John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
World War I as Experienced by the Soldiers
This set of readings does not seek to explain the origins or course of the First World War, but
its impact upon the participating societies. From our perspective, this war is the great divide;
much of the pre-war world is difficult to conceive and understand. The shape of its
institutions, its dominant political philosophies, its ethical and religious concepts crumbled
in the great conflagration. And out of the bloodshed and agony came a new world. This
chapter documents its birth pains.
The readings are arranged chronologically: 104 letters, poems, and diary entries composed
by the participants, mostly young men 18 to 24 years old. In the beginning, they express
patriotic zeal and enthusiasm, reflections of the Social Darwinism encountered in the last
chapter, but as the war continued, these letters and diaries change dramatically. War is
always hell, but seldom has its horror been captured in so many spontaneous informal
letters, and never has the transition from enthusiasm to despair been more graphically
portrayed than in these fumbling attempts to understand how, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's phrase,
"my safe little world blew itself apart."
Opening Months of the Fighting
Diary of Lieutenant Henri Desagneaux
1 August 1914: From the early hours Paris is in turmoil. The banks are besieged. At last at
4:15 in the afternoon, the news spreads like wild-fire, posters are being put up with the order
for mobilization on them! It's every man for himself, you scarcely have the time to shake a
few hands before having to go home to make preparations for departure. At six in the
morning, after some painful goodbyes, I go to Nogent-le-Perreux station. Already you find
yourself cut off from the world, the newspapers don't come here any more. But, on the other
hand, how much news there is! Everyone has his bit of information to tell—and it's true!... A
squadron of [German] Uhlans has been made prisoner; the [French] 20th Corps is already in
Alsace.
At last in the afternoon, I catch the first train which comes along which is going no one
knows precisely where, except that it is in the direction of the Front. The compartments and
corridors are bursting at the seams with people from all classes of society. Morale is
excellent, everyone is extraordinarily quiet and calm. Along the track at level crossings, in
the towns, crowds singing "La Marseillaise" gather to greet the troops. The French women
have set to it. They are handing out drinks, writing paper, and cigarettes. The general
impression is the following: it's Kaiser Bill who wanted war, it had to happen, we shall never
have such a fine opportunity again.
1
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Letter of Albert Mayer, 22 (Killed 2 August 1914, first day of fighting)
July 31, 1914: Everything is very quiet around here right now, and so I have plenty of time
to think of you and all my loved ones. There is something both sinister and enrapturing about
this mobilization process. The patrols are moving up exactly at the right second, no shoe, no
round of ammunition is missing, everything, but everything is in place. If our enemies carry
it off in the same fashion, then we will have a difficult task ahead of us.... Perhaps this letter
will never reach you; perhaps it will reach you soon; perhaps it will reach you when I and my
regiment have already passed into the region from which no earthly power can recall us. It is
not that I want to be pessimistic, but I believe that a certain feeling of apprehension now lives
in each of us—and so I extend heartfelt best wishes for the future. I hope that I will soon be
able to greet my brother also in soldier uniform. Are you not proud, that you have three sons
who can fight for the Fatherland?
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925
As early as my Vienna period, the Balkans were immersed in that livid sultriness which
customarily announces the hurricane, and from time to time a beam of brighter light flared
up, only to vanish again in the spectral darkness. But then came the Balkan War and with it
the first gust of wind swept across a Europe grown nervous. The time which now followed
lay on the chests of men like a heavy nightmare, sultry as feverish tropic heat, so that due to
constant anxiety the sense of approaching catastrophe turned at last to longing: let Heaven at
last give free rein to the fate which could no longer be thwarted. And then the first mighty
lightning flash struck the earth; the storm was unleashed and with the thunder of Heaven
there mingled the roar of the World War batteries....
The struggle of the year 1914 was not forced on the masses—not by the living God—it was
desired by the whole people. People wanted at length to put an end to the general uncertainty.
Only thus can it be understood that more than two million German men and boys thronged to
the colors for this hardest of all struggles, prepared to defend the flag with the last drop of
their blood. To me those hours seemed like a release from the painful feeling of my youth.
Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on
my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of
being permitted to live at this time....
What a man wants is what he hopes and believes. The overwhelming majority of the nation
had long been weary of the eternally uncertain state of affairs; thus it was only too
understandable that they no longer believed in a peaceful conclusion of the Austro-Serbian
conflict, but hoped for the final settlement. I, too, was one of these millions.
2
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Diary of Florence Farmborough, 27 (An English Governess and later nurse on the
Russian Front)
August 1914: Moscow ... was astir at an early hour and the streets were packed with excited
crowds. The Czar's reception by the people would be very sincere and warm, for he ranged
side by side with God in the affection and estimation of the peasant masses. What Little
Father Czar could not do for them, Little Father God would bring about, and what Little
Father God would not do, Little Father Czar could bring to pass.... Small wonder, then, that
the people were eager to express their love and reverence for such an august figure and to
pay homage to the Heaven-chosen representative of their Church and country.
Letter of an Anonymous German Soldier to His Sister
25 August 1914: No enemy can enter here without sacrificing one million men. We have the
watch every third night but it is for the Fatherland. You tell me, my dear sister, not to become
discouraged. That is absolutely impossible. Such enthusiasm has never before existed in the
German army. When "volunteers to the front" is called out, all present themselves, the entire
battery standing like a wall and each man wishing to be first. When we come back, it is
always singing, no matter how tired we are, and evenings we lie in the guardhouse stripped
of our trappings and sing, "Oh Germany high in honor," "Deutschland, Deutschland ü ber
alles," or "The Watch on the Rhine." The Social Democrats have volunteered to lie in wait 8
days on bread and water before the enemy; everybody shouts "Forward! Always Forward!
Victory or Death!" Think of Liege which the whole world considered impregnable, think of
our blue jackets who voluntarily faced death to win, and you may be sure that when
Christmas comes we shall either all be dead or victorious. It will not last longer.
Letter of Julian Grenfell, Killed 26 May 1915
29 September 1914: I adore war. It's like a big picnic without the objectlessness of a picnic.
I've never been so well or happy. No one grumbles at one for being dirty.
Letters of an Anonymous French Soldier
1 October 1914: I can say that, as far as the mind goes, I have lived through great days when
all vain preoccupations were swept away by a new spirit. If there should ever be any lapse so
that only one of my letters reaches you, may it be one that says how beneficial, how precious
have these torments been!
9 October 1914: It seems that we have the order to attack. I do not want to risk this great
event without directing my thoughts to you in the few moments of quiet that are left....
Everything here combines to maintain peace in the heart: the beauty of the woods in which
3
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
we live, the absence of intellectual complications.... It is paradoxical, as you say, but the
finest moments of my moral life are those that have just gone by....
Letter of Alan Seeger, 21, An American who joined the French Foreign Legion, Killed 3
July 1916
17 October 1914: After two weeks here and less than two months from enlistment we are
actually going at last to the firing line. By the time you receive this we shall already perhaps
have had our baptism of fire.... When we lie on the ground, it has been wonderful to hear the
steady pounding of the distant cannonade. But imagine how thrilling it will be tomorrow and
the following days, marching toward the front with the noise of battle growing continually
louder before us.... You have no idea how beautiful it is to see the troops undulating along
the road in front of one in columns of four as far as the eye can see with the captains and
lieutenants on horseback at the head of their companies....
Tomorrow the real hardship and privations begin. But I go into action with the lightest of
light hearts. The hard work and moments of frightful fatigue have not broken but hardened
me and I am in excellent health and spirits. Do not worry, for the chances are small of not
returning and I think you can count on seeing me at Fairlea next summer, for I shall certainly
return after the war to see you all and recuperate. I am happy and full of excitement over the
wonderful days that are ahead. It was such a comfort to receive your letter and know that you
approved of my action. Be sure that I shall play the part well for I was never in better health
nor felt my manhood more keenly....
Letter by an Anonymous German Soldier
3 November 1914: On 4 October we were quietly riding along a country road in France.
Suddenly a dispatch rider dashes up, bringing the news that 2 cavalry brigades (double our
number) have been sighted 2,000 yards off. We walked our horses for about 500 yards, then
took our positions in sections. Then off at a gallop with tilted lances and sabers hanging on
our arms. Each of us knew what it meant to have to fight against double numbers.
A hasty shake-hands with the comrades—a last prayer—a pat on the faithful horse's neck—
then on. The trumpeters blow "quick gallop." Soon we were in a glen, then over a hill and at
a distance of 200 yards we saw the enemy galloping towards us; we could even hear the
horses snorting. When we were about a 100 yards off each other, our captain called "Steady,"
30 yards—and I saw him draw his revolver—a report, and the French leader sinks from his
horse. A fearful encounter followed. Lance against lance, man against man, and every now
and then revolver reports. Suddenly, I see my Sergeant surrounded by 8 Frenchmen. We hew
him out and in a few seconds 8 young enemies are lying on the grass that is dyed red with
their blood. Our Sergeant is safe and we go rushing on. Most of us have lost our lances or left
them sticking in our enemies. Now we take to our sabers, we are all intoxicated with rage and
4
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
want revenge for our fallen comrades. Shoulder to shoulder, over the corpses of men and
horses—we don't know what we are doing in our rage—"Halt, what is that?" The trumpets, at
about 50 yards, sound retreat. The French shout Hurrah, for they think they have put us to
flight and are ever so pleased. Little they think what is going to happen. To our right, the
corner of a wood, there, under cover (we did not know it ourselves) 8 machine guns, which at
once begin their gruesome work and man for man is mowed down.
We stop—out with the carbines and our bullets are showered over the enemy. Now that they
remark what havoc we have made among them, they try to get off to the left. But 2
companies of infantry, at not more than 200 yards distance, give them a worthy reception.
The German rifles shoot slow and sure. We see the men and horses rolling in blood. There is
no escape for the enemy. They try to get back across the Marne, as they came, but that is
guarded by 4 German machine guns, which keep their posts and don't cease firing till the last
man has fallen from his horse. Those who advance are shot by our rifles.
The whole engagement has barely lasted one hour. In this space of time, 3,000 enemies lost
their lives. It was a ghastly sight—wherever you looked, nothing but dead and wounded,
groaning and screaming! I almost lost consciousness. Our squadron had to shoot the badly
wounded horses. There were about 700 of them, the rest were dead. On the French side not a
hundred horses remained uninjured.
Diary of Herbert Sulzbach, 20
21 October 1914: Change of position. We pull forward, get our first glimpse of this
battlefield, and have to get used to the terrible scenes and impressions: corpses, corpses and
more corpses, rubble, and the remains of villages.... The bodies of friend and foe lie tumbled
together.... We are now in an area of meadowland, covered with dead cattle and a few
surviving, ownerless cows. The ruins of the village taken by assault are still smoking.
Trenches hastily dug by the British are full of bodies. We get driven out of this position as
well, by infantry and artillery fire. We stand beside the guns with the horses. A dreadful night
comes down on us. We have seen too many horrible things all at once, and the smell of the
smoking ruins, the lowing of the deserted cattle, and the rattle of machine-gun fire make a
very strong impression on us, barely twenty years old as we are, but these things also harden
us up for what is going to come.
We certainly did not want this war! We are only defending ourselves and our Germany
against a world of enemies who have banded together against us.
5
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Letter of Friedrich Troller
30 October 1914: Oh what horror and suffering has come to France through this unfortunate
war! When we enter a village, we see the mothers in the doorways, a small child in their
arms, and others clustered around, holding tight to the mother and curiously inspecting the
foreign soldiers. Last week, we took a rest-break in just such a village, and saw the women
and children. Then I went up to one group, placed my hands on the waist of the little one—
who was just about as small as Anna—and lifted her high in the air. The mother followed my
motions with tears in her eyes. I explained in German that I had a little one just like her at
home. She answered that her husband was also in the war, and she had received no news
from him for weeks. It is horrible—and it is the same everywhere, be it for friends or foes.
Letter of Fritz Meese, 23, Killed 26 May 1915
November 1914: I am quite convinced that everybody who gets home safe and sound will
be a totally different fellow in every way. He will certainly be more considerate towards
other people, especially in the matter of exploiting them for his own ends. The habit of
comradeship necessitated by the war will have that result....
Letter of Kurt Schlenner, 19, Killed 21 December 1914
9 December 1914: The finest thing of all is the marvelous comradeship at the front.... First
of all there is the universal comradeship which runs through the whole German army and is
shown by our calling each other "Du.". . . Even more important than this general relation is
the personal comradeship between man and man among those who are constantly dependent
on one another. No test enables one to divide up into good and bad so easily as that of
comrade ship.... Anybody who, in spite of his own difficulties, still finds time to help the man
in front of him out of a shell-hole and to warn the man behind him of what's coming, is
simply a "good" one.... The test of comradeship also enables one to look into the very depths
of each one's soul, and then one sees how much in civil life was only outward show.
Letter of Alfred Buchalski, 23, Killed 10 November 1914
28 October 1914: With what joy, with what enthusiasm I went into the war, which seemed
to me a splendid opportunity for working off all the natural craving of youth for excitement
and experience! In what bitter disappointment I now sit here, with horror in my heart! And in
violent contrast to this, with what deep satisfaction I breathe in, with this precious air, that
life of which hundreds have been deprived!
How shall I ever properly describe to you the experiences of the last few days? I should like
to give you a complete picture of the whole battle, but only little isolated incidents thrust
6
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
themselves into the foreground. It was ghastly! Not the actual shedding of blood, nor that it
was shed in vain, nor the fact that in the darkness our own comrades were firing at us—no,
but the whole way in which a battle is fought is so revolting. To want to fight and not even to
be able to defend oneself! The attack, which I thought was going to be so magnificent, meant
nothing but being forced to get forward from one bit of cover to another in the face of a hail
of bullets, and not to see the enemy who was firing them!
Certainly I hope to get used to this sort of warfare, and that I may yet get a chance of
carrying out the order: "Forward, at the enemy!" If one could only accomplish something,
then, no doubt, the bullets wouldn't hurt so much!
Letters of Alan Seeger, 21, Killed 3 July 1916
10 November 1914: Fifth day of our second period in the trenches. Five days and nights of
pure misery. We came up here Thursday evening, a foggy, moonlit night, bright enough to
show the fields through which we ascended, spattered with shell-holes as thick as mole-hills,
and the pine woods full of shattered trunks and broken branches.... It is impossible to cross
the open spaces in daylight, so that we can only get food by going to the kitchens before
dawn and after sundown. The increasing cold will make this kind of existence almost
insupportable, with its accompaniments of vermin and dysentery. Could we only attack or be
attacked! I would hear the order with delight. The real courage of the soldier is not in facing
the cannon balls, but the fatigue and discomfort and misery....
12 November 1914: This is what is distressing about the kind of warfare we are up
against—being harried like this by an invisible enemy and standing up against all the dangers
of battle without any of its exhilaration or enthusiasm. From Belfort to the sea now it is the
war of the trenches.... In comparison with it a bayonet charge would be desirable and the
command welcome to us all....
Letters of Alfred Vaeth, 26, Killed 16 October 1915
4 November 1914: The worst thing is lying still under enemy shell fire. Nothing else is to be
compared with that. It is a frightful strain on the nerves. Anyhow, waiting and not being
allowed to do anything is much worse than fighting. The French have withdrawn a bit today.
Before that we were only about 100 yards away from each other. The unpleasant part of that
was that one was always expecting to be blown up by a mine. I shouldn't like to die that way.
I should prefer a fine, sunny day, when the barrage has cleared the way, and the inspiriting
order comes: "Fix bayonets! Charge! Hurrah!"
12 September 1915: The only thing that really troubles me is the utter weariness of the
troops. It is terrible how they are longing for peace. They seem to have lost all their spring.
7
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
There is hardly a man who still seems able to stiffen his backbone, hold up his head and
accept things just because they have to be.... We also hear from time to time discordant notes,
from home of course. They are again busy there abusing everybody who doesn't agree with
them. If there is to be a New Germany, the troops will have to take it home with them—it is
not to be found there.
12 October 1915: The attack was terribly beautiful! The most beautiful and at the same time
the most terrible thing I have ever experienced. Our Artillery shot magnificently, and after
two hours (the French take seventy) the position was sufficiently prepared for German
Infantry. The storm came, as only German Infantry can storm! It was magnificent the way
our men, especially the youngest, advanced, magnificent! Officers belonging to other
regiments, who were looking on, have since admitted they had never seen anything like it! In
the face of appalling machine-gun fire they went on with a confidence which nobody could
ever attempt to equal. And so the hill, which had been stormed in vain three times, was taken
in the hour. The booty was greater than was stated in the Order of the Day!
But now comes the worst part—to hold the hill! Bad, very bad days are in front of us. One
can scarcely hope to get through safe and sound. The French guns are shooting appallingly,
and every night there are counter-attacks and bombing raids. Where I am we are only about
20 yards apart. Now, when one has again got through the easiest part of the attack, one
shudders at the thought that one may be torn to bits by a shell in a trench, covered with dirt,
and so end—in the mud and filth. We should all like so much to live a few months longer,
until an advance towards final victory has been made there.
The attack was glorious!
Men vs Technology
Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel: A Diary of a German Storm-Troop Officer on the Western
Front, 1929
Hours [under artillery bombardment] were without doubt the most awful of the whole war.
