols had noticed us. Several batteries had opened fire on
us at the same time, and in ten minutes' time all our work was nothing
but a heap of sinking pontoons; twelve men were killed.

We now were ordered to march away. Only eight of our party were
left behind to look after the dead and wounded. We set out to get out
of the danger zone. After having marched up-stream for a distance of
about a mile and a quarter we halted and observed that the bridge-
building section of the army corps was present again. We were told
that we should complete the individual links of the bridge on land.
Those bridge-links, consisting each of two pontoons, were firmly tied
together, provided with anchors and all accessories, completed on
land, and then let down into the water. The site of the bridge, which
had meanwhile been determined upon, was made known to us, and
we rowed with all our might down the river towards that spot.

Our opponent, who had gained no knowledge of that ruse, did not
molest us, and in quick succession all the bridge-links reached the
determined place. The various links were rowed into their proper
position with tremendous speed, and joined together. It did not take
quite twenty minutes to get everything just sufficiently in shape. The
infantry, who had kept in readiness, then rushed across the bridge
which had been thickly strewn with straw so as to deaden the noise.

At the same time we had begun to cross the river by pontoon at
various points, and before the French were properly aware of what
was going on, the other side of the river had been occupied by our
troops and was soon firmly held by them.

The French artillery and infantry now began to pour a terrific fire on
the pontoons. We, the sappers, who were occupying the pontoons of
the bridge, were now for the greater part relieved and replaced by
infantry, but were distributed among the rowing pontoons to serve as
crews. I was placed at the helm of one of the pontoons. With four
sappers at the oars and eighteen infantrymen as our passengers we
began our first trip in an infernal rain of missiles. We were lucky
enough to reach the other side of the river with only one slightly
wounded sapper. I relieved that man, who then took the steering part.
On the return trip our pontoon was hit by some rifle bullets, but
happily only above the water-line. To our right and left the pontoons
were crossing the river, some of them in a sinking condition.

The sappers, who are all able to swim, sought to reach the bank of 
the river and simply jumped into the water, whilst the infantrymen
were drowned in crowds. Having landed and manned another
pontoon we pushed off once more and, pulling the oars through the
water with superhuman strength, we made the trip a second time.
That time we reached the other side with two dead men and a
wounded infantryman. We had not yet reached the other side when
all the infantry jumped into the shallow water and waded ashore. We
turned our boat to row back with the two dead men on board. Our
hands began to hurt much from the continual rowing and were soon
covered with blisters and blood blisters. Still, we had to row, however
much our hands might swell and hurt; there was no resting on your
oars then.

We were about twenty yards from shore when our pontoon was hit
below the water-line by several rifle bullets at the same time. A shot
entering a pontoon leaves a hole no bigger that the shot itself, but its
exit on the other side of the pontoon may be as big as a fist or a plate.
Our pontoon then began to sink rapidly so that we sappers had no
choice but to jump into the icy water. Scarcely had we left the boat
when it disappeared; but all of us reached the river-bank safely. We
were saved--for the moment. In spite of our wet clothes we had to
man another boat immediately, and without properly regaining breath
we placed our torn hands again on the oars.

We had scarcely reached the middle of the river when we collided
with another boat. That other boat, which had lost her helmsman, and
two oarsmen, rammed us with such force that our pontoon turned
turtle immediately and took down with her all the eighteen infantrymen
besides one of the sappers. Four of us saved ourselves in another
pontoon and, thoroughly wet, we steered her to the left bank. We had
just landed when we were commanded to bring over a pontoon laden
with ammunition, and the "joy-ride" was renewed. We crossed the
Meuse about another five times after that.

Meanwhile day had come. On the left bank a terrible fight had begun
between the German troops that had been landed, and the French.
The Germans enjoyed the advantage that they were no longer
exposed to the French artillery.

We got a short rest, and lay wet to the skin in an old trench shivering
all over with cold. Our hands were swollen to more than double their
ordinary size; they hurt us so much that we could not even lift our
water-bottle to our mouths. It must have been a harrowing sight to
watch us young, strong fellows lying on the ground helpless and
broken.




VII
In Pursuit



After a short rest we were commanded to search the burning houses
for wounded men. We did not find many of them, for most of the
severely wounded soldiers who had not been able to seek safety
unaided had been miserably burnt to death, and one could only judge
by the buttons and weapons of the poor wretches for what
"fatherland" they had suffered their terrible death by fire. With many it
was even impossible to find out the nationality they belonged to; a
little heap of ashes, a ruined house were all that was left of whole
families, whole streets of families.

It was only the wine cellars, which were mostly of strong construction,
that had generally withstood the flames. The piping hot wine in bottles
and barrels, proved a welcome refreshment for the soldiers who were
wet to their skins and stiff with cold. Even at the risk of their lives (for
many of the cellars threatened to collapse) the soldiers would fetch
out the wine and drink it greedily, however hot the wine might be.

And strangely enough, former scenes were repeated. After the hot
wine had taken effect, after again feeling refreshed and physically
well, that same brutality which had become our second nature in war
showed itself again in the most shameful manner. Most of us
behaved as if we had not taken part in the unheard-of events of the
last hours, as if we did not see the horrible reminders of the awful
slaughter, as if we had entirely forgotten the danger of extinction
which we had so narrowly escaped. No effort was made to do honor
to the dead though every one had been taught that duty by his
mother from the earliest infancy; there was nothing left of that natural
shyness which the average man feels in the presence of death. The
pen refuses even to attempt a reproduction of the expressions used
by officers and soldiers or a description of their actions, when they set
about to establish the nationality or sex of the dead. Circumstances
were stronger than we men, and I convinced myself again that it was
only natural that all feelings of humanity should disappear after the
daily routine of murdering and that only the instinct of self-
preservation should survive in all its strength. The longer the war
lasted the more murderous and bestial the men became.

Meanwhile the fight between our troops that had crossed the river
and the French on the other side of the Meuse had reached its
greatest fury. Our troops had suffered great losses; now our turn
came. While we were crossing, the German artillery pounded the
enemy's position with unheard-of violence. Scarcely had we landed
and taken our places when our section proceeded to the assault. The
artillery became silent, and running forward we tried to storm the
slope leading to the enemy positions. We got as near as 200 yards
when the French machine-guns came into action; we were driven
back with considerable losses. Ten minutes later we attempted again
to storm the positions, but had only to go back again exactly as
before. Again we took up positions in our trenches, but all desire for
fighting had left us; every one stared stupidly in front of him. Of
course we were not allowed to lose courage, though the victims of
our useless assaults were covering the field, and our dead mates
were constantly before our eyes.

The artillery opened fire again; reinforcements arrived. Half an hour
later we stormed for the third time over the bodies of our dead
comrades. That time we went forward in rushes, and when we halted
before the enemy's trench for the last time, some twenty yards away
from it, our opponent withdrew his whole first line. The riddle of that
sudden retreat we were able to solve some time later. It turned out
that the main portions of the French army had retreated long ago; we
had merely been engaged in rear-guard actions which, however, had
proved very costly to us.

During the next hour the enemy evacuated all the heights of the
Meuse. When we reached the ridge of those heights we were able to
witness a horrifying sight with our naked eyes. The roads which the
retreating enemy was using could be easily surveyed. In close
marching formation the French were drawing off. The heaviest of our
artillery (21-cm.) was pounding the retreating columns, and shell after
shell fell among the French infantry and other troops. Hundreds of
French soldiers were literally torn to pieces. One could see bodies
and limbs being tossed in the air and being caught in the trees
bordering the roads.

We sappers were ordered to rally and we were soon going after the
fleeing enemy. It was our task to make again passable for our troops
the roads which had been pounded and dug up by the shells; that
was all the more difficult in the mid-day sun, as we had first to remove
the dead and wounded. Two men would take a dead soldier by his
head and feet and fling him in a ditch. Human corpses were here
treated and used exactly as a board in bridge building. Severed arms
and legs were flung through the air into the ditch in the same manner.
How often since have I not thought of these and similar incidents,
asking myself whether I thought those things improper or immoral at
the time? Again and again I had to return a negative answer, and I
am therefore fully convinced of how little the soldiers can be held
responsible for the brutalities which all of them commit, to whatever
nation they belong. They are no longer civilized human beings, they
are simply bloodthirsty brutes, for otherwise they would be bad, very
bad soldiers.

When, during the first months of the war a Social-Democratic
member of parliament announced that he had resolved to take
voluntary service in the army because he believed that in that manner
he could further the cause of humanity on the battle-field, many a one
began to laugh, and it was exactly our Socialist comrades in our
company who made pointed remarks. For all of us were agreed that
that representative of the people must either be very simple-minded
or insincere.

The dead horses and shattered batteries had also to be removed.
We were not strong enough to get the bodies of the horses out of the
way so we procured some horse roaming about without a master,
and fastened it to a dead one to whose leg we had attached a noose,
and thus we cleared the carcass out of the road. The portions of
human bodies hanging in the trees we left, however, undisturbed. For
who was there to care about such "trifles"?

We searched the bottles and knapsacks of the dead for eatable and
drinkable things, and enjoyed the things found with the heartiest
appetite imaginable. Hunger and thirst are pitiless customers that
cannot be turned away by fits of sentimentality.

Proceeding on our march we found the line of retreat of the enemy
thickly strewn with discarded rifles, knapsacks, and other
accouterments. French soldiers that had died of sunstroke were
covering the roads in masses. Others had crawled into the fields to
the left and right, where they were expecting help or death. But we
could not assist them for we judged ourselves happy if we could keep
our worn-out bodies from collapsing altogether. But even if we had
wanted to help them we should not have been allowed to do so, for
the order was "Forward!"

At that time I began to notice in many soldiers what I had never
observed before--they felt envious. Many of my mates envied the
dead soldiers and wished to be in their place in order to be at least
through with all their misery. Yet all of us were afraid of dying--afraid
of dying, be it noted, not of death. All of us often longed for death, but
we were horrified at the slow dying lasting hours which is the rule on
the battle-field, that process which makes the wounded, abandoned
soldier die piecemeal. I have witnessed the death of hundreds of
young men in their prime, but I know of none among them who died
willingly. A young sapper of the name of Kellner, whose home was at
Cologne, had his whole abdomen ripped open by a shell splinter so
that his entrails were hanging to the ground. Maddened by pain he
begged me to assure him that he would not have to die. Of course, I
assured him that his wounds were by no means severe and that the
doctor would be there immediately to help him. Though I was a
layman who had never had the slightest acquaintance with the
treatment of patients I was perfectly aware that the poor fellow could
only live through a few hours of pain. But my words comforted him.
He died ten minutes later.

We had to march on and on. The captain told us we had been
ordered to press the fleeing enemy as hard as possible. He was
answered by a disapproving murmur from the whole section. For long
days and nights we had been on our legs, had murdered like
savages, had had neither opportunity nor possibility to eat or rest,
and now they asked us worn-out men to conduct an obstinate pursuit.
The captain knew very well what we were feeling, and tried to pacify
us with kind words.

The cavalry divisions had not been able to cross the Meuse for want
of apparatus and bridges. For the present the pursuit had to be
carried out by infantry and comparatively small bodies of artillery.
Thus we had to press on in any case, at least until the cavalry and
machine-gun sections had crossed the bridges that had remained
intact farther down stream near Sdan. Round Sommepy the French
rear-guard faced us again. When four batteries of our artillery went
into action at that place our company and two companies of infantry
with machine guns were told off to cover the artillery.

The artillery officers thought that the covering troops were insufficient,
because aeroplanes had established the presence of large masses
of hostile cavalry, an attack from whom was feared. But
reinforcements could not be had as there was a lack of troops for the
moment. So we had to take up positions as well as we could. We dug
shallow trenches to the left and right of the battery in a nursery of fir
trees which were about a yard high. The machine-guns were built in
and got ready, and ammunition was made ready for use in large
quantities. We had not yet finished our preparations when the shells
of our artillery began to whizz above our heads and pound the ranks
of our opponent. The fir nursery concealed us from the enemy, but a
little wood, some 500 yards in front of us, effectively shut out our
view.

We were now instructed in what we were to do in case of an attack by
cavalry. An old white-haired major of the infantry had taken
command. We sappers were distributed among the infantry, but
those brave "gentlemen," our officers, had suddenly disappeared.
Probably the defense of the fatherland is in their opinion only the duty
of the common soldier. As those "gentlemen" are only there to
command and as we had been placed under the orders of infantry
officers for that undertaking, they had become superfluous and had
taken French leave.

Our instructions were to keep quiet in case of an attack by cavalry, to
take aim, and not allow ourselves to be seen. We were not to fire until
a machine-gun, commanded by the major in person, went into action,
and then we were to fire as rapidly as the rifle could be worked; we
were not to forget to aim quietly, but quickly.

Our batteries fired with great violence, their aiming being regulated by
a biplane, soaring high up in the air, by means of signals which were
given by rockets whose signification experts only could understand.

One quarter of an hour followed the other, and we were almost
convinced that we should be lucky enough that time to be spared
going into action. Suddenly things became lively. One man nudged
the other, and all eyes were turned to the edge of the little wood some
five hundred yards in front of us. A vast mass of horsemen emerged
from both sides of the little wood and, uniting in front of it, rushed
towards us. That immense lump of living beings approached our line
in a mad gallop. Glancing back involuntarily I observed that our
artillery had completely ceased firing and that its crews were getting
their carbines ready to defend their guns.

But quicker than I can relate it misfortune came thundering up.
Without being quite aware of what I was doing I felt all over my body
to find some place struck by a horse's hoof. The cavalry came nearer
and nearer in their wild career. Already one could see the hoofs of the
horses which scarcely touched the ground and seemed to fly over the
few hundred yards of ground. We recognized the riders in their solid
uniforms, we even thought we could notice the excited faces of the
horsemen who were expecting a sudden hail of bullets to mow them
down. Meanwhile they had approached to a distance of some 350
yards. The snorting of the horses was every moment becoming more
distinct. No machine-gun firing was yet to be heard. Three hundred
yards--250. My neighbor poked me in the ribs rather indelicately,
saying, "Has the old mass murderer (I did not doubt for a moment
that he meant the major) gone mad! It's all up with us, to be sure!" I
paid no attention to his talk. Every nerve in my body was hammering
away; convulsively I clung to my rifle, and awaited the calamity. Two
hundred yards! Nothing as yet. Was the old chap blind or--? One
hundred and eighty yards! I felt a cold sweat running down my back
and trembled as if my last hour had struck. One hundred and fifty! My
neighbor pressed close to me. The situation became unbearable.
One hundred and thirty--an infernal noise had started. Rrrrrrrr--An
overwhelming hail of bullets met the attacking party and scarcely a
bullet missed the lump of humanity and beasts.

The first ranks were struck down. Men and beasts formed a wall on
which rolled the waves of succeeding horses, only to be smashed by
that terrible hail of bullets. "Continue firing!" rang out the command
which was not needed. "More lively!" The murderous work was
carried out more rapidly and with more crushing effect. Hundreds of
volleys were sent straight into the heap of living beings struggling
against death. Hundreds were laid low every second. Scarcely a
hundred yards in front of us lay more than six hundred men and
horses, on top of each other, beside each other, apart, in every
imaginable position. What five minutes ago had been a picture of
strength, proud horsemen, joyful youth, was now a bloody,
shapeless, miserable lump of bleeding flesh.

And what about ourselves? We laughed about our heroic deed and
cracked jokes. When danger was over we lost that anxious feeling
which had taken possession of us. Was it fear? It is, of course,
supposed that a German soldier knows no fear-at the most he fears
God, but nothing else in the world--and yet it was fear, low vulgar
fear that we feel just as much as the French, the English, or the
Turks, and he who dares to contradict this and talk of bravery and the
fearless courage of the warrior, has either never been in war, or is a
vulgar liar and hypocrite.

Why were we joyful and why did we crack jokes? Because it was the
others and not ourselves who had to lose their lives that time.
Because it was a life and death struggle. It was either we or they. We
had a right to be glad and chase all sentimentality to the devil. Were
we not soldiers, mass murderers, barbarians?




VIII
Nearly Buried Alive On The Battlefield



The commander of the artillery smilingly came up to the major of the
infantry and thanked and congratulated him.

We then went after the rest of our attackers who were in full flight.
The machine guns kept them under fire. Some two hundred might
have escaped; they fled in all directions. The artillery thereupon
began again to fire, whilst we set about to care for our wounded
enemies. It was no easy job, for we had to draw the wounded from
beneath the horses some of which were still alive. The animals kicked
wildly about them, and whenever they succeeded in getting free they
rushed off like demented however severely they had been hurt. Many
a wounded man who otherwise might have recovered was thus killed
by the hoofs of the horses.

With the little packet of bandaging material which we all had on us we
bandaged the men, who were mostly severely wounded, but a good
many died in our hands while we were trying to put on a temporary
dressing. As far as they were still able to speak they talked to us with
extreme vivacity. Though we did not understand their language we
knew what they wanted to express, for their gestures and facial
expressions were very eloquent. They desired to express their
gratitude for the charitable service we were rendering them, and like
ourselves they did not seem to be able to understand how men could
first kill each other, could inflict pain on each other, and then assist
each other to the utmost of their ability. To them as well as to us this
world seemed to stand on its head; it was a world in which they were
mere marionettes, guided and controlled by a superior power. How
often were we not made aware in that manner of the uselessness of
all this human slaughter!

We common soldiers were here handling the dead and wounded as if
we had never done anything else, and yet in our civilian lives most of
us had an abhorrence and fear of the dead and the horribly mangled.
War is a hard school-master who bends and reshapes his pupils.

One section was busy with digging a common grave for the dead. We
took away the papers and valuables of the dead, took possession of
the eatable and drinkable stores to be found in the saddle bags
attached to the horses and, when the grave was ready, we began to
place the dead bodies in it. They were laid close together in order to
utilize fully the available space. I, too, had been ordered to "bring in"
the dead. The bottom of the grave was large enough for twenty-three
bodies if the space was well utilized. When two layers of twenty-three
had already been buried a sergeant of the artillery, who was standing
near, observed that one of the "dead" was still alive. He had seen the
"corpse" move the fingers of his right hand. On closer examination it
turned out that we came near burying a living man, for after an
attempt lasting two hours we succeeded in restoring him to
consciousness. The officer of the infantry who supervised the work
now turned to the two soldiers charged with getting the corpses ready
and asked them whether they were sure that all the men buried were
really dead. "Yes," the two replied, "we suppose they are all dead."
That seemed to be quite sufficient for that humane officer, for he
ordered the interments to proceed. Nobody doubted that there were
several more among the 138 men whom we alone buried in one
grave (two other, still bigger, graves had been dug by different burial
parties) from whose bodies life had not entirely flown. To be buried
alive is just one of those horrors of the battlefield which your bar-room
patriot at home (or in America) does not even dream of in his
philosophy.

Nothing was to be seen of the enemy's infantry. It seemed that our
opponent had sent only artillery and cavalry to face us. Meanwhile the
main portions of our army came up in vast columns. Cavalry divisions
with mounted artillery and machine-gun sections left all the other
troops behind them. The enemy had succeeded in disengaging
himself almost completely from us, wherefor our cavalry accelerated
their movements with the intention of getting close to the enemy and
as quickly as possible in order to prevent his demoralized troops from
resting at night. We, too, got ready to march, and were just going to
march off when we received orders to form camp. The camping
ground was exactly mapped out, as was always the case, by the
superior command, so that they would know where we were to be
found in case of emergency. We had scarcely reached our camping
grounds when our field kitchen, which we thought had lost us,
appeared before our eyes as if risen from out of the ground. The men
of the field kitchen, who had no idea of the losses we had suffered
during the last days, had cooked for the old number of heads. They
were therefore not a little surprised when they found in the place of a
brave company of sturdy sappers only a crowd of ragged men, the
shadows of their former selves, broken and tired to their very bones.
We were given canned soup, bread, meat, coffee, and a cigarette
each. At last we were able to eat once again to our hearts' content.
We could drink as much coffee as we liked. And then that cigarette,
which appeared to most of us more important than eating and
drinking!

All those fine things and the expectation of a few hours of rest in
some potato field aroused in us an almost childish joy. We were as
merry as boys and as noisy as street urchins. "Oh, what a joy to be a
soldier lad!"--that song rang out, subdued at first, then louder and
louder. It died away quickly enough as one after the other laid down
his tired head. We slept like the dead.

We could sleep till six o'clock the next morning. Though all of us lay
on the bare ground it was with no little trouble that they succeeded in
waking us up. That morning breakfast was excellent. We received
requisitioned mutton, vegetables, bread, coffee, a cupful of wine, and
some ham. The captain admonished us to stuff in well, for we had a
hard day's march before us. At seven o'clock we struck camp. At the
beginning of that march we were in fairly good humor. Whilst
conversing we discovered that we had completely lost all reckoning of
time. Nobody knew whether it was Monday or Wednesday, whether it
was the fifth or the tenth of the month. Subsequently, the same
phenomenon could be observed only in a still more noticeable way. A
soldier in war never knows the date or day of the week. One day is
like another. Whether it is Saturday, Thursday or Sunday, it means
always the same routine of murdering. "Remember the Sabbath day
to keep it holy!" "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. But the
seventh day--thou shalt not do any work." These, to our Christian
rulers, are empty phrases. "Six days shalt thou murder and on the
seventh day, too."

When we halted towards noon near a large farm we had again to wait
in vain for our field kitchen. So we helped ourselves. We shot one of
the cows grazing in the meadows, slit its skin without first letting off
the blood, and each one cut himself a piece of meat. The meat, which
was still warm, was roasted a little in our cooking pots. By many it was
also eaten raw with pepper and salt. That killing of cattle on our own
book was repeated almost daily. The consequence was that all
suffered with their stomachs, for the meat was mostly still warm, and
eating it without bread or other food did not agree with us. Still, the
practice was continued. If a soldier was hungry and if he found a pig,
cow, or lamb during his period of rest, he would simply shoot the
beast and cut off a piece for his own use, leaving the rest to perish.

On our march we passed a little town, between Attigny and
Sommepy, crowded with refugees. Many of the refugees were ill, and
among their children an epidemic was raging which was infecting the
little ones of the town. A German medical column had arrived a short
time before us. They asked for ten sappers--the maids of all work in
war time--to assist them in their labors. I was one of the ten drafted
off for that duty.

We were first taken by the doctors to a wonderfully arranged park in
the center of which stood a castlelike house, a French manor-house.
The owner, a very rich Frenchman, lived there with his wife and an
excessive number of servants. Though there was room enough in the
palace for more than a hundred patients and refugees, that humane
patriot refused to admit any one, and had locked and bolted the
house and all entrances to the park.

