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	still too large for the objects we needed for our daily life.		still too large for the objects we needed for our daily life.
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−	~~Go To~~ [[~~XI MARCHING TO THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE---INTO THE TRAP~~ \| '''~~Next Chapter~~''']]	+

Hirgen at 04:46, 31 October 2008

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	their baggage. As for ourselves, the soldiers, our knapsack was		their baggage. As for ourselves, the soldiers, our knapsack was
	still too large for the objects we needed for our daily life.		still too large for the objects we needed for our daily life.
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		+	Go To [[XI MARCHING TO THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE---INTO THE TRAP \| '''Next Chapter''']]

Hirgen at 00:53, 2 September 2008

2008-09-02T00:53:47Z

New page

<CENTER>X 

SACKING SUIPPES </CENTER>

 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.

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

 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 über alles, über
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
über alles, über 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 fiancée
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 Châlons-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.

X SACKING SUIPPES - Revision history

Bkimberl at 18:40, 13 July 2009

Hirgen at 04:46, 31 October 2008

Hirgen at 00:53, 2 September 2008