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.
"Dear Fatherland, may peace be thine;
Fast stands and firm the Watch on the Rhine."
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.
XI
MARCHING TO THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE--INTO THE TRAP
A large proportion of the "gentlemen," our officers, regarded war as a
pleasant change to their enchanting social life in the garrison towns,
and knew exactly (at least as far as the officers of my company were
concerned) how to preserve their lives as long as possible "in the
interest of the Fatherland." When I buried the hatchet, fourteen months
after, our company had lost three times its original strength, but no
fresh supply of officers had as yet become necessary; we had not lost a
single officer. In Holland I got to know, some months later, that after
having taken my "leave" they were still very well preserved. One day at
Rotterdam, I saw a photo in the magazine, _Die Woche_, showing "Six
members of the 1st. Company of the Sapper Regiment No. 30 with the Iron
Cross of the 1st. Class." The picture had been taken at the front, and
showed the five officers and Corporal Bock with the Iron Cross of the
1st. Class. Unfortunately Scherl[1] did not betray whether those
gentlemen had got the distinction for having preserved their lives for
further service.
We spent the following night at the place, and then had to camp again in
the open, "because the place swarmed with franctireurs." In reality no
franctireurs could be observed, so that it was quite clear to us that
it was merely an attempt to arouse again our resentment against the
enemy which was dying down. They knew very well that a soldier is far
more tractable and pliant when animated by hatred against the "enemy."
The next day Châlons-sur-Marne was indicated as the next goal of our
march. That day was one of the most fatiguing we experienced. Early in
the morning already, when we started, the sun was sending down its fiery
shafts. Suippes is about 21 miles distant from Châlons-sur-Marne. The
distance would not have been the worst thing, in spite of the heat. We
had marched longer distances before. But that splendid road from Suippes
to Châlons does not deviate an inch to the right or left, so that the
straight, almost endless seeming road lies before one like an immense
white snake. However far we marched that white ribbon showed no ending,
and when one looked round, the view was exactly the same. During the
whole march we only passed one little village; otherwise all was bare
and uncultivated.
Many of us fainted or got a heat-stroke and had to be taken along by the
following transport column. We could see by the many dead soldiers,
French and German, whose corpses were lying about all along the road,
that the troops who had passed here before us had met with a still worse
fate.
We had finished half of our march without being allowed to take a rest.
I suppose the "old man" was afraid the machine could not be set going
again if once our section had got a chance to rest their tired limbs on
the ground, and thus we crawled along dispirited like a lot of snails,
carrying the leaden weight of the "monkey" in the place of a house. The
monotony of the march was only somewhat relieved when we reached the
immense camp of Châlons. It is one of the greatest military camps in
France. Towards three o'clock in the afternoon we beheld Châlons in the
distance, and when we halted towards four o'clock in an orchard outside
the town, all of us, without an exception, fell down exhausted.
The field kitchen, too, arrived, but nobody stirred for a time to fetch
food. We ate later on, and then desired to go to the town to buy several
things, chiefly, I daresay, tobacco which we missed terribly. Nobody was
allowed however, to leave camp. We were told that it was strictly
forbidden to enter the town. "Châlons," so the tale went, had paid a war
contribution, and nobody could enter the town. With money you can do
everything, even in war. Mammon had saved Châlons from pillage.
Far away could be heard the muffled roar of the guns. We had the
presentiment that our rest would not be of long duration. The rolling of
the gun firing became louder and louder, but we did not know yet that a
battle had started here that should turn out a very unfortunate one for
the Germans--the five days' battle of the Marne.
At midnight we were aroused by an alarm, and half an hour later we were
on the move already. The cool air of the night refreshed us, and we got
along fairly rapidly in spite of our exhaustion. At about four o'clock
in the morning we reached the village of Chepy. At that place friend
Mammon had evidently not been so merciful as at Châlons, for Chepy had
been thoroughly sacked. We rested for a short time, and noticed with a
rapid glance that preparations were just being made to shoot two
franctireurs. They were little peasants who were alleged to have hidden
from the Germans a French machine-gun and its crew. The sentence was
carried out. One was never at a loss in finding reasons for a verdict.
And the population had been shown who their "master" was.
The little village of Pogny half-way between Châlons-sur-Marne and
Vitry-le-François, had fared no better than Chepy, as we observed when
we entered it at nine o'clock in the morning. We had now got
considerably nearer to the roaring guns. The slightly wounded who were
coming back and the men of the ammunition columns told us that a
terrible battle was raging to the west of Vitry-le-François. At four
o'clock in the afternoon we reached Vitry-le-François, after a veritable
forced march. The whole town was crowded with wounded; every building,
church, and school was full of wounded soldiers. The town itself was not
damaged.
Here things must have looked very bad for the Germans for, without
allowing us a respite, we were ordered to enter the battle to the west
of Vitry-le-François. We had approached the firing line a little more
than two miles when we got within reach of the enemy's curtain of fire.