You cower in a heap alone in a hole and feel yourself the victim of a pitiless thirst for
destruction. With horror you feel that all your intelligence, your capacities, your bodily and
spiritual characteristics, have become utterly meaningless and absurd. While you think it, the
lump of metal that will crush you to a shapeless nothing may have started on its course. Your
discomfort is concentrated in your ear, that tries to distinguish amid the uproar the swirl of
your own death rushing near. It is dark too; and you must find in yourself alone all the
strength for holding out. You can't get up and with a blasé laugh light a cigarette in the
wondering sight of your companions.
Nor can you be encouraged by the sight of your friend clipping a monocle into his eye to
8
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
observe a hit close beside you. You know that not even a cock will crow when you are hit.
Well, why don't you jump up and rush into the night till you collapse in safety behind a bush
like an exhausted animal? Why do you hang on there all the time, you and your braves?
There are no superior officers to see you. Yet someone watches you. Unknown perhaps to
yourself, there is someone within you who keeps you to your post by the power of two
mighty spells: Duty and Honor. You know that this is your place in the battle, and that a
whole people relies on you to do your job. You feel, "If I leave my post, I am a coward in my
own eyes, a wretch who will ever after blush at every word of praise." You clench your teeth
and stay.
All of us held on that evening, all who lay along that dark Flanders road. Officers and men
alike showed what they were made of. Duty and Honor must be the corner stones of every
army. And a heightened sense of duty and honor must be inculcated in the officer who fights
in the forefront of the battle. For that, suitable material and a fixed mold are required. The
truth of this is fully known only in war....
Letter of Karl Josenhans, 22, Killed 29 January 1915
9 November 1914: One murderous instrument with which we have the advantage is the big
trench-mortar. They hurl huge shells about a thousand feet into the air and they fall almost
vertically. I have been able to observe their effect narrowly this time. Earth and branches are
flung into the air to the height of a house, and although the shells fell eighty yards away from
us, the ground under us shook. During the explosion I was looking through a periscope into
the French trench opposite and could see the terrified men running away to the rear. But
somebody was evidently standing behind them with a revolver, for one after another came
crawling back again. This war is simply a matter of hounding men to death, and that is a
degrading business. We can indeed be thankful that we are not to blame for starting it, for
even as it is one often is absolutely sickened by the war....
As regards physical hardships, I really have none. I have blankets at night and always enough
to eat and drink. One simply doesn't notice the bullets that whistle by and lodge in the walls
of the trench. It is only the responsibility that is a strain. It gives one simply no rest at night;
one is constantly seeing after one's sentries to make sure that they are all on the alert. And
this feeling haunts one even after one has been relieved, so that one dreams all night of
sentries and trenches. By the second night, things are better, so that one even dreams of
peacetime. It sounds a mere mockery when a local priest writes, as one did to a friend of
mine: "We must not wish for a speedy end of the war, because it is impossible." I should like
that man to have just one look at things as they are here. A great many letters too that are
written from the Front give no true picture; the people who write fine-sounding letters are
mostly running around miles away from the trenches. So we shall calmly continue to pray for
a speedy end.
9
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Letter of Lothar Dietz, 26, Killed 15 April 1915
November 1914: You at home can't have the faintest idea of what it means to us when in the
newspaper it simply and blandly says: "In Flanders today again only artillery activity." Far
better go over the top in the most foolhardy attack, cost what it may, than stick it out all day
long under shell-fire, wondering all the time whether the next one will maim one or blow one
to bits. For the last three hours, a corporal has been lying groaning on my right, here in the
dug-out, with one arm and both legs shattered by a shell. The trench runs down so steeply
that it is impossible to carry him that way on a ground-sheet, and the other communication
trench is under water. So "good advice is dear." Anyone who is badly wounded generally
dies while he is being got out of here. Today has cost us four killed, two dangerously and
three slightly wounded.
Letters of Kurt Peterson, 20, Killed 3 August 1915
25 October 1914: What experience one goes through during such an attack. It makes one
years older! Death roars around one; a hail of machine-gun and rifle bullets; every moment
one expects to be hit; one is certain of it. One's memory is in perfect working order, one sees
and feels quite clearly. One thinks of one's parents. Then there rises in every man thoughts of
defiance and rage and finally a cry for help: away with war! Away with this vile abortion
brought forth
by human wickedness! Human beings are slaughtering thousands of other human beings
whom they neither know, nor hate, nor love. Cursed be those who, while not themselves
obliged to face the horrors of war, bring it to pass! May they all be utterly destroyed, for they
are brutes and beasts of prey!
27 October 1914: There was an attack on Dixmuide. Ghastly! A repetition of the first attack.
Again frustrated by the awful machine-gun fire. The half uttered "Hurrah" was choked. We
all lay like logs on the ground and all about us Death hissed and howled. Such a night is
enough to make an old man of one. Strangely enough, I keep perfectly calm. I can't describe
my frame of mind, but it was quite simple. My brain was clear and bright; only the thought of
the Mother of Mercy predominated and on her I concentrated all my pain and torment.... One
thinks: "I have been in two attacks, may I never see another!" This is my most earnest desire.
What has become of one's courage? We have had enough of war. One is not necessarily a
coward because one's whole nature revolts against this barbarity, this gruesome slaughter.
Away, away with this war! Put an end to it as speedily as possible.
Letter of Franz Blumenfeld, 23, Killed 18 December 1914
14 October 1914: One thing weighs upon me from day to day—the fear of getting
10
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
brutalized. Your wishing you could provide me with a bullet-proof net is very sweet, but
strange to say I have no fear, none at all, of bullets and shells, but only of this great spiritual
loneliness. I am afraid of losing my faith in human nature, in myself, in all that is good in the
world! 0h, that is horrible. Much, much harder to bear than [most conditions here]. I don't
mind any of those things. It is much harder for me to endure the incredibly coarse tone that
prevails among men here. The sight of the slightly and dangerously wounded, the dead men
and horses lying about, hurts of course, but the pain of all that is not nearly so keen or lasting
as one imagined it would be. Of course that is partly due to the fact that one knows one can't
do anything to prevent it. But may it not at the same time be a beginning of a deplorable
callousness, almost barbarity, or how is it possible that it gives me more pain to bear my own
loneliness than to witness the sufferings of so many others? What is the good of escaping all
the bullets and shells, if my soul is injured?
Letter of Walter Roy, 21, Killed 24 April 1915
14 November 1914: Oh how suddenly everything has changed! First the free, golden
happiness, a life of liberty, enthusiasm for Nature, poetry, music, brightness and joy, all the
effervescence of youth.... And now, cold, cruel, bitter, earnest, stormy winter, death and
misery. Only one thing is real now—the war! And the only thing that inspires and uplifts is
love for the German Fatherland and the desire to fight and risk all for Emperor and Empire.
All else is thrust into the background and is like a dream, like a distant cloud in the evening
sky.
Letter of Ferdinand Belmont, a French Captain, Killed December 1915
April 1915: I often think that this agitated life, full of emotions, is very enviable, and that it
responds admirably to the proud ambitions of young men who would do and see
everything—those who feverishly demand "to live their life," according to the common and
fatal phrase. Yes, this life of action, always on the alert, indeed contains enough to satisfy a
taste for adventure, a thirst for the unexpected, a dread of routine and ordinary existence— in
brief the whole baggage of youth overflowing with pride. Here are life and adventure for
you. Here is something out of the ordinary, and all your desires are realized....
Diary of Sergeant S.V. Britten, Royal Highlanders of Canada
22 April 1915: Left at 6:30 pm for reserve trenches and reached our reserve dugouts via St.
Julien. Just rat holes! One hell of accommodation! Got to the trenches as a fatigue party with
stake and sandbags, and thought they were reserve trenches, they were so rotten. No trenches
at all in parts, just isolated mounds. found German's feet sticking up through the ground. The
11
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Gurkhas * had actually used human bodies instead of sandbags.
Right beside the stream where we were working were the bodies of two dead, since
November last, one faced downwards in full marching order, with his kit on his back. He
died game! Stench something awful and dead all round. Water rats had made a home of their
decomposed bodies. Visited the barbed wire with Rae—ordinary wire strung across. Quit
about 1 am, came back to our dugouts and found them on fire. Had to march out to St. Julien
and put up in a roofless house—not a roof left on anything in the whole place. Found our
sack of food had been stolen and we were famished. Certainly a most unlucky day, for I lost
my cherished pipe in the evening also. Bed at 4 am.
Letter of Hans Martens, 23, Killed 14 July 1915
14 February 1915, Rest Area: It won't be long now before I am at the Front again, thank
God! I'd rather be in the filthiest trench than here—one doesn't notice all the suffering so
much out there. My one and only wish is that I may at last really do something in a battle.
For when you simply stand in a trench and may not move, while shells and trench-mortars
keep coming over, well, that may be fighting, but far from doing anything, it is the exact and
horrible opposite. And that is the disgusting part of this war; it's all so mechanical; one might
call it the trade of systematic manslaughter. One takes part in it out of enthusiasm for the
object, while hating and despising the means one is forced to employ to attain that object.
General Mordacq's Account of the First German Gas Attack at Ypres
22 April 1915: It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. A Boche plane flew over the lines
and dropped flares which, as I later realized, gave the signal for the opening of the gas attack.
All around us the men left the trenches and fell back toward the village, but we did not
understand as yet the reason for their panic.... A few moments later, as we looked to our left,
we saw a thick, yellowish-green cloud veiling the sky like a cloud of vapor. We were already
affected by asphyxiating fumes. I had the impression that I was looking through green
glasses. At the same time, I felt the action of the gas upon my respiratory system; it burned in
my throat, caused pains in my chest, and made breathing all but impossible. I spat blood and
suffered from dizziness. We all thought we were lost.
Captain Pollard's Account of Ypres
April 1915: The trenches of the north of the canal and on the left off the Canadian 3rd
Brigade were held by the French colonial troops of the 45th Division, Turcos and Zouaves.
*
Indian troops fighting under British officers.
12
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Dusk was falling when from the German trenches in front of the French line rose that strange
green cloud of death. The light northeasterly breeze wafted it toward them, and in a moment
death had them by the throat.... It was a new and devilish engine of warfare, one for which
white troops were wholly unprepared, and which held for these brave Africans a sheer terror
of the supernatural—one cannot blame them that they broke and fled.
In the gathering dark of that awful night they fought with the terror, running blindly in the
gas-cloud, and dropping with breasts heaving in agony and the slow poison of suffocation
mantling their dark faces. Hundreds of them fell and died; others lay helpless, froth upon
their agonized lips and their racked bodies powerfully sick, with tearing nausea at short
intervals. They too would die later—a slow and lingering death of agony unspeakable.... The
whole air was tainted with the acrid smell of chlorine that caught at the back of men's throats
and filled their mouths with its metallic taste. Behind the gas-cloud came the advancing
hordes of Germans, under cover of a violent artillery fire.
Diary Entries of Rudolf Binding
24 April 1915: The effects of the successful gas attack are truly ghastly. Poisoning Men!—I
just don't know! Undoubtedly, after the rest of the world expresses its horror, they will
proceed to imitate what we have done. All of the dead lie with their fists clenched to cover
mouth and nose. The whole field seems yellow. They say that Ypres must surely fall. It is
burning in the distance—such a shame, for it is such a beautiful city. Langemarck is now a
heap of ruins, and all ruins look alike; there is no need to say anymore about them. Only one
portal of the church is still standing, with the date 1620 carved
16 May 1915: Another of our attacks fail, with great loss of life— and what is worse, the
men have grown sick and tired of our losses, and are not easily brought from the trenches
into an attack. The officers are brave enough fellows, but are no longer as well-trained and
professional, and they can no longer lead their men. Yet I cannot hold this against the troops.
There simply is not sufficient personal authority on the part of the officers. Possibly I too
would not follow their commands to leap from the trench into raging fire.
Diary of an Anonymous British Subaltern
Summer 1915: Now tonight, if the wind is favorable, gas is going over from our front
line.... "We are going to give the Huns a dose of their own bloody physic tonight. Let's hope
it wipes out all the bastards in the trench.". . . Gas! I believe there's not a man among us who
does not feel some shamefacedness at this loathsome method of war. Many times since I
heard the news I have said to myself: "They started it." I wonder why I find it necessary to
say it to myself so many times.
13
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Recollections of Sergeant Bill Hay, The Royal Scots, 1915
A Canadian came down and he shouted to our Captain: "The bastards have broken through;
they've gassed us and they've broken through, so give them the bloody bayonet, Jock!" So
then the order came, "Fix Bayonets," right along the line. Of course, our hands were shaking,
fixing the bayonets. That was our first counter-attack, but the strange thing was that when
you'd got your bayonet fixed and you got your order to charge, all the sort of nervousness
that you had, your fear and trembling, all seemed to go. You just—you were in action—your
main concentration was to get there and not get killed yourself, so you lost these twitterings.
Of course, the chaps were all gasping and couldn't breathe, and it was ghastly, especially for
chaps that were wounded—terrible for a wounded man to lie there! The gasping, the gasping!
And it caused a lot of mucus, phlegm, your eyes were stinging as well. You couldn't stop to
help anybody, even if he was your brother, he'd still be lying there badly injured, and you
mustn't help[ ... or there'd be nobody to contend with the attack....
The ambulances took chaps away, and many chaps were jumping on the wagons and
shooting off when they might have been able to stay a bit longer—not wounded—or not
much—then, of course, there was all the chaps lying about wounded and crying. That was
heart-rending, that was, all night long we could hear them. Before daybreak, we were told to
dig in—we had no trenches—with an entrenching tool, and all we could do was dig funk
holes—like a grave, more or less. We were digging these hole and I was sent in front, maybe
about fifty yards, with a covering party—so many men went out in front to lie there and
watch for the Jerries in case they made a sudden counter-attack—you were supposed to fire a
few shots and warn the blokes behind. And all the time the shells are coming over.
I'll tell you this much, I might not have been wounded in body but I was wounded in my
mind. I don't know if you can imagine it but obviously when there's shell fire, you get down
to get cover, only an idiot wouldn't get down, so you get down and you can't get your nails
into the ground and your head under the ground, you can't get down because you can't go any
further. You're on the ground and your nails are dug into the ground and there you are and
the shells are bursting round and there's screaming bits of shells and they're not just bits of
metal, they're hot metal flying all over the place and there are machine guns going and
pandemonium all round. How the devil did you get out of that unscathed? How did you get
out? It's a miracle, if there's such a thing as a miracle.
Msgr. John Bickerstaffe to his Mother
4 March 1915: I think I have even less than usual to make a letter out of tonight. I walked to
the Base office after Mass and got your letter of Tuesday.... The head priest at St. Jacques is a
queer old boy, and rather amusing. I said Mass for the Dead today, and told him it was for all
those killed in the war. "All those killed among the Allies, you mean," he said. "Oh no! For
14
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
the dead of all armies," I told him. He made a very ugly face and said: "I won't do that. The
Dear Lord must look after the Germans Himself." I laughed and said: "Perhaps the Good
Lord will say that He has no time, then, to look after you. Whereupon the sacristan giggled
and he went away shaking his old head.
25 March 1915: I hate telling you sad things, but I am going to tell you one. Yesterday I
heard one of the French soldiers, convalescent after being wounded, in one of the [hospitals]
close by, had received the order to go back to the fighting line. Probably he had been here
since September. The poor lad hanged himself. Isn't it horrible to think, not only of the act,
but of the unspeakable anguish of mind that ended in it?
My poor McCurry killed, nobly, in the way of duty, all his hopeful youth finished, that was
sad enough; but how much more horrible to think of this ignoble way of exit, in evasion of
duty, of one whose youth was hopeless. But it was not, I am sure, mere cowardice: it was
simply a breaking-point of endurance, reached after long horrors of anticipation. To go back
to that awful fighting, remembering it, and saved from it by a terrible wound—the thought of
it so infinitely more unbearable to a lonely, morbid mind than the first going to it. For that
poor soul, too, I said Mass today: do say a prayer for him.
General Routine Order No.1885, 18 October 1916
No., 12772 Private A. Botfield, 9th Battalion (Pioneers) South Stafforshire Regt. was tried by
FGCM on the following charge: "Misbehaving before the enemy in such a manner as to
show cowardice." The accused when proceeding with a party for work in the trenches ran
away owing to the bursting of a shell and did not afterwards rejoin the party. The sentence of
the Court was to "suffer death by being shot." The sentence was duly carried out at 5:50 am
on 18th October 1916.
Recollections of Captain W.G.Bagot Chester, King Edward's Own Gurka Rifles
24 September 1915: Left for trenches. A fine night with moon and clouds. There are two
extremes for the attack about to come off. If the wind is favorable it will take place at 6 am,
preceded by shell-gas, but if the wind shows no signs of changing, there will be a night attack
at 3 am. We hope to do the day attack, as have been induced to place great confidence in the
gas. At 12 midnight a message came through to say the 6 am scheme would be used, so we
then went to sleep for a few hours, wondering how many of us would be left to sleep
tomorrow night. The attack orders were:
5:00 am. Intensive Artillery bombardment.
5:30 am. Gas let loose. Assaulting infantry crowd into front trenches. Smoke bombs
over the parapet.
5:58 am. Gas cut off. Mine under German trenches blown up.
6 am. Assaulting infantry cross parapet.
