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....
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....