A terrific hail of shells was ploughing up every foot of ground.
Thousands of corpses of German soldiers were witnesses of the immense
losses the Germans had suffered in bringing up all available reserves.
The French tried their utmost to prevent the Germans from bringing in
their reserves, and increased their artillery fire to an unheard-of
violence.
It seemed impossible for us to break through that barricade of fire.
Hundreds of shells were bursting every minute. We were ordered to pass
that hell singly and at a running pace. We were lying on the ground and
observed how the first of our men tried to get through. Some ran forward
like mad, not heeding the shells that were bursting around them, and
got through. Others were entirely buried by the dirt dug up by the
shells or were torn to pieces by shell splinters. Two men had scarcely
reached the line when they were struck by a bull's-eye, i. e., the heavy
shell exploded at their feet leaving nothing of them.
Who can imagine what we were feeling during those harrowing minutes as
we lay crouching on the ground not quite a hundred feet away, seeing
everything, and only waiting for our turn to come? One had entangled
oneself in a maze of thoughts. Suddenly one of the officers would cry,
"The next one!" That was I! Just as if roused out of a bad dream, I jump
up and race away like mad, holding the rifle in my right hand and the
bayonet in my left. I jumped aside a few steps in front of two bursting
shells and run into two others which are bursting at the same time. I
leap back several times, run forward again, race about wildly to find a
gap through which to escape. But--fire and iron everywhere. Like a
hunted beast one seeks some opening to save oneself. Hell is in front of
me and behind me the officer's revolver, kept ready to shoot.--The lumps
of steel fall down like a heavy shower from high above. Hell and
damnation! I blindly run and run and run, until somebody gets me by my
coat. "We're there!" somebody roars into my ear. "Stop! Are you wounded?
Have a look; perhaps you are and don't know it?" Here I am trembling all
over. "Sit down; you will feel better; we trembled too." Slowly I became
more quiet. One after the other arrived; many were wounded. We were
about forty when the sergeants took over the command. Nothing was again
to be seen of the officers.
We proceeded and passed several German batteries. Many had suffered
great losses. The crews were lying dead or wounded around their
demolished guns. Others again could not fire as they had no more
ammunition. We rested. Some men of the artillery who had "nothing to do"
for lack of ammunition came up to us. A sergeant asked why they did not
fire. "Because we have used up all our ammunition," a gunner replied. "O
yes, it would be quite impossible to bring up ammunition through that
curtain of fire." "It's not that," announced the gunner; "it's because
there isn't any more that they can't bring it up!" And then he went on:
"We started at Neufchâteau to drive the French before us like hunted
beasts; we rushed headlong after them like savages. Men and beasts were
used up in the heat; all the destroyed railroads and means of
transportation could not be repaired in those few days; everything was
left in the condition we found it; and in a wild intoxication of victory
we ventured to penetrate into the heart of France. We rushed on without
thinking or caring, all the lines of communication in our rear were
interrupted--we confidently marched into the traps the French set for
us. Before the first ammunition and the other accessories, which had all
to be transported by wagon, have reached us we shall be all done for."
Up to that time we had had blind confidence in the invincible strategy
of our "Great General Staff," and now they told us this. We simply did
not believe it. And yet it struck us that the French (as was made clear
by everything around us) were in their own country, in the closest
proximity of their largest depot, Paris, and were in possession of
excellent railroad communications. The French were, besides, maintaining
a terrible artillery fire with guns of such a large size as had never
yet been used by them. All that led to the conclusion that they had
taken up positions prepared long before, and that the French guns had
been placed in such a manner that we could not reach them.
In spite of all we continued to believe that the gunner had seen things
in too dark a light. We were soon to be taught better.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] A proprietor of many German sensational newspapers.
XII
AT THE MARNE--IN THE MAW OF DEATH
We got in the neighborhood of the line of defense, and were received by
a rolling fire from the machine-guns. We went up to the improvised
trenches that were to protect us, at the double-quick. It was raining
hard. The fields around were covered with dead and wounded men who
impeded the work of the defenders. Many of the wounded contracted
tetanus in consequence of contact with the clayey soil, for most of them
had not been bandaged. They all begged for water and bread, but we had
none ourselves. In fact, they implored us to give them a bit of bread.
They had been in that hell for two days without having eaten a mouthful.
We had scarcely been shown our places when the French began to attack in
mass formation. The occupants of those trenches, who had already beaten
back several of those attacks, spurred us on to shoot and then began to
fire themselves into the on-rushing crowd as if demented. Amidst the
shouting and the noise one could hear the cries of the officers of the
infantry: "Fire! Fire! More lively!" We fired until the barrels of our
rifles became quite hot. The enemy turned to flee. The heap of victims
lying between us and our opponents had again been augmented by hundreds.
The attack had been beaten back.