It did not take us long to force all the doors and make all the locks
useless. The lady of the house had to take up quarters in two large
rooms, but that beauty of a male aristocrat had to live in the garage
and had to put up with a bed of straw--in that way the high and
mighty gentleman got a taste of the refugee life which so many of his
countrymen had to go through. He was given his food by one of the
soldiers of the medical corps; it was nourishing food, most certainly
too nourishing for our gentleman. One of my mates, a Socialist
comrade, observed drily,

"It's at least a consolation that our own gang of junkers isn't any
worse than that mob of French aristocrats; they are all of a kidney. If
only the people were to get rid of the whole pack they wouldn't then
have to tear each other to pieces any longer like wild beasts."

In the meantime our mates had roamed through the country and
captured a large barrel full of honey. Each one had filled his cooking
pot with honey to the very brim and buckled it to his knapsack. The
ten of us did likewise, and then we went off to find our section with
which we caught up in a short time. But we had scarcely marched a
few hundred yards when we were pursued by bees whose numbers
increased by hundreds every minute. However much we tried to
shake off the little pests their attentions grew worse and worse. Every
one of us was stung; many had their faces swollen to such an extent
that they were no longer able to see. The officers who were riding
some twenty yards in front of us began to notice our slow
movements. The "old man" came along, saw the bees and the
swollen faces but could, of course, not grasp the meaning of it all until
a sergeant proffered the necessary information. "Who's got honey in
his cooking pot?" the old chap cried angrily. "All of us," the sergeant
replied. "You, too?" "Yes, captain." The old man was very wild, for he
was not even able to deal out punishments. We had to halt and throw
away the "accursed things," as our severe master called them. We
helped each other to unbuckle the cooking pots, and our sweet
provisions were flung far away into the fields on both sides of the
road. With the honey we lost our cooking utensils, which was certainly
not a very disagreeable relief.

We continued our march in the burning noon-day sun. The
ammunition columns and other army sections which occupied the
road gave the whirled-up dust no time to settle. All around us in the
field refugees were camping, living there like poor, homeless gypsies.
Many came up to us and begged for a piece of dry bread.

Without halting we marched till late at night. Towards nine o'clock in
the evening we found ourselves quite close to the town hall of
Sommepy. Here, in and about Sommepy, fighting had started again,
and we had received orders to take part in it to the northwest of
Sommepy.




IX
Soldiers Shooting Their Own Officers



It was dark already, and we halted once more. The ground around us
was strewn with dead. In the middle of the road were some French
batteries and munition wagons, with the horses still attached; but
horses and men were dead. After a ten minutes' rest we started
again. Marching more quickly, we now approached a mall wood in
which dismounted cavalry and infantry were waging a desperate
hand-to-hand struggle with the enemy. So as to astonish the latter we
had to rush in with a mighty yell. Under cover of darkness we had
succeeded in getting to the enemy's rear. Taken by surprise by the
unexpected attack and our war whoop, most of the Frenchmen lifted
their hands and begged for quarter, which was, however, not granted
by the infuriated cavalrymen and infantry. When, on our side, now
and then the murdering of defenseless men seemed to slacken it was
encouraged again by the loud commands of the officers. "No
quarter!" "Cut them all down!" Such were the orders of those
estimable gentlemen, the officers.

We sappers, too, had to participate in the cold blooded slaughtering
of defenseless men. The French were defenseless because they
threw away their arms and asked for quarter the moment that they
recognized the futility of further resistance. But the officers then saw
to it, as on many earlier and later occasions, that "too many
prisoners were not made." The sapper carries a bayonet which must
not be fixed to the rifle according to international agreement, because
the back of that bayonet is an extremely sharp steel saw, three
millimeters in thickness. In times of peace the sapper never does
bayonet practice, the bayonet being exclusively reserved for
mechanical purposes. But what does militarism care for international
law! We here had to fix the saw, as had always been done since the
beginning of the war. Humanity was a jest when one saw an
opponent with the toothed saw in his chest and the victim, who had
long given up all resistance, endeavoring to remove the deadly steel
from the wound. Often that terrible tool of murder had fastened itself
so firmly in the victim's chest that the attacker, in order to get his
bayonet back, had to place his foot on the chest of the miserable man
and try with all his might to remove the weapon.

The dead and wounded lay everywhere covered with terrible injuries,
and the crying of the wounded, which might soften a stone, but not a
soldier's heart, told of the awful pain which those "defenders of their
country" had to suffer.

However, not all the soldiers approved of that senseless, that criminal
murdering. Some of the "gentlemen" who had ordered us to
massacre our French comrades were killed "by mistake" in the
darkness of the night, by their own people, of course. Such
"mistakes" repeat themselves almost daily, and if I keep silence with
regard to many such mistakes which I could relate, giving the exact
name and place, the reader will know why.

During that night it was a captain and first lieutenant who met his fate.
An infantryman who was serving his second year stabbed the captain
through the stomach with his bayonet, and almost at the same time
the first lieutenant got a stab in the back. Both men were dead in a
few minutes. Those that did the deed showed not the slightest sign of
repentance, and not one of us felt inclined to reproach them; on the
contrary, every one knew that despicable, brutal murderers had met
their doom.

In this connection I must mention a certain incident which
necessitates my jumping a little ahead of events. When on the
following day I conversed with a mate from my company and asked
him for the loan of his pocket knife he drew from his pocket three
cartridges besides his knife. I was surprised to find him carrying
cartridges in his trousers' pockets and asked him whether he had no
room for them in his cartridge case.

"There's room enough," he replied, "but those three are meant for a
particular purpose; there's a name inscribed on each of them." Some
time after--we had meanwhile become fast friends--I inquired again
after the three bullets. He had one of them left. I reflected and
remembered two sergeants who had treated us like brutes in times of
peace, whom we had hated as one could only hate slave-drivers.
They had found their grave in French soil.

The murder did not cease as long as an opponent was alive. We
were then ordered to see whether all the enemies lying on the ground
were really dead or unable to fight. "Should you find one who
pretends to be dead, he must be killed without mercy." That was the
order we received for that tour of inspection. However, the soldiers
who had meanwhile quieted down a little and who had thus regained
their senses took no trouble to execute the shameful command.
What the soldiers thought of it is shown by the remark of a man
belonging to my company who said, "Let's rather look if the two
officers are quite dead; if not, we shall have to kill them, too, without
mercy." "An order was an order", he added.

We now advanced quickly, but our participation was no longer
necessary, for the whole line of the enemy retired and then faced us
again, a mile and a quarter southwest of Sommepy. Sommepy itself
was burning for the greater part, and its streets were practically
covered with the dead. The enemy's artillery was still bombarding the
place, and shells were falling all around us. Several hundred
prisoners were gathered in the market-place. A few shells fell at the
same time among the prisoners, but they had to stay where they
were. An officer of my company, lieutenant of the reserve Neesen,
observed humanely that that could not do any harm, for thus the
French got a taste of their own shells. He was rewarded with some
cries of shame. A Socialist comrade, a reservist, had the pluck to cry
aloud, "Do you hear that, comrades? That's the noble sentiment of an
exploiter; that fellow is the son of an Elberfeld capitalist and his father
is a sweating-den keeper of the worst sort. When you get home again
do not forget what this capitalist massacre has taught you. Those
prisoners are proletarians, are our brethren, and what we are doing
here in the interest of that gang of capitalist crooks is a crime against
our own body; it is murdering our own brothers!" He was going to
continue talking, but the sleuths were soon upon him, and he was
arrested. He threw down his gun with great force; then he quietly
suffered himself to be led away.

All of us were electrified. Not one spoke a word. One suddenly beheld
quite a different world. We had a vision which kept our imagination
prisoner. Was it true what we had heard--that those prisoners were
not our enemies at all, that they were our brothers? That which
formerly--0 how long ago might that have been!--in times of peace,
had appeared to us as a matter of course had been forgotten; in war
we had regarded our enemies as our friends and our friends as our
enemies. Those words of the Elberfeld comrade had lifted the fog
from our brains and from before our eyes. We had again a clear view;
we could recognize things again.

One looked at the other and nodded without speaking; each one felt
that the brave words of our friend had been a boon to us, and none
could refrain from inwardly thanking and appreciating the bold man.
The man in front of me, who had been a patriot all along as far as I
knew, but who was aware of my, views, pressed my hand, saying.
"Those few words have opened my eyes; I was blind; we are friends. 
Those words came at the proper time." Others again I heard remark:
"You can't surpass Schotes; such a thing requires more courage than
all of us together possess. For he knew exactly the consequences
that follow when one tells the truth. Did you see the last look he gave
us? That meant as much as, 'Don't be concerned about me; I shall
fight my way through to the end. Be faithful workers; remain faithful to
your class!'"

The place, overcrowded with wounded soldiers, was almost entirely
occupied by the Germans. The medical corps could not attend to all
the work, for the wounded kept streaming in in enormous numbers.
So we had to lend a helping hand, and bandaged friend and enemy
to the best of our ability. But contrary to earlier times when the
wounded were treated considerately, things were now done more
roughly.

The fighting to the south of the place had reached its greatest
violence towards one o'clock in the afternoon, and when the
Germans began to storm at all points, the French retired from their
positions in the direction of Suippes.

Whether our ragged company was no longer considered able to fight
or whether we were no longer required, I do not know; but we got
orders to seek quarters. We could find neither barn nor stable, so we
had to camp in the open; the houses were all crowded with wounded
men.

On that day I was commanded to mount guard and was stationed
with the camp guard. At that place arrested soldiers had to call to
submit to the punishment inflicted on them. Among them were seven
soldiers who had been sentenced to severe confinement which
consisted in being tied up for two hours.

The officer on guard ordered us to tie the "criminals" to trees in the
neighborhood. Every arrested soldier had to furnish for that purpose
the rope with which he cleaned his rifle. The victim I had to attend to
was sapper Lohmer, a good Socialist. I was to tie his hands behind
his back, wind the loose end of the rope round his chest, and tie him
with his back towards the tree. In that position my comrade was to
stand for two hours, exposed to the mockery of officers and
sergeants. But comrade Lohmer had been marching with the rest of
us in a broiling sun for a whole day, had all night fought and murdered
for the dear Fatherland which was now giving him thanks by tying him
up with a rope.

I went up to him and told him that I would not tie, him to the tree. "Do
it, man," he tried to persuade me; "if you don't do it another one will. I
shan't be cross with you, you know."--"Let others do it; I won't fetter
you."

The officer, our old friend Lieutenant Spahn, who was getting
impatient, came up to us. "Can't you see that all the others have been
seen to? How long do you expect me to wait?" I gave him a sharp
look, but did not answer. Again he bellowed out the command to tie
my comrade to the tree. I looked at him for a long time and did not
deign him worthy of an answer. He then turned to the "criminal" who
told him that I could not get myself to do the job as we were old
comrades and friends. Besides, I did not want to fetter a man who
was exhausted and dead tired. "So you won't do it?" he thundered at
me, and when again he received no reply--for I was resolved not to
speak another word to the fellow--he hissed, "That b--is a Red to
the marrow!" I shall never in my life forget the look of thankfulness
that Lohmer gave me; it rewarded me for the unpleasantness I had in
consequence of my refusal. Of course others did what I refused to
do; I got two weeks' confinement. Naturally I was proud at having
been a man for once at least. As a comrade I had remained faithful to
my mate. Yet I had gained a point. They never ordered me again to
perform such duty, and I was excluded from the guard that day. I
could move about freely and be again a free man for a few hours.

The evening I had got off I employed to undertake a reconnoitering
expedition through the surrounding country in the company of several
soldiers. We spoke about the various incidents of the day and the
night, and, to the surprise, I daresay, of every one of us, we
discovered that very little was left of the overflowing enthusiasm and
patriotism that had seized so many during the first days of the war.
Most of the soldiers made no attempt to conceal the feeling that we
poor devils had absolutely nothing to gain in this war, that we had
only to lose our lives or, which was still worse, that we should sit at
some street corner as crippled "war veterans" trying to arouse the pity
of passers-by by means of some squeaking organ.

At that moment it was already clear to us in view of the enormous
losses that no state, no public benevolent societies would be able
after the war to help the many hundreds of thousands who had
sacrificed their health for their "beloved country." The number of the
unfortunate wrecks is too great to be helped even with the best of
intentions.

Those thoughts which occupied our minds to an ever increasing
extent did not acquire a more cheerful aspect on our walk. The
wounded were lying everywhere, in stables, in barns, wherever there
was room for them. If the wounds were not too severe the wounded
men were quite cheerful. They felt glad at having got off so cheaply,
and thought the war would long be over when they should be well
again. They lived by hopes just as the rest of us.




X
Sacking Suippes



The inhabitants of the place who had not fled were all quartered in a
large wooden shed. Their dwelling places had almost all been
destroyed, so that they had no other choice but live in the shed that
was offered them. Only one little, old woman sat, bitterly crying, on
the ruins of her destroyed home, and nobody could induce her to
leave that place.

In the wooden shed one could see women and men, youths, children
and old people, all in a great jumble. Many had been wounded by bits
of shell or bullets; others had been burned by the fire. Everywhere
one could observe the same terrible misery--sick mothers with half-
starved babies for whom there was no milk on hand and who had to
perish there; old people who were dying from the excitement and
terrors of the last few days; men and women in the prime of their life
who were slowly succumbing to their wounds because there was
nobody present to care for them.

A soldier of the landwehr, an infantryman, was standing close to me
and looked horror-struck at some young mothers who were trying to
satisfy the hunger of their babes. "I, too," he said reflectively, "have a
good wife and two dear children at home. I can therefore feel how
terrible it must be for the fathers of these poor families to know their
dear ones are in the grip of a hostile army. The French soldiers think
us to be still worse barbarians than we really are, and spread that
impression through their letters among those left at home. I can
imagine the fear in which they are of us everywhere. During the Boxer
rebellion I was in China as a soldier, but the slaughter in Asia was
child's play in comparison to the barbarism of civilized European
nations that I have had occasion to witness in this war in friend and
foe." After a short while he continued: "I belong to the second muster
of the landwehr, and thought that at my age of 37 it would take a long
time before my turn came. But we old ones were no better off than
you of the active army divisions--sometimes even worse. Just like
you we were sent into action right from the beginning, and the heavy
equipment, the long marches in the scorching sun meant much
hardship to our worn-out proletarian bodies so that many amongst us
thought they would not be able to live through it all.

"How often have I not wished that at least one of my children were a
boy? But to-day I am glad and happy that they are girls; for, if they
were boys, they would have to shed their blood one day or spill that of
others, only because our rulers demand it." We now became well
acquainted with each other. Conversing with him I got to know that
dissatisfaction was still more general in his company than in mine and
that it was only the ruthless infliction of punishment, the iron discipline,
that kept the men of the landwehr, who had to think of wife and
children, from committing acts of insubordination. Just as we were
treated they treated those older men for the slightest breach of
discipline; they were tied with ropes to trees and telegraph poles.


"Dear Fatherland, may peace be thine;
Fast stands and firm the
Watch on the Rhine."


A company of the Hessian landwehr, all of them old soldiers, were
marching past with sore feet and drooping heads. They had probably
marched for a long while. Officers were attempting to liven them up.
They were to sing a song, but the Hessians, fond of singing and
good-natured as they certainly are known to be, were by no means in
a mood to sing. "I tell you to sing, you swine!" the officer cried, and
the pitifully helpless-looking "swine" endeavored to obey the
command. Here and there a thin voice from the ranks of the overtired
men could be heard to sing, "Deutschland, Deutschland ber alles,
ber alles in der Welt." With sore feet and broken energy, full of
disgust with their "glorious" trade of warriors, they sang that
symphony of supergermanism that sounded then like blasphemy,
nay, like a travesty "Deutschland, Deutschland ber alles, ber alles
in der Welt."

Some of my mates who had watched the procession like myself
came up to me saying, "Come, let's go to the bivouac. Let's sleep,
forget, and think no more."

We were hungry and, going "home," we caught some chicken,
"candidates for the cooking pot," as we used to call them. They were
eaten half cooked. Then we lay down in the open and slept till four
o'clock in the morning when we had to be ready to march off. Our
goal for that day was Suippes. Before starting on the march an army
order was read out to us. "Soldiers," it said, "His Majesty, the
Emperor, our Supreme War Lord, thanks the soldiers of the Fourth
Army, and expresses to all his imperial thankfulness and
appreciation. You have protected our dear Germany from the
invasion of hostile hordes. We shall not rest until the last opponent
lies beaten on the ground, and before the leaves fall from the trees
we shall be at home again as victors. The enemy is in full retreat, and
the Almighty will continue to bless our arms."

Having duly acknowledged receipt of the message by giving those
three cheers for the "Supreme War Lord" which had become almost
a matter of daily routine, we started on our march and had now plenty
of time and opportunity to talk over the imperial "thankfulness." We
were not quite clear as to the "fatherland" we had to "defend" here in
France. One of the soldiers thought the chief thing was that God had
blessed our arms, whereupon another one, who had been president
of a freethinking religious community in his native city for many a long 
year, replied that a religious man who babbled such stuff was
committing blasphemy if he had ever taken religion seriously.

All over the fields and in the ditches lay the dead bodies of soldiers
whose often sickening wounds were terrible to behold. Thousands of
big flies, of which that part of the country harbors great swarms, were
covering the human corpses which had partly begun to decompose
and were spreading a stench that took away one's breath. In between
these corpses, in the burning sun, the poor, helpless refugees were
camping, because they were not allowed to use the road as long as
the troops were occupying it. But when were the roads not occupied
by troops!

Once, when resting, we chanced to observe a fight between three
French and four German aeroplanes. We heard above us the well-
known hum of a motor and saw three French and two German
machines approach one another. All of them were at a great altitude
when all at once we heard the firing of machine-guns high up in the
air. The two Germans were screwing themselves higher up,
unceasingly peppered by their opponents, and were trying to get
above the Frenchmen. But the French, too, rose in great spirals in
order to frustrate the intentions of the Germans. Suddenly one of the
German flying-men threw a bomb and set alight a French machine
which at the same time was enveloped in flames and, toppling over,
fell headlong to the ground a few seconds after. Burning rags came
slowly fluttering to the ground after it. Unexpectedly two more strong
German machines appeared on the scene, and then the Frenchmen
took to flight immediately, but not before they had succeeded in
disabling a German Rumpler-Taube by machine-gun fire to such an
extent that the damaged aeroplane had to land in a steep glide. The
other undamaged machines disappeared on the horizon.

That terrible and beautiful spectacle had taken a few minutes. It was
a small, unimportant episode, which had orphaned a few children,
widowed a woman--somewhere in France.

In the evening we reached the little town of Suippes after a long
march. The captain said to us, "Here in Suippes there are swarms of
franctireurs. We shall therefore not take quarters but camp in the
open. Anybody going to the place has to take his rifle and ammunition
with him." After recuperating a little we went to the place in order to
find something to eat. Fifteen dead civilians were lying in the middle
of the road. They were inhabitants of the place. Why they had been
shot we could not learn. A shrugging of the shoulders was the only
answer one could get from anybody. The place itself, the houses,
showed no external damage.

I have never in war witnessed a greater general pillaging than here in
Suippes. It was plain that we had to live and had to have food. The
inhabitants and storekeepers having fled, it was often impossible to
pay for the things one needed. Men simply went into some store, put
on socks and underwear, and left their old things; they then went to
some other store, took the food they fancied, and hied themselves to
a wine-cellar to provide themselves to their hearts' content. The men
of the ammunition trains who had their quarters in the town, as also
the men of the transport and ambulance corps and troopers went by
the hundred to search the homes and took whatsoever pleased them
most. The finest and largest stores--Suippes supplied a large tract of
country and had comparatively extensive stores of all descriptions--
were empty shells in a few hours. Whilst men were looking for one
thing others were ruined and broken. The drivers of the munition and
transport trains dragged away whole sacks full of the finest silk,
ladies' garments, linen, boots, and shoved them in their shot-case.
Children's shoes, ladies' shoes, everything was taken along, even if it
had to be thrown away again soon after. Later on, when the field-post
was running regularly, many things acquired in that manner were sent
home. But all parcels did not reach their destination on account of the
unreliable service of the field-post, and the maximum weight that
could be sent proved another obstacle. Thus a pair of boots had to
be divided and each sent in a separate parcel if they were to be
dispatched by field-post. One of our sappers had for weeks carried
about with him a pair of handsome boots for his fiance and then had
them sent to her in two parcels. However, the field-post did not
guarantee delivery; and thus the war bride got the left boot, and not
the right one.

An important chocolate factory was completely sacked, chocolates
and candy lay about in heaps trodden under foot. Private dwellings
that had been left by their inhabitants were broken into, the wine-
cellars were cleared of their contents, and the windows were
smashed--a speciality of the cavalry.

As we had to spend the night in the open we tried to procure some
blankets, and entered a grocer's store in the market-place. The store
had been already partly demolished. The living-rooms above it had
remained, however, untouched, and all the rooms had been left
unlocked. It could be seen that a woman had had charge of that
house; everything was arranged in such a neat and comfortable way
that one was immediately seized by the desire to become also
possessed of such a lovely little nest. But all was surpassed by a
room of medium size where a young lady had apparently lived. Only
with great reluctance we entered that sanctum. To our surprise we
found hanging on the wall facing the door a caustic drawing on wood
bearing the legend in German: "Ehret die Frauen, sie flechten und
weben himmlische Rosen ins irdische Leben." (Honor the women,
they work and they weave heavenly roses in life's short reprieve.) The
occupant was evidently a young bride, for the various pieces of the
trousseau, trimmed with dainty blue ribbons, could be seen in the
wardrobes in a painfully spick and span condition. All the wardrobes
were unlocked. We did not touch a thing. We were again reminded of
the cruelty of war. Millions it turned into beggars in one night; the
fondest hopes and desires were destroyed. When, the next morning,
we entered the house again, driven by a presentiment of misfortune,
we found everything completely destroyed. Real barbarians had been
raging here, who had lost that thin varnish with which civilization
covers the brute in man. The whole trousseau of the young bride had
been dragged from the shelves and was still partly covering the floor.
Portraits, photographs, looking-glasses, all lay broken on the floor.
Three of us had entered the room, and all three of us clenched our
fists in helpless rage.

Having received the command to remain in Suippes till further orders
we could observe the return of many refugees the next day. They
came back in crowds from the direction of Chlons-sur-Marne, and
found a wretched, dreary waste in the place of their peaceful homes.
The owner of a dry-goods store was just returning as we stood before
his house. He collapsed before the door of his house, for nothing
remained of his business. We went up to the man. He was a Hebrew
and spoke German. After having somewhat recovered his self-
possession he told us that his business had contained goods to the
value of more than 8000 francs, and said: "If the soldiers had only
taken what they needed I should have been content, for I expected
nothing less; but I should have never believed of the Germans that
they would destroy all of my possessions." In his living-rooms there
was not even a cup to be found. The man had a wife and five
children, but did not know where they were at that time. And his fate
was shared by uncounted others, here and elsewhere.