15
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Towards morning the wind, which it was hoped would favor us, seemed to be blowing, what
little there was of it, from the German trenches towards us. however, the order was to let
loose the gas, but when those in charge of the cylinders turned on the taps, clouds of gas blew
backwards. My throat became very sore. One of the gas men in the traverse in which I was
standing, keeping an eye on my watch, became overcome and was lying at my feet groaning
horribly. I was counting the seconds to 6 o'clock, and then I gave the signal to cross the
parapet, I think we were all glad to get out of our trench full of gas. The distance to the front
German trench was about 200 yards. For the first eighty the air was thick with smoke from
the smoke bombs, but as we emerged into view of the Hun, they let drive at us. I found my
men dropping all round me, and when I reached the German wire I was practically alone, and
found myself with one of two others literally running along the outside cage of the German
wire searching for a way through. our Artillery had not, as we hoped, laid the wire
entanglements flat, at any rate on my front. A moment later I felt a blow on my right
shoulder, and over I went. Fortunately, I fell close to a "pip-squeak" hole. It was very shallow
and small and already occupied by one of my wounded men.
Well! it didn't take a moment to realize the attack had failed hopelessly, and there was
nothing to be done but to lie low as if dead for the rest of the day. There was only room in the
hole to keep our heads and bodies below the level of the ground; our legs had to remain
outside. Budhiman was my comrade in the shell hole. It was not long before I heard a squeal
of pain. He got hit a second time. Next hit was my turn, and a piece of iron landed on my
right groin. Now and then we would hear the thud of a bullet hitting the ground within a few
inches of our heads. The Huns were doing their best to finish us off. The next thing to interest
me was a piece of iron which hit me in my left foot, and yet another later on landed in my left
leg, just below the knee.
Another view of the same battle, as related by a private.
Recollections of Private Harry Fellowes, Northumberland Fusiliers
1915: We had five nights of marching down to Loos. Our Company Commander, Captain
Powell, called together the Companies and addressed us and he told us that there was a battle
raging.... We were going up to relieve them. I can still remember the cheers. We never
thought what was in front of us....
On the way up to the line, the Adjutant stopped me. He said, "The CO's got a message for
you to take up." I can remember the words of that message even to this day. It was written on
an old signal pad. it wasn't dated or signed, it just said, "The CO wishes the attack to be
carried out with the bayonet in the true Northumbrian fashion." It was the first I heard that
we were going into action. When I got to the trenches all the lads were standing with fixed
bayonets and as I walked through the back they started to climb out of the trench, running as
16
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
fast as the equipment would ever allow. They were just a mob! I was looking for Captain
Powell to give him the message, and then I realized he was up there with the lads, so I
followed on. The leading men would be about 100 yards from the German wire and till then
not a shot had been fired. Suddenly all hell was let loose. Some men began to stumble and
fall, machine-guns were firing from the front of us and enfilading from the left-side from
some Germans. A lad in front of me went down, shot in the head, and I tripped and fell over
him. To this day I don't feel any shame—I stayed where I was.
I'll remember the sight until my dying day, the whole slope was full of prone figures. The
Germans had suddenly stopped firing, just like they'd begun. Men started to rise to their feet,
some stumbled and crawled any way to try and get back. Still the Germans never fired.
Shortly afterwards I remember there was a report that the German General in charge of the
area had said that his machine-gunners had refused to fire another shot. They were so filled
with bitter remorse and guilt at the corpses at Loos that they refused to fire another shot. I do
believe this.
When I got back to in the trench I landed in the same place where I'd left. One of the lads
handed me a water bottle. We lay there and it was awful listening to the cries of the men on
that field, some were screaming. Terrible! I'm afraid a lot were dead before the night.
All this time I still had the message for Captain Powell. I didn't find him until afterwards. As
a matter of fact, he was the only office we had left in the Company, and I found him when we
got back to Vermelles. I went up to him and I apologized and I told him I was sorry, I had a
message for him. I gave him this message. He read it. He said, "It doesn't matter, Sonny,
now." I could see tears running down his cheeks.
Psychology of Men at War
Letter of Captain Edwin G. Venning, 32, Killed 6 August 1915
May 1915: It's a queer thing, but my impression of all this mighty business is the utter
smallness of it all, the infinite smallness; the meaningless orders, obeyed by brainless heads,
all willing to do their little best, until some tiny men cart them off to a little grave behind one
of the small houses one uses for headquarters.... I was never more disappointed. When I
looked for grandeur, I find a pettiness lost sight of almost since my school-days.
Last Letter of an Anonymous German Soldier
May 1915: The war has its own psyche. It is well-known that the preservation of harmful
influences, for example constant drinking of alcohol, will transform a person's character. So
here in the front lines, there occur significant dislocations of one's natural personality. The
milieu affects us. First of all, the purely masculine existence which we lead (we have been
17
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
torn away from home and work, and must forego as good as completely the society of
women and children), must leave its stamp upon us. We are no longer citizens and fathers of
families, but fighters. How good it was to come into an inhabited area, and see children
playing. Yes, yesterday I was warmed to the heart when I saw a sow suckling her young. It
was a real experience to see a mother once more, even if it was only a pig! And then the
surroundings and the tasks we must do. Wherever one goes, we see the ruins of human
dwellings, the eternal rumbling and din in the air, the daily murders, the permanent sight of
dead and wounded. All this soon enters our consciousness as the real, the most natural thing
in the world, and thereby deposits a certain roughness and indifference into our souls....
One thing has constantly amazed me, and that is the ease with which we bear our fate, when
the dangers are not particularly high. In these circumstances we act like children: we live for
the moment. And it is good that we do. For should we be able to constantly remember the
dangers which mill about us, then life in the trenches would be unbearable. When grenades
burst near us, and when shrapnel flies around our ears, then there is nobody who is free of
fear. But should the fire slacken only a little, then we become quite relaxed. That the fire now
has turned onto other troops does not concern us!
Letter of Kurt Rohrbach, 23, Killed 6 October 1916
26 July 1915: In this war, which obliges one to concentrate one's strength to the utmost, I
feel that I have lost many of the treasures amassed during a period of gradual auspicious
development in time of peace. The knowledge which I acquired at school and at the
University, the interests aroused in me by a civilian occupation, are lost to sight and memory,
and only with difficulty will it be possible to regain them. You know that having been too
early forced to take a serious view of life, my youth was short; I could not even fall in love
properly; but it is this awful war which has made an old man of me. Certainly here at the
front my body has become weather-proof and my muscles as hard as iron, but my mind has
not developed. Everybody who looks daily into the cold eye of death and gazes on so many
dead faces bearing the stamp of suffering and renunciation, becomes certainly callous, but
also old, very very old.
Letter of Captain Charles M. Childe, 21, Killed March 1916
21 September 1915: I have been a confirmed pessimist so far, but taking it all round I
believe the rotten breed of Germans is in for far, far, more than it ever bargained for. But it
must take time. Here's a pleasant tid-bit, which ought to be framed in gold! The French Staff
report that at Souchez last week they captured 2000 of the breed, pumped them dry of
information, disarmed them and then packed them off down a communication trench. A
Zouave or two were waiting round a traverse and as each Deutsche filed past he was
gracefully and neatly dispatched. The French don't want prisoners—all they want is scalps,
and you would feel the same after a long week-end in the Glory Hole Orchard.
18
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Letters of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin S. J.
7 October 1915: At Ypres we were thrown into battle without having had the time to realize
what was happening to us; this time we could savor at leisure the slow approach of the great
day—and to all those who were capable of reflection, this anticipation brought a ripening of
the soul. I made a tour of the trenches on the eve of the attack to see people I knew and to
give communion to some (all to whom 1 offered it accepted; I was limited by the smallness
of my pyx). You can't imagine what emotions I then experienced, nor what one feels is
conveyed in the clasp of a man who shakes one's hand, at a bend in a communication trench,
after one has given him God—while the shells are going across, almost like a solid vault
overhead, with a continual hum, on their way to demolish the trenches 200 meters further on,
the trenches that we will have to conquer as soon as the bombardment stops. There's no doubt
about it; the only man who knows in the innermost depths of his being the weight and
grandeur of war, is the man who goes over the top with bayonet and grenade. In that moment
training, of course, and a sort of intoxication, play a large part; but even so it is still true that
the infantryman leaving his trench for the attack is a man apart, a man who has lived a
minute of life of which other men have simply no conception at all.
15 February 1917: [Since I have been appointed chaplain] I feel useless, a passenger. I
assure you that I'd a thousand times rather be throwing grenades or handling a machine-gun
than be a supernumerary as I am now. What I'm going to say may not be very orthodox—
and yet I believe there's a core of truth in it: I feel that doing so I would be more a priest. Isn't
a priest a man who has to bear the burden of life in all its forms, and show by his own life
how human work and love of God can be combined?
Letter of Ferdinand Belmont, a French Captain, Killed December 1915
1915: What a strange war! Formerly, there were battles; between the battles the soldiers
marched and rested. Now there are no longer either battles or truces; there is only war
without a minute's rest, without an inch of ground unoccupied. Progress demands that. There
is no longer either strategy, or combination, or skill, or intelligence, but only endurance,
tenacity, patience, and obstinacy. I cannot make up my mind as to which of the two forms of
war is the harder. War nowadays, in spite of, or even because of the negative importance of
the individual combatant, possesses perhaps more merit than the older form....
Letters of Josef Birnbeck, 18, Killed 1 August 1915
23 July 1915: One thought constantly runs through my head: "You are a dead man!" And yet
I believe even more firmly that such an eventuality is most improbable. It should not and will
not happen! And yet the thought recurs; the many patrols on which I have been sent, and the
many dangers and fears I have experienced, have obviously not been without influence.
19
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Indeed, after all I have been through, it is quite natural that I can picture myself as dead. And
yet it is hideous, because I can see it so clearly. I can even hear the sound of the bullet that
brings my death, feel the slap and penetration of the shot into my body—and then a heavy
fall and I lay in the mossy covered ground of a forest. And then I shudder with fear at how
you will take the news when it reaches home—and even my pain is blocked out with my
yearning for you.... And with the last remaining energy, I am able to pull your picture out of
my breast pocket—but already my breath is getting shorter, the blood flows darker, and
thicker, and then—
Almighty God and Father, no—it can't happen like that! Do you believe in such signs?
26 July 1915: Tonight we cross the river and tomorrow we go into action; we are to storm a
position! My heart is full of pain. My comrades are all sitting together, singing soldier's
songs, and melodies from our homeland, but their faces tell a different story. In case it should
happen . . . we shall meet again in another world. I can write no more.
The stalemate on the Western Front persuaded the Germans to concentrate
their efforts against Russia, and in the summer of 1915 they opened a major
attack there.
The Eastern Front
Letter of Hans Petras, 25, Killed 9 September 1916
20 July 1915: After a number of hot days, which have already cost us much blood yet also
produced numerous prisoners and much booty, I can now take out some time to greet you all
and pass on the word that I am in fine shape, in spite of numerous nights without sleep, and
in spite of many bullets and grenades, all of which missed.... We began the attack on the
14th, crossing our barbed wire and into the Russian positions. All were deserted. Only the
bodies of men killed by our artillery fire were scattered around.... We passed on through a
mass of ruins. Everywhere there are Russian supplies and ammunition. Obviously they must
have evacuated the place rapidly. But where are the Russians? Armed with reinforcements,
we press on to the next village. It too is empty. The inhabitants greet us in friendly fashion
and explain that the Russians had snuck out on the preceding night, protected to the last by a
troop of Cossacks. And so we press on, from farm to farm, from forest to forest, picking up
prisoners, young fellows who don't want to fight anymore and who are glad to turn over their
guns to us. The peasants seem friendly....
And then suddenly we see the Russian method of fighting flaring on the horizon—huge
pillars of smoke, as one by one they proceed to burn down the farm buildings, and even
whole villages, driving out the people and the animals. Day and night we follow in pursuit....
And everywhere we find only fires and ruins. Fires which the Russians have set in their own
20
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
land! What nonsense! What valuable things they are destroying! Without in the slightest
fashion hindering our advance.... Now finally we can once again become cavalry! The
Russians are destroying the bridges, and point out their line of retreat by flames, the whole
horizon seems to be on fire. We are now pursuing them closer than ever in the direction of
Warsaw.
Letter of Hugh Walpole, a Medical Orderly in Russia
16 June 1915: Have been in the thick of things for nearly a month, under fire several times,
and have decided that a dentist is much more alarming. The worst part of a battle is its
invisibility and never knowing what it's going to do next. Waiting with a cart under shrapnel
for wounded is depressing if it lasts long, but doing anything definite is highly inspiring, and
amusing sometimes in most unexpected ways.... Day before yesterday eight hundred
wounded in twelve hours. I cut off fingers with a pair of scissors as easily as nothing.
Diary of Florence Farmborough, A Nurse on the Russian Front
19 July 1915: It was 11 pm. when the first alarm came. Shouts and cries broke our muchneeded rest. Footsteps hurried past the tent, an extraordinary light was over everything, the
glow penetrated into the darkest recesses of our tent. "Fire, Fire! . . . The whole village is on
fire." The village was on fire in four different places.... [It] was larger than average and the
small one-storied huts—containing at best only two or three rooms—were separated one
from the other by a miniature garden or yard. The straw-thatched roofs on these small
homesteads sped the wholesale destruction of the buildings.
From our halting-place we could see the burning village in its entirety. Once it had gained
strength, the fire spread rapidly.... Groups of mounted Cossacks galloped up and down the
streets at intervals; there was something cynical in the manner in which they viewed the
holocaust. Our thoughts and prayers were with the homeless peasantry who were mad with
grief and fear. Who had done this? Whose treacherous hand had destroyed their homes? .
A peasant woman, old and wrinkled as a fairy-tale witch, stopped near us. Peering into our
faces, she told us with breathless, excited mutterings that she had seen the villains who had
lighted the fire; she had seen them, she avowed, in the act of igniting a straw thatch.
"Cossacks they were! Our Russians; our own Russians!" And she continued, "What could the
poor and helpless do when their own people turned against them?". . .
Letters of R.Scotland Liddell, an English Orderly on the Russian Front
6 July 1915: The Germans on the Bzura-Rawka front fired gas shells against the Russians
for the second time. The first occasion was five weeks before. The battle scene during the
night was wonderful. The flashes of the artillery fire were like gleams of lightning in the sky.
21
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
The boom of the guns was continuous. The shrapnel burst in fours with spurts of orange
flame. I did not sleep. I stood in the open air and watched the spectacle. In the early morning
the poisoned men were brought out of the deadly area of the trenches, gasping for air. The
21st Siberian Regiment of four thousand men had seven hundred left when daylight came.
Three thousand three hundred men were dead or poisoned. Yet each man was supposed to
have a respirator, and each respirator was said to be gas-proof. The officers were confident of
this; they were confident of their readiness to fight against the foul fumes.... I discussed the
heavy percentage of losses with an officer on whose word I can depend.... He shrugged his
shoulders. "Russia's a queer country," he said, "there are things you'll never understand. The
men were not ordered to put them on."
I write of this instance as it was told to me. I confess that in spite of my friend's reliability, I
was inclined at first to doubt his word. Later on, I mentioned the matter to some other
officers of high rank. "But that could never be?" I said. "It's possible," said they.
4 August 1915, Warsaw: We left Pruszkow two nights ago at a little after nine o'clock. We
left it, I ought to say, on fire. The flames were eating up the place as we streamed slowly out.
We stopped for a while outside Warsaw. Behind us was the glare of the burning town; in
front of us was a fine crescent moon, the lights of Warsaw, and to the north was a great patch
of dull red in the sky that marked the destruction of another village. The Russians burn all
they leave behind. The Germans will find nothing at all, but cinders and blackened stones.
"So when they get there, they'll find the place bare and so the poor dogs'll get none." (Heaven
knows what made me think of that wretched rhyme just now).
18 August 1915: Heaven only knows when this retreat will stop. I suppose it'll come to an
end sometime, but at present we are still on the run. I think we will move from here any day
now, perhaps any minute. To tell you the truth, I'm so absolutely tired of all the horror and
tragedy that I don't much care whether we go away or remain. Can you understand the
tiredness that leads to utter indifference? ... Oh Lord, what sights I have seen today! It's
horrible—horrible—horrible! I am often afraid that the tragedies I see will haunt me all my
life; that my dreams will be blood-red and that armies of wrecked men will parade before me
as I sleep. Ugh! I thought I was hardened. I'm as sensitive as a little convent girl of
seventeen. Of course I do not cry. But, Heaven knows, I could—and I don't know why I
don't.... Today we've had hundreds, the crop of yesterday's battle. They've come in carts, in
wagons and motor ambulances. Some of the poor devils have limped their way here, leaning
on each other and on rough branches. Two died in one wagon. I hear the death rattle in their
throats now. One of them had half his head taken away with shrapnel. The other had his back
torn open to the lungs. They lay breathing in great breaths of air and breathing out with a
rattling gurgling sound that signals coming death.... Grey-faced men, splashed with blood.
Bandages from which the blood showed wet red amidst dry brown. Groans and weak cries
asking for a glass of tea. A wounded German screaming when his wound was dressed—a
shrapnel ball had bored through his right thigh.... And the refugees—hundreds of them, old
22
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
and young and middle-aged. An old, old man trembling as he sat on a heap of luggage.
Young mothers nursing their babies with fear in their eyes. One of our generals found a dead
woman by the wayside this afternoon. She had tramped for days from somewhere many
miles away. Weak and ill she had laid down by the roadside and died....
The Gallipoli Expedition
To take pressure off collapsing Russia, the Allies decided to open a third
front, landing at Suvla Bay in the Dardanelles in order to capture Istanbul.
