[5] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the
original sources.
"FORCED TO FIGHT"--THE TALE OF A SCHLESWIG DANE
"_What My Eyes Witnessed in East Prussia_"
_Told by Erich Erichsen, A Soldier in the German Army Translated from
the Danish by Ingebord Lund_
This is a tragic story of a Dane who was forced to fight in the
German Army. He was mobilized at the beginning of the War and
forced to serve on the Western and Eastern fronts. He wrote the
first revelations of life in the German trenches. This is the first
authentic account of how Germany makes war from the lips of a German
soldier. After being wounded, disfigured for life, and a cripple, he
went home where his own father and mother hardly knew him. Twenty
editions of his book have appeared in Danish but for obvious reasons,
its sale in Germany has been prohibited. The experiences herein
related are by permission of his American publishers, _Robert M.
McBride and Company_.
[6] I--STORY OF SUFFERING ON THE RUSSIAN FRONT
On the East front I took part in the great offensive against the
Russians. My old comrade was there also; he was still alive. But there
were many new faces in my division. The bloody days before Liège,
the horrors of the fight through Belgium, and the long strife in the
trenches of Flanders, had cost many men their lives or their reason....
I remember how Belgium was laid waste. But to tell the truth, things
were much the same in East Prussia. Before the invasion, it was in many
parts a melancholy country. But it looked more pitiable than ever, as
we marched through it, with the Russians retreating before us. Trampled
fields, ploughed up by shells, burnt farms, property wantonly injured
or destroyed, towns in ruins and human beings in despair, robbed of
all they had, their happiness, their joy, their future. It was an
indescribable scene of misery and woe. But at the same time it was
exceedingly touching to see how the greater number of the people clung
to the devastated home, whose master was probably in the fighting line,
if he were not already killed. The wretched hovels and the ruined farms
still sheltered human creatures, who did their work as best they could,
and hid themselves from the night and the rain in some cramped space,
between half-charred boards and ends of beams, or whatever they could
find to hand.
It was misery. It was poverty. It was wretchedness. But it was
home--the one fixed point in their existence. If they once forsook
that, they were exposed to the merciless uncertainty of life. So they
clung to it obstinately and faithfully in spite of all they had to bear
and suffer, both when the Russians advanced, and when they retreated.
Among their other miseries they had also learnt to know famine. When
the Russians advanced, they did not leave much behind. Many a time
these people begged our last slice of bread from us, to stay the worst
of their hunger.
We gave to them willingly. I felt at times, that their lot was far
worse than ours. We indeed might lose our lives in many different ways,
and we also knew what it was to be hungry. But we had not to listen to
our children crying for food, or see our tiny infants sicken and die
because there was no milk to be had and the mother's breasts were empty.
I can well understand why wherever we came, the people greeted us as
their deliverers.
I understand their joy and their often boundless gratitude in word and
deed. I understand why the old men and the trembling women so often
fell upon our necks with tears of joy.
It must be heart-breaking to see the plot of ground you love laid
waste and trampled down, without being able to do anything to save it.
It must be still more heart-breaking to see the home that you have
cherished devoured by flames, and then, on dark and stormy nights,
taking your children by the hand or on your back, and followed by
terror-stricken women and bewildered old people, to flee from that
home and wander along toilsome roads to uncertainty, in company with
hundreds of others who know just as little where to go for help or
safety.
We met many such crowds of homeless wayfarers on our march, people who
could hardly drag themselves along for hunger and cold and terror.
There were miserable carts drawn by miserable, starved horses and
wretched bits of furniture, piled up anyhow in haste and fear. There
were people huddled together under the lee of a hedge or in a wood,
or sheltering in the holes they had dug into banks of earth or dykes,
wrapped in rags, starving with cold and still terror-stricken.
Men gazing towards the homes from which they had fled, looking in
bewilderment and despair at the down-trodden and ruined country;
women lying down and trying to warm their little ones at a naked,
impoverished breast, or groaning in misery and hopelessness over the
dying eyes of a child; old men and old women with only one wish in the
world--the sum and substance of their prayers from hour to hour being
that God would take them away from all this misery, which they could
not in the least comprehend and which they had not strength enough to
bear.