However, not all the soldiers approved of that senseless, that criminal
murdering. Some of the "gentlemen" who had ordered us to massacre our
French comrades were killed "by mistake" in the darkness of the night,
by their own people, of course. Such "mistakes" repeat themselves
almost daily, and if I keep silence with regard to many such mistakes
which I could relate, giving the exact name and place, the reader will
know why.
During that night it was a captain and first lieutenant who met this
fate. An infantryman who was serving his second year stabbed the
captain through the stomach with his bayonet, and almost at the same
time the first lieutenant got a stab in the back. Both men were dead in
a few minutes. Those that did the deeds showed not the slightest signs
of repentance, and not one of us felt inclined to reproach them; on
the contrary, every one knew that despicable, brutal murderers had met
their doom.
In this connection I must mention a certain incident which necessitates
my jumping a little ahead of events. When on the following day I
conversed with a mate from my company and asked him for the loan of
his pocket knife he drew from his pocket three cartridges besides his
knife. I was surprised to find him carrying cartridges in his trousers'
pockets and asked him whether he had no room for them in his cartridge
case. "There's room enough," he replied, "but those three are meant
for a particular purpose; there's a name inscribed on each of them."
Some time after--we had meanwhile become fast friends--I inquired again
after the three bullets. He had one of them left. I reflected and
remembered two sergeants who had treated us like brutes in times of
peace, whom we had hated as one could only hate slave-drivers. They had
found their grave in French soil....
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_." ...