I should tell an untruth if I were to pretend that his misery touched me
very deeply. It is true that the best among us--and those were almost
always the men who had been active in the labor movement at home,
who hated war and the warrior's trade from the depth of their soul--
were shaken out of their lethargy and indifference by some especially
harrowing incident, but the mass was no longer touched even by
great tragedies.

When a man is accustomed to step over corpses with a cold smile on
his lips, when he has to face death every minute day and night he
gradually loses that finer feeling for human things and humanity. Thus
it must not surprise one that soldiers could laugh and joke in the
midst of awful devastation, that they brought wine to a concert room
in which there was a piano and an electric organ, and had a joyful
time with music and wine. They drank till they were unconscious; they
drank with sergeants and corporals, pledging "brotherhood"; and they
rolled arm in arm through the streets with their new "comrades."

The officers would see nothing of this, for they did not behave much
better themselves, even if they knew how to arrange things in such a
manner that their "honor" did not entirely go to the devil. The
"gentleman" of an officer sends his orderly out to buy him twenty
bottles of wine, but as he does not give his servant any money
wherewith to "buy," the orderly obeys the command the best he can.
He knows that at any rate he must not come back without the wine. In
that manner the officers provide themselves with all possible comforts
without losing their "honor." We had five officers in our company who
for themselves alone needed a wagon with four horses for
transporting their baggage. As for ourselves, the soldiers, our
knapsack was still too large for the objects we needed for our daily
life.




XI
Marching To The Battle Of The Marne--Into The Trap



A large proportion of the "gentlemen," our officers, regarded war as a
pleasant change to their enchanting social life in the garrison towns,
and knew exactly (at least as far as the officers of my company were
concerned) how to preserve their lives as long as possible "in the
interest of the Fatherland." When I buried the hatchet, fourteen
months after, our company had lost three times its original strength,
but no fresh supply of officers had as yet become necessary; we had
not lost a single officer. In Holland I got to know, some months later,
that after having taken my "leave" they were still very well preserved.
One day at Rotterdam, I saw a photo in the magazine, Die Woche,
showing "Six members of the 1st. Company of the Sapper Regiment
No. 30 with the Iron Cross of the 1st. Class." The picture had been
taken at the front, and showed the five officers and Corporal Bock
with the Iron Cross of the 1st. Class. Unfortunately Scherl [Note: A
proprietor of many German sensational newspapers.] did not betray
whether those gentlemen had got the distinction for having preserved
their lives for further service.

We spent the following night at the place, and then had to camp
again in the open, "because the place swarmed with franctireurs." In
reality no franctireurs could be observed, so that it was quite clear to
us that it was merely an attempt to arouse again our resentment
against the enemy which was dying down. They knew very well that a
soldier is far more tractable and pliant when animated by hatred
against the "enemy."

The next day Chlons-sur-Marne was indicated as the next goal of
our march. That day was one of the most fatiguing we experienced.
Early in the morning already, when we started, the sun was sending
down its fiery shafts. Suippes is about 21 miles distant from Chlons-
sur-Marne. The distance would not have been the worst thing, in spite
of the heat. We had marched longer distances before. But that
splendid road from Suippes to Chlons does not deviate an inch to
the right or left, so that the straight, almost endless seeming road lies
before one like an immense white snake. However far we marched
that white ribbon showed no ending, and when one looked round, the
view was exactly the same. During the whole march we only passed
one little village; otherwise all was bare and uncultivated.

Many of us fainted or got a heat-stroke and had to be taken along by
the following transport column. We could see by the many dead
soldiers, French and German, whose corpses were lying about all
along the road, that the troops who had passed here before us had
met with a still worse fate.

We had finished half of our march without being allowed to take a
rest. I suppose the "old man" was afraid the machine could not be set
going again if once our section had got a chance to rest their tired
limbs on the ground, and thus we crawled along dispirited like a lot of
snails, carrying the leaden weight of the "monkey" in the place of a
house. The monotony of the march was only somewhat relieved
when we reached the immense camp of Chlons. It is one of the
greatest military camps in France. Towards three o'clock in the
afternoon we beheld Chlons in the distance, and when we halted
towards four o'clock in an orchard outside the town, all of us, without
an exception, fell down exhausted.

The field kitchen, too, arrived, but nobody stirred for a time to fetch
food. We ate later on, and then desired to go to the town to buy
several things, chiefly, I daresay, tobacco which we missed terribly.
Nobody was allowed however, to leave camp. We were told that it
was strictly forbidden to enter the town. Chlons, so the tale went,
had paid a war contribution, and nobody could enter the town. With
money you can do everything, even in war. Mammon had saved
Chlons from pillage.

Far away could be heard the muffled roar of the guns. We had the
presentiment that our rest would not he of long duration. The rolling of
the gun firing became louder and louder, but we did not know yet that
a battle had started here that should turn out a very unfortunate one
for the Germans--the five days' battle of the Marne.

At midnight we were aroused by an alarm, and half an hour later we
were on the move already. The cool air of the night refreshed us, and
we got along fairly rapidly in spite of our exhaustion. At about four
o'clock in the morning we reached the village of Chepy. At that place
friend Mammon had evidently not been so merciful as at Chlons, for
Chepy had been thoroughly sacked. We rested for a short time, and
noticed with a rapid glance that preparations were just being made to
shoot two franctireurs. They were little peasants who were alleged to
have hidden from the Germans a French machine-gun and its crew.
The sentence was carried out. One was never at a loss in finding
reasons for a verdict. And the population had been shown who their
"master" was.

The little village of Pogny half-way between Chlons-sur-Marne and
Vitry-le-Franois, had fared no better than Chepy, as we observed
when we entered it at nine o'clock in the morning. We had now got
considerably nearer to the roaring guns. The slightly wounded who
were coming back and the men of the ammunition columns told us
that a terrible battle was raging to the west of Vitry-le-Franois. At four
o'clock in the afternoon we reached Vitry-le-Franois, after a veritable
forced march. The whole town was crowded with wounded; every
building, church, and school was full of wounded soldiers. The town
itself was not damaged.

Here things must have looked very bad for the Germans for, without
allowing us a respite, we were ordered to enter the battle to the west
of Vitry-le-Franois. We had approached the firing line a little more
than two miles when we got within reach of the enemy's curtain of
fire. A terrific hail of shells was ploughing up every foot of ground.
Thousands of corpses of German soldiers were witnesses of the
immense losses the Germans had suffered in bringing up all available
reserves. The French tried their utmost to prevent the Germans from
bringing in their reserves, and increased their artillery fire to an
unheard-of violence.

It seemed impossible for us to break through that barricade of fire.
Hundreds of shells were bursting very minute. We were ordered to
pass that hell singly and at a running pace. We were lying on the
ground and observed how the first of our men tried to get through.
Some ran forward like mad, not heeding the shells that were bursting
around them, and got through. Others were entirely buried by the dirt
dug up by the shells or were torn to pieces by shell splinters. Two
men had scarcely reached the line when they were struck by a bull's-
eye, i. e., the heavy shell exploded at their feet leaving nothing of
them.

Who can imagine what we were feeling during those harrowing
minutes as we lay crouching on the ground not quite a hundred feet
away, seeing everything, and only waiting for our turn to come? One
had entangled oneself in a maze of thoughts. Suddenly one of the
officers would cry, "The next one!" That was I! Just as if roused out of
a bad dream, I jump up and race away like mad, holding the rifle in
my right hand and the bayonet in my left. I jumped aside a few steps
in front of two bursting shells and run into two others which are
bursting at the same time. I leap back several times, run forward
again, race about wildly to find a gap through which to escape. But--
fire and iron everywhere. Like a hunted beast one seeks some
opening to save oneself. Hell is in front of me and behind me the
officer's revolver, kept ready to shoot. The lumps of steel fall down
like a heavy shower from high above. Hell and damnation! I blindly
run and run and run, until somebody gets me by my coat. "We're
there!" somebody roars into my ear. "Stop! Are you wounded? Have
a look; perhaps you are and don't know it?" Here I am trembling all
over. "Sit down; you will feel better; we trembled too." Slowly I
became more quiet. One after the other arrived; many were
wounded. We were about forty when the sergeants took over the
command. Nothing was again to be seen of the officers.

We proceeded and passed several German batteries. Many had
suffered great losses. The crews were lying dead or wounded around
their demolished guns. Others again could not fire as they had no
more ammunition. We rested. Some men of the artillery who had
"nothing to do" for lack of ammunition came up to us. A sergeant
asked why they did not fire. "Because we have used up all our
ammunition," a gunner replied. "0 yes, it would be quite impossible to
bring up ammunition through that curtain of fire." "It's not that,"
announced the gunner; "it's because there isn't any more that they
can't bring it up!" And then he went on: "We started at Neufchteau
to drive the French before us like hunted beasts; we rushed headlong
after them like savages. Men and beasts were used up in the heat; all
the destroyed railroads and means of transportation could not be
repaired in those few days; everything was left in the condition we
found it; and in a wild intoxication of victory we ventured to penetrate
into the heart of France. We rushed on without thinking or caring, all
the lines of communication in our rear were interrupted--we
confidently marched into the traps the French set for us. Before the
first ammunition and the other accessories, which had all to be
transported by wagon, have reached us we shall be all done for."

Up to that time we had had blind confidence in the invincible strategy
of our "Great General Staff," and now they told us this. We simply did
not believe it. And yet it struck us that the French (as was made clear
by everything around us) were in their own country, in the closest
proximity of their largest depot, Paris, and were in possession of
excellent railroad communications. The French were, besides,
maintaining a terrible artillery fire with guns of such a large size as
had never yet been used by them. All that led to the conclusion that
they had taken up positions prepared long before, and that the
French guns had been placed in such a manner that we could not
reach them.

In spite of all we continued to believe that the gunner had seen things
in too dark a light. We were soon to be taught better.




XII
At The Marne--In The Maw Of Death



We got in the neighborhood of the line of defense, and were received
by a rolling fire from the machineguns. We went up to the improvised
trenches that were to protect us, at the double-quick. It was raining
hard. The fields around were covered with dead and wounded men
who impeded the work of the defenders. Many of the wounded
contracted tetanus in consequence of contact with the clayey soil, for
most of them had not been bandaged. They all begged for water and
bread, but we had none ourselves. In fact, they implored us to give
them a bit of bread. They had been in that hell for two days without
having eaten a mouthful.

We had scarcely been shown our places when the French began to
attack in mass formation. The occupants of those trenches, who had
already beaten back several of those attacks, spurred us on to shoot
and then began to fire themselves into the on-rushing crowd as if
demented. Amidst the shouting and the noise one could hear the
cries of the officers of the infantry: "Fire! Fire! More lively!" We fired
until the barrels of our rifles became quite hot. The enemy turned to
flee. The heap of victims lying between us and our opponents had
again been augmented by hundreds. The attack had been beaten
back.

It was dark, and it rained and rained. From all directions one heard in
the darkness the wounded calling, crying, and moaning. The
wounded we had with us were likewise moaning and crying. All
wanted to have their wounds dressed, but we had no more
bandages. We tore off pieces of our dirty shirts and placed the rags
on those sickening wounds. Men were dying one after the other.
There were no doctors, no bandages; we had nothing whatever. You
had to help the wounded and keep the French off at the same time. It
was an unbearable, impossible state of things. It rained harder and
harder. We were wet to our skins. We fired blindly into the darkness.
The rolling fire of rifles increased, then died away, then increased
again. We sappers were placed among the infantry. My neighbor
gave me a dig in the ribs.

"I say," he called out.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Who are you?"

"A sapper."

"Come here," he hissed. "It gives you an uncanny feeling to be alone
in this hell of a night. Why are you here too?--They'll soon come
again, those over there; then there'll be fine fun again. Do you hear
the others cry?"

He laughed. Suddenly he began again: "I always shoot at those until
they leave off crying that's great fun."

Again he laughed, that time more shrilly than before.

I knew what was the matter. He had become insane. A man passed
with ammunition. I begged him to go at once and fetch the section
leader. The leader, a lieutenant of the infantry, came up. I went to
meet him and told him that my neighbor was continually, firing at the
wounded, was talking nonsense, and was probably insane. The
lieutenant placed himself between us. "Can you see anything?" he
asked the other man. "What? See? No; but I hear them moaning and
crying, and as soon as I hit one--well, he is quiet, he goes to sleep--"
The lieutenant nodded at me. He took the gun away from the man.
But the latter snatched it quickly away again and jumped out of the
trench. From there he fired into the crowd of wounded men until, a
few seconds after, he dropped down riddled by several bullets.

The drama had only a few spectators. It was scarcely over when it
was forgotten again. That was no place to become sentimental. We
continued shooting without any aim. The crying of the wounded
became louder and louder. Why was that so? Those wounded men,
lying between the two fighting lines, were exposed to the aimless fire
of both sides. Nobody could help them, for it would have been
madness to venture between the lines. Louder and more imploring
became the voices that were calling out, "Stretcherbearer! Help!
Help! Water!" For an answer they got at most a curse or a
malediction.

Our trench was filled with water for about a foot water and mud. The
dead and wounded lay in that mire where they had dropped. We had
to make room. So we threw the dead out of the trench. At one o'clock
in the night people came with stretchers and took away part of the
wounded. But there was no help at all for the poor fellows between
the lines.

To fill the cup of misery we received orders, in the course of the night,
to attack the enemy's lines at 4:15 o'clock in the morning. At the time
fixed, in a pouring rain, we got ready for storming. Received by a
terrible fire from the machine-guns we had to turn back half-way.
Again we had sacrificed uselessly a great number of men. Scarcely
had we arranged ourselves again in our trench when the French
began a new attack. They got as far as three yards from our trenches
when their attack broke down under our fire. They, too, had to go
back with enormous losses. Three times more the French attacked
within two hours, each time suffering great losses and achieving not
the slightest success.

We did not know what to do. If help did not arrive soon it would be
impossible for us to maintain our position. We were tormented by
hunger and thirst, were wet to the skin, and tired enough to drop
down. At ten o'clock the French attacked a fourth time. They came up
in immense masses. Our leaders recognized at last the danger in
which we were and withdrew us. We retreated in waves abandoning
the wounded and our material. By exerting our whole strength we
succeeded in saving the machine-guns and ammunition. We went
back a thousand yards and established ourselves again in old
trenches. The officers called to us that we should have to stay there
whatever happened; reinforcements would soon come up. The
machine-guns were in their emplacements in a jiffy. Our opponents,
who were following us, were immediately treated to a hail of bullets.
Their advance stopped at once. Encouraged by that success we
continued firing more wildly than ever so that the French were obliged
to seek cover. The reinforcements we had been promised did not
arrive. Some 800 yards behind us were six German batteries which,
however, maintained but a feeble fire.

An officer of the artillery appeared in our midst and asked the
commander of our section whether it would not be wise to withdraw
the batteries. He said he had been informed by telephone that the
whole German line was wavering. Before the commander had time to
answer another attack in mass formation took place, the enemy being
five or seven times as numerous as we were. As if by command, we
quitted our position without having been told to do so, completely
demoralized; we retired in full flight, leaving the six batteries (36 guns)
to the enemy. Our opponent had ceased his curtain of fire fearing to
endanger his own advancing troops. The Germans used that
moment to bring into battle reinforcements composed of a medley of
all arms. Portions of scattered infantry, dismounted cavalry, sappers
without a lord and master, all had been drummed together to fill the
ranks. Apparently there were no longer any proper complete reserve
formations on that day of battle.

Again we got the order, "Turn! Attention!"

The unequal fight started again. We observed how the enemy made
preparations to carry off the captured guns. We saw him advance to
the assault. He received us with the bayonet. We fought like wild
animals. For minutes there was bayonet fighting of a ferocity that
defies description. We stabbed and hit like madmen--through the
chest, the abdomen, no matter where. There was no semblance of
regular bayonet fighting; that, by the way, can only be practised in the
barracks yard. The butt-ends of our rifles swished through the air.
Every skull that came in our way was smashed-in. We had lost
helmets and knapsacks. In spite of his great numerical superiority the
enemy could not make headway against our little barrier of raving
humanity. We forgot all around us and fought bloodthirstily without
any calculation. A portion of our fellows had broken through the ranks
of the enemy, and fought for the possession of the guns.

Our opponent recognized the danger that was threatening him and
retired, seeking with all his might to retain the captured guns. We did
not allow ourselves to be shaken off, and bayoneted the retiring foes
one, after the other. But the whole mass of the enemy gathered again
round the guns. Every gun was surrounded by corpses, every minute
registered numerous victims. The artillery who took part in the fight
attempted to remove the breech-blocks of the guns. To my right,
around the third gun, three Germans were still struggling with four
Frenchmen; all the others, were lying on the ground dead or
wounded. Near that one gun were about seventy dead or wounded
men. A sapper could be seen before the mouth of the gun. With
astonishing coolness he was stuffing into the mouth of that gun one
hand grenade after another. He then lit the fuse and ran away.
Friends and enemies were torn into a thousand shreds by the terrible
explosion that followed. The gun was entirely demolished. Seventy or
eighty men had slaughtered each other for nothing--absolutely
nothing.

After a struggle lasting nearly one hour all the guns were again in our
possession. Who can imagine the enormous loss of human lives with
which those lost guns had been recaptured! The dead and wounded,
infantry, cavalry, sappers and artillery, together with the Frenchmen,
hundreds and hundreds of them, were covering the narrow space,
that comparatively small spot which had been the scene of the
tragedy.

We were again reinforced, that time by four regular companies of
infantry, which had been taken from another section of the battle-field.
Though one takes part in everything, one's view as an individual is
very limited, and one has no means of informing oneself about the
situation in general. Here, too, we found ourselves in a similar
situation. But those reinforcements composed of all arms, and the
later arrivals, who had been taken from a section just as severely
threatened as our own, gave us the presentiment that we could only
resist further attacks if fresh troops arrived soon. If only we could get
something to quiet the pangs of hunger and that atrocious thirst!

The horses of the guns now arrived at a mad gallop to take away the
guns. At the same moment the enemy's artillery opened a murderous
fire, with all sizes of guns, on that column of more than thirty teams
that were racing along. Confusion arose. The six horses of the
various teams reared and fled in all directions, drawing the
overturned limbers behind them with wheels uppermost. Some of the
maddest animals ran straight into the hottest fire to be torn to pieces
together with their drivers. Then our opponent directed his fire on the
battery positions which were also our positions. We had no other
choice--we had either to advance or retire. Retire? No! The order
was different. We were to recapture our lost first positions, now
occupied by the French, who were now probably getting ready for
another attack. Had we not received fresh food for cannon so that the
mad dance could begin again? We advanced across a field covered
with thousands upon thousands of torn and bleeding human bodies.

No shot was fired. Only the enemy's artillery was still bombarding the
battery positions. We were still receiving no fire from the artillery;
neither did the enemy's infantry fire upon us. That looked suspicious;
we knew what was coming. We advanced farther and farther without
being molested. Suddenly we found ourselves attacked by an army of
machine-guns. An indescribable hail of bullets was poured into us.
We threw ourselves to the ground and sought cover as well as we
could. "Jump forward! March, march!" Again we ran to meet our fate.
We had lost already more than a third of our men. We halted again,
exhausted. Scarcely had we had time to take up a position when we
were attacked both in front and the flank. We had no longer strength
enough to withstand successfully a simultaneous frontal and flank
attack. Besides, we were being almost crushed by superior numbers.
Our left wing had been completely cut off, and we observed our
people on that wing raising their hands to indicate that they
considered themselves prisoners of war. However, the French gave 
no quarter--exactly as we had acted on a former occasion. Not a
man of our left wing was spared; every one was cut down.

We in the center could give them no help. We were getting less from
minute to minute. "Revenge for Sommepy!" I heard it ringing in my
ears. The right wing turned, drew us along, and a wild stampede
began. Our direct retreat being cut off, we ran backwards across the
open field, every one for himself, with beating hearts that seemed
ready to burst, all the time under the enemy's fire.

After a long run we reached a small village to the northeast of Vitry-le-
Franois. There we arrived without rifles, helmets or knapsacks; one
after the other. But only a small portion could save themselves. The
French took plenty of booty. All the guns we fought for were lost,
besides several others. Of the hundreds of soldiers there remained
scarcely one hundred. All the others were dead, wounded or missing.
Who knew?

Was that the terrible German war machine? Were those the
cowardly, degenerated Frenchmen whom we had driven before us
for days? No; it was war, terrible, horrid war, in which fortune is fickle.
To-day it smiles upon you; to-morrow the other fellow's turn comes.

We sought to form up again in companies. There were just twelve
men left of our company. Little by little more came up from all
directions until at last we counted twenty. Then every one began to
ask questions eagerly; every one wanted to know about his friend,
mate, or acquaintance. Nobody could give an answer, for every one
of us had been thinking merely of himself and of nobody else. Driven
by hunger we roamed about the place. But our first action was
drinking water, and that in such quantities as if we wanted to drink
enough for a lifetime. We found nothing to eat. Only here and there in
a garden we discovered a few turnips which we swallowed with a
ravenous appetite without washing or even cleaning them
superficially.

But where was our company? Nobody knew. We were the company,
the twenty of us. And the officers? "Somewhere," a soldier observed,
"somewhere in a bomb-proof shelter." What were we to do? We did
not know. Soon after a sergeant-major of the field gendarmes came
up sitting proudly on his steed. Those "defenders of the Fatherland"
have to see to it that too many "shirkers" do not "loiter behind the
front." "You are sappers, aren't you?" he roared out. "What are you
doing here? 30th. Regiment?" He put a great many questions which
we answered as well as we were able to. "Where are the others?"
"Over there," said a young Berliner, and pointed to the battle-field,
"dead or prisoners; maybe some have saved themselves and are
elsewhere!" "It doesn't matter," roared out our fierce sergeant-major
for whom the conversation began to become unpleasant. "Wait till I
come back." "Where are the officers?" Again nobody could answer
him. "What are their names? I daresay I shall find them. Maybe they
are at Vitry?" We gave him their names--Captain Menke, First
Lieutenant Maier, Lieutenants of the Reserves Spahn, Neesen and
Heimbach. He gave us a certificate with which to prove the purpose
of our "loitering" to other overseers and disappeared. "Let's hope the
horse stumbles and the fellow breaks his neck." That was our pious
wish which one of our chaps sent after him.

We went into one of the houses that had been pillaged like all the
rest, lay down on mattresses that were lying about the rooms and
slept--slept like door-mice.




XIII
The Rout Of The Marne



None of us knew how long we had slept; we only knew that it was
night. Some men of our company had waked us up. They had been
looking for us for a long time. "Come along," they said; "the old man
is outside and making a hell of a row. He has got seventeen men
together and is swearing like a trooper because he can't find you."
Drowsily and completely bereft of any will-power of our own we
trudged after them. We knew we were again being sent forward.

But we did not care; we had lost all balance. Never before had I
noticed such indifference on our part as on that night.

