WHAT THE MEN IN THE TRENCHES WRITE HOME
SOBERING REALITIES OF BATTLE--“WAR IS TERRIBLE”--THE COMMON ENEMY,
DEATH--“A WASTEFUL WAR”--“SAME PAIR OF BLUE EYES”--FIGHTING WITHOUT
HATE.
Life at the front is not all marching and fighting by any means: there
are long days and nights of waiting in which though it be
“Theirs not to reason why”
the soldiers have abundant time to reflect upon the grim fatality of war
and the hideousness of the carnage. They are continually facing death,
and though many of them, perhaps most of them, become inured to the
sights of human slaughter, others cannot fail to be impressed by the
stark, white faces of the fallen--friends and foes alike. Sights more
horrible than perhaps they could have imagined are burned into their
minds, never to be effaced.
Naturally some of their reflections find expression in the letters home,
when the soldier is more or less off guard. There we get an “inside
view” of the war which does much to offset the ruthlessness of rulers
and restore one’s faith in the essential humanity of men.
“WAR IS TERRIBLE”
The following letter, which Refers to the fighting along the Aisne, was
found on a German officer of the Seventh Reserve Corp:
“Cerny, South of Laon, Sept. 14, 1914.
“My dear Parents: Our corps has the task of holding the heights south of
Cerny in all circumstances until the fourteenth corps on our left flank
can grip the enemy’s flank. On our right are other corps. We are
fighting with the English Guards, Highlanders, and Zouaves. The losses
on both sides have been enormous. For the most part this is due to the
too brilliant French artillery.
[Illustration: THE MOTHER.]
“The English are marvelously trained in making use of ground. One never
sees them, and one is constantly under fire. The French airmen perform
wonderful feats. We cannot get rid of them. As soon as an airman has
flown over us, ten minutes later we get their shrapnel fire in our
positions. We have little artillery in our corps; without it we cannot
get forward.
“Three days ago our division took possession of these heights and dug
itself in. Two days ago, early in the morning, we were attacked by an
immensely superior English force, one brigade and two battalions, and
were turned out of our positions. The fellows took five guns from us. It
was a tremendous hand-to-hand fight.
“How I escaped myself I am not clear. I then had to bring up supports on
foot. My horse was wounded, and the others were too far in the rear.
Then came up the guards jäger battalion, fourth jäger, sixth regiment,
reserve regiment thirteen, and landwehr regiments thirteen and sixteen,
and with the help of the artillery we drove the fellows out of the
position again. Our machine guns did excellent work; the English fell in
heaps.
“In our battalion three Iron Crosses have been given, one to C. O., one
to Captain ----, and one to Surgeon ----. [Names probably deleted.] Let
us hope that we shall be the lucky ones next time.
“During the first two days of the battle I had only one piece of bread
and no water. I spent the night in the rain without my overcoat. The
rest of my kit was on the horses which had been left behind with the
baggage and which cannot come up into the battle because as soon as you
put your nose up from behind cover the bullets whistle.
“War is terrible. We are all hoping that a decisive battle will end the
war, as our troops already have got round Paris. If we beat the English
the French resistance will soon be broken. Russia will be very quickly
dealt with; of this there is no doubt.
“Yesterday evening, about six, in the valley in which our reserves stood
there was such a terrible cannonade that we saw nothing of the sky but a
cloud of smoke. We had few casualties.”
THE COMMON ENEMY, DEATH
How foe helps foe when the last grim hour comes is revealed in the
letter which a French cavalry officer sent to his fiancée in Paris:
“There are two other men lying near me, and I do not think there is much
hope for them either. One is an officer of a Scottish regiment and the
other a private in the Uhlans. They were struck down after me, and when
I came to myself, I found them bending over me, rendering first aid.
“The Britisher was pouring water down my throat from his flask, while
the German was endeavoring to stanch my wound with an antiseptic
preparation served out to them by their medical corps. The Highlander
had one of his legs shattered, and the German had several pieces of
shrapnel buried in his side.
“In spite of their own sufferings they were trying to help me, and when
I was fully conscious again the German gave us a morphia injection and
took one himself. His medical corps had also provided him with the
injection and the needle, together with printed instructions for its
use.
“After the injection, feeling wonderfully at ease, we spoke of the lives
we had lived before the war. We all spoke English, and we talked of the
women we had left at home. Both the German and the Britisher had only
been married a year. . . .
“I wonder, and I supposed the others did, why we had fought each other
at all. I looked at the Highlander, who was falling to sleep, exhausted,
and in spite of his drawn face and mud-stained uniform, he looked the
embodiment of freedom. Then I thought of the Tri-color of France, and
all that France had done for liberty. Then I watched the German, who had
ceased to speak. He had taken a prayer book from his knapsack and was
trying to read a service for soldiers wounded in battle.”
“SAME PAIR OF BLUE EYES”
Sergeant Gabriel David, of the French infantry, who saw seven months of
continuous service in the trenches of the Argonne Forest, described the
odd effect of peeping over the top of a trench for weeks into the same
pair of German blue eyes.
“I don’t know who this man was or what he might have been,” he said,
“but wherever I go I can yet see those sad-looking eyes. He and I gazed
at each other for three weeks in one stretch; his watch seemed to always
be the same as mine. We came to respect each other. I am sure that I
would always know those blue eyes, and I would like to meet that man
when the war has ended.”
FIGHTING WITHOUT HATE
There is yet to appear an authentic letter from a private or officer on
either side that contains a tithe of the virulence and bitterness shown
in the statements and writings of many non-combatants.
“One wonders,” runs a letter of a British officer, “when one sees a
German face to face, is this really one of those devils who wrought such
devastation--for devastation they have surely wrought. You can hardly
believe it, for he seems much the same as other soldiers. I can assure
you that out here there is none of that insensate hatred that one hears
about.
“Just to give you some idea of what I mean, the other night four German
snipers were shot on our wire. The next night our men went out and
brought one in who was near and get-at-able and buried him. They did it
with just the same reverence and sadness as they do to our own dear
fellows. I went to look at the grave the next morning, and one of the
most uncouth-looking men in my company had placed a cross at the head of
the grave, and had written on it:
“‘Here lies a German.
We don’t know his name.
For he died bravely fighting
For his Fatherland.’
“And under that, ‘got mitt uns’ (sic), that being the highest effort of
all the men at German. Not bad for a bloodthirsty Briton, eh? Really
that shows the spirit.”