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Hirgen at 21:11, 2 November 2008

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	therefore not a little surprised when we related to them the events		therefore not a little surprised when we related to them the events
	of the last few days.		of the last few days.
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Hirgen at 01:59, 2 September 2008

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<CENTER>XV 

AT THE END OF THE FLIGHT </center>

 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.

XV AT THE END OF THE FLIGHT - Revision history

Bkimberl at 18:44, 13 July 2009

Hirgen at 21:11, 2 November 2008

Hirgen at 01:59, 2 September 2008