There the old man was standing. He saw us coming up, without
headgear, the uniforms all torn to tatters, and minus our knapsacks.
He received us with the greeting, "Where have you been, you
boobies?" Nobody answered. What did we care? Things could not
get any worse than they were. Though all of us resented the wrong
done to us we all remained silent.

"Where is your equipment?--Lost?--Lost? That's a fine story. You
rag-tag miserable vagabonds.

"If they were all like you--" For a while he went on in that style. That
pretty fellow had suffered the "miserable vagabonds" to go forward
while he himself had been defending his "Fatherland" at Vitry, three
or four miles behind the front. We picked out the best from among the
rifles that were lying about, and, soon we were again "ready for
battle."

We were standing half-asleep, leaning on the barrel of our rifles and
waiting to be led forth again to slaughter, when a shot was fired right
in our midst. The bullet had shattered the entire right hand of a
"spoiled ensign," as the officers express themselves. His hand was
bandaged. "How did that happen?" asked the officers. An
eyewitness related the incident saying. "Like all of us he put his hand
on the mouth of the barrel when it happened; I did not see any more."
"Had he secured the gun? Don't you know that it is forbidden to lean
with your hand on the mouth of your rifle and that you have been
ordered to secure your rifle when it is loaded?" Then turning to the
"spoiled ensign," who was writhing with pain, he bawled at him: "I
shall report you for punishment on I account of gross negligence and
self-mutilation on the battle-field!"

We all knew what was the matter. The ensign was a sergeant, but a
poor devil. He was fully aware that he had no career before him. We
soldiers liked him because we knew that military life disgusted him.
Though he was a sergeant he chose his companions solely among
the common soldiers. We would have divided with him our last crust
of bread, because to us especially, he behaved like a fellow-man. We
also knew how harshly he was treated by his superiors, and
wondered that the "accident" had not happened before. I do not know
whether he was placed before a courtmartial later on. Punishments
for self-mutilation are the order of the day, and innumerable men are
being severely punished. Now and then the verdicts are made known
to the soldiers at the front to serve as a deterrent. The people at
home, however, will get to hear very little of them.

The captain passed on the command to an officer's representative,
and then the old man disappeared again in the direction of Vitry. He
spurred on his steed, and away he flew. One of the soldiers thought
that the captain's horse was a thousand times better off than we
were. We knew it. We knew that we were far below the beast and
were being treated accordingly.

We marched off and halted at the northwestern exit of the village.
There we met sappers gathered from other companies and
battalions, and our company was brought up to 85 men. The officer's
representative then explained to us that we should not be led into the
firing line that day; our only task was to watch that German troops
fighting on the other side of the Marne should find the existing
temporary bridges in order in case they had to retreat. We marched
to the place where the Saulx enters the Marne.

So we marched off and reached our destination towards six o'clock in
the morning. The dead were lying in heaps around us in every field;
death had gathered in a terrible harvest. We were lying on a wooded
height on our side of the Marne, and were able to overlook the
country for many miles in front of us. One could see the explosions of
the shells that were raining down by the thousand. Little, almost
nothing was to be seen of the men, and yet there were thousands in
front of us who were fighting a desperate battle. Little by little we could
make out the faint outline of the struggle. The Germans were about a
mile and a half behind the Marne in front of us. Near the banks of the
Marne large bodies of German cavalry were stationed. There were
only two tumble-down bridges constructed of make-shift materials.
They stood ready to be blown up, and had plenty of explosive matter
(dynamite) attached to them. The electrical priming wires led to our
position; we were in charge of the firing apparatus. Connected by
telephone we were able to blow up the bridges in an instant.

On the other side things began to get lively. We saw the French at
various places pressing forward and flowing back again. The rifle fire
increased continually in violence, and the attacks became more
frequent. Two hours passed in that way. We saw the French bringing
up reinforcement after reinforcement, in spite of the German artillery
which was maintaining but a feeble fire. After a long pause the enemy
began to attack again. The French came up in several lines. They
attacked several times, and each time they had to go back again;
each time they suffered great losses. At about three o'clock in the
afternoon our troops attacked by the enemy with all his strength,
began to give ground, slowly at first, then in a sort of flight. Our
exhausted men could no longer withstand the blow dealt with
enormous force. In a wild stampede all of them tried at the same time
to reach safety across the bridges. The cavalry, too, who were in
cover near the banks of the river, rushed madly to the bridges. An
enormous crowd of men and beasts got wedged before the bridges.
In a trice the bridge before us was thickly covered with human beings,
all of whom were trying to reach the opposite side in- a mad rush. We
thought we could notice the temporary bridge sway under its
enormous burden. Like ourselves the officer's representative could
overlook the whole country. He pressed the receiver of the telephone
convulsively to his left ear, his right hand being on the firing apparatus
after which another man was looking. With bated breath he gazed
fixedly into the fleeing crowds. "Let's hope the telephone is in order,"
he said to himself at intervals. He knew as well as we did that he had
to act as soon as the sharp order was transmitted by telephone. It
was not much he had to do. Directed by a movement of the hand the
man in charge of the apparatus would turn a key that looked like a
winged screw--and all would be over.

The crowds were still rushing across the bridge, but nearly half of our
men, almost the whole of the cavalry, were still on the other side. The
bridge farther up was not being used so much and nearly all had
reached safety in that portion of the battlefield. We observed the
foremost French cross that bridge, but the bridge remained intact.
The sergeant-major who was in charge of the other apparatus was
perplexed as he received no order; so he blew up that bridge on his
own responsibility sending hundreds of Frenchmen to their watery
grave in the river Marne.

At the same moment the officer's representative next to me received
the command to blow up the second and last bridge. He was
confused and hesitated to pass on the order. He saw that a great
crowd of Germans were still on the other side, he saw the struggles of
that mass of men in which every one was trying to be the first one to
reach the bridge and safety beyond. A terrible panic ensued. Many
soldiers threw themselves into the river and tried to swim across. The
mass of soldiers on the other side, still numbering several thousands,
were pressed harder and harder; the telephone messages were
becoming ever more urgent. All at once the officer's representative
jumped up, pushed aside the sapper in charge of the apparatus, and
in the next second a mighty explosion was heard. Bridge and men
were blown into the air for hundreds of yards. Like a river at times of
inundations the Marne was carrying away wood and men, tattered
uniforms and horses. Swimming across it was of no earthly use, and
yet soldiers kept throwing themselves into the river.

On the other side the French began to disarm completely the German
soldiers who could be seen standing there with hands uplifted.
Thousands of prisoners, innumerable horses and machine guns had
fallen into the hands of the enemy. Some of us were just going to
return with the firing apparatus which was now superfluous when we
heard the tale of the significance of the incident, confirming the
suspicions of many a one amongst us. An error had been committed,
that could not be undone! When the bridge higher up, that was being
used to a smaller degree by the soldiers, had been crossed by the
German troops and the enemy had immediately begun his pursuit,
the staff of officers in command at that passage intended to let a
certain number of enemies cross the bridge, i.e., a number that could
not be dangerous to the German troops who were in temporary
safety. Those hasty troops of the enemy could not have received any
assistance after the bridge had been blown up, and would have been
annihilated or taken prisoners. For that reason it was intended to
postpone the blowing up of the bridge.

However, the sergeant-major in charge of the firing apparatus
imagined, as his thoughts kept whirling through his head, that the
telephone wires must have been destroyed, and blew up on his own
initiative the bridge that was densely crowded with Frenchmen, before
our opponent succeeded in interrupting the wires., But at the same
time the officer's representative in charge of the firing apparatus of
the second bridge received an order, the words of which (as he later
himself confessed) were not at all clear to him, threw the receiver
aside, lost the absolutely necessary assurance, killed all the people
on the bridge, and delivered hundreds upon hundreds into the hands
of the enemy.

We had no time to gather any more detailed impressions, for we
received the order that all the men of our company were to gather at
Vitry before the cathedral. We began to sling our hook with a sigh of
relief, that time a little more quickly than ordinarily, for the enemy's
artillery was already beginning to sweep the country systematically.
We heard from wounded men of other sections, whom we met on the
way, that the French had crossed the Marne already at various
places. We discussed the situation among us, and found that we
were all of the same opinion. Even on Belgian territory we had
suffered heavy losses; every day had demanded its victims; our
ranks had become thinner and thinner; many companies had been
used up entirely and, generally speaking, all companies had suffered
severely. These companies, furnished and reduced to a minimum
strength, now found themselves opposed to an enemy excellently
provided with all necessaries. Our opponent was continually bringing
up fresh troops, and we were becoming fewer every hour. We began
to see that it was impossible for us to make a stand at that place.
Soldiers of the various arms confirmed again and again that things
were looking just as bad with them as with us, that the losses in men
and material were truly enormous. I found myself thinking of the "God
of the Germans. Had He cast them aside?" I thought it so loudly that
the others could hear me. "Well," one of them remarked, "whom God
wants to punish He first strikes with blindness. Perhaps He thought of
Belgium, of Drucharz, of Sommepy, of Suippes, and of so many other
things, and suffered us to rush into this ruin in our blind rage."

We reached Vitry. There the general misery seemed to us to be
greater than outside. There was not a single house in the whole town
that was not overcrowded with wounded men. Amidst all that misery
pillaging had not been forgotten. To make room for the wounded all
the warehouses had been cleared and their contents thrown into the
streets. The soldiers of the ambulance corps walked about, and
everything that was of value and that pleased them they annexed.
But the worst "hyenas" of the battle-field are to be found in the
ammunition and transport trains. The men of these two branches of
the army have sufficient room in their wagons to store things away.
The assertion is, moreover, proved by the innumerable confiscations,
by the German Imperial Post Office, of soldiers' parcels, all of them
containing gold rings, chains, watches, precious stones, etc. The
cases discovered in that or any other way are closely gone into and
the criminals are severely punished, but it is well known that only a
small percentage of the crimes see the light of day. What are a
thousand convictions or so for a hundred thousand crimes!

In Vitry the marauders' business was again flourishing. The soldiers
of the transport trains, above all, are in no direct danger in war.
Compared with the soldiers fighting at the front it is easy for them to
find food; besides, it is they who transport the provisions of the
troops. They know that their lives are not endangered directly and
that they have every reason to suppose that they will return
unscathed. To them war is a business, because they largely take
possession of all that is of any value. We could therefore
comprehend that they were enthusiastic patriots and said quite
frankly that they hoped the war would continue for years. Later on we
knew what had happened when the Emperor had made one of his
"rousing" speeches somewhere in the west and had found the
"troops" in an "excellent mood and full of fight." Among that sort of
troops there were besides the transport soldiers numerous cavalry
distributed among the various divisions, army corps staffs, and
general staffs.




XIV
The Flight From The Marne



We soon reached the cathedral and reported to Lieutenant Spahn
whom we found there. He, too, had defended his "Fatherland" in that
town. Clean shaven and faultlessly dressed, he showed up to great
advantage contrasted with us. There we stood in ragged, dirty, blood-
stained uniforms, our hair disheveled, with a growing beard covered
with clay and mud. We were to wait. That was all. We sat down and
gazed at the misery around us. The church was filled with wounded
men. Many died in the hands of the medical men. The dead were
carried out to make room for others. The bodies were taken to one
side where whole rows of them were lying already. We took the
trouble to count the dead, who had been mostly placed in straight
rows, and counted more than sixty. Some of them were in uniforms
that were still quite good, whilst our uniforms were nothing but rags
hanging from our backs. There were some sappers among them, but
their coats were not any better than our own.

"Let us take some infantry coats," somebody ventured; "what's the
difference? A coat is a coat." So we went and took the coats from
several bodies and tried them on. Taking off their clothes was no
easy job, for the corpses were already rigid like a piece of wood. But
what was to be done? We could not run about in our shirt-sleeves! All
did not find something to fit them, and the disappointed ones had to
wait for another chance to turn up. We also needed boots, of course;
but the corpses lying before our eyes had boots on that were not
much better than our own. They had worn theirs as long as we had
worn ours, but we thought we might just inspect them all the same.
We looked and found a pair of fairly good ones. They were very
small, but we guessed they might fit one or the other amongst us.
Two of us tried to remove them. "But they are a tight fit," one of the
two remarked. Two more came up to help. Two were holding the leg
of the dead man while the two others tugged at the boot. It was of no
use; the leg and the foot were so rigid that it was found impossible to
get the boot off. "Let it go," one of those holding the leg remarked,
"you will sooner pull off his leg than remove that boot." We let go just
as the doctor passed. "What are you doing there?" he asked us.
"We want to get some boots." "Then you will have to cut them open;
don't waste your time, the rigid leg will not release the boot." He
passed on. The situation was not complete without a brutal joke. An
infantryman standing near said, pointing to the dead, "Now you know
it; let them keep their old boots, they don't want to walk on their bare
feet." The joke was laughed at. And why not? Here we were out of
danger. What were the others to us? We were still alive and those
lying there could hear no longer. We saw no other things in war, and
better things we had not been taught.

It is true that on the way we had got some bread by begging for it, but
we were still quite hungry. Nothing was to be seen of our field kitchen.
The crew of our field kitchen and the foraging officer and sergeant
always preferred to defend their Fatherland several tens of miles
behind the front. What were others to them? What were we to them?
As long as they did not need to go within firing range of the artillery
they were content. Comradeship ceases where the field kitchen
begins.

There were, however, some field kitchens belonging to other parts of
the army. They had prepared meals, but could not get rid of the food;
even if their company, i.e., the rest of their company, should have
arrived they would have had far too much food. Many a one for whom
they had prepared a meal was no longer in need of one. Thus we
were most willingly given as much to eat as we wanted. We had
scarcely finished eating when we had to form up again. Gradually
several men of our company had come together. We lined up in a
manner one is used to in war. The "old man" arrived. One of the
officers reported the company to him, but evidently did not report the
number of the missing. Perhaps the old man did not care, for he did
not even ask whether we knew anything about the one or the other.
He stepped in front of the company and said (a sign of his good
temper), "Good morning, men!" (It was seven o'clock in the evening!)
As an answer he got a grunting noise such as is sometimes made by
a certain animal, and a sneering grin. Without much ado we were
ordered to go to the tool wagons which were standing near the
northern exit of the town, and provide ourselves with rifle ammunition
and three hand grenades each. "At half past nine to-night you have to
line up here; each man must have 500 cartridges, three hand
grenades, and fuses for igniting them; step aside!"

On our way to the implement wagons we noticed that everywhere
soldiers that had lost their companies were being drawn together and
that new formations were being gotten together with the greatest
speed. We felt that something was in the air, but could not tell what it
might be. The rain had started again and was coming down in
torrents. When we were at the appointed place at half past nine in the
evening we saw all the principal streets filled with troops, all of them in
storming outfit like ourselves. A storming outfit consists of a suit made
of cloth, a cap, light marching baggage, tent canvas, cooking utensils,
tentpegs, the iron ration, and, in the case of sappers, trench tools
also. During the day we got our "Klamotten," i.e., our equipment
together again. We were standing in the rain and waited. We did not
yet know what was going to happen. Then we were ordered to take
off the lock of our rifles and put them in our bread bags. The rifles,
could not now be used for shooting. We began to feel what was
coming, viz., a night attack with bayonets and hand grenades. So as
not to shoot each other in the dark we had to remove the lock from
the rifle. We stood there till about 11 o'clock when we were suddenly
ordered to camp. We did not know what the whole thing meant, and
were especially puzzled by the last order which was, however,
welcomed by all of us. We judged from the rolling thunder that the
battle had not yet decreased in violence, and the sky was everywhere
red from the burning villages and farm houses.

Returning "home" we gathered from the conversation the officers had
among themselves that a last attempt was to be made to repel the
French; that explained the night assault the order for which had now
been canceled. They had evidently made, or been obliged to make
another resolution at the general staff; perhaps they had recognized
that no more could be done and had rescinded the order for the
attack and decided upon a retreat, which began the next morning at 6
o'clock. We, however, had no idea that it should be our last night at
Vitry.

We lodged in a shanty for the night. Being sufficiently tired we were
soon in a deep slumber. We had to rise at four o'clock in the morning.
Each of us received a loaf of bread; we filled our water bottles, and
marched off. Whither we were marching we were not told, but we
guessed it. The remaining population of Vitry, too, seemed to be
informed; some were lining the streets, and their glances were
eloquent. Everywhere a feverish activity was to be observed. We
halted outside the town. The captain called us to gather round him
and addressed us as follows: "Our troops will evacuate their positions
on account of the difficult terrain, and retire to those heights where
they will take up new positions." In saying that he turned round and
pointed to a ridge near the horizon. He continued: "There we shall
settle down and expect the enemy. New reinforcements will arrive
there to-day, and some days hence you will be able to send a picture
postcard home from Paris." I must avow that the majority of us
believed that humbug at the time. Other portions of the army were
already arriving from all directions. We had been marching for some
hours when we heard that Vitry had already been occupied again by
the French and that all the material stored at Vitry, together with all
the hospitals, doctors and men, and whole companies of the medical
service had been taken there.

Towards two o'clock in the afternoon we reached the heights the
captain had shown us, but he had evidently forgotten everything, for
we marched on and on. Even the most stupid amongst us now began
to fear that we had been humbugged. The streets became ever more
densely crowded with retreating troops and trains; from all sides they
came and wanted to use the main road that was also being used by
us, and the consequence was that the road became too congested
and that we were continually pushed more to the rear. Munition
wagons raced past us, singly, without any organization. Order was no
longer observed. Canteen and baggage wagons went past, and here
already a wild confusion arose. Every moment there was a stop and
all got wedged. Many would not wait, and some wagons were driven
by the side of the road, through fields turned sodden by the rain, in an
attempt to get along. One wagon would be overturned, another one
would stick in the mud. No great trouble was taken to recover the
vehicles, the horses were taken out and the wagon was left. The
drivers took the horses and tried to get along; every one was intent
upon finding safety. Thus one incident followed upon another.

An officer came riding up and delivered an order to our captain. We
did not know what it was. But we halted and stepped into the field.
Having stacked our rifles we were allowed to lie down. We lay down
by the side of the road and gazed at the columns, field kitchens,
transports, medical trains, field post wagons, all filing past us in
picturesque confusion. Wounded men were lying or sitting on all the
vehicles. Their faces showed that riding on those heavy wagons
caused them pain. But they, too, wanted to get along at any price for
they knew from personal experience what it meant to fall into the
hands of an uncompromising enemy. They would perhaps be
considered as little as they and we ourselves had formerly considered
the wounded Frenchmen left in our hands. Because they knew this,
as all of us did, they did not want to be left behind for anything in the
world.

We had as yet not the slightest idea what we were to do. Night came
upon us, and it poured again in torrents. We lay on the ground and
felt very cold. Our tired bodies no longer gave out any heat. Yet we
stayed on the ground too tired to move. Sections of artillery now
began to arrive, but most of the batteries had no longer their full
number (6) of guns. One had lost three, another two; many guns
even arriving singly. Quite a number of limbers, some 50 or so,
passed without guns. Those batteries had only been able to save the
horses and had been obliged to leave the guns in the hands of the
French. Others had only two or four horses instead of six.

Presently some fifteen motorcars, fine solid cars, came along. We
gazed in astonishment at the strong, elegant vehicles. "Ah!" my
neighbors exclaimed, "the General Staff!" Duke Albrecht of
Wurttemberg and his faithful retainers! We were getting rebellious
again. Every one felt wild, and it rained curses. One man said, "After
having sent thousands to their doom they are now making off in
motorcars." We were lying in the swamp, and nobody noticed us. The
automobiles raced past and soon left all behind them. We were still
quite in the dark as to our purpose in that place. We lay there for
hours, till ten o'clock at night. The troops were surging back largely in
dissolved formations. Machine-gun sections arrived with empty
wagons; they had lost all their guns. In the west we heard the thunder
of guns coming nearer and nearer.

We did not know whether we were going to be sent into battle again
or not!

The confusion in the road became worse and worse and
degenerated in the darkness into a panic. Refugees, who were
wandering about with women and children in that dark night and in
the pouring rain, got under the wheels of wagons; wounded men in
flight were likewise crushed by the wheels; and cries for help came
from everywhere out of the darkness. The streets were badly worn.
Abandoned vehicles were lining the sides of the road. We began to
move at three o'clock in the morning, and before we were fully aware
of what was happening we found ourselves with the rear-guard.
Regiments of infantry, shot to pieces, arrived in a pitiful condition.
They had cast away their knapsacks and all unnecessary
impediments, and were trying to get along as fast as possible. Soon
after, the first shrapnel of the enemy began to burst above our heads,
which caused us to accelerate our march continually. The road, which
had also been used during the advance, was still marked by deep
shell holes that were filled with water to the very edge, for it rained
without interruption. It was pitch-dark, and every now and then
somebody would fall into one of those shell holes. We were all wet
through, but continued to press on. Some would stumble over
something in the dark, but nobody paid, any attention. The great thing
was to get along. Dead horses and men lay in the middle of the road,
but nobody took the trouble to remove the "obstacle."

It was almost light when we reached a small village and halted. The
whole place was at once occupied and put in a state of defense as
well as was possible. We took up positions behind the walls of the
cemetery.

Other troops arrived incessantly, but all in disorder, in a wild confused
jumble. Cavalry and artillery also arrived together with a machine-gun
section. These, however, had kept their formations intact; there was
some disorder, but no sign of panic. One could see that they had
suffered considerable losses though their casualties had not been as
heavy as ours. The enemy was bombarding us with his guns in an
increasing degree, but his fire had no effect. Some houses had been
hit and set alight by shells. Far away from us hostile cavalry patrols
showed themselves, but disappeared again. Everything was quiet.
Ten minutes afterwards things in front of us began to get lively; we
saw whole columns of the enemy approach. Without firing a shot we
turned and retired farther back. Mounted artillery were stationed
behind the village and were firing already into the advancing enemy.
A cavalry patrol came galloping across the open field, their horses
being covered with foam. We heard the leader of the patrol, an
officer, call out in passing to a cavalry officer that strong forces of the
enemy were coming on by all the roads. We left the village behind us
and sought to get along as quickly as possible. We had no idea
where we were. The cavalry and artillery sections that had been left
behind were keeping the enemy under fire. Towards noon shrapnel
was again exploding above our heads, but the projectiles were
bursting too high up in the air to do any damage to us. Yet it was a
serious warning to us, for it gave us to understand that the enemy
was keeping close on our heels--a sufficient reason to convert our 
retreat into a flight. We therefore tried to get away as fast as our tired
out bones would let us. We knew there was no chance of a rest to-
day. So we hurried on in the drenching rain.

