August 14, 2025 • 15 mins
15 - At the End of the Flight. A German Deserter's War Experience by Anonymous.
The author of this 1917 narrative, who escaped from Germany and military service after 14 months of fighting in France, did not wish to have his name made public, fearing reprisals against his relatives. The vivid description of the life of a common German soldier during “The Great War” aroused much interest when it was published in the United States in serial form. Here was a warrior against his will, a hater of militarism for whom there was no romance in war, but only butchery and brutality, grime and vermin, inhuman toil and degradation. His story also contains the first German description of the retreat of the Teutonic armies after the battle of the Marne.
The author of this 1917 narrative, who escaped from Germany and military service after 14 months of fighting in France, did not wish to have his name made public, fearing reprisals against his relatives. The vivid description of the life of a common German soldier during “The Great War” aroused much interest when it was published in the United States in serial form. Here was a warrior against his will, a hater of militarism for whom there was no romance in war, but only butchery and brutality, grime and vermin, inhuman toil and degradation. His story also contains the first German description of the retreat of the Teutonic armies after the battle of the Marne.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter fifteen of a German deserter's War Experience by anonymous.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter fifteen.
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,
(00:20):
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 Victor's 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,
(00:42):
one hour chased the other involuntarily, one was drawn along.
We slept while walking. Our boots were literally filled with water.
Complaining was of no use. We had to keep on marching.
Another night passed. Next morning, troops belonging to the main
army were distributed among the rear guard in long columns.
(01:03):
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 infantry had eaten,
(01:25):
we were given the rest about a pint of bean
soup beach. 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
(01:47):
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
(02:09):
fled and was lucky enough to reach the other side
of the Marn 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
(02:29):
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
(02:50):
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 rear guard could keep the enemy back.
(03:11):
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 eleven o'clock in the night, alarm was sounded. In
the greatest hurry, we had to get ready to march
(03:33):
off and start it 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 daybreak we passed the town of Saint Menhould,
which was completely intact. Here we turned to the east,
(03:55):
still stubbornly pursued by the French, and reached Clermont a
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
(04:15):
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
(04:37):
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 Chelelane, quite near the village of Serne Aunt
d'hur mois. It was very dark and a thick mist
surrounded us. We soldiers had no knowledge of the ware
(05:00):
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 lawn
(05:21):
are 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
(05:43):
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 stiff and cool during
the attack and aim accurately. They were mostly married men
(06:05):
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 ninety eight rifle. They were
provided with a remodeled rifle of the eighty eight pattern
(06:26):
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.
(06:50):
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 in attempt 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
(07:10):
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.
(07:31):
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. From
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, then driven back again.
(07:53):
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,
(08:14):
one after the other, one man after the other had
lain down to sleep, never to wake 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
(08:35):
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
(08:58):
Red Cross flag 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
(09:19):
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
(09:42):
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.
(10:04):
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
(10:25):
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 its 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
(10:48):
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 duck, skies, pigeons, et cetera. The feathered tribe
numbering more than five hundred head, had been captured in
a few hours, and everywhere cooking operations were in full swing.
(11:11):
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
(11:32):
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 farmers sought safety somewhere else. Not a soul cared
where he had gone. Rifle bullets aimed too high were
(11:53):
continually flying about us, but nobody cared in the least
though several soldiers had been hit. The men of our company,
he 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
(12:15):
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 among us a sergeant called Louis from Frankfort al
lemand one of his brothers, also a sergeant, was in
the column that was passing by. That had aroused our interest,
(12:37):
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.
(12:58):
He was seen to quiver, that was all. Then he
stood motionless. Presently he went straight to the place of
the catastrophe, without heating 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
(13:20):
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 he
had buried the mangled corpse. The sergeant borrowed a map
of the general's 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
(13:41):
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
(14:02):
were renewing their attack, 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. That night, it
(14:22):
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
(14:44):
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 eighteen seventy seventy one,
and they had believed that they went forward to a
(15:06):
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 they had pictured to themselves.
They knew nothing of our retreat, and were therefore not
a little surprised when we related to them the events
(15:28):
of the last few days. End of Chapter fifteen.
Chapter fifteen of a German deserter's War Experience by anonymous.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter fifteen.
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,
(00:20):
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 Victor's 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,
(00:42):
one hour chased the other involuntarily, one was drawn along.
We slept while walking. Our boots were literally filled with water.
Complaining was of no use. We had to keep on marching.
Another night passed. Next morning, troops belonging to the main
army were distributed among the rear guard in long columns.
(01:03):
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 infantry had eaten,
(01:25):
we were given the rest about a pint of bean
soup beach. 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
(01:47):
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
(02:09):
fled and was lucky enough to reach the other side
of the Marn 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
(02:29):
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
(02:50):
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 rear guard could keep the enemy back.
(03:11):
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 eleven o'clock in the night, alarm was sounded. In
the greatest hurry, we had to get ready to march
(03:33):
off and start it 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 daybreak we passed the town of Saint Menhould,
which was completely intact. Here we turned to the east,
(03:55):
still stubbornly pursued by the French, and reached Clermont a
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
(04:15):
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
(04:37):
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 Chelelane, quite near the village of Serne Aunt
d'hur mois. It was very dark and a thick mist
surrounded us. We soldiers had no knowledge of the ware
(05:00):
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 lawn
(05:21):
are 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
(05:43):
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 stiff and cool during
the attack and aim accurately. They were mostly married men
(06:05):
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 ninety eight rifle. They were
provided with a remodeled rifle of the eighty eight pattern
(06:26):
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.
(06:50):
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 in attempt 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
(07:10):
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.
(07:31):
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. From
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, then driven back again.
(07:53):
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,
(08:14):
one after the other, one man after the other had
lain down to sleep, never to wake 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
(08:35):
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
(08:58):
Red Cross flag 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
(09:19):
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
(09:42):
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.
(10:04):
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
(10:25):
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 its 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
(10:48):
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 duck, skies, pigeons, et cetera. The feathered tribe
numbering more than five hundred head, had been captured in
a few hours, and everywhere cooking operations were in full swing.
(11:11):
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
(11:32):
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 farmers sought safety somewhere else. Not a soul cared
where he had gone. Rifle bullets aimed too high were
(11:53):
continually flying about us, but nobody cared in the least
though several soldiers had been hit. The men of our company,
he 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
(12:15):
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 among us a sergeant called Louis from Frankfort al
lemand one of his brothers, also a sergeant, was in
the column that was passing by. That had aroused our interest,
(12:37):
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.
(12:58):
He was seen to quiver, that was all. Then he
stood motionless. Presently he went straight to the place of
the catastrophe, without heating 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
(13:20):
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 he
had buried the mangled corpse. The sergeant borrowed a map
of the general's 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
(13:41):
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
(14:02):
were renewing their attack, 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. That night, it
(14:22):
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
(14:44):
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 eighteen seventy seventy one,
and they had believed that they went forward to a
(15:06):
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 they had pictured to themselves.
They knew nothing of our retreat, and were therefore not
a little surprised when we related to them the events
(15:28):
of the last few days. End of Chapter fifteen.
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