Recollections of Father Eric Green, Gallipoli
April 1915: On land there was still a scene of indescribable confusion. On the narrow strip
of sandy, stony beach, not more than about thirty to forty feet wide, at the foot of the cliffs
which rise range above range, men were moving in every direction. Troops landing, troops
marching west, troops marching east, men laden with rations, mules and horses packed with
stores and water barrels and bearers coming down the cliffs with wounded and dying on
stretchers. Hugging the foot of the cliff I found my first quarters.... It was a marvel how much
had been squeezed in so small a space, when really there was no space at all.
Before half an hour was over, my work began and it went on until 3 am. I had not one
moment; one wounded and dying man following on after another. Just time, if the man was
conscious, to hear his confession and a muttered act of contrition, to give absolution, and the
anointing, before a new man claimed attention. Poor fellows, with wounds of every
description, all disfigured and defiled with blood, and clay and dirt, in many cases
unrecognizable, often features blown away. But being suddenly, as it were, plunged into this
valley of suffering and death; in the very thick of it, I hardly realized the terror of things;
there was no time to think, but only to do and act in what way I could to give the help that I
was there to give. Sights that at ordinary times would have unmanned anyone, were passed
over with a businesslike indifference, all save the case of one poor lad; a Haileybury boy,
hardly nineteen, who looked as though he might be asleep, but was moaning for his mother;
he was shot near the heart and died before an hour was over. At 3 am, casualties, more or
less, cased coming in. I rolled myself up in my blanket and lay on the sand....
Diary of Captain Aubrey Herbert, Irish Guards, Gallipoli
25 April 1915: There were lines of men clinging like cockroaches under the cliffs or moving
silently as the guns on the right and left enfiladed us. The only thing to be done was to dig in
as soon as possible, but a good many men were shot while they were doing this. We
remained on the beach.... We had no artillery to keep the enemy's fire down. We spent a
chilly night, sometimes lying down, sometimes walking, as the rain began to fall after dark,
and we had not too much food.
23
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
We were very hard pressed; as every draft landed it was hurried off to that spot in the line
where reinforcements were most needed. This naturally produced chaos amongst the units,
and order was not re-established for some time. It was a terrible night for those in authority. I
believe that, had it been possible, we should have re-embarked that night, but the sacrifices
involved would have been too great. preparations for the expedition had been totally
inadequate. The chief RAMC officer had told me the ridiculously small number of casualties
he had been ordered to make preparations for, and asked my opinion, which I gave him with
some freedom. As it was, we had to put six hundred men on the ship from which we had
disembarked in the morning, to go back to the hospital in Egypt, a four days' journey, under
the charge of one officer—who was a veterinary surgeon!
Diary of Horace Bruckshaw, Killed 1918
13 July 1915, Gallipoli: We spent the remainder of the night in our old spot on the gully after
aimlessly wandering about half the night as usual. At dawn we moved from here, which now
were the supports, and went into the new fire position which was taken from the Turks
yesterday. We just had to go into a Turkish communication trench which now formed part of
our supports. This was in a terrible state, simply full of dead bodies and filth of all kinds. Up
to dinner time all our time was taken in burying the dead and cleaning up. Where some of the
dead had already been half buried was a sight awful to witness and the stench was terrific.
Heads, arms and legs were sticking up from the ground and out of the parapets. It was
terrible and a sight I can never forget.
Letter of Bert Fielder, 26, Killed 29 October 1916
21 July 1915: You ask me when the war is going to be over. Well I'll just tell you, only keep
it secret. In October. You say we don't seem to be getting on very well out here; My word, if
you only knew what a job we've got before us, just try to imagine a hill called Achi Baba,
just fancy yourself at the bottom of a big hill with trenches and trenches piled on top of one
another, made of concrete with thousands of Turks and machine-guns, five of these trenches
we took one morning one after the other, but before we got to the first trench we left a good
many of our chums behind, but it's no good stopping and the faster you can run the better
chance you have of getting through the rain of bullets, and our boys went mad.
I have thought just lately what a lot of savages war turns us into, we see the most horrible
sights of bloodshed and simply laugh at it. It seems to be nothing but blood, blood
everywhere you go and on everything you touch, and you are walking amongst dead bodies
all day and all night, human life seems to be of no value at all—you are joking with a chap
one minute and the next minute you go to the back of the trench to do a job for yourself and
then you see a little mound of earth with a little rough wooden cross on it with the name of
the man you had been joking with a short time before. My dear Scrumps, I don't know
24
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
whether I'm right in telling you this, because you worry so but I would not mention it only
for the reason that I don't think I shall have any more of it, but I certainly do thank the One
Above and you for your prayers at night together with our Boy for keeping me safe
throughout it all.
At the start of the winter, British authorities decided to abandon the Gallipoli
front.
Letters from Captain Arthur D. Borton
29 November 1915: This may never reach you, as I darn't run the risk of the Censor, so shall
try and get it home by hand. Am sorry to say that things are going very badly with us, and it
looks like a sticky finish for the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. The trouble started 2
days ago, when we had about 3 inches of rain in 5 hours, since then it has been blowing a
hurricane and snowing. All the trenches were flooded and any amount of men drowned. No
dry clothes, no shelter and perishing cold....
The powers that be have at last made up their minds to evacuate Suvla, but am afraid they
have left it too late, as most of the lighters and boats have been wrecked. Anyhow my guns
are to cover the last man off, so I think we can more or less make up our minds that our
number is up. We will, however, make our last fight a good one, and I couldn't have a better
lot of men to do it with. They are really wonderful, never a grumble, and they're suffering
more than God ever intended men to suffer. You know I'm pretty hard, and when I tell you
I've had about as much as I can stand, you'll realize that we have got a legitimate "grouse."
Next Day [30 November 1915]: I think we've reached the Limit of Misery. It started to
freeze hard yesterday evening, and has continued to do so for the last 24 hours. The dead are
all over the place, and the sea is still too rough to get the sick on board the Hospital ships....
Have just heard that in one battalion of 450 in the front-line all but 16 died in the night. This
is probably a mere fable, invented by the numerous Job's comforters who are having the time
of their lives, but it shows how serious things are.... If only this show hadn't been such a
Fiasco, I might have been able to do a bit of good for myself, but am afraid as things stand
that having been at Suvla will not be an Open Sesame for promotion. Anyway, I suppose one
is darned lucky to be still on earth these days.
16 December 1915: We are in the final stages of evacuation now, and I am writing to record
my final impressions. We have succeeded in getting rather the place of honor in the
retirement and shall be the last people off. I take it we shall all get off or none of us. I
somehow want to think that someone will know what I think of my men. They are really too
splendid, and I believe are secretly hoping that things will go wrong so that we can get into
trouble at the end. I hope to goodness we don't. I wish the next 3 days were over as I'm
feeling rotten and am nearly on my last legs. But I honestly am the proudest fellow in the
25
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Army.
21 December 1915: By this time, you will have heard of the successful evacuation of Suvla
and Anzac [Australian and New Zealand Army Corps]. It—I must say—was an absolute
triumph of organization and cooperation between Army and Fleet. To withdraw 80,000 men
by sea and from the most impossible of harbors, all in full view of the enemy and within easy
reach of his Artillery, without his getting the slightest inkling of it until the last man was
actually on a ship is quite a performance. I have hardly woken up to the fact yet that it isn't a
dream.
We were pretty well the last people away, as we held the second line until everyone was
through. We then loaded guns and ammunition into my 3 Ford cars and legged it for the
Beach. I got my army straight on a lighter then I took the 3 Fords which were supposed to be
destroyed and spent the next 3 hours bringing in odds and ends which it seemed a pity to
leave, and finally as things were so quiet I got the 3 cars on the last section of the Pontoon
Pier and got them towed off as well.
The last of us then cracked a bottle of champagne looted from the medical comforts and—as
the piles of stores it was impossible to move went up in flames—got away....
All Quiet on the Western Front
Meanwhile, the war in Europe seemed to follow its own relentless insistence
on mass destruction. No great attacks were staged, but constant
bombardments which were inevitably described in the news with the
statement, "All quiet on the Western Front." In 1929 Erich Marie Remarque
used this as the title of his brilliant novel of a German unit in World War I.
Diary Entries of Sergeant Gottfried Kreibohm, Bavarian Lehr Regiment
10 July 1916: After being relieved in the morning we returned to the dugout in the wood.
The artillery fire there was absolutely frantic. Nearly every shell landed in the trench. Some
men were buried alive while others were blown into the air. Unteroffizier Wahlen's squad had
dug the deepest hole into the side of the trench for protection. It was too deep, for two shells
landed directly on top of them and six men were entombed inside. We immediately began
tearing away at the earth and could hear someone shouting, but our rescue efforts did not
save everyone.
11 July 1916: At 4 am, I left with three men and took up residence in the field of craters
between the company's forward trench and Mametz Wood. We immediately set to work
deepening our holes, digging for two hours. About eight o'clock, the English began to
systematically strafe the company sector with heavy-calibre shells. Geysers of earth a
26
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
hundred feet high shot from the ground.... No relief came. The shell fire increased in our
vicinity and every fifteen minutes we had to shovel clods of earth from our holes. Pieces of
equipment were sent flying out of the Company's trench, while the barbed-wire stakes
tumbled crazily in the air. The ground rumbled and heaved with each explosion. Suddenly, a
noise like a roaring freight train rushed down upon me, and I instinctively covered my head
with my hands. I waited one, two, five agonizing seconds—for the explosion. When nothing
happened I opened my eyes and saw, to my immense relief, a large shell half buried in the
earth only [five feet] away from me. It was a dud. Thus we waited in our holes for ten
hours—the most fearful ten hours I had ever experienced in my life.
Letter of Harold Macmillan to his mother
13 May 1916: Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about a modern battlefield is the
desolation and emptiness of it all . . . one cannot emphasize too much. Nothing is to be seen
of war or soldiers—only the split and shattered trees and the burst of an occasional shell
reveal anything of the truth. One can look for miles and see no human beings. But in those
miles of country lurk (like moles or rats, it seems) thousands, even hundreds of thousands of
men, planning against each other perpetually some new device of death. Never showing
themselves, they launch at each other bullet, bomb, aerial torpedo and shell. And somewhere
too (on the German side we know of their existence opposite us) are the little cylinders of
gas, waiting only for the moment to spit forth their nauseous and destroying fumes. And yet
the landscape shows nothing of all this—nothing but a few shattered trees and three or four
lines of earth and sandbags, these and the ruins of towns and villages are the only signs of
war anywhere visible. The glamour of red coats—the martial tunes of flag and drum— aidede-camps scurrying hither and thither on splendid chargers—lances glittering and swords
flashing—how different the old wars must have been.
Diary of Helen MacKay, a Volunteer Nurse in France
August 1915, by the Bedside of a Dying American Volunteer: He lay in the bright ward and
talked all of the time. He had enlisted in the Foreign Legion and fought since the beginning,
and was wounded last week in the Argonne. He wanted me to sit beside him and listen. I
hated the things he said. He said he was a fool, they all were fools, and they all knew it now.
He said there was no glory. They had thought that war was glorious. And it was hideous;
sardine tins and broken bottles, mud or dust, never a green thing left to live. There was no
enemy. Just guns. When a man fell, nobody had hit him, only a gun. If he was dead, luck for
him.... "Gee, what fools we were," he said.
Diary of Rudolf Binding
5 August 1915: The War is changing for me; perhaps this happens to everyone sooner or
later. For the last few weeks I no longer look to Him alone as to the only Lord of us all,
27
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
claiming an unwilling allegiance. I think of you, too. Not that I had forgotten you, but you
were more inside me and with me. Now I feel that you are something behind me, that I had to
leave at home, and that I must now worry about—from a distance.
For this reason I think of Peace, too. But I say with truth that this is not the only reason; the
War itself gradually brings the warrior round to this point of view. This is not a summit, but
rather an end at which one arrives. Here on the Western Front the War has lost all its dash; it
is so devoid of resiliency, and so bloodless that the blood which still flows daily seems like a
sign of old age, where the blood oozes through the brittle walls of the veins.
The fact that regimental bands are being formed to entertain officers and men, that one keeps
up a continual chit-chat of formal and unnecessary correspondence—these are bad signs.... If
troops from the Eastern Front are liberated to serve on our front soon, as has been planned,
the senilities of the western war should soon disappear. Those who return from leave no
longer find the excitement of the wind and storm, filled with the early enthusiasm and the
fresh smell of blood; the affairs of home have gained a greater importance because the War is
older. Peace, as a condition, takes precedence of War while the latter is still going on. We say
that we do not think of Peace, but at the same time we long for it.
And yet there are people who enjoy the War. But they are those who know nothing about it.
The Archives of Reason give good advice on this point to those Americans who want war:
"Dig a trench shoulder-high in your garden; fill it half-full of water and get into it. Remain
there for two or three days on an empty stomach. Furthermore, hire a lunatic to shoot at you
with revolvers and machine-guns at close range. This arrangement is quite equal to a war and
will cost your country very much less."
I liked the hired lunatic especially.
Diary of Herbert Sulzbach, 21
2 August 1915: A star-lit summer night. A decent Landwehr chap came up suddenly and
said to 2nd Lt. Reinhardt: "Sir, it's that Frenchie over there singing again so wonderful." We
stepped out of the dug-out into the trench, and quite incredibly, there was a marvelous tenor
voice ringing out through the night with an aria from Rigoletto. The whole company were
standing in the trench listening to the "enemy," and when he had finished, applauded so loud
that the good Frenchman must certainly have heard it and is sure to have been moved by it in
some way or other as much as we were by his wonderful singing. What an extraordinary
contrast! You fire on each, you kill each other, and then all of a sudden a Frenchman starts to
sing, and the music makes us forget the whole war: seems to overcome every kind of
difference. Anyway, that was an experience much more splendid than anything you can
express in words.
28
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
The most famous examples of such comradery between the two opposing
forces in the trenches were the improvised Christmas truces of 1914 and
1915.
Memoirs of Lieutenant Johannes Niemann, 133rd Royal Saxon Regiment
[In late December 1914], we came up to take over the trenches on the front between
Frelinghien and Houplines, where our regiment and the Scottish Seaforth Highlanders were
face to face. It was a cold starry night and the Scots were a hundred or so meters in front of
us in their trenches where, as we discovered, like us they were up to their knees in mud. My
Company Commander and I, savoring the unaccustomed calm, sat with our orderlies round a
Christmas tree we had put up in our dugout.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, our enemies began to fire on our lines. Our soldiers had
hung little Christmas trees covered with candles above the trenches and our enemies, seeing
the lights, thought we were about to launch a surprise attack. But by midnight it was calm
once more. Next morning the mist was slow to clear and suddenly my orderly threw himself
into my dugout to say that both the German and Scottish soldiers had come out of their
trenches and were fraternizing along the front. I grabbed my binoculars and looking
cautiously over the parapet saw the incredible sight of our soldiers exchanging cigarettes,
schnapps and chocolate with the enemy. Later a Scottish soldier appeared with a [soccer ball]
which seemed to come from nowhere and a few minutes later a real football match got under
way.... It was far from easy to play on the frozen ground, but we continued, keeping
rigorously to the rules, despite the fact that it only lasted an hour and that we had no referee.
A great many of the passes went wide, but all the amateur footballers, although they must
have been very tired, played with huge enthusiasm. Us Germans really roared when a gust of
wind revealed that the Scots wore no drawers under their kilts—and hooted and whistled
every time they caught an impudent glimpse of one posterior belonging to one of "yesterday's
enemies." But after an hour's play, when our Commanding Officer heard about it, he sent an
order that we must put a stop to it. A little later we drifted back to our trenches and the
fraternization ended. The game finished with a score of three goals to two in favor of Fritz
against Tommy.
Few authentic diaries survive describing this remarkable event, which
happened all along the Western Front. Here is one.
Diary of 2nd Lieutenant J.D. Wyatt, The Yorkshire Regiment
30 December 1914: Same routine as before. Still no war! At about lunchtime however a
message came down the line to way that Germans had sent across to say that their General
was coming along in the afternoon, so we had better keep down, as they might have to do a
little shooting to make things look right!!! And this is war!! This we did, and a few shots
29
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
came over about 3:30 pm.
Memoirs of 2nd Lieutenant Cyril Drummond, Royal Field Artillery
On our part of the front, the truce went on for a week. Troops of both sides worked on their
trenches or did anything they wanted to do, quite uninterrupted by each other. One of the
Dublin Fusiliers was killed one day by a bullet which came from the front of Plugstreet
Wood, and the Saxons immediately sent over and apologized, saying it hadn't been anything
to do with them, but from those so-and-so Prussians on their left. That was the only casualty
that occurred during that truce. But of course the war was becoming a farce and the high-ups
decided that this truce must stop. Orders came through to our Brigade, and so to my own
battery, that fire was to be opened the following morning on a certain farm which stood
behind the German support line. Our battery was to put twelve rounds of high explosive shell
into it at eleven o'clock. We sent someone over to tell the Boches, and the next morning at
eleven o'clock I put twelve rounds into the farmhouse, and of course there wasn't anybody
there. But that broke the truce—on our front at least.
Alarmed by this event, military authorities were determined not to have it
repeated in 1915.
Order of General Staff of the 47th (London) Division
19 December 1915: CONFIDENTIAL: The GOC directs me to remind you of the
unauthorized truce which occurred on Christmas Day at one or two places in the line last
year, and to impress upon you that nothing of the kind is to be allowed on the Divisional
Front this year. The Artillery will maintain a slow gun fire on the enemy's trenches
commencing at dawn, and every opportunity will as usual be taken to inflict casualties upon
any of the enemy exposing themselves.
Despite this order, in 1915 the truce was repeated.