The number of those who dropped by the way from exhaustion
became larger and larger. They belonged to various portions of the
army. We could not help them, and there were no more wagons;
these were more in front. Those unfortunate men, some of whom
were unconscious, were left behind just as the exhausted horses.
Those that had sufficient strength left crawled to the side of the road;
but the unconscious ones remained where they fell, exposed to the
hoofs of the horses and the wheels of the following last detachments.
If they were lucky enough not to be crushed to atoms they fell into the
hands of the enemy. Perhaps those who found our men were men
and acted accordingly, but if they were soldiers brutalized by war,
patriots filled with hatred, as could also be found in our own ranks,
then the "boche" (as the French say) had to die a miserable death by
the road, die for his "Fatherland." To our shame, be it said, we knew it
from our own experience, and summoned all our energy so as not to
be left behind. I was thinking of the soldier of the Foreign Legion lying
in the desert sand, left behind by his troop and awaiting the hungry
hyenas.

The road was covered with the equipment the soldiers had thrown
away. We, too, had long ago cast aside all unnecessary ballast. Thus
we were marching, when we passed a wood densely packed with
refugees. Those hunted people had stretched blankets between the
trees so as to protect themselves from the rain. There they were lying
in the greatest conceivable misery, all in a jumble, women and men,
children and graybeards. Their camp reached as far as the road, and
one could observe that the terrible hours they had lived through had
left deep furrows in their faces. They looked at us with weary, tired
eyes. The children begged us to give them some bread, but we had
nothing whatsoever left and were ourselves tormented by hunger.
The enemy's shrapnel was still accompanying us, and we had
scarcely left the wood when shrapnel began to explode there, which
caused the refugees, now exposed to the fire, to crowd into the fields
in an attempt to reach safety. Many of them joined us, but before long
they were forbidden to use the road because they impeded the
retreat of the troops. Thus all of them were driven without pity into the
fields soaked by the rain.

When we came to a pillaged village towards the evening we were at
last granted a short rest, for in consequence of our quick marching
we had disengaged ourselves almost completely from the enemy.
We heard the noise of the rear-guard actions at a considerable
distance behind us, and we wished that they would last a long time,
for then we could rest for a longer period. From that village the head
man and two citizens were carried off by the Germans, the three
being escorted by cavalry. We were not told why those people were
being taken along, but each place had to furnish such "hostages,"
whole troops of whom were being marched off. The remaining cattle
had also been taken along; troopers were driving along the cattle in
large droves. We were part of the rear-guard. It is therefore easy to
understand why we found no more eatables. Hunger began to plague
us more and more. Not a mouthful was to be had in the village we
had reached, and without having had any food we moved on again
after half an hour's rest.

We had marched two miles or so when we came upon a former
camping place. Advancing German troops had camped there about a
week ago. The bread that had evidently been plentiful at that time
now lay scattered in the field. Though the bread had been lying in the
open for about a week and had been exposed to a rain lasting for
days, we picked it up and swallowed it ravenously. As long as those
pangs of hunger could be silenced, it mattered little what it was that
one crammed into one's stomach.




XV
At The End Of The Flight



Night fell again, and there was still no prospect of sleep and
recuperation. We had no idea of how far we had to retire. Altogether
we knew very little of how things were going. We saw by the strange
surroundings that we were not using the same road on which we had
marched before to the Marne as "victors." "Before!" It seemed to us
as if there was an eternity between that "before" and the present
time, for many a one who was with us then was now no longer among
us.

One kept thinking and thinking, one hour chased the other.
Involuntarily one was drawn along. We slept whilst walking. Our boots
were literally filled with water. Complaining was of no use. We had to
keep on marching. Another night past. Next morning troops belonging
to the main army were distributed among the rear-guard. In long
columns they were lying by the side of the road to let us pass in order
to join up behind. We breathed a sigh of relief, for now we were no
longer exposed to the enemy's artillery fire. After a march of some
five hours we halted and were lucky enough to find ourselves close to
a company of infantry that had happily saved its field kitchen.

After the infantrymen had eaten we were given the rest, about a pint
of bean soup each. Some sappers of our company were still among
that section of the infantry. They had not been able to find us and had
joined the infantry. We. thought they were dead or had been taken
prisoners, but they had only been scattered and had lost their way.
We had hopes to recover still many a one of our missing comrades in
a similar manner, but we found only a few more afterwards. In the
evening of the same day we saw another fellow of our company
sitting on the limber of the artillery. When he saw us he joined us
immediately and told us what had happened to him. The section he
belonged to had its retreat across the Marne cut off; nearly all had
been made prisoners already and the French were about to disarm
them when he fled and was lucky enough to reach the other side of
the Marne by swimming across the river. He, too, could not or did not
want to find our company, and joined the artillery so as not to be
forced to walk, so he explained. Our opinion was that he would have
done better by remaining a prisoner, for in that case the murdering
business would have ended as far as he was concerned. We told him
so, and he agreed with us. "However," he observed, "is it sure that
the French would have spared us? I know how we ourselves acted;
and if they had cut us down remorselessly we should now be dead.
Who could have known it?" I knew him too well not to be aware that
he for one had every reason to expect from the enemy what he had
often done in his moments of bloodthirst; when he was the "victor" he
knew neither humanity nor pity.

It was not yet quite dark when we reached a large village. We were to
find quarters there and rest as long as was possible. But we knew
well enough that we should be able to rest only for as long as the
rearguard could keep the enemy back. Our quarters were in the
public school, and on account of the lack of food we were allowed to
consume our iron rations. Of course, we had long ago lost or eaten
that can of meat and the little bag of biscuits. We therefore lay down
with rumbling stomachs.

Already at 11 o'clock in the night alarm was sounded. In the greatest
hurry we had to get ready to march off, and started at once. The night
was pitch-dark, and it was still raining steadily. The officers kept on
urging us to hurry up, and the firing of rifles told us that the enemy
was again close at our heels. At day-break we passed the town of St.
Menehould which was completely intact. Here we turned to the east,
still stubbornly pursued by the French, and reached Clermont-en-
Argonne at noon. Again we got some hours of rest, but in the evening
we had to move on again all night long in a veritable forced march.
We felt more tired from hour to hour, but there was no stopping.

The rain had stopped when we left the road at ten o'clock in the
morning and we were ordered to occupy positions. We breathed
again freely, for that exhausting retreat lasting for days had reduced
us to a condition that was no longer bearable. So we began to dig
ourselves in. We had not half finished digging our trenches when a
hail of artillery projectiles was poured on us. Fortunately we lost but
few men, but it was impossible to remain any longer, and we were
immediately ordered to retreat. We marched on over country roads,
and it was dark when we began to dig in again. We were in the
neighborhood of Challerange quite near the village of Cerney-en-
Dormois. It was very dark and a thick mist surrounded us. We
soldiers had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the enemy. As
quickly as possible we tried to deepen our trench, avoiding every
unnecessary noise. Now and then we heard secret patrols of the
enemy approach, only to disappear again immediately.

It was there we got our first reinforcements. They came up in the dark
in long rows, all of them fresh troops and mostly men of the landwehr,
large numbers of whom were still in blue uniforms. By their uniforms
and equipment one could see that the men had been equipped and
sent off in great haste. They had not yet heard the whistle of a bullet,
and were anxiously inquiring whether the place was dangerous. They
brought up numerous machine-guns and in a jiffy we had prepared
everything for the defense.

We could not get to know where the French were supposed to be.
The officers only told us to keep in our places. Our trench was thickly
crowded with men, and provided with numerous machine-guns. We
instructed the new arrivals in the way they would have to behave if an
attack should be made, and told them to keep quite still and cool
during the attack and aim accurately.

They were mostly married men that had been dragged from their
occupations and had been landed right in our midst without
understanding clearly what was happening to them. They had no idea
where, in what part of the country they were, and they overwhelmed
us with all sorts of questions. They were not acquainted with the
handling of the new 98-rifle. They were provided with a remodeled
rifle of the 88 pattern for which our ammunition could be used.
Though no shots were fired the "new ones" anxiously avoided putting
their heads above the edge of the trench. They provided us liberally
with eatables and cigars.

It was getting light, and as yet we had not seen much of the enemy.
Slowly the mist began to disappear, and now we observed the
French occupying positions some hundred yards in front of us. They
had made themselves new positions during the night exactly as we
had done. Immediately firing became lively on both sides. Our
opponent left his trench and attempted an attack, but our great mass
of machine-guns literally mowed down his ranks. An infernal firing had
set in, and the attack was beaten off after only a few steps had been
made by the opposing troops. The French renewed their attack again
and again, and when at noon we had beaten back eight assaults of
that kind hundreds upon hundreds of dead Frenchmen were covering
the ground between our trenches and theirs. The enemy had come to
the conclusion that it was impossible to break down our iron wall and
stopped his attacks.

At that time we had no idea that this was to be the beginning of a
murderous exhausting war of position, the beginning of a slow,
systematic, and useless slaughter. For months and months we were
to fight on in the same trench, without gaining or losing ground, sent
forward again and again to murder like raving beasts and driven back
again. Perhaps it was well that we did not know at that time that
hundreds of thousands of men were to lose their lives in that
senseless slaughter.

The wounded men between the trenches had to perish miserably.
Nobody dared help them as the opposing side kept up their fire. They
perished slowly, quite slowly. Their cries died away after long hours,
one after the other. One man after the other had lain down to sleep,
never to awake again. Some we could hear for days; night and day
they begged and implored one to assist them, but nobody could help.
Their cries became softer and softer until at last they died away--all
suffering had ceased. There was no possibility of burying the dead.
They remained where they fell for weeks. The bodies began to
decompose and spread pestilential stenches, but nobody dared to
come and bury the dead. If a Frenchman showed himself to look for a
friend or a brother among the dead he was fired at from all directions.
His life was dearer to him and he never tried again. We had exactly
the same experience. The French tried the red cross flag. We
laughed and shot it to pieces. The impulse to shoot down the
"enemy" suppressed every feeling of humanity, and the "red cross"
had lost its significance when raised by a Frenchman. Suspicion was
nourished artificially, so that we thought the "enemy" was only
abusing the flag; and that was why we wanted to shoot him and the
flag to bits.

But we ourselves took the French for barbarians because they paid
us back in kind and prevented us from removing our own wounded
men to safety. The dead remained where they were, and when ten
weeks later we were sent to another part of the front they were still
there.

We had been fortunate in beating back all attacks and had inflicted
enormous losses upon the enemy without having ourselves lost
many dead or wounded men. Under those circumstances no further
attack was to be expected for the time being. So we employed all our
strength to fortify our position as strongly as possible. Half of the men
remained in their places, and the other half made the trenches wider
and deeper. But both sides maintained a continuous lively fire. The
losses we suffered that day were not especially large, but most of the
men who were hit were struck in the head, for the rest of the body
was protected by the trench.

When darkness began to descend the firing increased in violence.
Though we could not see anything we fired away blindly because we
thought the enemy would not attempt an attack in that case. We had
no target and fired always in the direction of the enemy's trench.
Throughout the night ammunition and materials were brought up, and
new troops kept arriving. Sand bags were brought in great quantities,
filled and utilized as cover, as a protection from the bullets. The
sappers were relieved towards morning. We had to assemble at a
farm behind the firing line. The farmhouse had been completely
preserved, and all the animals were still there; but that splendor was
destined to disappear soon. Gradually several hundreds of soldiers
collected there, and then began a wild chase after ducks, geese,
pigeons, etc. The feathered tribe, numbering more than 500 head,
had been captured in a few hours, and everywhere cooking
operations were in full swing.

There were more than eighty cows and bullocks in a neighboring
field. All of them were shot by the soldiers and worked into food by
the field kitchens. In that place everything was taken. Stores of hay
and grain had been dragged away in a few hours. Even the straw
sheds and outbuildings were broken up, the wood being used as fuel.
In a few hours that splendid farm had become a wreck, and its
proprietor had been reduced to beggary. I had seen the owner that
morning, but he had suddenly disappeared with his wife and children,
and nobody knew whither. The farm was within reach of the artillery
fire, and the farmer sought safety somewhere else. Not a soul cared
where he had gone.

Rifle bullets, aimed too high, were continually flying about us, but
nobody cared in the least though several soldiers had been hit. A
man of our company, named Mertens, was sitting on the ground
cleaning his rifle when he was shot through the neck; he died a few
minutes after. We buried him in the garden of the farm, placed his
helmet on his grave, and forgot all about him.

Near the farm a German howitzer battery was in position. The battery
was heavily shelled by the enemy. Just then a munition train
consisting of three wagons came up to carry ammunition to the
battery. We had amongst us a sergeant called Luwie, from Frankfort-
on-the-Main. One of his brothers, also a sergeant, was in the column
that was passing by. That had aroused our interest, and we watched
the column to see whether it should succeed in reaching the battery
through the fire the enemy was keeping up. Everything seemed to go
along all right when suddenly the sergeant, the brother of the sapper
sergeant, was hit by a shell and torn to pieces, together with his
horse. All that his own brother was watching. It was hard to tell what
was passing through his mind. He was seen to quiver. That was all;
then he stood motionless. Presently he went straight to the place of
the catastrophe without heeding the shells that were striking
everywhere, fetched the body of his brother and laid it down. Part of
the left foot of the dead man was missing and nearly the whole right
leg; a piece of shell as big as a fist stuck in his chest. He laid down
his brother and hurried back to recover the missing limbs. He brought
back the leg, but could not find the foot that had been torn off. When
we had buried the mangled corpse the sergeant borrowed a map of
the general staff from an officer and marked the exact spot of the
grave so as to find it again after the war.

The farmhouse had meanwhile been turned into a bandaging station.
Our losses increased very greatly judging from the wounded men
who arrived in large numbers. The farmhouse offered a good target
to the enemy's artillery. Though it was hidden by a hillock some very
high poplars towered above that elevation. We felled those trees.
Towards evening we had to go back to the trench, for the French
were renewing their attacks, but without any effect. The fresh troops
were all very excited, and it was hard for them to get accustomed to
the continued rolling rifle fire. Many of them had scarcely taken up
their place when they were killed. Their blue uniforms offered a good
target when they approached our positions from behind.

At night it was fairly quiet, and we conversed with the new arrivals.
Some of them had had the chance of remaining in garrison service,
but had volunteered for the front. Though they had had only one day
in the firing line they declared quite frankly that they repented of their
decision. They had had quite a different idea of what war was like,
and believed it an adventure, had believed in the fine French wine,
had dreamt of some splendid castle where one was quartered for
weeks; they had thought that one would get as much to eat and drink
as one wished. It was war, and in war one simply took what one
wanted.

Such nonsense and similar stuff they had heard of veterans of the
war of 1870-71, and they had believed that they went forward to a life
of adventure and ease. Bitterly disappointed they were now sitting in
the rain in a dirty trench, with a vast army of corpses before them.
And every minute they were in danger of losing their life! That was a
war quite different from the one he had pictured to themselves. They
knew nothing of our retreat and were therefore not a little surprised
when we related to them the events of the last few days.




XVI
The Beginning Of Trench Warfare



On the next morning, at daybreak, we quitted the trench again in
order to rest for two days. We went across the fields and took up
quarters at Cerney-en-Dormois. We lodged in one of the abandoned
houses in the center of the village. Our field kitchen had not yet
arrived, so we were obliged to find our own food. Members of the
feathered tribe were no longer to be discovered, but if by any chance
a chicken showed its head it was immediately chased by a score of
men. No meat being found we resolved to be vegetarians for the time
being, and roamed through the gardens in search of potatoes and
vegetables. On that expedition we discovered an officer's horse tied
to a fence. We knew by experience that the saddle bags of officers'
horses always concealed something that could be eaten. We were
hungry enough, and quickly resolved to lead the horse away. We
searched him thoroughly under "cover," and found in the saddle bags
quite a larder of fine foodstuffs, butter and lard among them. Then we
turned the horse loose and used the captured treasure to prepare a
meal, the like of which we had not tasted for a long time.

It tasted fine in spite of our guilty conscience. One man made the fire,
another peeled the potatoes, etc. Pots and a stove we found in one
of the kitchens of the houses in the neighborhood.

Towards evening long trains with provisions and endless rows of
fresh troops arrived. In long columns they marched to the front and
relieved the exhausted men. Soon the whole place was crowded with
soldiers. After a two days' rest we had to take up again the regular
night duties of the sapper. Every night we had to visit the position to
construct wire entanglements. The noise caused by the ramming in of
the posts mostly drew the attention of the French upon us, and thus
we suffered losses almost every night. But our rest during the
daytime was soon to be put an end to, for the enemy's artillery began
to shell the place regularly. Curiously enough, the shelling took place
always at definite hours. Thus, at the beginning, every noon from 12
to 2 o'clock from fifty to eighty shells used to fall in the place. At times
the missiles were shrapnel from the field artillery. One got
accustomed to it, though soldiers of other arms were killed or
wounded daily. Once we were lying at noon in our lodgings when a
shrapnel shell exploded in our room, happily without doing any
damage. The whole room was filled with dust and smoke, but not one
troubled to leave his place. That sort of shooting was repeated almost
daily with increasing violence. The remaining inhabitants of the
village, mostly old people, were all lodged in a barn for fear of
espionage. There they were guarded by soldiers. As the village was
being bombarded always at certain hours the officer in command of
the place believed that somebody in the village communicated with
the enemy with a hidden telephone. They even went so far as to
remove the hands of the church clock, because somebody had seen
quite distinctly "that the hands of the clock (which was not going) had
moved and were pointing to 6 and immediately afterwards to 5."

Of course, the spy that had signaled to the enemy by means of the
church clock could be discovered as little as the man with the
concealed telephone. But in order to be quite sure to catch the "real"
culprit all the civilians were interned in the barn. Those civilian
prisoners were provided with food and drink like the soldiers, but like
the soldiers they were also exposed to the daily bombardment, which
gradually devastated the whole village. Two women and a child had
already been killed in consequence and yet the people were not
removed. Almost daily a house burned down at some spot or other in
the village, and the shells now began falling at 8 o'clock in the
evening. The shells were of a large size. We knew exactly that the
first shell arrived punctually at 8 o'clock, and we left the place every
night. The whole village became empty, and exactly at 8 o'clock the
first shell came buzzing heavily over to our side. At short intervals,
fourteen or sixteen at the most, but never more, followed it. Those
sixteen we nicknamed the "iron portion." Our opinion was that the gun
was sent forward by the French when it became dark, that it fired a
few shots, and was then taken to the rear again. When we returned
from our "walk," as we called that nightly excursion, we had to go to
our positions. There we had to perform all imaginable kinds of work.
One evening we had to fortify a small farm we had taken from the
French the day before. We were to construct machine-gun
emplacements. The moon was shining fairly brightly. In an adjoining
garden there were some fruit trees, an apple tree among them, with
some apples still attached to it. A Frenchman had hanged himself on
that tree. Though the body must have hung for some days--for it 
smelled considerably--some of our sappers were eager to get the
apples. The soldiers took the apples without troubling in the least
about the dead man.

Near that farm we used mine throwers for the first time. The
instruments we used there were of a very primitive kind. They
consisted of a pipe made of strong steel plate and resting on an iron
stand. An unexploded shell or shrapnel was filled with dynamite,
provided with a fuse and cap, and placed in the tube of the mine
thrower. Behind it was placed a driving charge of black powder of a
size corresponding with the distance of the target and the weight of
the projectile. The driving charge, too, was provided with a fuse that
was of such a length that the explosion was only produced after the
man lighting the fuse had had time to return to a place of safety. The
fuse of the mine was lit at the same time as the former, but was of a
length commensurate with the time of flight of the mine, so as to
explode the latter when the mine struck the target, or after a
calculated period should the mark be missed. The driving charge
must be of such strength that it throws the projectile no farther than is
intended. The mine thrower is not fired horizontally but at a steep
angle. The tube from which the mine is fired is, for instance, placed at
an angle of 45 degrees, and receives a charge of fifteen grammes of
black powder when the distance is 400 yards.

It happens that the driving charge does not explode, and the
projectile remains in the tube. The fuse of the mine continues
burning, and the mine explodes in the tube and demolishes the stand
and everything in its neighborhood. When we used those mine
throwers here for the first time an accident of the kind described
happened. Two volunteers and a sapper who were in charge of the
mine thrower in question thought the explosion took too long a time.
They believed it was a miss. When they had approached to the
distance of some five paces the mine exploded and all three of them
were wounded very severely. We had too little experience in the
management of mine throwers. They had been forgotten, had long
ago been thrown on the junk heap, giving way to more modern
technical appliances of war. Thus, when they suddenly cropped up
again during the war of position, we had to learn their management
from the beginning. The officers, who understood those implements
still less than we ourselves did, could not give us any hints, so it was
no wonder that accidents like the foregoing happened frequently.

Those mine throwers cannot be employed for long distances; at 600
yards they reach the utmost limit of their effectiveness.

Besides handling the mine throwers we had to furnish secret patrols
every night. The chief purpose of those excursions was the
destruction of the enemy's defenses or to harry the enemy's sentries
so as to deprive them of sleep.

We carried hand grenades for attack and defense. When starting on
such an excursion we were always instructed to find out especially
the number of the army section that an opponent we might kill
belonged to. The French generally have their regimental number on
the collars of their coat or on their cap. So whenever we "spiflicated"
one and succeeded in getting near him we would cut that number out
of his coat with a knife or take away his coat or cap. In that way the
German army command identified the opposing army corps. They
thus got to know exactly the force our opponent was employing and
whether his best troops were in front of us. All of us greatly feared
those night patrols, for the hundreds of men killed months ago were
still lying between the lines. Those corpses were decomposed to a
pulp. So when a man went on nocturnal patrol duty and when he had
to crawl in the utter darkness on hands and knees over all those
bodies he would now and then land in the decomposed faces of the
dead. If then a man happened to have a tiny wound in his hands his
life was greatly endangered by the septic virus. As a matter of fact
three sappers and two infantrymen of the landwehr regiment No. 17
died in consequence of poisoning by septic virus. Later on that kind of
patroling was given up or only resorted to in urgent cases, and only
such men were employed who were free of wounds. That led to
nearly all of us inflicting skin wounds to ourselves to escape patrol
duty.

Our camping place, Cerney-en-Dormois, was still being bombarded
violently by the enemy every day. The firing became so heavy at last
that we could no longer sleep during the day. The large shells
penetrated the houses and reached the cellars. The civilian prisoners
were sent away after some had been killed by shells. We ourselves,
however, remained in the place very much against our inclination in
spite of the continuous bombardment. Part of our company lived in a
large farmhouse, where recently arrived reserves were also lodged.
One day, at noon, the village was suddenly overwhelmed by a hail of
shells of a large size. Five of them struck the farmhouse mentioned,
almost at the same time. All the men were resting in the spacious
rooms. The whole building was demolished, and our loss consisted of
17 dead and 98 wounded men. The field kitchen in the yard was also
completely destroyed. Without waiting for orders we all cleared out of
the village and collected again outside. But the captain ordered us to
return to the place because, so he said, he had not yet received
orders from the divisional commander to evacuate the village.
Thereupon we went back to our old quarters and embarked again on
a miserable existence. After living in the trenches during the night, in
continual danger of life, we arrived in the morning, after those hours
of trial, with shattered nerves, at our lodgings. We could not hope to
get any rest and sleep, for the shells kept falling everywhere in the
village. In time, however, one becomes accustomed to everything.
When a shell came shrieking along we knew exactly whereabout it
would strike. By the sound it made we knew whether it was of large or
small size and whether the shell, having come down, would burst or
not. Similarly the soldiers formed a reliable judgment in regard to the
nationality of an aeroplane. When an aeroplane was seen at a great
distance near the horizon the soldiers could mostly say exactly
whether it was a German or a French flying machine. It is hard to say
by what we recognized the machines. One seems to feel whether it is
a friend or a foe that is coming. Of course, a soldier also remembers
the characteristic noise of the motor and the construction of the
aeroplane.