Recollections of Corporal C. Coles, Coldstream Guards
1915: I was in my dugout having a bit of a fry-up for breakfast, and my sentry called out,
Corp, Corp, they're over the top." I rushed out and stood on the firing platform and the
Germans had no arms of any kind. They were waving. First one German walked over in No
Man's Land and one or two of our boys did the same. And in the middle of No Man's Land
they were shaking hands and one or two could speak English.... it lasted all day Christmas,
after the first hour. What stopped the troops was our officers, except one. He was a
Lieutenant and he went over the top and he got sent home in disgrace. But the likes of
Captain Dickie and Humphrey de Trafford, they wasn't having that. They sent through to the
Artillery. The Artillery fired 18-pounders on No Man's Land where we were, stopping the
30
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
thing altogether. The Germans retired and we went back in our trench. Well, the Germans
wasn't going to be done! It was Christmas Day to their idea, and in the evening, well, we had
in our dugouts braziers like oil drums with holes in and coke and suddenly we looked across
the trenches and they was placing their braziers all along the parapet. So we did the same,
and it was just like Fleet Street on Christmas Night. It was a wonderful sight. I shall never
forget it.
We had an order from GHQ saying that it was hoped that there would be no repetition of the
regrettable recurrences of last Christmas Day, and that any German who ventured to show
himself was to be shot at once. We subsequently heard that the Huns had a similar order....
On our right the French, after singing carols most of the night, and the Huns replying, did go
out for about three minutes, and as soon as they got back put over covey upon covey of rifle
grenades. A true conception of the Christmas spirit!
Report of Major General Cavan, Guards Division
25 December 1915: I much regret to report that in spite of special orders there was some
communication held between the lines occupied by the Guards Division and the 13th
Bavarian Reserve Regt this morning. I have seen the Brigadiers concerned who were on the
spot within twenty minutes of hearing of the episode, and our men were back in the trenches
within thirty to forty minutes after first going out. I have ordered a full and searching enquiry
to be made tomorrow as to how my implicit orders came to be disobeyed, which I will
forward in due course. Large parties of unarmed Germans were the first to appear but this is
no excuse, and I regret the incident more than I can say.
Our Artillery fired throughout the day as ordered.
Recollections of Colonel W.N.Nicholson, Suffolk Regiment
1915: We spent our second Christmas of the war in Senlis. Strict orders had been issued
against any form of truce on the trench line. The Germans caught one of our men on patrol
and we shelled them when they started singing carols. But it is a commentary on modern war
that commanders should fear lest the soldiers on each side become friendly. Our soldiers
have no quarrel with "Fritz," save during the heat of battle, or in retaliation for some blow
below the belt. If whole armies fraternized politicians on both sides would be sore set to
solve their problems. Yet is is possible that if there had been a truce for a fortnight on the
whole trench line at any time after the Battle of the Somme the war might have ended—and
what would mother have said then?
Letter of Friedrich Steinbrecher, 25, Killed 19 April 1917
3 November 1916: The poetry of the trenches is a thing of the past. The spirit of adventure is
31
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
dead We are now oppressed by the reflection that we have seen what a battle is like and shall
see it again. We have become wise, serious and professional. Stern duty has taken the place
of a keenness, sometimes amounting to passion—a frigid, mechanical doing of one's duty....
When one has seen how brutal, how degrading war can be, any idyllic interval comes like a
reprieve from the gallows.... The war which began as a fresh youth is ending up as a made-up
boring, antiquated actor. Death is the only conqueror. We are all disillusioned, at least as
regards what is called world-philosophy.
Propaganda
If the soldiers were disillusioned, they still fought; the governments were
more worried about the morale of the home-front. Almost from the first day of
the war, efforts were made to stir up civilian hatred, especially by spreading
stories of atrocities committed by soldiers at the front. Most of the early
stories involved alleged mistreatment of Belgium civilians by Germans, who
were thereafter nicknamed Huns.
The War Illustrated, 5 September 1914
British war correspondents in Belgium have seen little murdered children with roasted feet.
The tiny mites were hung over a fire before they were slain. This was done by German
troops—men with children of their own at home, or with little brothers and sisters of the
same age as the innocents they torture before killing them.... The things done to Belgian girls
and women, before their tortured lifeless bodies with battered faces were thrown into a ditch,
are so unspeakably dreadful that details cannot be printed.
London Times, 27 August 1914
One man whom I did not see told an official of the Catholic Society that he had seen with his
own eyes German soldiery chop off the arms of a baby which clung to its mother's skirts.
One of the most wide-spread stories was that German troops habitually cut off
the hands of Belgium and French children.In addition, nearly every Allied
paper carried stories of raped Belgium nuns and babies skewed on German
bayonets. After the war, despite determined efforts by relief agencies, not a
single example of such atrocities was ever found.
Colonel Repington, Diary of the World War
I was told by Cardinal Gasquet that the Pope promised to make a great protest to the world if
a single case could be proved of the violation of Belgian nuns or cutting off of children's
hands. An inquiry was instituted and many cases examined with the help of the Belgian
Cardinal Mercier. Not one case could be proved.
32
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
But the stories took on a life of their own, especially at the home front.
Diary Entries of Reverend Andrew Clark
21 November 1914: I left Oxford at 10:30 am by a very good train; I was very fortunate in
my compartment... On my left hand was a sergeant of the South Staffordshire, a strongly
built man with extremely clear cut and pleasant features. He told me he was now completing
his seventeenth year with the Colors. He had served in Baluchistan and the Punjab. The
fanatic savages of the Himalayas, in his opinion, were outdone in savagery by many of the
Germans. The Boer War, he said, was 'a picnic' in comparison. In several of the actions he
had seen more shells discharged in twenty minutes than he had seen in the whole course of
the South-African War. He said that this war is "not fighting, but murder." ...
He said that all that had been in the papers about German brutality was far short of the truth.
In a chateau the British troops found a largish party of Germans who had murdered the
inhabitants and then set themselves to drink up everything in the cellar. While they were still
drunk a party of British soldiers came up—and took no prisoners. He said the destruction in
France and Belgium was inconceivable. On many miles of roads the dreadful slaughter of the
war is in evidence.
12 December 1914: Mr. Metcalf brought some items of war gossip; Mr. Metcalf does
dentistry for Belgian convalescents. Other Belgians have told him that over and over again
they have passed decapitated bodies of children lying by the roadside. A doctor serving with
the London Scottish was attending twenty-five wounded in a barn. He sent for ambulance
carts to take them off the field. Before the ambulance came Germans arrived and shot all the
twenty-five.
Another extremely popular story was that Germans crucified captured Allied
soldiers.
London Times, 10 May 1915
Last week a large number of Canadian soldiers wounded in the fighting around Ypres,
arrived at the base hospital at Versculles. They all told a story of how one of their officers
had been crucified by the Germans. he had been pinned to a wall by bayonets thrust through
his hands and feet, another bayonet had been driven through his throat, and finally, he was
ridden with bullets. The wounded Canadians said the the Dublin Fusiliers had seen this done
with their own eyes, and they had heard the officers of the Dublin Fusiliers talking about it.
Within a few days, the story got elaborated by a member of Parliament who
asked the government to investigate.
33
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
British House of Commons Debate, 19 Mary 1915
MR HOUSTON asked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether he has any official
information showing that during the recent fighting, when the Canadians were temporarily
drive back, they were compelled to leave about forty of their wounded comrades in a barn,
and that on recapturing the position they found the Germans had bayoneted all the wounded
with the exception of a sergeant, and that the Germans had removed the figure of Christ from
the large village crucifix and fastened the sergeant, while alive, to the cross; and whether he
is aware that the crucifixion of our soldiers is becoming a practice of Germans.
The government spokesmen said an "inquiry is being made and is not yet
complete." No denial of such absurd rumors was ever made by the British
government. Bizarre stories constantly circulated throughout the war,
including one that the Germans systematically collected dead bodies from
battle fields in order to turn them into soap, lubricating oil, and bone mill for
pig's fodder.
On the German side, equally horrible stories were being told. In 1915, an
army chaplain preached a Pentecost sermon in which he asserted that
"Belgians hung German soldiers and scalded them with hot tar and burnt them
alive." German civilians insisted that British soldiers routinely gouged out the
eyes of wounded German prisoners. One report in the Weser Zeitung claimed
that there was a whole wing of the military hospital at Aachen devoted to
these cases.
Americans proved to be particularly imaginative in spreading such stories,
especially as an encouragement for the United States to enter the war. One
Protestant Divine specialized in such stories.
Sermon by Rev. Newell Dwight Hills
October 1917: Many Americans have looked with horror upon the photograph of the
mutilated bodies of women. Sacred forever the bosom of his mother, and not less sacred the
body of every woman. Not content with mutilating the bodies of Allied officers, of Belgian
boys, they lifted the knife upon the loveliness of women. The explanation was first given by
the Germans themselves. When the Hun joins the army, he must pass his medical
examination. A few drops of blood are taken from the left arm and the Wassermann blood
culture is developed. If free from disease, the soldier receives a card giving him access to the
camp women, who are kept in the rear for the convenience of the German soldier. If,
however, the Wassermann test shows that the German has syphilis, the soldier bids him
report to the commanding officer. The captain tells him plainly that he must stay away from
the camp women upon peril of his life, and that if he uses one of their girls he will be shot
like a dog.... Under this restriction the syphilitic soldier has but one chance, namely, to
34
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
capture a Belgian or French girl; but using this girl means contaminating her, and she in turn
will contaminate the next German using her. To save his own life, therefore, when the
syphilitic German has used a French or Belgian girl, he cuts off her breast as a warning to the
next German soldier. The girl's life weighs less than nothing against lust or the possibility of
losing his life by being charged with the contamination of his brother German.
German clerics were also willing to engage in propaganda from the pulpit.
Sermon by Rev. Johann Rump, Berlin
Late 1916: Against us stands the world's greatest sham of a nation, whom, with German
good nature, we have much too long called the "English cousin," the Carthaginians of the
North Sea, in whom we trusted that blood would have proved thicker than water: the Judas
among the nations, who this time, for a change, betrays Germanism for thirty pieces of silver.
Against us stands sensual France, the harlot amongst the peoples, to be bought for any
prurient excitement, shameless, unblushing, imprudent, and cowardly, with her worthless
myrmidons. Against us stands Russia, inwardly, indeed, rotten, mouldering, masking its
diseases under outbursts of brutality, but capable of employing any means, devoid of all
feeling—not dangerous of herself, but becoming a menace when leagued with others, like a
beast raging from the fever of wounds, deceitful, never to be trusted. Can God find pleasure
in our opponents? France denies Him, England laughs at Him, Russia forgets Him. Never
will the holy God, Who does not let Himself be mocked, never will He make their cause His
own, unless we compel Him to—never!"
Even among the troops, up-lifting lectures were delivered..
Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, 1930
1916: Officers' Training School: Every afternoon at half-past five, the School assembled to
listen to a lecture. Eyeing an audience of about 300 officers and NCO.'s I improved my
knowledge of regimental badges, which seemed somehow to affect the personality of the
wearer. A lion, a lamb, a dragon or an antelope, a crown, a harp, a tiger or a sphinx, these
differentiated men in more ways than one....
My wool-gatherings were cut short when the lecturer cleared his throat; the human
significance of the audience was obliterated then, and its outlook on life became restricted to
destruction and defense. A gas expert from GHQ would inform us that "gas was still in its
infancy." (Most of us were either dead or disabled before gas had had time to grow up.) An
urbane Artillery General assured us that high explosives would be our best friend in future
battles, and his ingratiating voice made us unmindful, for the moment, that explosives often
arrived from the wrong direction. But the star turn in the schoolroom was a massive sandyhaired Highland Major whose subject was "The Spirit of the Bayonet." Though at that time
35
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
undecorated, he was afterwards awarded the Distinguished Service Order for lecturing. He
took as his text a few leading points from the Manual of Bayonet Training.
To attack with the bayonet effectively requires Good Direction, Strength and
Quickness, during a state of wild excitement and probably physical exhaustion.
The bayonet is essentially an offensive weapon. In a bayonet assault all ranks go
forward to kill or be killed, and only those who have developed skill and strength
by constant training will be able to kill. The spirit of the bayonet must be
inculcated into all ranks, so that they go forward with that aggressive
determination and confidence of superiority born of continual practice, without
which a bayonet assault will not be effective.
He spoke with homicidal eloquence, keeping the game alive with genial and well-judged
jokes. He had a Sergeant to assist him. The Sergeant, a tall sinewy machine, had been trained
to such a pitch of frightfulness, that at a moment's warning he could divest himself of all
semblance of humanity. With rifle and bayonet he illustrated the Major's ferocious
aphorisms, including facial expression. When told to "put on a killing face," he did so,
combining it with an ultra-vindictive attitude. "To instill fear into the opponent" was one of
the Major's main maxims. Man, it seemed, had been created to jab the life out of Germans.
To hear the Major talk, one might have thought that he did it himself every day before
breakfast. His final words were: "Remember that every Boche you fellows kill is a point
scored to our side; every Boche you kill brings victory one minute nearer and shortens the
war by one minute. Kill them! Kill them! There's only one good Boche, and that's a dead
one!"
Afterwards, I went up the hill to my favorite sanctuary, a wood of hazels and beeches. The
evening air smelt of wet mould and wet leaves; the trees were misty-green; the church bell
was tolling in the town and smoke rose from the roofs. Peace was there in the twilight of that
prophetic foreign spring. But the lecturer's voice still battered on my brain. "The bullet and
the bayonet are brother and sister." "If you don't kill him, he'll kill you." "Stick him between
the eyes, in the throat, in the chest." "Don't waste good steel. Six inches are enough. What's
the use of a foot of steel sticking out at the back of a man's neck? Three inches will do for
him; when he coughs, go and look for another."
Recollections of Private Reg Lawrence, South African Brigade
1917: Today the Padre preached on the text, Love your enemies, do well to them that do
spitefully use you. Afterwards, the Colonel gave us a little heart-to-heart talk on the
desirability of remembering that we had bayonets on our rifles and using them accordingly.
No encouragement to take prisoners unless they can be of value for information. Dead men
tell no tales and eat no rations, etc., ad nauseum. The church cannot be allowed too much
rope lest we lose the war!
36
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
The soldiers feared that propaganda seemed to be working among the civilian
population.
Letter of Captain Arthur G. West
12 February 1916: How bloody people seem to be in England about peace and peace
meetings. I suppose they are getting rather Prussian in the country, but are all peace meetings
always broken up by soldiers (who've probably never been here at all)? I have contracted
hatred and enmity for nobody out here save for soldiers generally and a few noncommissioned officers in particular. For the Hun I feel nothing but a spirit of animal
fraternity that the poor man has to sit just like us and do all the horrible and useless things
that we do, when he might be at home with his wife or his books, as he preferred. Well, well;
who is going to have the sense to begin talking of peace? We're stuck here until our
respective Governments have the sense to do it....
Letter of a British Sergeant, Killed August 1916
25 March 1916: I dream of after the war.... You will not find the man from the trenches is
going to hate the Germans to the order of the politician, and refuse to buy German goods....
By God! I can see the scene—before the peace, even during an armistice. The infantrymen
will swarm over the parapets of the trenches of both sides and will exchange every damned
thing which they can spare off their persons—down to their buttons and hats and bits of their
equipment—for "souvenirs." If only one has the luck to be alive to be able to enjoy that day!
The happiest fate of all would be to be alive and to be in the trenches....
Letter of Lieutenant Ratcliffe, 19, Killed July 1916
June 1916: I was reading a story in one of the magazines that you sent out which was trying
to prove that this war had a good effect on men's minds and made them more religious than
they were before.... Now that I am out here, I must confess that I almost altogether disagree,
and think that war has an almost degrading effect on the minds of soldiers.
What is there out here to raise a man's mind out of a rut? Everywhere one sees preparations
for murder; nearly every person one sees is a filthy, dirty man with some implement of
destruction about his person. The countryside and the beauties of nature . . . are all spoilt by
the dust and mud of motor trucks and by huge camps. Everywhere the works of God are
spoiled by the hands of man. One looks at a sunset and for a moment thinks that that at least
is unsophisticated, but an airplane flies across, and puff! puff! and the whole scene is spoilt
by clouds of shrapnel smoke! So you can understand that men who are at war really become
more bestial than when at peace, despite popular opinion to the contrary.
37
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Letter of Corporal James Parr, 27, Killed 1 July 1916
19 June 1916: Don't tell me war does no good. Someone said to me the other day: "And after
all, what's the use of all this? We lose money, we lose the best years of our lives, we run the
risk of losing our lives altogether, at any rate of being incapacitated. And what do we gain?
We could live and love and work somewhere in the world whether Germany or England won.
What's the use of it all?" What do we gain? I think we gain the one thing that every man has
wanted from his boyhood up—opportunity. Opportunity to show what he is made of.
Opportunity to show himself what he is made of; to show that he can be the hero he's always
wanted to be from the time he first made up his mind to be a pirate when he grew up. He may
not always know that he wanted it, but to my mind it was the thing missing—the thing that
made us at times discontented, moldy, and unsatisfied. What do we gain? We stand to gain
everything and to lose— only our lives. A paltry exchange, if we leave behind a memory that
is good.
Letters of Alan Seeger, 21, Killed 3 July 1916
Diary, 31 July 1915: Perhaps historic fatality has decreed that Germany shall come out of
this struggle triumphant and that the German people shall dominate in the 20th century as
French, English, Spanish, and Italian have in preceding centuries. To me the matter of
supreme importance is not to be on the winning side, but on the side where my sympathies
lie. Feeling no greater dignity possible for a man than that of one who makes himself the
instrument of Destiny in these tremendous moments, I naturally ranged myself on the side to
which I owed the greatest obligation. But let it always be understood that I never took arms
out of any hatred against Germany or the Germans, but purely out of love for France. The
German contribution to civilization is too large, and German ideals too generally in accord
with my own, to allow me to join in the chorus of hate against a people whom I frankly
admire. It was only that the France, and especially the Paris, that I love should not cease to be
the glory and the beauty that they are that I engaged. For that cause I am willing to stick to
the end. But I am ready to accept the verdict of History in this case as I do, and everyone
does, in the old cases between Athens and Sparta, or between Greece and Rome. Might is
right, and you cannot get away from it....
30 November 1915: Your letter naturally made me unhappy, for it is only in thinking of you
that any possible doubts can rise in my mind about having done well in coming here.
Philosophy, I know, cannot modify the natural sentiments of the heart, so I will refrain from
commenting on your letter. I can only say that I am perfectly content here and happier than I
possibly could be anywhere else. I was a spectator, now I am an actor. I was in a shallow,
now I am moving in the full current. It is better in every respect, and since it was inevitable,
there is no use lamenting.
13 April 1916: I have greatly enjoyed this vacation, which, with the time I was [ill] in the
38
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
hospital, will have given me three months and a half out of the army. I have had the less
cause to regret it because neither the regiment nor any units of our army corps have been in
action, but have still remained in reserve.... When I go back, I shall probably be just in time
for the big spring attacks.... I shall go back the first of May without regrets. These visits to
the rear confirm me in my conviction that the work up there on the front is so far the most
interesting work that a man can be doing at this moment that nothing else counts in
comparison.
15 June 1916, to His Mother: The hour of our being relieved here seems more and more
near now. We shall probably go back for a short repos before the big attacks which should
not be far off now. I am not going to write you any more at length before these big events
come off. Words are perfectly futile at such a time and serve no earthly purpose. I have
already said all I have to say—how I am glad to be here, have no regrets, and would wish to
be nowhere else in the world than where I am. We both have to be brave, and you, even, one
thing more—patient. When we go into action, you will know it; the French Announcement
will be brilliant that day for the first time since we helped make it so last Fall in Champagne.
28 June 1916: We go up to the attack tomorrow. This will probably be the biggest thing yet.
We are to have the honor of marching in the first wave.... I will write you soon if I get
through all right. If not, my only earthly care is for my poems.... I am glad to be going in the
first wave. If you are in this thing at all it is best to be iI to the limit. And this is the supreme
experience.
Alan Seeger participated in the first wave of the attack on Belloy-en-Santerre
on 3 July 1916. He was killed just short of the village, at about 6:00 pm. He
left behind a poem which is one of the most famous of the war.
Alan Seeger, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death," 1916
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
39
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear....
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year.
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Memoirs of an Anonymous British Subaltern
The great seductive enjoyment of war, outside the infantry ranks, is the sense of power it
confers. By means of finely adjusted guns and the use of high explosives, the maximum of
effect can be produced by the minimum of effort, and this appeals to a childish instinct latent
in everyone. "You press the button and we do the rest." The appeal to this instinct will sell
millions of cameras in time of peace; but what is the wonder of pressing a button and seeing
a photograph compared with the wonder of pulling a string and seeing as the result a dump
go up perhaps five miles away?
Every sport, when you come to analyze it, depends largely upon its power of producing a big
effect with apparently small cause, whether the power resides in the ace of hearts, the
thickness of a cricket-bat, or the responsiveness of a golf-ball to fine timing. In war, this
apparent disproportionate relation between cause and effect, which confers its flattering and
enjoyable sense of power upon the player, is seen at its highest. Hence, from this standpoint,
war is king of sports. Only imagination can spoil the game.
Bloodletting on the Somme
With the failures of all other strategies, the Allies decided that the only way to
end the war was a gigantic push, preceded by days of bombardment with the
heaviest guns. The opening of the great battle of the Somme could be heard
even in England.
Diary Entries of Reverend Andrew Clark
1-2 July 1916
All this morning the Flanders (as it is supposed) guns have been booming forth, making
40
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
house quiver at times and shaking window sashes. At 10 am they made almost an
uninterrupted roll of sound, like a long roll of distant thunder..... All the village was talking
about "the good news" of last night, the "push" of the British troops in Flanders (apparently
successfully) begun. ... Official Bulletin as posted at Great Leights Post Office.
British Official. Attack launched 7:30 am north of Somme combined with
French. British broken into German forward system on 16 mile front. French
attack equally satisfactory. Remainder front successful British raiding
parties....
As usual, the press reports were nothing but lies. By nightfall of that first day,
the British Army had suffered the war's greatest losses in a single day's
fighting, 60,000 men killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Far from being a
success, the Somme battle was to drag on until November, and total AngloFrench casualties would exceed, 1,200,000 men. None of these figures ever
were released to the British public.
Recollections of the Somme by Corporal Heinrich Renzig, 88th German Infantry
Regiment
1916: Our objective lay some 500 to 600 meters in front of us—Delville Wood. The ground
to be covered in the attack sloped gently toward the shattered wood and could be seen from
all parts of the wood's eastern edge. The first wave, to which I belonged, went over at exactly
2:15 and began to run down the slope toward the wood. Until this moment the enemy had
held his fire, but now he let loose. The entire length of the wood's edge was one giant
machine-gun next. After running about 150 meters I laid down in order to catch my breath.
Again I ran forward a short distance and leaped into a very large deep shell hole already
occupied by two pioneers who were seeking refuge from the murderous fire. They had gone
over with us in the first wave. We could see how the entire line of attack was stopped cold by
the enemy's fire. Here and there a few small groups tried to push forward, but the men were
either driven to the ground or shot down. Every attempt to move forward meant certain death
and useless sacrifice, while No-Man's Land and our trenches behind were plastered by the
enemy's artillery. Caught between the enemy and exploding shells, the next seven hours were
the most difficult time of my life at the Front. If someone was wounded he was better off
dead since no help was possible during the day. And who would find him at night? In the
meantime, the August sun burned down through the cloudless sky.
Letter of Friedrich Steinbrecher, 21, Killed 19 April 1917
12 April 1916: "Somme." The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly
word! All the things I am now once more enjoying—bed, coffee, rest at night, water—seem
unnatural and as if I had no right to them. And yet I was only there a week. Life is a gift. If
41
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
only I had not seen all that! We only gradually realize who is no longer with us. So many
have gone. Some so soon that they are already forgotten. Those who fell beside me I shall
never forget. Only fifty of my platoon is left; all the best have been killed.
At the beginning of the month we left our old position. During the truck and train journey we
were still quite cheery. We knew what we were wanted for. Then came bivouacs, an "alarm"
and we were rushed up through shell-shattered villages and barrages into the turmoil of war.
The enemy was firing with 12-inch guns. There was a perfect torrent of shells. The last days
had been stiflingly hot. Sooner than we expected we were in the thick of it. First in the
artillery-position. Columns were tearing hither and thither as if possessed. The gunners could
no longer see or hear. Very lights were going up along the whole front, and there was
deafening noise: the cries of wounded, orders, reports.
At noon the gun-fire became even more intense, and then came the order: "The French have
broken through. Counter-attack!" We advanced through the shattered wood in a hail of shells.
I don't know how I found the right way. Then across an expanse of shell-craters, on and on.
Falling down, and getting up again. Machine-guns were firing. I had to cut across our own
barrage and the enemy's. I am unwounded.
At last we reach the front line. Frenchmen are forcing their way in. The tide of battle ebbs
and flows. Then things get quieter. We have not fallen back a foot. Now one's eyes begin to
see things. I want to keep running on—to stand still and look is horrible. "A wall of dead and
wounded!" How often have I read that phrase!—now I know what it means....
The next series of diary entries were written by Thomas Frederick Littler, who
at 17 had enlisted in the Cheshire Regiment for coastal defense on 14
November 1914 but transferred to the active service in January 1916, and
after a month training sailed for France in March 1916. He was 19 years old.
Diary Entries of Thomas Frederick Littler
1 July 1916
After having had our rum issue we stood to till 7-25a.m when we put up a
smoke screen and went over the top at 7-30 with the London Scottish and Queens
Westminster Rifles, we took four lines of trenches from the Germans, but were driven back
by midday to our original position, our losses were very heavy although we took many
prisoners, I could not attempt to write all that happened this day, so I'll leave a cutting from
the paper here.
The casualties from my Battalion were A Company 112, B Company 62, C Company 91, D
Company 25, in my platoon we lost the following men Lieutenant Leigh, who had taken over
from Lieut. Larne, was wounded the left arm blown off, Private Harry Wakefield, Private
Wilfred Carter, killed, Private Jack White, Private Frank Walker, missing, and Private Harry
42
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Frodsham, Private Sam Mellor, and Private George Parker wounded, L-Cpl R Eaton, and LCpl Harry Carveley wounded, the following men died of wounds during the following week
Sgt Piers, L-Cpl J Kinsey, and Private Albert Clarke, Private Jack Perrin, and Private Sidney
Jones, we left the line this night being too weak in numbers to hold it, and got back to
Souastre about 12-30 p.m.
The most accurate account of this first day’s battle concluded that 19,240
British soldiers had been killed, and an additional 38,230 men had been
wounded. It was the heaviest one day’s casualties in British history. German
losses, dead and wounded, amounted to about 12,000.
Bur the Battle on the Somme continued for another 140 days!
10 August 1916
Worked this morning in a trench about 10 yds from the billet, the
Germans were shelling the village heavily, and about 12 o'clock noon a 5.9 was dropped
direct on the billet, it killed Private Joe Orme, Private Harry Percival, and Private Dick
Hearne, it wounded Private Hazelhurst, Coalthorpe, Duckworth, and Barton, and Private
George Hunt (my chum) got shell-shock, losing his speech and use of his limbs, the billet
took fire, but was quickly put out, and the rescue of dead and wounded went on, afterwards
we had to find fresh billets in cellars which was much safer, everyone was fagged out and
done, but what few were left in the Platoon had to go to work at 6p.m till 2a.m and about
8p.m an enemy airoplane swept us with machine gun fire.
11 August 1916
We fortified our cellar by sandbagging it all round and on top, went to the
trenches at 6p.m and while still daylight we were again swept with machine gun fire from a
German airoplane, also he signalled to their artillery who opened out and we had to fall back,
later on the Germans fired Miniweffers on our job, also we were bombed, so we had a lively
night of it, but got no casualties.
7 September 1916
We left camp and went 4 kilos nearer the line and bivouac in the
ground, and passed over the newly conquered ground and went forward at night and dug a
new communication trench, were heavily shelled and had 15 casualties, in our platoon we
had three casualties, Sgt Prince, Sgt Oldham and Private Mitchem.
8 September 1916 Finished the work of the night before, also found the body of Sgt
Oldham who we buried on the spot. We had many casualties this night.
9 September 1916
Went over the top in an attack by the Brigade, reversed the parapets of
the front line , which we had established, came back 50yds dug a new front line support,
returned having had 25 casualties, in our Platoon we had Corporal Hodkinson, Privates
Haddon, Cook and Dugnough.
43
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
13 September 1916
This is my [19th] birthday but it was spent in the trenches, and the
Somme Battle went on, we found we were entrenched on the edge of Leuze Wood.
September 14th 1916
Repaired the trenches around and made ready to attack, suffered
heavy casualties.
15 September 1916 We made a big attack at Leuze Wood and advanced 1 mile in depth
taking four lines of trenches, we had 12 large caterpillars to help in this attack, which begun
at 4-30 a.m, our losses were slight in comparison with the Germans, our Battalion was
withdrawn at 10-30 p.m being too weak to hold the line.
16 September 1916
We rested all day and at night we had reinforcements sent to us, and
went forward and dug an advanced fire trench, but the guide took us the wrong way, and led
us into the enemy lines, the Germans opened a heavy fire on us, and we retired hastily but
with casualties, Company Commander Captain Dickson being wounded, Platoon Officer
Second Lieutenant Clements and 12 other rank also wounded, two died very shortly after.
22 September 1916 I had lost count of the days, but up to today we had had 376 casualties
in the Battalion, and we were working every night in the lines leaving our dug-out at 5p.m
and returning at 6 a.m, our attacks kept carrying us farther ahead.
27 September 1916
We left High Wood and Leuze Wood sector and marched back 7 kilos
to a place just outside Meaulte and rested two days, had four lots of reinforcements, and our
casualties to date were 430. …
1 October 1916
We advanced again along with the French who were in touch with us on
our right, we took four lines of trenches from the Germans, captured Combles and I sustained
a severe cut on the leg with barbed wire, and it bled badly but I had to carry on.
10 October 1916
We came out of the line at 10-30p.m and we had suffered very heavy
casualties and only numbered about 500 strong after going in about 850 strong.
According to the best modern sources, total British casualties (dead and
wounded) for the “Somme Offensive” was 313,289. The French losses
amounted to c, 434,000, for a total Allied loss of 947,289. The German losses
are estimated at 719,000 and a combined total loss for this terrible battle:
1,666,289.
Diary of Herbert Sulzbach, 22
October 1916: And now it will soon be three years since I went to war, and my diary, which
I've been keeping since the very beginning, is not only a personal reminder for me; when one
44
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
of these notebooks is written full, I send it home to my parents for them to read. Actually,
however, I should like to think it was meant to be read by others, not only by my parents—
sometimes I wish it could be read aloud to everyone who has stayed at home. That may
sound presumptuous of me, but all I mean is that the people who have stayed at home—you
people at home—have really no notion what it's like to fight this war! And you have even
less idea of the incredible performance achieved by every last man of the thousands, millions
of German soldiers! And all this with a way of taking their own heroism for granted and with
such particular devotion, faith and conviction, such determination and comradeship, as the
world has never yet seen! If you roll all that together you call it duty, and simply doing our
duty has produced the situation right up to this day; we have defied a world full of enemies
and are resisting successfully. For God's sake hold fast at home with us out here!
Letter of Bert Fielder, 26, Killed 29 October 1916
26 October 1916: Your letter of the 15th received yesterday noon and those of 16th and 18th
last night.... Am sorry I have not been able to write this last week but we've been in a terrible
muddle, not been able to settle anywhere, have had a short stay in the trenches and am now
back again for a short rest, and a very much needed clean up, for I can tell you there is some
mud here at present. Am glad you are both keeping well, am in the pink myself except for a
cold which of course is not to be wondered at whilst this wet weather lasts. Hoping this will
find you still in the best of health, I must conclude with lots of love from your loving
Husband, Bert XXXXXX
Military Nurse to Mrs Fielder, 30 October 1916
Dear Madam, I am very sorry to have to tell you that Sergeant Fielder, B. J. 15388 RMLI,
died in No. 11 Casualty Clearing Station last night. He was admitted during the day severely
wounded in thigh and foot and from the first there was almost no hope of his recovery. He
was unconscious till the evening when he gave us your address, but that was practically all
we could get out of him. It was found necessary to operate in the afternoon and his right leg
had to be taken off. He had every care and attention possible but in spite of everything he
gradually sank and passed quietly away during the night. His wounds were so numerous and
at the same time so serious that it was almost hopeless from the first. With deepest sympathy
in your bereavement.
Letter of an Anonymous British Officer
21 November 1916: When I look back upon some of the sights I have seen, a sort of fear
creeps over me—this is going too far—this war is becoming a thing of the devil— men are
touching, yea, trespassing upon rights they have not. One cannot level, destroy, pound to
atoms a whole countryside, and the people therein, without being called to account for it.
Pray God forgive us; perhaps He will, but what of those who are at the bottom of all this
45
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
horror? Can even He, the all-forgiving one, look with mercy upon their deeds? I am not
speaking of the men who have fallen, they are all right, but this long, long list of names
brings desolation to thousands of homes— what of that? Shall we, if we are spared, be able
to resume life as we left it in 1914? Can things be the same? I cannot believe it, I cannot....
Recollections of Volunteer Reinhold Spengler, Bavarian Infantry
1916: The brutality and inhumanity of war stood in great contrast to what I had heard and
read about as a youth. I really wanted to go off to the Front at the beginning of the war
because in school we were taught to be super-patriots. This was drilled into us—in order to
be men we should go off to war and, if necessary, bravely die for Kaiser and Fatherland.
When I joined the army in the spring of 1916, I still carried presumptions that the war would
be fought like the 1870 War between Germany and France. Man-to-man combat, for
instance. But in the trenches friend and foe alike suffered from the effects of invisible
machinery. It was not enough to conquer the enemy. He had to be totally destroyed. The
fighting troops of the front lines saw themselves mired hopelessly in this hellish wasteland.
Whoever lived through it thanked his good luck. The rest died as "heroes." It seemed quite
unlikely to me in late 1916 that I should live through it. When you met someone you knew
who belonged to a different outfit, he was greeted with the words, "Well, are you still alive?"
It was said humorously but meant in deadly earnest. For a young man who had a long and
worthwhile future awaiting him, it was not easy to expect death almost daily. However, after
a while I got used to the idea of dying young. Strangely, it had a sort of soothing effect and
prevented me from worrying too much. Because of this, I gradually lost the terrible fear of
being wounded or killed.