When a French flier passed over our camp the streets would quickly
empty themselves. The reason was not that we were afraid of the
flying man; we disappeared because we knew that a bombardment
would follow after he had landed and reported. We left the streets so
as to convey the impression that the place was denuded of troops.
But the trick was not of much use. Every day houses were set alight,
and the church, which had been furnished as a hospital, was also
struck several times.

Up to that time it had been comparatively quiet at the front. We had
protected our position with wide wire entanglements. Quite a maze of
trenches, a thing that defies description, had been constructed. One
must have seen it in order to comprehend what immense masses of
soil had been dug up.

Our principal position consisted of from 6 to 8 trenches, one behind
the other and each provided with strong parapets and barbed wire
entanglements; each trench had been separately fortified. The
distance between the various trenches was sometimes 20 yards,
sometimes a hundred and more, all according to the requirements of
the terrain. All those positions were joined by lines of approach.
Those connecting roads are not wide, are only used by the relieving
troops and for transporting purposes, and are constructed in a way
that prevents the enemy from enfilading them; they run in a zigzag
course. To the rear of the communication trenches are the shelters of
the resting troops (reserves). Two companies of infantry, for instance,
will have to defend in the first trench a section of the front measuring
some two hundred yards. One company is always on duty, whilst the
other is resting in the rear. However, the company at rest must ever
be ready for the firing line and is likely to be alarmed at any minute for
service at a moment's notice should the enemy attack. The company
is in telephonic communication with the one doing trench duty.
Wherever the country (as on swampy ground) does not permit the
construction of several trenches and the housing of the reserves the
latter are stationed far in the rear, often in the nearest village. In such
places, relieving operations, though carried out only at night are very
difficult and almost always accompanied by casualties.

Relief is not brought up at fixed hours, for the enemy must be
deceived. But the enemy will be informed of local conditions by his
fliers, patrols or the statements of prisoners, and will keep the country
under a continual heavy curtain fire, so that the relieving troops
coming up across the open field almost always suffer losses. Food
and ammunition are also forwarded at night. The following incident
will illustrate the difficulty even one man by himself experiences in
approaching such positions.

Myself, a sergeant, and three others had been ordered on secret
patrol duty one night. Towards ten o'clock we came upon the line of
the curtain fire. We were lying flat on the ground, waiting for a
favorable opportunity to cross. However, one shell after the other
exploded in front of us, and it would have been madness to attempt
to pass at that point. Next to me lay a sapper of my own annual
military class; nothing could be seen of the sergeant and the two
other privates. On a slight elevation in front of us we saw in the
moonlight the shadowy forms of some persons who were lying flat on
the ground like ourselves. We thought it impossible to pass here. My
mate, pointing to the shapes before us said, "There's Sergeant
Mertens and the others; I think I'll go up to them and tell him that we
had better wait a while until it gets more quiet." "Yes; do so," I replied.
He crawled to the place on his hands and knees, and I observed him
lying near the others. He returned immediately. The shapes turned
out to be four dead Frenchmen of the colonial army, who had been
there for weeks. He had only seen who they were when he received
no answer to his report. The dead thus lay scattered over the whole
country. Nothing could be seen of the sergeant and the other men.
So we seized a favorable opportunity to slip through, surrounded by
exploding shells. We could find out nothing about our companions.
Our search in the trench was likewise unsuccessful; nobody could
give us the slightest information though sappers were well known
among the infantry, because we had to work at all the points of the
front. An hour later the relieving infantry arrived. They had lost five
men in breaking through the barrier fire. Our sergeant was among the
wounded they brought in. Not a trace was ever found of the two other
soldiers. Nobody knew what had become of them.

Under such and similar conditions we spent every night outside. We
also suffered losses in our camp almost every day. Though reserves
from our garrison town had arrived twice already our company had a
fighting strength of only 75 men. But at last we cleared out of the
village, and were stationed at the village of Boucoville, about a mile
and a half to the northeast of Cerney-en-Dormois. Cerney-en-
Dormois was gradually shelled to pieces, and when at night we had to
go to the trench we described a wide circle around that formerly
flourishing village.

At Boucoville we received the first letters from home by the field post.
They had been on their journey for a long, long time, and arrived
irregularly and in sheaves. But many were returned, marked,
"Addressee killed," "Addressee missing," "Wounded." However,
many had to be marked, "Addressee no longer with the army
detachment." They could not quite make out the disappearance of
many "addressees," but many of us had just suspicions about them,
and we wished good luck to those "missing men" in crossing some
neutral frontier.

The letters we received were dated the first days of August, had
wandered everywhere, bore the stamps of various field post-offices
and, in contrast with the ones we received later on, were still full of
enthusiasm. Mothers were not yet begging their sons not to risk their
lives in order to gain the iron cross; that imploring prayer should arrive
later on again and again. It was also at that place that we received
the first of those small field post-parcels containing cigars and
chocolate.

After staying some ten weeks in that part of the country we were
directed to another part of the front. Nobody knew, however, whither
we were going to be sent. It was all the same to us. The chance of
getting out of the firing line for a few days had such a charm for us
that our destination did not concern us in the least. It gave us a
wonderful feeling of relief, when we left the firing zone on our march
to the railroad station at Challerange. For the first time in a long period
we found ourselves in a state of existence where our lives were not
immediately endangered; even the most far-reaching guns could no
longer harm us. A man must have lived through such moments in
order to appreciate justly the importance of such a feeling. However
much one has got accustomed to being in constant danger of one's
life, that danger never ceases to oppress one, to weigh one down.

At the station we got into a train made up of second and third-class
coaches. The train moved slowly through the beautiful autumnal
landscape, and for the first time we got an insight into the life behind
the front. All the depots, the railroad crossings and bridges were held
by the military. There all the men of the landsturm were apparently
leading quite an easy life, and had made themselves comfortable in
the depots and shanties of the road-men. They all looked well
nourished and were well clad. Whenever the train stopped those
older men treated us liberally to coffee, bread, and fruit. They could
see by our looks that we had not had the same good time that they
were having. They asked us whence we came. Behind the front
things were very lively everywhere. At all the larger places we could
see long railway trains laden with agricultural machinery of every
description. The crew of our train were men of the Prusso-Hessian
state railroads. They had come through those parts many times
before, and told us that the agricultural machines were being
removed from the whole of the occupied territory and sent to East
Prussia in order to replace what the Russians had destroyed there.
The same was being done with all industrial machinery that could be
spared. Again and again one could observe the finest machines on
their way to Germany.

Towards midnight we passed Sdan. There we were fed by the Red
Cross. The Red Cross had erected feeding stations for passing
troops in long wooden sheds. Early next morning we found ourselves
at Montmdy. There we had to leave the train, and were allowed to
visit the town for a few hours.




XVII
Friendly Relations With The Enemy



There was no lack of food at Montmdy. The canteens were provided
with everything; prices were high, however. Montmdy is a third-class
French fortress and is situated like Ehrenbreitstein on a height which
is very steep on one side; the town is situated at the foot of the hill.
The fortress was taken by the Germans without a struggle. The
garrison who had prepared for defense before the fortress, had their
retreat cut off. A railroad tunnel passes through the hill under the
fortress, but that had been blown up by the French. The Germans laid
the rails round the hill through the town so as to establish railroad
communications with their front. It looked almost comical to watch the
transport trains come rolling on through the main street and across
the market place. Everywhere along the Meuse the destroyed bridges
had been replaced by wooden ones. Montmdy was the chief base of
the Fifth Army (that of the Crown Prince), and contained immense
stores of war material. Besides that it harbored the field post-office,
the headquarters for army provisions, a railroad management, and a
great number of hospitals. The largest of them used to be called the
"theater hospital," on account of its being installed in the municipal
theater and the adjoining houses, and always contained from 500 to
600 wounded.

Things were very lively at Montmdy. One chiefly observed
convalescent soldiers walking through the streets and a remarkable
number of officers, all of whom had been attached to the various
departments. They loitered about in their faultless uniforms, or rode
along whip in hand. Moreover, they had not yet the slightest idea of
what war was like, and when we met them they expected us to salute
them in the prescribed manner. Many of them accosted us and asked
us rudely why we did not salute. After a few hours we got sick of life
twenty miles behind the Verdun front.

At Montmdy we were about twenty miles behind Verdun and some
sixty miles away from our former position. When towards one o'clock
p. m. we began to move on we guessed that we were to be dragged
to the country round Verdun. After a march of nine miles we reached
the village of Fametz. There we were lodged in various barns. Nearly
all of the inhabitants had stayed on; they seemed to be on quite
friendly terms with the soldiers. Time had brought them closer to each
other, and we, too, got an entirely different idea of our "hereditary
enemy" on closer acquaintance. When walking through the place we
were offered all kinds of things by the inhabitants, were treated to
coffee, meat, and milk, exactly as is done by German patriots during
maneuvers and we were even treated better than at home. To reward
them for these marks of attention we murdered the sons of those
people who desired nothing better than living in peace.

Early next morning we moved on, and when we arrived at Damvillers
in the evening we heard that we were some three miles behind the
firing line. That very night we marched to the small village of Warville.
That was our destination, and there we took up our quarters in a
house that had been abandoned by its inhabitants.

We were attached to the ninth reserve division, and the following day
already we had to take up our positions. Fifteen of us were attached
to a company of infantry. No rifle firing was to be heard along the line,
only the artillery of the two sides maintained a weak fire. We were not
accustomed to such quietness in the trenches, but the men who had
been here for a long time told us that sometimes not a shot was fired
for days and that there was not the slightest activity on either side. It
seemed to us that we were going to have a nice quiet time.

The trench in that section crossed the main road leading from
Damvillers to Verdun (a distance of some fifteen miles). The enemy's
position was about 300 yards in front of us. German and French
troops were always patroling the road from six o'clock at night till the
morning. At night time those troops were always standing together.
Germans and Frenchmen met, and the German soldiers had a liking
for that duty. Neither side thought for a moment to shoot at the other
one; everybody had just to be at his post. In time both sides had cast
away suspicions; every night the "hereditary enemies" shook hands
with each other; and on the following morning the relieved sentries
related to us with pleasure how liberally the Frenchmen had shared
everything with them. They always exchanged newspapers with
them, and so it came about that we got French papers every day, the
contents of which were translated to us by a soldier who spoke the
French language.

By day we were able to leave the trench, and we would be relieved
across the open field without running any danger. The French had no
ideas of shooting at us; neither did we think of shooting at the French.

When we were relieved we saluted our enemies by waving our
helmets, and immediately the others replied by waving their caps.
When we wanted water we had to go to a farm situated between the
lines. The French too, fetched their water from there. It would have
been easy for each side to prevent the other from using that well, but
we used to go up to it quite unconcerned, watched by the French.
The latter used to wait till we trotted off again with our cooking pots
filled, and then they would come up and provide themselves with
water. At night it often happened that we and the Frenchmen arrived
at the well at the same time. In such a case one of the parties would
wait politely until the other had done. Thus it happened that three of
us were at the well without any arms when a score of Frenchmen
arrived with cooking pots. Though the Frenchmen were seven times
as numerous as ourselves the thought never struck them that they
might fall upon us. The twenty men just waited quietly till we had
done; we then saluted them and went off.

One night a French sergeant came to our trench. He spoke German
very well, said he was a deserter, and begged us to regard him as
our prisoner. But the infantrymen became angry and told him to get
back to the French as quickly as possible. Meanwhile a second
Frenchman had come up and asked excitedly whether a man of
theirs had not deserted to us a short while ago. Then our section
leader, a young lieutenant, arrived upon the scene, and the
Frenchman who had come last begged him to send the deserter
back. "For," so he remarked, "if our officers get to know that one of
our men has voluntarily given himself up we shall have to say good-
by to the good time we are having, and the shooting will begin again."

We, too, appreciated the argument that such incidents would only
make our position worse. The lieutenant vanished; he did not want to
have a finger in that pie; very likely he also desired that things remain
as they were. We quickly surrendered the deserter; each one of the
two Frenchmen was presented with a cigarette, and then they
scurried away full steam ahead.

We felt quite happy under those circumstances and did not wish for
anything better. On our daily return journeys we observed that an
immense force of artillery was being gathered and were placed in
position further back. New guns arrived every day, but were not fired.
The same lively activity could be observed in regard to the
transportation of ammunition and material. At that time we did not yet
suspect that these were the first preparations for a strong offensive.

After staying in that part of the country some four weeks we were
again ordered to some other part of the front. As usual we had no
idea of our new destination. Various rumors were in circulation. Some
thought it would be Flanders, others thought it would be Russia; but
none guessed right.

We marched off and reached Dun-sur-Meuse in the afternoon. We
had scarcely got to the town when the German Crown Prince,
accompanied by some officers and a great number of hounds, rode
past us. "Good day, sappers!" he called to us, looking at us closely.
He spoke to our captain, and an officer of his staff took us to an
establishment of the Red Cross where we received good food and
wine. The headquarters of the Hohenzollern scion was here at Dun-
sur-Meuse. The ladies of the Red Cross treated us very well. We
asked them whether all the troops passing through the place were
cared for as well as that. "0 yes," a young lady replied; "only few pass
through here, but the Crown Prince has a special liking for sappers."

We lodged there for the night, and the soldiers told us that Dun-sur-
Meuse was the headquarters of the Fifth Army, that life was often
very jolly there, and every day there was an open air concert. We
heard that the officers often received ladies from Germany, but, of
course, the ladies only came to distribute gifts among the soldiers.

Richly provided with food we continued our march the next morning,
and kept along the side of the Meuse. In the evening we were lodged
at Stenay.




XVIII
Fighting In The Argonnes



Finally, after two days, we landed at Apremont-en-Argonne. For the
time being we were quartered in a large farm to the northeast of
Apremont. We found ourselves quite close to the Argonnes. All the
soldiers whom we met and who had been there for some time told us
of uninterrupted daily fighting in those woods.

Our first task was to construct underground shelters that should serve
as living rooms. We commenced work at about a mile and three
quarters behind the front, but had to move on after some shells had
destroyed our work again. We then constructed, about a mile and a
quarter behind the front, a camp consisting of thirty-five underground
shelters.

A hole is dug, some five yards square and two yards deep. Short tree
trunks are laid across it, and about two yards of earth piled upon
them. We had no straw, so we had to sleep on the bare ground for a
while. Rifle bullets coming from the direction of the front kept flying
above our heads and struck the trees. We were attached to the
various companies of infantry; I myself was with the tenth company of
the infantry regiment No. 67.

The soil had been completely ploughed up by continued use, and the
paths and roads had been covered with sticks and tree trunks so that
they could be used by men and wagons. After an arduous march we
reached the foremost position. It was no easy task to find one's way
in that maze of trenches. The water was more than a foot deep in
those trenches. At last we arrived at the most advanced position and
reported to the captain of the tenth company of the 67th regiment of
infantry. Of course, the conditions obtaining there were quite
unknown to us, but the men of the infantry soon explained things to
us as far as they could. After two or three days we were already quite
familiar with our surroundings, and our many-sided duty began.

The French lay only some ten yards away from us. The second day
we were engaged in a fight with hand grenades. In that fight Sapper
Beschtel from Saarbrucken was killed. He was our first casualty in the
Argonnes, but many were to follow him in the time that followed. In
the rear trenches we had established an engineering depot. There 25
men made nothing but hand grenades. Thus we soon had made
ourselves at home, and were ready for all emergencies.

At the camp we were divided in various sections. That division in
various sections gave us an idea of the endless ways and means
employed in our new position. There were mining, sapping, hand
grenade sections, sections for mine throwing and illuminating pistols.
Others again constructed wire entanglements, chevaux-de-frise, or
projectiles for the primitive mine throwers. At one time one worked in
one section then again in another. The forest country was very
difficult. The thick, tangled underwood formed by itself an almost
insuperable obstacle. All the trees were shot down up to the firing
level. Cut off clean by the machine-guns they lay in all directions on
the ground, forming a natural barricade.

The infantrymen had told us about the difficulties under which fighting
was carried on uninterruptedly. Not a day passed without casualties.
Firing went on without a pause. The men had never experienced an
interval in the firing. We soon were to get an idea of that mass
murder, that systematic slaughter. The largest part of our company
was turned into a mine laying section, and we began to mine our
most advanced trench. For a distance of some 500 yards, a yard
apart, we dug in boxes of dynamite, each weighing 50 pounds. Each
of those mines was provided with a fuse and all were connected so
that all the mines could be exploded at the same instant. The mines
were then covered with soil again and the connecting wires taken
some hundred yards to the rear.

At that time the French were making attacks every few days. We
were told to abandon the foremost trench should an attack be made.
The mines had been laid two days when the expected attack
occurred, and without offering any great resistance we retreated to
the second trench. The French occupied the captured trench without
knowing that several thousands of pounds of explosives lay buried
under their feet. So as to cause our opponents to bring as many
troops as possible into the occupied trench we pretended to make
counter attacks. As a matter of fact the French trench was soon
closely manned by French soldiers who tried to retain it.

But that very moment our mines were exploded. There was a mighty
bang, and several hundreds of Frenchmen were literally torn to
pieces and blown up into the air. It all happened in a moment. Parts
of human bodies spread over a large stretch of ground, and the arms,
legs, and rags of uniforms hanging in the trees, were the only signs of
a well planned mass murder. In view of that catastrophe all we had
experienced before seemed to us to be child's play. That "heroic
deed" was celebrated by a lusty hurrah.

For some days one had gained a little advantage, only to lose it again
soon. In order to make advances the most diverse methods were
used, as was said before. The mining section would cut a
subterranean passage up to the enemy's position. The passage
would branch out to the right and left a yard or so before the position
of our opponent, and run parallel with it. The work takes of course
weeks to accomplish, for the whole of the loosened soil must be
taken to the rear on small mining wagons. Naturally, the soil taken out
must not be heaped in one place, for if that were done the enemy
would get wind of our intentions and would spoil everything by
countermining. As soon as work is advanced far enough the whole
passage running parallel with the enemy's trench is provided with
explosives and dammed up. When the mine is exploded the whole of
the enemy's trench is covered by the soil that is thrown up, burying
many soldiers alive. Usually such an explosion is followed by an
assault. The sapping section, on the other hand, have to dig open
trenches running towards the enemy's position. These are connected
by transversal trenches, the purpose being to get one's own position
always closer to the enemy's. As soon as one's position has
approached near enough to make it possible to throw hand grenades
into the enemy's position the hand grenade sections have to take up
their places and bombard the enemy's trenches continually with hand
grenades, day and night.

Some few hundred yards to the rear are the heavy modern mine
throwers firing a projectile weighing 140 pounds. Those projectiles,
which look like sugar loaves, fly cumbrously over to the enemy where
they do great damage. The trade of war must not stop at night; so the
darkness is made bright by means of illuminating rockets. The
illuminating cartridge is fired from a pistol, and for a second all is
bright as day. As all that kind of work was done by sappers the
French hated the sappers especially, and French prisoners often told
us that German prisoners with white buttons and black ribbons on
their caps (sappers) would be treated without any mercy. Warned by
the statements of those prisoners nearly all provided themselves with
infantry uniforms. We knew that we had gradually become some
specialty in the trenches.

If the infantry were molested somewhere by the enemy's hand
grenades they used to come running up to us and begged us to go
and meet the attack. Each of us received a cigar to light the hand
grenades, and then we were off. Ten or twenty of us rained hand
grenades on the enemy's trench for hours until one's arm got too stiff
with throwing.

Thus the slaughter continued, day after day, night after night. We had
48 hours in the trenches and 12 hours' sleep. It was found impossible
to divide the time differently, for we were too few. The whole of the
forest had been shot and torn to tatters. The artillery was everywhere
and kept the villages behind the enemy's position under fire. Once
one of the many batteries which we always passed on our way from
camp to the front was just firing when we came by. I interrogated one
of the sighting gunners what their target might be. "Some village or
other," the gunner replied. The representative of the leader of the
battery, a lieutenant-colonel, was present. One of my mates inquired
whether women and children might not be in the villages.

"That's neither here nor there," said the lieutenant-colonel, "the
women and children are French, too, so what's the harm done? Even
their litter must be annihilated so as to knock out of that nation for a
hundred years any idea of war."

If that "gentleman" thought to win applause he was mistaken. We
went our way, leaving him to his "enjoyment."

On that day an assault on the enemy's position had been ordered,
and we had to be in our places at seven o'clock in the morning. The
67th regiment was to attack punctually at half past eight, the sappers
taking the lead. The latter had been provided with hand grenades for
that purpose. We were only some twenty yards away from the
enemy. Those attacks, which were repeated every week, were
prepared by artillery fire half an hour before the assault began. The
artillery had to calculate their fire very carefully, because the distance
between the trench and that of the enemy was very small. That
distance varied from three to a hundred yards, it was nowhere more
than that. At our place it was twenty yards. Punctually at eight o'clock
the artillery began to thunder forth. The first three shots struck our
own trench, but those following squarely hit the mark, i.e., the French
trench. The artillery had got the exact range and then the volleys of
whole batteries began to scream above our heads. Every time the
enemy's trench or the roads leading to it were hit with wonderful
accuracy. One could hear the wounded cry, a sign that many a one
had already been crippled. An artillery officer made observations in
the first trench and directed the fire by telephone.

The artillery became silent exactly at half past eight, and we passed
to the assault. But the 11th company of regiment No. 67, of which I
spoke before, found itself in a such a violent machine-gun fire that
eighteen men had been killed a few paces from our trench. The dead
and wounded had got entangled in the wild jumble of the trees and
branches encumbering the ground. Whoever could run tried to reach
the enemy's trench as quickly as possible. Some of the enemy
defended themselves desperately in their trench, which was filled with
mud and water, and violent hand to hand fighting ensued. We stood
in the water up to our knees, killing the rest of our opponents.
Seriously wounded men were lying flat in the mud with only their
mouths and noses showing above the water. But what did we care!
They were stamped deeper in the mud, for we could not see where
we were stepping; and so we rolled up the whole trench. Thereupon
the conquered position was fortified as well as it could be done in all
haste. Again we had won a few yards of the Argonnes at the price of
many lives. That trench had changed its owners innumerable times
before, a matter of course in the Argonnes, and we awaited the usual
counter attack.