Diary of an Anonymous French Officer
1916: We are at once encircled. Life hangs by a thread. The corpses, now indiscreet, display
ghastly wounds. Only a few are intact; it is hard to find the broken statues I saw in the
moonlight. And the realization of death, in the revolt of one's whole being, is invested with a
special horror—that of being crushed and pulverized, of being not even a dead man, but a
nameless heap, a handful of fleshly dust. Then, too, there is the thought of remaining
unburied.
Letter of Private Leonard Hard, 5th New Zealand Reinforcements
25 December 1916: Dear Father, Mother and Connie: ... I was sorry to hear of young
Jeremy's death, but with such a large number of relatives here some are bound to go. Human
life is about the cheapest thing in existence just now and, after the manner of fatalists, we
come to regard being alive and well as merely luck. While in billets a short time back I
managed to get off for a few hours to visit my old company in the 1st Brigade. I found one of
46
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
my original Trentham mates still alive and well. He and I are the only ones who have not
been either killed or wounded. Out of the original platoon, I find that including myself there
are still five men out of the fifty who can claim to have come through without a scratch.
Unfortunately this is a case of all right "so far," but the war is not over yet by a good bit.
Letter of Sharpshooter Hermann Keyser, 9th Jä ger Battalion
24 December 1916: Dear parents and sister: Christmas Eve! It is 10 o'clock in the evening.
I write you these lines with thoughts of longing for home and days gone by. So much has
changed in the past year. The war goes on with no hope for a soon-to-come peace. How
ironic that man calls this holiday a time for peace. I can only wish it will happen during the
coming year. Nothing would make me happier than to be together with all of you under the
Christmas tree. For the first time in my life there is no tree, no singing, nothing.
Diary of Rudolf Binding
29 July 1917: I am scared. For the first time in this war I have doubts whether we shall be
able to hold out against the odds. Thirty new four-gun batteries have appeared on the enemy's
front in a single day, not counting those which may not have been spotted; on the Fourth
Army front alone there are 160 of these monsters which belch the most enormous shells at us
from twenty-five miles away—that is to say, practically out of range—and that is nothing
compared with the total. Altogether there must be eight to ten thousand guns employed on
this little bit of front. If one reckons that the main offensive is being made on a front of
twenty-five miles, that means a gun to every four yards. Imagine all the ten thousand muzzles
hurling out not only projectiles of iron and lead, but spreading poison gasses as well; imagine
only a fifth of this number of guns opposed to this concentration, all overworked pieces
which fire, it is true, but not so accurately as on the first day; imagine an enemy airman
cruising over each one of our batteries and directing onto it five times the fire which they can
thunder, whereas they are perhaps unsupported by any air force and simply have to sit tight;
that is the picture that scares me. Verdun, the Somme, and Arras are simply purgatories when
compared with this concentrated hell, which one of these days will be stoked up to whiteheat.... I know that I am no pessimist, but I have a sense of coming disaster.
Protests Against the War
In early 1917 the sufferings and frustrations of the soldiers in the battle areas
produced a series of demonstrations which caused officials to fear that
revolutions were imminent. In Russia thousands of soldiers deserted and
returned to their villages.
The other big mutiny was on the Western Front. During December 1916, the
Intelligence Bureau of the French Army began receiving alarming reports of
the poor morale among the common soldiers. Military officials, however,
47
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
chose to attribute the unrest to pacifist and socialist agitation, and proceeded
to enforce strict censorship of published material and limited leaves. As
General de Nivelle, head of the French Army wrote on 28 February 1917:
"During their leaves a certain number of soldiers, under the pretext of
discussing questions of working conditions, actually participate in meetings at
which socialists and anarchists expose pacifist theories. Upon returning to the
trenches, these soldiers repeat to their comrades the arguments which they
have heard."
On 16 April 1917 the French launched a massive assault. It was a stunning
debacle, and immediately the anti-war sentiments of the troops and their
disgust with the leadership and course of the war flared into numerous acts of
insubordination.. Much of the front line went on strike, refusing to participate
in any further attacks.
Letters Intercepted by the French Military Intelligence Division
50th Regiment, 20 May 1917: Now the infantrymen, the artillery men, everyone is down in
the dumps. Another week of this and there will be either peace or desertion. All of us are fed
up with seeing five million so-called civilized men die as savages. May peace come quickly!
66th Regiment, 26 May 1917: I have never seen the morale of the army so low as at this
moment. There are several reasons for this. First of all, two-thirds of the men have not had
any leave for six months. They have been on the front far too long. They have been through
three attacks so far and now there is talk of a fourth.... At any moment another attack could
begin but that won't solve anything.
I don't know what is going to happen. Things have been in an uproar. We had a battalion in
our regiment as well as a regiment in our division which refused to attack. Everyone's morale
is getting very low. It won't be long until it's all over because everyone is fed up. Fortunately
there has not been too heavy a toll of casualties recently. That would cause real trouble, it
seems to me, given the low state of morale. The 3rd Battalion refused to go over the top
again. Believe me, that caused big trouble for a little while. But the Colonel won them over.
Since he is like a father to all of us, they backed down. But before long things will be really
bad, because all of us are sick of war, especially of being made to kill and destroy.
Let us be like our Russian Brothers and walk away from the war.
Unidentified Unit, 29 May 1917: All the soldiers are shouting: "Down with War!" They
refuse to take orders. I hope they all do the same thing and put an end to this ceaseless
carnage.... At Soissons, they killed two policemen. We have nothing to gain from the
continuation of the war. Word has it that Paris is embroiled in strikes. All the better! Believe
me, given the way all of us are made to lay down our lives, Revolution would not be bad.
What is missing now is a civilian uprising and then all would be well. It is shameful for men
48
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
to be slaughtered like animals. I hope you will not worry about me. I will remain calm
whatever happens.... It will give me renewed hope to know that you have heard the cries:
"Down with war! On with the Revolution!"
7th Company, 3 June 1917: I am going to tell you everything. We refused to fall in on
Tuesday evening. We do not want to march. We are practically on strike. Many other
regiments are doing the same thing we are doing.... When I come home on leave I will tell
you more. They treat us like beasts. They make us march, but give us little to eat. You break
your back for nothing, or else they make you go over the top in an attack. But half the troops
held their ground and would not advance. I don't know what is going to come of all this, but
right now it is very bad.
Perhaps you won't receive this letter. Perhaps they will open the mail and burn the letters that
tell what is really going on.
74th Regiment, 5 June 1917: At this moment, nothing is happening. We should be going up
to the trenches, but I don't think we will. All the soldiers are fed up. I don't say anything. I
keep my mouth shut. I am happy enough about what is going on, but the Censor keeps me
from telling the whole story [in this letter]. Everyone has his turn to laugh! Let the gentlemen
from America come over here and take our places. Let them have their heads crammed full,
like ours have been, with the clap-trap that we are beating the Germans!
Born into wealth and educated in the finest schools, Siegfried Sassoon (18871967) was certainly a key member of the "Establishment." and one of the most
talented and famous poets of the war. An early volunteer for the war, his
experiences produced works which protested the war.
Siegfried Sassoon, "They", 1917
The Bishop tells us: "When the boys come back
They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
In a just cause: they lead the last attack
On Anti-Christ; their comrade's blood has bought
New right to breed an honorable race.
They have challenged Death and dared him face to face."
"We're none of us the same!" the boys reply.
For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
49
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
A chap who's served that hasn't found some change."
And the bishop said: "The ways of God are strange!"
Having enlisted on 3 August 1914, Sassoon had demonstrated distinguished
valor in France, was badly wounded and was scheduled for permanent home
service. Instead, in the summer of 1917, he published the following in the
London Times.
Siegfried Sassoon: Declaration Against War, 30 July 1917
This statement was made to his commanding officer by Second Lieutenant S. L. Sassoon,
Military Cross, recommended for DSO., Third Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, as
explaining his grounds for refusing to serve further in the army.
I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I
believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I
am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon
which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and
conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this
war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and
that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be obtainable by
negotiation. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a
party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not
protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for
which the fighting men are being sacrificed. In behalf of those who are suffering now I make
this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may
help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the
continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient
imagination to realize.
Given his distinguished record and impeccable family connections, Sassoon
was not punished. He accepted transfer to a sanatorium where he wrote some
of the most bitter poems to come out of the war.
Siegfried Sassoon: "Dreamers," 1918
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
50
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin.
They think of fire-lit homes, clean beds, and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
Siegfried Sassoon: "Base Details," 1918
If I were fierce and bald and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honor. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say—"I used to know his father well.
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die—in bed.
Passchendaele
The French mutiny, and other protests, accomplished nothing, but the Russian
revolt helped knock that country out of the war. This freed German troops for
further actions on the Western Front, where the war continued without
interruptions. To take pressure off the French, the British High Command
ordered a full offensive in Fkanders. It began as the “Third Battle of Ypres”
The following recollection was written after the war by a British Private who
had volunteered in 1915 as an 18 year old and was 20 when he fought this
battle in 1917. It givse a good insight into the terrible sufferings which was
the lot of the enlisted soldier as this battle opened.
Recollection of Private F. N. Gladden (from 1929) Battle of Messines Ridge
On the morning of June 5th [1917] I was awakened from a deep sleep - I had been out
carrying bombs until the early hours of the morning - and ordered to join the party detailed to
assist the Australian Tunnelling Company, who were working day and night in six-hour
shifts. The sergeant in charge of the party conducted us down a labyrinth of passages more
marvellous at every step, until we came to an opening to the outer world.
51
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Just where it I was I could not make out; it did not seem to be under direct observation.
A high and considerable breastwork of sandbags zigzagged away to the right (this had been
the method of disposing of the earth brought out of the workings), and the ground beyond,
which rose quickly to a low ridge not far away, was absolutely desolate. We moved around a
corner in the breastwork and formed a continuous chain to transport the bags back into the
galleries where they were wanted for tamping - that is, for building a barrier against the
backward force of the explosion.
I was the last man in the chain and consequently the farthest from safety, a position for which
I had in no wise manoeuvred, and I stood in the comer of a traverse where the breastwork
turned sharply to the left and gradually petered out in the waste. We worked with a will, for
our task was light and the fresh air a welcome change from the stuffy atmosphere of the
saps. An observation balloon on the far horizon attracted our attention, but whether friend or
foe we could not decide.
Shortly after, a battery began to fire and the shells burst on the ridge about a hundred yards
away; another salvo passed over and crashed on the hill behind. "No need to worry"; we
thought. "They were not intended for us." We had progressed so well that the N.C.O.
thought it would be a good idea to lengthen the chain. Three of us moved round the corner
and the work continued.
Suddenly the gun fired again and something in the scream of the first shell foretold that it
was for us. I ducked as it burst opposite the corner of the breastwork. We ran like rabbits for
the sap. I was turning the last bend when a man a few yards in front crashed to the ground.
He was a youngster just out from England who had taken up the position I had recently
vacated. Aided by the man in front I attempted to lift him, but we were now alone, some 50
yards from the entrance, and an approaching salvo urged us forward again. I reached the sap
opening, panting and frightened, and hung on to the timber baulk at the side to regain my
breath.
It was safe there, and we waited while the sergeant went to Headquarters for instructions.
At that moment Corporal B. of our company arrived on the scene, and, on learning what had
happened, demanded why we had left the casualty out there. We were certain he was dead,
but the corporal would not be satisfied.
"Come on, one of you men," he said. "We must fetch him in." No one moved; We had all
been thoroughly shaken. I felt ashamed. Why wouldn't someone go? A last appeal and
Corporal B. started alone. Something for the moment overcame my terror and impelled me
to follow him. We raced along the breastwork. All was still. We bent to raise the prostrate
figure at the corner, but the hand of Death had made the task too much for our strength,
weakened by the stress and excitement. Shelling recommenced and the bags above began to
52
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
scatter around us.
"Run!" screamed the corporal, and with my remaining energies I ran as I had never run
before, as a regular tornado of shells smashed down the breastwork behind us. The stretcher
bearers who fetched him in later, when all was again quiet, reported that he had pieces of
shrapnel through the brain and the heart and therefore must have died instantly. How he had
managed to run a dozen yards and turn the corner I could never understand.
The Attack. The afternoon of June 6th found us back at the Bund dug-outs preparing for the
advance. It had been rumoured for some days that the long-expected offensive was
imminent, but the actual orders came suddenly, as they usually did to the men in the ranks.
The battalion was to attack on the morrow. "B" Company was to be in close support, and
this was generally thought preferable to "going over the top"; though memories of a similar
position before the Butte de Warlencourt on the Somme, when the supporting company was
severely punished, did not reassure me.
The sun shone brightly and the Bund dug-outs had thrown off the lethargic appearance usual
at that time of the day. We were not under observation, and could go about our preparations
unmolested. All was quiet. In the little stream that trickled down the embankment from the
lake we were able to wash ourselves - perhaps for the last time. Some whose steel helmets
lacked the regulation canvas cover were daubing them with mud; officers were trying on
their rankers' tunics, which would make them less conspicuous to the enemy; while stretcher
bearers, runners, and others were sewing distinctive badges to their sleeves.
On the embankment above a notice board, relic of a more leisurely type of warfare, forbade
us to catch fish with Mills' bombs - a sport in which we were very unlikely to indulge just
then. Below lay the flats dividing us from Ypres, which filled the middle distance and stood
out clearly, a tooth edge of jagged ruins, in the afternoon sun. Tea was served and those
fortunates detailed to go back to the transport field as reinforcements were preparing to
leave. Those last bright hours passed slowly. When at last night began to fall tractors
hauling heavy guns crawled out from Ypres and took up positions on the flats in front.
At certain points guns were placed wheel to wheel and no attempt was made to hide them.
Gun after gun left the town, and now with the thickening dusk there followed streams of
men: small groups at first, followed later by long files reaching out like tentacles into the
Salient.
Lastly, throwing caution to the winds, the field guns galloped up the roads, followed closely
by their ammunition trains. Surely never through all its vicissitudes had the Salient
witnessed such a furious activity.
At midnight the company moved off and followed the duckboard track towards Hill 60 once
again. Lying by the route at the corner of the Bund, I saw two shapes, roughly covered by a
53
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
piece of old sacking. The blackness of their exposed features told me that they had long lain
thus: in the bustle of preparing for a push the small services due to the dead were often
overlooked. I felt sad; there was no peace here even in death. Suddenly the raucous blast of a
Strombus horn came from near at hand, and the terrifying cry of "Gas!" passed down the
file. The enemy were "strafing" with gas shells, which whined over and struck the ground
with their peculiar undecided thud, while a sickly smell came to my nostrils.
The fear of gas was the greatest fear of all, and we sighed with relief when we had passed
through the danger zone, and could take off our box respirators. The remainder of the
journey to the jumping-off trench was accomplished without mishap. The trench was newly
dug somewhere on the hill and nowhere more than 4.5 feet deep. We looked like getting a
thrashing when the show commenced.
The attack was to be preceded by the explosion of the mine. There in the bowels of the earth
after many months of preparation, tunnelling, and counter-tunnelling by the enemy, an
unprecedented amount of explosive had been buried and the effects of the detonation of such
an immense charge were uncertain. We might all be involved. In any case our trenches
might close in, and, to evade that possibility, we were ordered to lay out on top for the event.
The night was clear; the guns were silent. Ever and anon an enemy Verey light went up from
his line and spread a lurid glare over the scene. Those hours of waiting were hardly
bearable. At last the first streaks of dawn showed in the sky, and whispered orders sent us to
our positions a few yards in front of the trench.
The last few minutes dragged with relentless slowness; each second seemed an hour, each
minute an eternity. The greyness of a new day now suffused the sky. I felt a tremor of fear
run through my body; the silence of the grave seemed to enfold the whole world. With a
sharp report an enemy rocket began to mount towards the heavens. A voice behind cried
"Now!" It was the hour, and that last enemy light never burst upon the day. The ground
began to rock and I felt my body carried up and down as by the waves of the sea.
In front the earth opened and a large black mass was carried to the sky on pillars of fire, and
there seemed to remain suspended for some seconds while the awful red glare lit up the
surrounding desolation. No sound came. I had been expecting a noise from the mine so
tremendous as to be unbearable. [19 tunnels fillwed with more than a million pounds of
explosives had been set off.] For a brief space all was silent, as though we had been too
close to hear and the sound had leapt over us like some immense wave. A line of men rose
from the ground a few yards in front and advanced towards the upheaval, their helmets
silhouetted and bayonets glinting in the redness of that unearthly dawn. I saw no more.
We hurled ourselves back to the trench. And then there was a tremendous roar and a tearing
across the skies above us, as the barrage commenced with unerring accuracy. It was as
54
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
though a door had been suddenly flung open. The skies behind our lines were lit by the
flashes of many thousand guns, and above the booming din of the artillery came the rasping
rattle of the Vickers guns pouring a continuous stream of lead over into the enemy's lines.
Never before, surely, had there been such a bombardment, and I shuddered for those
unfortunates caught in that storm of death. Yet the German gunners were not slow to answer
their S.O.S. call, for before I had crossed the few yards back to the trench their shells were
already bursting around. I saw the trench before me and in my excitement I slipped upon the
edge and fell head foremost amidst a rain of loose earth. My helmet slipped off and I was
just able to drag out my Lewis gun buckets before a stream of humanity striving to reach the
deeper parts of the trench carried me before it.
I had lost my steel helmet and could think of little else during the whole bombardment. The
shells lashed the ground with fury. Each piece of flying shrapnel seemed to be searching for
my unprotected head and as I pushed it into the parapet the loose grains of earth matted my
hair and trickled into the collar of my tunic. The rest of the section crouched near.