Presently the "mules" began to get active. "Mules" are the guns of the
French mountain artillery. As those guns are drawn by mules, the
soldier in the Argonnes calls them "mules" for short. They are very
light guns with a flat trajectory, and are fired from a distance of only
50-100 yards behind the French front. The shells of those guns
whistled above our heads. Cutting their way through the branches
they fly along with lightning rapidity to explode in or above some
trench. In consequence of the rapid flight and the short distance the
noise of the firing and the explosion almost unite in a single bang.
Those "mules" are much feared by the German soldiers, because
those guns are active day and night. Thus day by day we lived
through the same misery.




XIX
Christmas In The Trenches



Winter had arrived and it was icy cold. The trenches, all of which had
underground water, had been turned into mere mud holes. The cold
at night was intense, and we had to do 48 hours' work with 12 hours'
sleep. Every week we had to make an attack the result of which was
in no proportion to the immense losses. During the entire four months
that I was in the Argonnes we had a gain of terrain some 400 yards
deep. The following fact will show the high price that was paid in
human life for that little piece of France. All the regiments (some of
these were the infantry regiments Nos. 145, 67, 173, and the
Hirschberg sharpshooting battalion No. 5) had their own cemetery.
When we were relieved in the Argonnes there were more dead in our
cemetery than our regiment counted men. The 67th regiment had
buried more than 2000 men in its cemetery, all of whom, with the
exception of a few sappers, had belonged to regiment No. 67. Not a
day passed without the loss of human lives, and on a "storming day"
death had an extraordinarily rich harvest. Each day had its victims,
sometimes more, sometimes fewer. It must appear quite natural that
under such conditions the soldiers were not in the best of moods. The
men were all completely stupefied. Just as they formerly went to work
regularly to feed the wife and children they now went to the trenches
in just the same regular way. That business of slaughtering and
working had become an every day affair. When they conversed it
was always the army leaders, the Crown Prince and Lieutenant-
General von Mudra, the general in command of the 16th Army Corps,
that were most criticized..

The troops in the Argonnes belonged to the 16th Army Corps, to the
33rd and 34th division of infantry. Neither of the two leaders, neither
the Crown Prince nor von Mudra, have I ever seen in the trenches.
The staff of the Crown Prince had among its members the old
General-Fieldmarshal Count von Haeseler, the former commander of
the 16th Army Corps, a man who in times of peace was already
known as a relentless slave driver. The "triplets," as we called the trio,
the Crown Prince, von Mudra, and Count von Haeseler, were more
hated by most of the soldiers than the Frenchman who was out with
his gun to take our miserable life.

Many miles behind the front the scion of the Hohenzollerns found no
difficulty to spout his "knock them hard!" and, at the price of
thousands of human lives, to make himself popular with the patriots
at home who were sitting there behind the snug stove or at the beer
table complaining that we did not advance fast enough. Von Mudra
got the order "Pour le mrite"; they did not think of his soldiers who
had not seen a bed, nor taken off their trousers or boots for months;
these were provided with food and shells, and were almost being
eaten up by vermin,

That we were covered with body lice was not to be wondered at, for
we had scarcely enough water for drinking purposes, and could not
think of having a wash. We had worn our clothes for months without
changing them; the hair on our heads and our beards had grown to
great length. When we had some hours in which to rest, the lice
would not let us sleep.

The air in the shelters was downright pestiferous, and to that foul
stench of perspiration and putrefaction was added the plague of lice.
At times one was sitting up for hours and could not sleep, though one
was dead tired. One could catch lice, and the more one caught the
worse they got. We were urgently in want of sleep, but it was
impossible to close the eyes on account of the vermin. We led a
loathsome, pitiful life, and at times we said to one another that
nobody at home even suspected the condition we were in. We often
told one another that if later on we should relate to our families the
facts as they really were they would not believe them. Many soldiers
tried to put our daily experience in verse. There were many of such
jingles illustrating our barbarous handicraft.

It was in the month of December and the weather was extremely
cold. At times we often stood in the trenches with the mud running
into our trousers' pockets. In those icy cold nights we used to sit in
the trenches almost frozen to a lump of ice, and when utter
exhaustion sometimes vanquished us and put us to sleep we found
our boots frozen to the ground on waking up. Quite a number of
soldiers suffered from frost-bitten limbs; it was mostly their toes that
were frost-bitten. They had to be taken to the hospital. The soldiers
on duty fired incessantly so as to keep their fingers warm.

Not all the soldiers are as a rule kept ready to give battle. If no attack
is expected or intended, only sentries occupy the trench. About three
yards apart a man is posted behind his protective shield of steel.
Nevertheless all the men are in the trench. The sentries keep their
section under a continual fire, especially when it is cold and dark. The
fingers get warm when one pulls the trigger. Of course, one cannot
aim in the darkness, and the shots are fired at random. The sentry
sweeps his section so that no hostile patrol can approach, for he is
never safe in that thicket. Thus it happens that the firing is generally
more violent at night than at day; but there is never an interval. The
rifles are fired continually; the bullets keep whistling above our trench
and patter against the branches. The mines, too, come flying over at
night, dropping at a high angle. Everybody knows the scarcely
audible thud, and knows at once that it is a mine without seeing
anything. He warns the others by calling out, "Mine coming!" and
everybody looks in the darkness for the "glow-worm," i.e., the burning
fuse of the mine. The glowing fuse betrays the direction of the mine,
and there are always a few short seconds left to get round some
corner. Thee same is the case with the hand grenades. They, too,
betray the line of their flight at night by their burning fuse. If they do
not happen to arrive in too great numbers one mostly succeeds in
getting out of their way. In daylight that is not so hard because one
can overlook everything. It often happens that one cannot save
oneself in time from the approaching hand grenade. In that case
there is only one alternative--either to remain alive or be torn to
atoms. Should a hand grenade suddenly fall before one's feet one
picks it up without hesitation as swiftly as possible and throws it away,
if possible back into the enemy's trench. Often, however, the fuse is
of such a length that the grenade does not even explode after
reaching the enemy's trench again, and the Frenchman throws it
back again with fabulous celerity. In order to avoid the danger of
having a grenade returned the fuse is made as short as possible, and
yet a grenade will come back now and again in spite of all. To return a
grenade is of course dangerous work, but a man has no great choice;
if he leaves the grenade where it drops he is lost, as he cannot run
away; and he knows he will be crushed to atoms, and thus his only
chance is to pick up the grenade and throw it away even at the risk of
having the bomb explode in his hand. I know of hand grenades
thrown by the French that flew hither and thither several times. One
was thrown by the French and immediately returned; it came back
again in an instant, and again we threw it over to them; it did not
reach the enemy's trench that time, but exploded in the air.

Though in general the infantry bullets cannot do much damage while
one is in the trench it happens daily that men are killed by ricochet
bullets. The thousands of bullets that cut through the air every minute
all pass above our heads. But some strike a tree or branch and
glance off. If in that case they hit a man in the trench they cause
terrible injuries, because they do not strike with their heads but
lengthwise. Whenever we heard of dum-dum bullets we thought of
those ricochet bullets, though we did not doubt that there were dum-
dum bullets in existence. I doubt, however, if dum-dum bullets are
manufactured in factories, for the following reasons: first, because a
dum-dum bullet can easily damage the barrel of a rifle and make it
useless; secondly, because the average soldier would refuse to carry
such ammunition, for if a man is captured and such bullets are found
on him, the enemy in whose power he is would punish him by the
laws of war as pitilessly as such an inhuman practice deserves to be
punished. Generally, of course, a soldier only executes his orders.

However, there exist dum-dum bullets, as I mentioned before. They
are manufactured by the soldiers themselves. If the point is filed or
cut off a German infantry bullet, so that the nickel case is cut through
and the lead core is laid bare, the bullet explodes when striking or
penetrating an object. Should a man be hit in the upper arm by such
a projectile the latter, by its explosive force, can mangle the arm to
such an extent that it only hangs by a piece of skin.

Christmas came along, and we still found ourselves at the same
place without any hope of a change. We received all kinds of gifts
from our relations at home and other people. We were at last able to
change our underwear which we had worn for months.

Christmas in the trenches! It was bitterly cold. We had procured a
pine tree, for there were no fir trees to be had. We had decorated the
tree with candles and cookies, and had imitated the snow with
wadding.

Christmas trees were burning everywhere in the trenches, and at
midnight all the trees were lifted on to the parapet with their burning
candles, and along the whole line German soldiers began to sing
Christmas songs in chorus. "0, thou blissful, 0, thou joyous, mercy
bringing Christmas time!" Hundreds of men were singing the song in
that fearful wood. Not a shot was fired; the French had ceased firing
along the whole line. That night I was with a company that was only
five paces away from the enemy. The Christmas candles were
burning brightly, and were renewed again and again. For the first time
we heard no shots.

From everywhere, throughout the forest, one could hear powerful
carols come floating over "Peace on earth--"

The French left their trenches and stood on the parapet without any
fear. There they stood, quite overpowered by emotion, and all of them
with cap in hand. We, too, had issued from our trenches. We
exchanged gifts with the French--chocolate, cigarettes, etc. They
were all laughing, and so were we; why, we did not know. Then
everybody went back to his trench, and incessantly the carol
resounded, ever more solemnly, ever more longingly--"O, thou
blissful--"

All around silence reigned; even the murdered trees seemed to listen;
the charm continued, and one scarcely dared to speak. Why could it
not always be as peaceful? We thought and thought, we were as
dreamers, and had forgotten everything about us. Suddenly a shot
rang out; then another one was fired somewhere. The spell was
broken. All rushed to their rifles. A rolling fire. Our Christmas was
over.

We took up again our old existence. A young infantryman stood next
to me. He tried to get out of the trench. I told him: "Stay here; the
French will shoot you to pieces." "I left a box of cigars up there, and
must have it back." Another one told him to wait till things quieted
down somewhat. "They won't hit me; I have been here three months,
and they never caught me yet." "As you wish; go ahead!"

Scarcely had he put his head above the parapet when he tumbled
back. Part of his brains was sticking to my belt. His cap flew high up
into the air. His skull was shattered. He was dead on the spot. His
trials were over. The cigars were later on fetched by another man.

On the following Christmas day an army order was read out. We were
forbidden to wear or have in our possession things of French origin;
for every soldier who was found in possession of such things would
be put before a court-martial as a marauder by the French if they
captured him. We were forbidden to use objects captured from the
French, and we were especially forbidden to make use of woolen
blankets, because the French were infected with scabies. Scabies is
an itching skin disease, which it takes at least a week to cure. But the
order had a contrary effect. If one was the owner of such an "itch-
blanket" one had a chance of getting into the hospital for some days.
The illness was not of a serious nature, and one was at least safe
from bullets for a few days. Every day soldiers were sent to the
hospital, and we, too, were watching for a chance to grab such a
French blanket. What did a man care, if he could only get out of that
hell!




XX
The "Itch"--A Savior



On January 5th the Germans attacked along the whole forest front,
and took more than 1800 prisoners. We alone had captured 700 men
of the French infantry regiment No. 120. The hand to hand fighting
lasted till six o'clock at night. On that day I, together with another
sapper, got into a trench section that was still being defended by eight
Frenchmen. We could not back out, so we had to take up the
unequal struggle. Fortunately we were well provided with hand
grenades. We cut the fuses so short that they exploded at the earliest
moment. I threw one in the midst of the eight Frenchmen. They had
scarcely escaped the first one, when the second arrived into which
they ran. We utilized their momentary confusion by throwing five more
in quick succession. We had reduced our opponents to four. Then we
opened a rifle fire, creeping closer and closer up to them. Their bullets
kept whistling above our heads. One of the Frenchmen was shot in
the mouth; three more were left. These turned to flee. In such
moments one is seized with an indescribable rage and forgets all
about the danger that surrounds one. We had come quite near to
them, when the last one stumbled and fell forward on his face. In a
trice I was on him; he fought desperately with his fists; my mate was
following the other two. I kept on wrestling with my opponent. He was
bleeding from his mouth; I had knocked out some of his teeth. Then
he surrendered and raised his hands. I let go and then had a good
look at him. He was some 35 years old, about ten years older than
myself. I now felt sorry for him. He pointed to his wedding ring, talking
to me all the while. I understood what he wanted--he wanted to be
kept alive. He handed me his bottle, inviting me to drink wine. He
cried; maybe he thought of his wife and children. I pressed his hand,
and he showed me his bleeding teeth. "You are a silly fellow," I told
him; "you have been lucky. The few missing teeth don't matter. For
you the slaughtering is finished; come along!" I was glad I had not
killed him, and took him along myself so as to protect him from being
ill-treated. When I handed him over he pressed my hand thankfully
and laughed; he was happy to be safe. However had the time he
might have as prisoner he would be better off at any rate than in the
trenches. At least he had a chance of getting home again.

In the evening we took some of the forbidden blankets, hundreds of
which we had captured that day. Ten of us were lying in a shelter, all
provided with blankets. Everybody wanted to get the "itch," however
strange that may sound. We undressed and rolled ourselves in those
blankets. Twenty-four hours later little red pimples showed
themselves all over the body, and twelve men reported sick. The
blankets were used in the whole company, but all of them had not the
desired effect. The doctor sent nine of us to the hospital at
Montmdy, and that very evening we left the camp in high glee. The
railroad depot at Apremont had been badly shelled; the next station
was Chatel. Both places are a little more than three miles behind the
front, At Apremont the prisoners were divided into sections. Some of
the prisoners had their homes at Apremont. Their families were still
occupying their houses, and the prisoners asked to be allowed to pay
them a visit. I chanced to observe one of those meetings at
Apremont. Two men of the landsturm led one of the prisoners to the
house which he pointed out to them as his own. The young wife of
the prisoner was sitting in the kitchen with her three children. We
followed the men into the house. The woman became as white as a
sheet when she beheld her husband suddenly. They rushed to meet
each other and fell into each other's arms. We went out, for we felt
that we were not wanted. The wife had not been able to get the
slightest signs from her husband for the last five months, for the
German forces had been between her and him. He, on the other
hand, had been in the trench for months knowing that his wife and
children must be there, on the other side, very near, yet not to be
reached. He did not know whether they were alive or dead. He heard
the French shells scream above his head. Would they hit Apremont?
He wondered whether it was his own house that had been set alight
by a shell and was reddening the sky at night. He did not know. The
uncertainty tortured him, and life became hell. Now he was at home,
though only for a few hours. He had to leave again a prisoner; but
now he could send a letter to his wife by the field post. He had to take
leave. She had nothing she could give him--no underwear, no food,
absolutely nothing. She had lost all and had to rely on the charity of
the soldiers. She handed him her last money, but he returned it. We
could not understand what they told each other. She took the money
back; it was German money, five and ten pfennig pieces and some
coppers--her whole belongings. We could no longer contain
ourselves and made a collection among ourselves. We got more than
ten marks together which we gave to the young woman. At first she
refused to take it and looked at her husband. Then she took it and
wanted to kiss our hands. We warded her off, and she ran to the
nearest canteen and bought things. Returning with cigars, tobacco,
matches, and sausage, she handed all over to her husband with a
radiant face. She laughed, once again perhaps in a long time, and
sent us grateful looks. The children clung round their father and
kissed him again and again. She accompanied her husband, who
carried two of the kiddies, one on each arm, while his wife carried the
third child. Beaming with happiness the family marched along
between the two landsturm men who had their bayonets fixed. When
they had to take leave, all of them, parents and children began to
weep. She knew that her husband was no longer in constant danger,
and she was happy, for though she had lost much, she still had her
most precious possessions. Thousands of poor men and women
have met such a fate near their homes.

Regular trains left Chatel. We quitted the place at 11 o'clock at night,
heartily glad to leave the Argonnes behind us. We had to change
trains at Vouzires, and took the train to Diedenhofen. There we saw
twelve soldiers with fixed bayonets take along three Frenchmen. They
were elderly men in civilian dress. We had no idea what it signified, so
we entered into a conversation with one of our fellow travelers. He
was a merchant, a Frenchman living at Vouzires, and spoke
German fluently. The merchant was on a business trip to Sdan, and
told us that the three civilian prisoners were citizens of his town. He
said: "We obtain our means of life from the German military
authorities, but mostly we do not receive enough to live, and the
people have nothing left of their own; all the cattle and food have
been commandeered. Those three men refused to keep on working
for the military authorities, because they could not live on the things
they were given. They were arrested and are now being transported
to Germany. Of course, we don't know what will happen to them."

The man also told us that all the young men had been taken away by
the Germans; all of them had been interned in Germany.

At Sdan we had to wait for five hours; for hospital trains were
constantly arriving. It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon of the following
day when we reached Montmdy, where we went to the hospital.
There all our clothes were disinfected in the "unlousing
establishment," and we could take a proper bath. We were lodged in
the large barracks. There one met people from all parts of the front,
and all of them had only known the same misery; there was not one
among them who did not curse this war. All of them were glad to be in
safety, and all of them tried their best to be "sick" as long as possible.
Each day we were twice treated with ointment; otherwise we were at
liberty to walk about the place.

One day we paid a visit to the fortress of Montmdy high up on a hill.
Several hundreds of prisoners were just being fed there. They were
standing about in the yard of the fortress and were eating their soup.
One of the prisoners came straight up to me. I had not noticed him
particularly, and recognized him only when he stood before me. He
was the man I had struggled with on January 5th, and we greeted
each other cordially. He had brought along a prisoner who spoke
German well and who interpreted for us all we had to say to each
other. He had seen me standing about and had recognized me at
once. Again and again he told me how glad he was to be a prisoner.
Like myself he was a soldier because he had to be, and not from
choice. At that time we had fought with each other in blind rage; for a
moment we had been deadly enemies. I felt happy at having stayed
my fury at that time, and again I became aware of the utter idiocy of
that barbarous slaughter. We separated with a firm handshake.

A fortnight I remained at the hospital; then I had to return to the front.
We had been treated well at the hospital, so we started on our return
journey with mixed feelings. As soon as we arrived at Chatel, the
terminus, we heard the incessant gun fire. It was no use kicking, we
had to go into the forest again. When we reached our old camp, we
found that different troops were occupying it. Our company had left,
nobody knew for what destination. Wherever we asked, nobody could
give us any information. So we had to go back to the command of our
corps, the headquarters of which were at Corney at that time. We left
Chatel again by a hospital train, and reached Corney after half an
hour's journey. Corney harbored the General Staff of the 16th Army
Corps, and we thought they surely ought to know where our company
was. General von Mudra and his officers had taken up their quarters
in a large villa. The house was guarded by three double sentries. We
showed our pay books and hospital certificates, and an orderly led us
to a spacious room. It was the telephone room. There the wires from
all the divisional fronts ran together, and the apparatus were in
constant use. A sergeant-major looked into the lists and upon the
maps. In two minutes he had found our company. He showed us on
the map where it was fighting and where its camp was. "The camp is
at the northern end of Varennes," he said, "and the company belongs
to the 34th division; formerly it was part of the 33rd. The position it is
in is in the villages of Vauquois and Boureuilles." Then he explained
to us on the map the direction we were to take, and we could trot off.
We returned by rail to Chatel, and went on foot from there to
Apremont. We spent the night in the half destroyed depot of
Apremont. In order to get to Varennes we had to march to the south.
On our way we saw French prisoners mending the roads. Most of
them were black colonial troops in picturesque uniforms. On that road
Austrian motor batteries were posted. Three of those 30.5-cm.
howitzers were standing behind a rocky slope, but did not fire. When
at noon we reached the height of Varennes we saw the whole wide
plan in front of us. Varennes itself was immediately in front of us in
the valley. A little farther up on the heights was Vauquois. No houses
were to be seen; one could only notice a heap of rubbish through the
field glasses. Shells kept exploding in that rubbish heap continually,
and we felt a cold sweat run down our backs at the thought that the
place up there was our destination. We had scarcely passed the
ridge when some shells exploded behind us. At that place the French
were shooting with artillery at individuals. As long as Vauquois had
been in their power they had been able to survey the whole country,
and we comprehended why that heap of rubbish was so bitterly
fought for. We ran down the slope and found ourselves in Varennes.
The southern portion of the village had been shelled to pieces and
gutted. Only most of the chimneys which were built apart from the
bottom upward, had remained standing, thin blackened forms rising
out of the ruins into the air. Everywhere we saw groups of soldiers
collecting the remaining more expensive metals which were sent to
Germany. Among other things church-bells melted into shapeless
lumps were also loaded on wagons and taken away. All the copper,
brass, tin, and lead that could be got was collected.




XXI
In The Hell Of Vauquois



We soon found our company, and our comrades told us what hell
they had gotten into. The next morning our turn came, too. We had to
reach the position before day-break, for as soon as it got light the
French kept all approaches under constant fire. There was no trace
of trenches at Vauquois. All that could be seen were pieces of stones.
Not a stone had literally remained on the other at Vauquois. That
heap of ruins, once a village, had changed hands no less than fifteen
times. When we arrived half of the place was in the possession of the
Germans. But the French dominated the highest point, whence they
could survey the whole country for many miles around. In the
absence of a trench we sought cover behind stones, for it was
absolutely impossible to construct trenches; the artillery was shooting
everything to pieces.

Thus the soldiers squatted behind piles of stones and fired as fast as
their rifles would allow. Guns of all sizes were bombarding the village
incessantly. There was an army of corpses, Frenchmen and
Germans, all lying about pell-mell. At first we thought that that terrible
state of things was only temporary, but after a few days we
recognized that a slaughter worse than madness was a continuous
state of things at that place. Day and night, ever the same. With
Verdun as a base of operations the French continually brought up
fresh masses of troops. They had carried along a field railroad the
heavy pieces of the neighboring forts of Verdun, and in the spring of
1915 an offensive of a local, but murderous kind war, begun. The
artillery of both sides bombarded the place to such an extent that not
a foot of ground could be found that was not torn up by shells.
Thousands upon thousands of shells of all sizes were employed. The
bombardment from both sides lasted three days and three nights,
until at last not a soldier, neither French nor German, was left in the
village. Both sides had been obliged to retreat before the infernal fire
of the opponent, for not a man would have escaped alive out of that
inferno. The whole slope and height were veiled in an impenetrable
smoke. In the evening of the third day the enemy's bombardment
died down a little, and we were ordered to go forward again into the
shell torn ruins. It was not yet quite dark when the French advanced
in close order.

We were in possession of almost the whole of the village, and had
placed one machine-gun next to the other. We could see the
projectiles of the artillery burst in great numbers among the reserves
of the attackers. Our machine-guns literally mowed down the first
ranks. Five times the French renewed their attack during that night,
their artillery meanwhile making great gaps in our ranks. We soldiers
calculated that the two sides had together some three or four
thousand men killed in that one night. Next morning the French
eased their attacks, and their guns treated us again to the
accustomed drum fire. We stood it until 10 o'clock in the morning;
then we retreated again without awaiting orders, leaving innumerable
dead men behind. Again the French advanced in the face of a violent
German artillery fire, and effected a lodgment at the northern edge of
the village of Vauquois that used to be. A few piles of stones was all
that still belonged to us. We managed to put a few stones before us
as a protection. The guns of neither side could hurt us or them, for
they, the enemy, were but ten paces away. But the country behind us
was plowed by projectiles. In face of the machine gun fire it was
found impossible to bring up ammunition.

The sappers undid the coils of rope worn round their bodies, and
three men or more crept back with them. One of them was killed; the
others arrived safely and attached the packets of cartridges to the
rope. Thus we brought up the ammunition by means of a rope
running in a circle, until we had enough or till the rope was shot
through. At three o'clock in the afternoon we attacked again, but
found it impossible to rise from the ground on account of the hail of
bullets. Everybody was shouting, "Sappers to the front with hand
grenades!" Not a sapper stirred. We are only human, after all.

A sergeant-major of the infantry came creeping up. He looked as if
demented, his eyes were bloodshot. "You're a sapper?" "Yes,"
"Advance!" "Alone?" "We're coming along!" We had to roar at each
other in order to make ourselves understood in the deafening,
confounded row. Another sapper lay beside me. When the sergeant-
major saw that he could do nothing with me he turned to the other
fellow. That man motioned to him to desist, but the sergeant-major
got ever more insistent, until the sapper showed him his dagger, and
then our superior slung his book. Some twenty hand grenades were
lying in front of us. Ten of them I had attached to my belt for all
emergencies. I said to myself that if all of them exploded there would
not be much left of me. I had a lighted cigar in my mouth. I lit one
bomb after the other and threw them over to some Frenchmen who
were working a machine-gun in front of me, behind a heap of stones.
All around me the bullets of the machine-guns were splitting the
stones. I had already thrown four grenades, but all of them had
overshot the mark. I took some stones and threw them to find out
how far I would have to throw in order to hit the fire spitting machine in
front. My aim got more accurate each time until I hit the barrel of the
gun. "If it had only been a hand grenade," I thought. An infantryman
close to me was shot through the shell of one ear, half of which was
cut in pieces; the blood was streaming down his neck. I had no more
material for bandaging except some wadding, which I attached to his
wound. In my pocket I had a roll of insulating ribbon, rubber used to
insulate wires; with that I bandaged him. He pointed to the machine-
gun. Thereupon I gave him my cigar, telling him to keep it well alight
so as to make the fuse which I desired to light by it burn well. In quick
succession I threw six hand grenades. I don't know how many of
them took effect, but the rags of uniforms flying about and a
demolished machine-gun said enough. When we advanced later on I
observed three dead men lying round the machine-gun.

That was only one example of the usual, daily occurrences that
happen day and night, again and again and everywhere, and the
immense number of such actions of individual soldiers makes the
enormous loss of human life comprehensible.

We were still lying there without proceeding to the attack. Again
ammunition was brought up by ropes from the rear. A hand grenade
duel ensued; hundreds of hand grenades were thrown by both sides.
Things could not go on long like that; we felt that something was
bound to happen. Without receiving an order and yet as if by
command we all jumped up and advanced with the dagger in our
hands right through the murderous fire, and engaged in the maddest
hand to hand fighting. The daggers, sharp as razors, were plunged
into head after head, chest after chest. One stood on corpses in order
to make other men corpses. New enemies came running up. One
had scarcely finished with one when three more appeared on the
scene.

We, too, got reinforcements. One continued to murder and expected
to be struck down oneself the next moment. One did not care a cent
for one's life, but fought like an animal. I stumbled and fell on the
stones. At that very moment I caught sight of a gigantic Frenchman
before me who was on the point of bringing his sapper's spade down
on me. I moved aside with lightning speed, and the blow fell upon the
stone. In a moment my dagger was in his stomach more than up to
the hilt. He went down with a horrible cry, rolling in his blood in
maddening pain. I put the bloody dagger back in my boot and took
hold of the spade. All around me I beheld new enemies. The spade I
found to be a handy weapon. I hit one opponent between head and
shoulder. The sharp spade half went through the body; I heard the
cracking of the bones that were struck. Another enemy was close to
me. I dropped the spade and took hold of my dagger again. All
happened as in a flash. My opponent struck me in the face, and the
blood came pouring out of my mouth and nose. We began to wrestle
with each other. I had the dagger in my right hand. We had taken
hold of each other round the chest. He was no stronger than myself,
but he held me as firmly as I held him. We tried to fight each other
with our teeth. I had the dagger in my hand, but could not strike. Who
was it to be? He or I? One of us two was sure to go down. I got the
dagger in such a position that its point rested on his back. Then I
pressed his trembling body still more firmly to myself. He fastened his
teeth in my shaggy beard, and I felt a terrible pain. I pressed him still
more firmly so that his ribs almost began to crack and, summoning all
my strength, I pushed the dagger into the right side of his back, just
below the shoulderblade. In frightful pain he turned himself round
several times, fell on his face, and lay groaning on the ground. I
withdrew my dagger; he bled to death like many thousands.

We had pushed back the French for some yards when we received
strong assistance. After a short fight the enemy turned and fled, and
we followed him as far as the southern edge of the village. There the
French made a counterattack with fresh bodies of men and threw us
back again for some 50 yards. Then the attack was halted, and we
found ourselves again where we had been at the beginning of that
four days' slaughter. Thousands of corpses were covering the ruins
of Vauquois, all sacrificed in vain.




XXII
Sent On Furlough



For four days and nights, without food and sleep, we had been raging
like barbarians, and had spent all our strength. We were soon
relieved. To our astonishment we were relieved by cavalry. They
were Saxon chasseurs on horseback who were to do duty as
infantrymen. It had been found impossible to make good the
enormous losses of the preceding days by sending up men of the
depot. So they had called upon the cavalry who, by the way, were
frequently employed during that time. The soldiers who had been in a
life and death struggle for four days were demoralized to such an
extent that they had no longer any fighting value. We were relieved
very quietly, and could then return to our camp. We did not hear
before the next day that during the period described our company
had suffered a total loss of 49 men. The fate of most of them was
unknown; one did not know whether they were dead or prisoners or
whether they lay wounded in some ambulance station.

The village of Varennes was continually bombarded by French guns
of large size. Several French families were still living in a part of the
village that had not been so badly damaged. Every day several of the
enemy's 28-cm. shells came down in that quarter. Though many
inhabitants had been wounded by the shells the people could not be
induced to leave their houses.

Our quarters were situated near a very steep slope and were thus
protected against artillery fire. They consisted of wooden shanties
built by ourselves. We had brought up furniture from everywhere and
had made ourselves at home; for Varennes was, after all, nearly two
miles behind the front. But all the shanties were not occupied, for the
number of our men diminished from day to day. At last the longed-for
men from the depot arrived. Many new sapper formations had to be
got together for all parts of the front, and it was therefore impossible
to supply the existing sapper detachments with their regular reserves.
Joyfully we greeted the new arrivals. They were, as was always the
case, men of very different ages; a young boyish volunteer of 17
years would march next to an old man of the landsturm who had
likewise volunteered. All of them, without any exception, have bitterly
repented of their "free choice" and made no secret of it. "It's a
shame," a comrade told me, "that those seventeen-year-old children
should be led to the slaughter, and that their young life is being
poisoned, as it needs must be in these surroundings; scarcely out of
boyhood, they are being shot down like mad dogs."

It took but a few days for the volunteers--all of them without an
exception--to repent bitterly of their resolve, and every soldier who
had been in the war for any length of time would reproach them when
they gave expression to their great disappointment. "But you have
come voluntarily," they were told; "we had to go, else we should have
been off long ago." Yet we knew that all those young people had
been under some influence and had been given a wrong picture of
the war.

Those soldiers who had been in the war from the start who had not
been wounded, but had gone through all the fighting, were gradually
all sent home on furlough for ten days. Though our company
contained but 14 unwounded soldiers it was very hard to obtain the
furlough. We had lost several times the number of men on our
muster-roll, but all our officers were still in good physical condition.

It was not until September that I managed to obtain furlough at the
request of my relations, and I left for home with a resolve that at times
seemed to me impossible to execute. All went well until I got to
Diedenhofen.

As far as that station the railroads are operated by the army
authorities. At Diedenhofen they are taken over by the Imperial
Railroads of Alsace-Lorraine and the Prusso-Hessian State
Railroads. So I had to change, and got on a train that went to
Saarbruecken. I had scarcely taken a seat in a compartment in my
dirty and ragged uniform when a conductor came along to inspect the
tickets. Of course, I had no ticket; I had only a furlough certificate and
a pass which had been handed to me at the field railroad depot of
Chatel. The conductor looked at the papers and asked me again for
my ticket. I drew his attention to my pass. "That is only good for the
territory of the war operations," he said; "you are now traveling on a
state railroad and have to buy a ticket."

I told him that I should not buy a ticket, and asked him to inform the
station manager. "You," I told him, "only act according to instructions.
I am not angry with you for asking of me what I shall do under no
circumstances." He went off and came back with the manager. The
latter also inspected my papers and told me I had to pay for the
journey. "I have no means for that purpose," I told him. For these last
three years I have been in these clothes (I pointed to my uniform),
"and for three years I have therefore been without any income.
Whence am I to get the money to pay for this journey?" "If you have
no money for traveling you can't take furlough." I thought to myself
that if they took me deep into France they were in conscience bound
to take me back to where they had fetched me. Was I to be a soldier
for three years and fight for the Fatherland for more than a year only
to find that now they refused the free use of their railroads to a ragged
soldier? I explained that I was not going to pay, that I could not save
the fare from the few pfennigs' pay. I refused explicitly to pay a
soldier's journey with my private money, even if--as was the case
here--that soldier was myself. Finally I told him, "I must request you
to inform the military railroad commander; the depot command
attends to soldiers, not you." He sent me a furious look through his
horn spectacles and disappeared. Two civilians were sitting in the
same compartment with me; they thought it an unheard-of thing that
a soldier coming from the front should be asked for his fare. Presently
the depot commander came up with a sergeant. He demanded to
see my furlough certificate, pay books, and all my other papers.

"Have you any money?"

"No."

"Where do you come from?"

"From Chatel in the Argonnes."

"How long were you at the front?

"In the fourteenth month."

"Been wounded?

"No."

"Have you no money at all?"

"No; you don't want money at the front."

"The fare must be paid. If you can't, the company must pay. Please
sign this paper."

I signed it without looking at it. It was all one to me what I signed, as
long as they left me alone. Then the sergeant came back.

"You can not travel in that compartment; you must also not converse
with travelers. You have to take the first carriage marked 'Only for the
military.' Get into that."

"I see," I observed; "in the dogs' compartment."

He turned round again and said, "Cut out those remarks."

The train started, and I arrived safely home. After the first hours of
meeting all at home again had passed I found myself provided with
faultless underwear and had taken the urgently needed bath. Once
more I could put on the civilian dress I had missed for so long a time.
All of it appeared strange to me. I began to think. Under no conditions
was I going to return to the front. But I did not know how I should
succeed in getting across the frontier. I could choose between two
countries only--Switzerland and Holland. It was no use going to
Switzerland, for that country was surrounded by belligerent states,
and it needed only a little spark to bring Switzerland into the war, and
then there would be no loophole for me. There was only the nearest
country left for me to choose--Holland. But how was I to get there?
There was the rub. I concocted a thousand plans and discarded them
again. Nobody, not even my relatives, must know about it.




XXIII
The Flight To Holland



My furlough soon neared its end; there were only four days left. I
remembered a good old friend in a Rhenish town. My plan was made.
Without my family noticing it I packed a suit, boots, and all
necessities, and told them at home that I was going to visit my friend.
To him I revealed my intentions, and he was ready to help me in
every possible manner.

My furlough was over. I put on my uniform, and my relations were left
in the belief that I was returning to the front. I went, however, to my
friend and changed into civilian clothes. I destroyed my uniform and
arms, throwing the lot into the river near by. Thus having destroyed all
traces, I left and arrived at Cologne after some criss-cross traveling.
Thence I journeyed to Duesseldorf and stayed at night at an hotel. I
had already overstayed my leave several days. Thousands of
thoughts went through my brain. I was fully aware that I would lose
my life if everything did not come to pass according to the program. I
intended to cross the frontier near Venlo (Holland). I knew, however,
that the frontier was closely guarded.

The country round Venlo, the course of the frontier in those parts
were unknown to me; in fact, I was a complete stranger. I made
another plan. I returned to my friend and told him that it was
absolutely necessary for me to get to know the frontier district and to
procure a map showing the terrain. I also informed him that I had to
get hold of a false identification paper. He gave me a landsturm
certificate which was to identify me in case of need. In my note-book I
drew the exact course of the frontier from a railway map, and then I
departed again.

Dead tired, I reached Crefeld that night by the last train. I could not go
on. So I went into the first hotel and hired a room. I wrote the name
that was on the false paper into the register and went to sleep. At six
o'clock in the morning there was a knock at my door.

"Who is there?

"The police."

"The police?

"Yes; the political police."

I opened the door.

"Here lives... (he mentioned the name in which I had registered).

"Yes."

"Have you any identification papers?"

"If you please," I said, handing him the landsturm certificate.

"Everything in order; pardon me for having disturbed you."

"You're welcome; you're welcome," I hastened to reply, and thought
how polite the police was.

That well-known leaden weight fell from my chest, but I had no mind
to go to sleep again. Whilst I was dressing I heard him visit all the
guests of the hotel. I had not thought of the customary inspection of'
strangers in frontier towns. It was a good thing I had been armed for
that event.

Without taking breakfast (my appetite had vanished) I went to the
depot and risked traveling to Kempten in spite of the great number of
policemen that were about. I calculated by the map that the frontier
was still some fifteen miles away. I had not much baggage with me,
only a small bag, a raincoat and an umbrella. I marched along the
country road and in five hours I reached the village of Herongen. To
the left of that place was the village of Niederhofen. Everywhere I saw
farmers working in the fields. They would have to inform me of how
the line of the frontier ran and how it was being watched. In order to
procure that information I selected only those people who, to judge by
their appearance, were no "great lights of the church."

Without arousing suspicion I got to know that the names of the two
places were "Herongen" and "Niederhofen," and that a troop of
cuirassiers were quartered at Herongen. The man told me that the
soldiers were lodged in the dancing ball of the Schwarz Inn. Presently
I met a man who was cutting a hedge. He was a Hollander who went
home across the frontier every night; he had a passport. "You are the
man for me," I thought to myself, and said aloud, that I had met
several Hollanders in that part of the country (he was the first one),
and gave him a cigar. I mentioned to him that I had visited an
acquaintance in the Schwarz Inn at Herongen.

"Yes," he said; "they are there."

"But my friend had to go on duty, so I am having a look round."

"They have got plenty to do near the frontier."

"Indeed?"

"Every thirty minutes and oftener a cavalry patrol, and every quarter
of an hour an infantry patrol go scouting along the frontier."

"And how does the frontier run?" I queried, offering him a light for his
cigar.

He showed me with his hand.

"Here in front of you, then right through the woods, then up there;
those high steeples towering over the woods belong to the factories
of Venlo."

I knew enough. After a few remarks I left him. All goes according to
my program, I thought. But there was a new undertaking before me. I
had to venture close enough to the frontier to be able to watch the
patrols without being seen by them. That I succeeded in doing during
the following night.

I hid in the thick underwood; open country was in front of me. I
remained at that spot for three days and nights. It rained and at night
it was very chilly, On the evening of the third day I resolved to
execute my plan that night.

Regularly every fifteen minutes a patrol of from three to six soldiers
arrived. When it had got dark I changed my place for one more to the
right, some five hundred yards from the frontier. I said to myself that I
would have to venture out as soon as it got a little lighter. In the
darkness I could not see anything. It would have to be done in
twilight. I had rolled my overcoat into a bundle to avoid making a
noise against the trees. I advanced just after a patrol had passed. I
went forward slowly and stepped out cautiously without making a
noise. Then I walked with ever increasing rapidity. Suddenly a patrol
appeared on my right. The frontier was about three hundred yards
away from me. The patrol had about two hundred yards to the point
of the frontier nearest to me. Victory would fall to the best and swiftest
runner. The patrol consisted of five men; they fired several times.
That did not bother me. I threw everything away and, summoning all
my strength, I made in huge leaps for the frontier which I passed like
a whirlwind. I ran past the pointed frontier stone and stopped fifty
yards away from it. I was quite out of breath, and an indescribable
happy feeling took hold of me. I felt like crying into the world that at
last I was free.

I seated myself on the stump of a tree and lit a cigar, quite steadily
and slowly; for now I had time. Scarcely fifty yards away, near the
frontier stone, was the disappointed patrol. I read on the side of the
frontier stone facing me, "Koningrjk der Nederlanden" (Kingdom of
the Netherlands). I had to laugh with joy. "Who are you?" one of the
German patrol called to me. "The Hollanders have now the right to
ask that question; you've got that right no longer, old fellow," I replied.
They called me all manner of names, but that did not excite me. I
asked them: "Why don't you throw me over my bag which I threw
away in the hurry? It contains some washing I took along with me so
as to get into a decent country like a decent man."

Attracted by that conversation, a Dutch patrol, a sergeant and three
men, came up. The sergeant questioned me, and I told him all. He
put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Be glad that you are here--
wij Hollanders weuschen de vrede (we Hollanders wish for peace),
and you are welcome here in hospitable Holland."

I had to go with the soldiers to their guard-room and take breakfast
with them. Thereupon they showed me the nearest road to Venlo,
where I arrived at seven o'clock in the morning. From Venlo I traveled
to Rotterdam. I soon obtained a well-paid position and became a man
again, a man who could live and not merely exist. Thousands upon
thousands of Belgian refugees are living in Holland and are treated
as the guests of the people. There are also great numbers of German
deserters in Holland, where their number is estimated to be between
fifteen and twenty thousand. Those deserters enjoy the full protection
of the Dutch authorities.

I would have never thought of leaving that hospitable country with its
fairly liberal constitution if the political sky had not been so
overclouded in the month of March, 1916.




XXIV
America And Safety



What I have still to relate does not concern actual war experiences.
But the reader might want to know how I came to America. That must
be done in a few short sentences.

In Holland war was believed to be unavoidable. Again I had to choose
another domicile. After much reflection and making of plans I decided
to go to America.

After having left my place I executed that plan. Some days after I was
informed that the steamer Zyldyk of the Holland-American line was
leaving for New York in the night from the 17th to the 18th of March.
According to my plan I packed my things in a sailor's bundle and
began the risky game.

I had never been on a sea-going steamer before. The boat was a
small trader. I had found out that the crew had to be on board by
midnight. I had an idea that the men would not turn up earlier than
was necessary. With my sailor's bundle I stood ready on the pier as
early as ten o'clock. All I had packed together in the excitement
consisted of about seven pounds of bread and a tin containing some
ten quarts of water. At midnight the sailors and stokers of the boat
arrived. Most of them were drunk and came tumbling along with their
bundles on their backs. I mixed with the crowd and tumbled along
with them. I reached the deck without being discovered. I observed
next to me a deep black hole with an iron ladder leading downwards. I
threw my bundle down that hole and climbed after it. All was dark. I
groped my way to the coal bunker. I would have struck a match, but I
dared not make a light. So I crawled onto the coal which filled the
space right up to the ceiling. Pushing my bundle in front of me I made
my way through the coal, filling again the opening behind me with
coal. Having in that manner traversed some thirty yards I came upon
a wall. There I pushed the coal aside so as to have room to lie down.
I turned my back against the outer wall of the boat.

Nobody suspected in the slightest degree that I was on board. Now
the journey can start, I thought to myself. At last the engines began to
work; we were off. After many long hours the engines stopped. Now
we are in England I guessed. Perhaps we were off Dover or
somewhere else; I did not know. Everything was darkness down
there. While the boat was stopping I heard the thunder of guns close
to us. I had no idea what that might mean. I said to myself, "If the
English find me my voyage is ended." But they did not turn up.

At last we proceeded; I did not know how long we had stopped. All
went well; I scarcely felt the boat move. However, it was bitterly cold,
and I noticed that the cold increased steadily. Then the weather
became rougher and rougher. Days must have passed. I never knew
whether it was day or night. Down in my place it was always night. I
ate bread and drank water. But I had scarcely eaten when all came
up again. Thus my stomach was always empty.

Through the rolling of the boat I was nearly buried by the coal. It got
worse and worse, and I had to use all my strength to keep the coal
away from me. The big lumps wounded me all about the head; I felt
the blood run over my face. My store of bread was nearly finished,
and the water tasted stale. I lit a match and saw that the bread was
quite black.

I wondered whether we were nearly there. No more bread. I felt my
strength leave me more and more. The boat went up and down, and I
was thrown hither and thither for hours, for days. I felt I could not
stand it much longer. I wondered how long we had been on the water.
I had no idea. I was awfully hungry. Days passed again. I noticed that
I had become quite thin.

At last the engines stopped again. But soon we were off once more.
After long, long hours the boat stopped. I listened. All was quiet. Then
I heard them unloading with cranes.

New York!--After a while I crept forth. I found that half of the coal had
been taken away. Not a soul was there. Then I climbed down a
ladder into the stokehole; nobody was there either. I noticed a pail
and filled it with warm water. With it I hastened into a dark corner and
washed myself. I was terribly tired and had to hold on to something so
as not to collapse. When I had washed I took my pocket mirror and
gazed at my face. My own face frightened me; for I looked pale as a
sheet and like a bundle of skin and bones. I wondered how long the
voyage had lasted. I had to laugh in spite of my misery--I had
crossed the ocean and had never seen it!

The problem was now to get on land. What should I say if they caught
me? I thought that if I were caught now I should simply say I wanted
to get to Holland as a stowaway in order to reach Germany. In that
case, I thought, they would quickly enough put me back on land. With
firm resolve I climbed on deck which was full of workmen.

I noticed a stair-way leading to the warehouse. Gathering all my
strength I loitered up to it in a careless way and--two minutes later I
had landed. I found myself in the street outside the warehouse.,

Up to that time I had kept on my legs. But now my strength left me,
and I dropped on the nearest steps.

It was only then that I became aware of the fact that I was not in New
York, but in Philadelphia. It was 5 o'clock in the afternoon of April 5th,
1916. 1 had reckoned on twelve days and the voyage had taken
eighteen.

Physically a wreck, I became acquainted with native Americans in the
evening. They afforded me every assistance that one human being
can give to another. One of those most noble-minded humanitarians
took me to New York. I could not leave my room for a week on
account of the hardships I had undergone; I recovered only slowly.

But to-day I have recovered sufficiently to take up again in the ranks
of the American Socialists the fight against capitalism the extirpation
of which must be the aim of every class-conscious worker. A
relentless struggle to the bitter end is necessary to show the ruling
war provoking capitalist caste who is the stronger, so that it no longer
may be in the power of that class to provoke such a murderous war
as that in which the working-class of Europe is now bleeding to death.