Our corporal, Regular soldier and veteran of the First Battle of Ypres, sat crouched in the
corner, his knees almost to his chin, and, except for an occasional blasphemy or laconic "The
next one'll get us," he remained motionless. My pal leaned against the parapet, his eyes
closed as though death had already come to him, and a little further along another youngster
cried audibly.
From right and left came cries of pain and the stretcher bearers, risking all in their devotion,
pushed backwards and forwards to dress the wounded. Our casualties were heavy, but
fortunately the enemy batteries were disorganized and the shooting somewhat haphazard,
otherwise few of us would have escaped that morning. News came back of the success of the
first advance with comparatively light casualties, and, after a lull, our guns increased again to
tremendous fury while the attack was further developed. The crack of rifles and rattle of
machine guns came through the din.
Casualties this time were much heavier, as was to be expected. Then the bombardment
slowly died away and it was obvious that the time for consolidation had arrived. Orders
came for us to lead along the trench, and I soon found a helmet for which the owner no
longer had any use. I appropriated it thankfully. We got mixed up with a carrying party
coming from the opposite direction, and the enemy, who could see into the lower parts of the
trench, began sniping with "whizz-bangs." Those small, swiftly travelling shells came
without warning and spread a greater feeling of "wind-up" than did the larger varieties.
Something had gone wrong and we were turned about. A shell hit the parapet near by and a
second burst on the inside of the parados, but 2 or 3 yards away. The man in front was
killed, while I, who was lifted from my feet by the explosion and enveloped in a thick
suffocating cloud of yellow fumes, remained unscratched. Such were the fortunes of war.
55
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
For the next hour or so I was suffering from shell-shock and only half-conscious of the
withering fire that the enemy directed against us from the left sector of the old line behind
us. The shelling was measured and nerve-racking. Each shell was intended for the trench
and did not fall far away.
The casualty list lengthened, and it seemed that endurance could stand little more. Our
inactivity was deadly. At last the enemy got tired, and towards the late afternoon all became
quiet. Then came the order for us to reinforce the troops in Battle Wood. We left the trench
and crossed the shell-torn hill by the railway cutting. The crater, which I expected to see as
an immense jagged hole in the ground, was actually a large flat-bottomed depression like a
frying-pan, clear and clean from debris except at the further edge, where vestiges of one of
the enemy's trenches showed through its side. The poor devils caught in that terrible
cataclysm had no chance. Yet what chance was there for anyone in that war of guns and
mathematics?
On the nearer lip of the crater lay the body of a German still clutching his rifle. He was a
tremendous fellow well over 6 feet in height, I should think, and seems to have made a
single-handed effort to hold up the advancing British line. How he got there is difficult to
imagine. He was probably out on advance post between the mine and our lines and had
retreated to the crater to make his last brave stand. A murmur of admiration passed down the
file at the recognition of such courage.
Here and there black fountains of earth were thrown up as heavy enemy shells burst in the
wilderness and put a finishing touch to that scene of desolation. I could survey the whole of
the famous hill and, away in front, the tree stumps of Battle Wood; and it occurred to me that
until that day no man had, during those many months since the first battles, stood on that
same ground in daylight and lived
Tragicly none of the British battle objectives were reached, but the fighting
continued until Occtober, causing eventually 300,000 British casualties and
213,000 German dead and wounded. Following is one of the most graphic
letters to come out of the war. It describes the Passchendaele battles.
Letter of Private Leonard Hart, 5th New Zealand Reinforcements
19 October 1917: Dear Mother, Father and Connie: In a postcard which I sent you about a
fortnight ago, I mentioned that we were on the eve of a great event. Well that great event is
now over now and by some strange act of fortune, I have once again come through without a
scratch.
For the first time in our brief history as an army, the New Zealanders failed in their objective
with the most appalling slaughter I have ever seen. My company went into action 180 strong
56
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
and we came out thirty-two strong. Still, we have nothing to be ashamed of, as our
commander afterwards told us that no troops in the world could possibly have taken the
position, but this is small comfort when one remembers the hundreds of lives that have been
lost and nothing gained. ...
The weather had for some days been wet and cold and the mud was in places up to the knees.
The ground had all been deluged with our shells before being taken from the Germans, and
for those file miles leading to our front line trench there was nothing but utter desolation, not
a blade of grass, or tree, numerous tanks stuck in the mud and for the rest, just one shell hole
touching another. The only structures which had stood the bombardment in any way at all
were the German machine-gun emplacements.
These emplacements are marvelous structures made of concrete with walls often ten feet
thick and the concrete reinforced throughout with railway irons and steel bands and bars. The
ground was strewn with the corpses of numerous Huns and Tommies. Dead horses and mules
lay everywhere, yet no attempt had been made to bury any of them. Well, we at length
arrived at our destination—the front line—and relieved the worn-out Tommies. They had not
attempted to dig trenches but had simply held the line by occupying a long line of shell holes,
two or three men to each hole. Many of them seemed too worn out to walk properly and I
don't know how some of them must have got on during their long tramp through the mud
back to billets. Each of us had a shovel with him, so we set to work to make some kind of
trenches. We were at this point about half-way up one slope of the ridge which in the course
of forty-eight hours we were to try and take. The mud was not so bad here owing to the water
being able to run away into a swamp at the foot of the ridge. Anyway by daybreak we had
dug ourselves in sufficiently and, although wet and covered in mud from head to foot, we felt
fit for a feed of bread and bully beef for breakfast. We stayed in our new trenches all that day
and the day following during which it rained off and on, and Fritz kept things lively with his
artillery.
At three o'clock on the third morning we received orders to attack the ridge at half-past five.
It was pitch dark and raining heavily. When all was ready we were told to lay down and wait
the order to charge. Our artillery barrage curtain of fire was to open out at twenty past five
and play on the German positions on top of the ridge a hundred and fifty yards ahead of us.
At twenty past five to the second, and with a roar that shook the ground, our guns opened out
on the five-mile sector of the advance. Through some blunder our artillery barrage opened up
about two hundred yards short of the specified range and thus opened right in the midst of us.
It was a truly awful time—our men getting cut to pieces in dozens by our own guns. I heard
an officer shout an order to the men to retire a short distance and wait for our barrage to life.
Some, who heard the order, did so. Others, not knowing what to do under the circumstances,
stayed where they were, while others advanced towards the German positions, only to be
mown down by his deadly rifle and machine-gun fire. At length our barrage lifted and we all
57
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
once more formed up and made a rush for the ridge.
What was our dismay upon reaching almost to the top of the ridge to find a long line of
practically undamaged German concrete machine-gun emplacements with barbed wire
entanglements in front of them fully fifty yards deep! The wire had been cut in a few places
by our Artillery but only sufficient to allow a few men through at a time. Dozens got hung up
in the wire and shot down before their comrades' eyes. It was now broad daylight and what
was left of us realized that the day was lost. We accordingly lay down in shell holes or any
cover we could get and waited. Any man who showed his head was immediately shot. They
were marvelous shots those Huns. We had lost nearly eighty per cent of our strength and
gained about three hundred yards of ground in the attempt. This three hundred yards was
useless to us for the Germans still held and dominated the ridge.
We hung on all that day and night. There was no one to give us orders, all our officers of the
battalion having been killed or wounded. All my Company officers were killed outright—one
of them, a son of the Revd Ryburn of Invercargill, was shot dead beside me. The second day
after this tragic business, we were surprised to see about half a dozen Huns sudden appear
waving a white flag. They proved to be Red Cross men and they were asking for a truce to
take in their wounded and bury their dead. It was a humane and gallant act. Our stretcherbearers were able to go and take all our wounded from the barbed wire, and we had all the
wounded carried out before nightfall. We had not time to bury many of our dead but the
wounded should be the only consideration in times like that, but I went out and buried poor
Ryburn. My company has come out with no officers, only one sergeant out of seven, one
corporal and thirty men. Even then we are not the worst off.
I have just decided to have this letter posted by someone going on leave to England, so I will
tell you a few more facts which it would not have been advisable to mention otherwise. Some
terrible blunder has been made. Someone is responsible for that barbed wire not having been
broken up by our artillery, someone is responsible for the opening of our barrage in the
midst of us instead of 150 yards ahead of us. Someone else is responsible for those machinegun emplacements being left practically intact, but the papers will all report another glorious
success, and no one except those who actually took part in it will know any different. I will
relate to you another little incident or two which never reaches the press, or if it does it is
"censored" in order to deceive the public. This almost unbelievable but perfectly true incident
is as follows.
During the night after we had relieved the Tommies prior to our attack on the ridge, we were
surprised to hear agonized cries of "Stretcher-bearer," "Help," "For God's sake come here"
etc., coming from all sides of us. When daylight came some of us, myself included, crawled
out to some adjacent shell holes from where the cries were coming and were astonished to
find about half a dozen Tommies, badly wounded, some insane, others almost dead with
starvation and exposure, lying stuck in the mud and too weak to move. We asked on man
58
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
who seemed a little better than the others what was the meaning of it, and he said that if we
cared to crawl about among the shell holes all round about him we would find dozens more
in similar plight. We were dumbfounded, but the awful truth remained, these chaps, wounded
in the defense of their country had been callously left to die the most awful of deaths in the
half-frozen mud while tens of thousands of able-bodied men were camped within five miles
of them behind the lines. All these Tommies ... had been wounded during their unsuccessful
attack on the ridge which we afterwards tried to take, and at the time when we came upon
them they must have been lying where they fell in mud and rain for four days and nights.
Those that were still alive had subsisted on the rations and water that they had carried with
them or else had taken it from dead comrades beside them.
I have seen some pretty rotten sights during the two and a half years of active service, but I
must say that this fairly sickened me. We crawled back to our trenches and inside of an hour
all our stretcher-bearers were working like the heroes that they were, and in full view of the
enemy whom, to his credit, did not fire on them. They worked all day carrying out those
Tommies.
Carrying wounded over such country often knee-deep in mud is the most trying work
imaginable, and I do not say for a moment that the exhausted Tommies (the survivors of the
first attack on Passchendaele Ridge) were physically capable of doing it, but I do say that it
was their officers' duty to send back and have fresh men brought up to carry out the wounded
that they themselves could not carry. Perhaps they did send back for help, but still the fact
remains that nothing was done until our chaps came up, and whoever is responsible for the
unnecessary sacrifice of those lives deserves to be shot more than any Hun ever did.
If they had asked for an armistice to carry out their wounded I do not doubt that it would
have been granted for the Huns had plenty of wounded to attend to as well as the Tommies. I
suppose our armchair leaders call this British stubbornness. if this represents British
stubbornness then it is time we called it by a new name. I would suggest callous brutality as a
substitute. After reading this do not believe our lying press who tell you that the brutality of
this war is on the Hun's side. The Hun is no angel, we all know, and the granting of an
armistice, such as that which we had, is a rare occurrence ... but for all the terrific casualties
those Jä gers inflicted on us, we survivors of Passchendaele Ridge must all admit that they
played the game on that occasion at any rate.
We are expecting to move about twenty miles back from here tomorrow where we can get
fresh reinforcements and thoroughly reorganized. I shall not be sorry to get on the move.
Letter of Helmut Zschuppe, 19, Killed 18 September 1917
14 September 1917: Yesterday the Iron Cross, Second Class, was sent to me. The pleasure
this gave me was some small compensation. Tomorrow I start back to the Company. Today, I
59
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
am in the Convalescent Section getting ready. Well, and what now? When one thing is over
one begins to ask, what next? I wait for what fate may bring; am low-spirited and pale and
love the dusk. It seems as if many sleepless nights had made me ultra-sensitive. When I was
left alone for a few minutes with the Iron Cross, I had quite different thoughts from those that
were in my mind before. It seemed as if the Cross were made of shell splinters—black blood
congealed on a yellowish dead face with open mouth—bandages encrusted with pus—the
strangled cries of hoarse voices— flaccid, gangrened flesh on the stump of a leg. But all that
shall not make me hold back! And I am comforted by the thought of your prayers and your
love.
The following document is another post-war recollection by a British s0oldier
who had volunteered as a 17 year-old to be a medic in France, but then
transferred in 1916 to the active service. He was 20 when the following
experiences occurred following the Pasendael battles. He described them in a
report written in 1929.
Recollections of George F. Wear (written in 1929)
It was here [in the battle of Paschendael] that we first met the new "mustard" gas. Our
division suffered heavily; men dropped in the streets, on the roads, in billets, often many
hours afterwards. New respirators had to be served out. … We came into the Salient in the
autumn, and, there being no scope for trench mortars, we were scattered among field
batteries, on ammunition dumps, and other jobs mostly as inglorious as they were necessary.
Not that I personally had any longer any illusions about glory. In common with most others,
I considered going up the line little more than a horrible necessity, the odd periods of rest in
uncomfortable cold tents or huts surrounded by seas of mud a heavenly respite almost too
good to be true.
I doubt if anyone who has not experienced it can really have any idea of what the Salient was
like during those "victories" of 1917. The bombardments of the Somme the year before were
nothing to those round Ypres. Batteries jostled each other in the shell-marked waste of mud,
barking and crashing night and day. There were no trees, no houses, no countryside, no
shelter, no sun. Wet, grey skies hung over the blasted land, and in the mind a gloomy
depression grew and spread.
Trenches had disappeared. "Pill-boxes" and shell holes took their place. We never went up
the line with a working party with any real expectation of returning, and there was no longer
any sustaining feeling that all this slaughter was leading us to anything. No one could see
any purpose in it. I remember watching a company of infantry marching up the greasy
duckboard track one evening. A young subaltern with them recognized me. We had been in
the same sector once south of Arras - "Our turn now," he said, without a smile. "Bye-bye."
They marched on, bowed, hopeless.
60
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
I had all sorts of escapes; in fact they were so frequent that I got into a strange frame of mind,
and became careless. It seemed as if I couldn't bother to try and avoid unnecessary danger.
The only matters of importance were whether the rations would come up promptly and if the
bottle of whisky I had ordered would be there.
It was for me the worst part of the War. Even now it looms like a gigantic nightmare in the
back of my mind. … How I envied those who had never gone out or had never joined the
Army!
In February 1918 we were in the Salient again, this time with new 6-inch mortars. Attacks
and raids were fairly frequent, but our work was mechanical and had no interest for any of
us. We hated our turns in the trenches, and thought only of when we should come out.
Most of my friends had left, some for the Flying Corps, the majority forever. Gas, death, and
wounds had accounted for them. New officers and men came out, the proceeds of
conscription, but, whatever their quality, they were not like the old lot. How could they be?
I began to feel like one who had outlived his time, and grew more and more depressed. I
certainly had no hope of surviving much longer. The odds were heavily against it. After the
big [German] attack on the Somme in March, we evacuated the Salient. It presented a
strange empty and quiet appearance as we marched out. I think many of us could have sat
down on the duckboards and wept that April day. All the fruits of the appalling struggle of
the year before were given up in a night. We were sent to field batteries again, and there was
some excitement in the new open fighting.
We would trot calmly into action in full view of the Boches as steadily as on parade. But we
were never left long in peace, and had to endure a great deal of heavy shelling and gas
bombardment. At last, one early morning, at the beginning of the last German attack south
of Ypres (as I learned later), in the middle of an S.O.S. a perfect deluge of 4.2's rained on the
unsheltered battery.
I was one of the first to be hit, and, despite the pain of the wound and the terror that I should
bleed to death before I was attended to, I kept on repeating to myself, "It's over now. It's
over now." And so it was, for me at any rate. When I came out of hospital many months
later the Armistice had been signed. I was just twenty-one years of age, but I was an old man
-- cynical, irreligious, bitter, disillusioned. I have been trying to grow young ever since.
The war seemed to go on stubbornly, despite horrendous losses on all sides.
The next documents come from the diary of our 22 year old British private
whose experience during the Somme offensive of 1916 we have already seen.
61
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
Diary Entries of Thomas Frederick Littler:
12 August 1918
Rested till 7pm and then set out for the line, we had our orders at 10pm,
the raid being made on 4 separate machine gun posts and 4 sappers going over to each post
and 50 infantry men and an officer at each post. No.1 and 2 Sappers of our 4 carried a
torpedo candeloe and placed it under the enemy wire entanglement, no.3 ran the fuse from
the front line to the candeloe and connected up, no.4 brought the Exploder and connected
with the fuse and blew the wire.
The infantry rushed the gap and captured the occupants of the posts and made them
prisoners. There was very heavy shelling the whole night and we got to the infantries
company HQ at 1am. Out of 200 infantry men who went over 35 are missing and out of 16
Sappers 7 are not accounted for, we captured 44 prisoners and 8 machine guns, I got a good
souvenir in the way of a German revolver, and we got back to our camp at 8 a.m.
19 October 1918 Left billets and went forward 14 kilos to build a bridge across the river
Lys at Courtrai and 2nd Corporal W Mather and myself crossed the Lys on two planks with a
Lewis gun and ammunition and lay out all night covering the company while they worked we
also had infantry covering parties, it poured all night long, very heavy fire prevailed all night,
and Lieutenant Archebald, and Lieutenant Harper MC were wounded, Sappers Penney and
Gill killed, and Sappers Brooke, Dean and Blackmore wounded.
20 October 1918
Left our billets at Moorseele and marched through Gulleghem, Heule to
Bisseghem at night we got called out to make a large raft on the river Lys to take very heavy
guns across on, as the bridge had been blown up, by the enemy during his retreat, the raft was
completed by midday on the 21st.
21 October 1918
We completed the raft by midday had dinner and then twelve of us were
detailed off to take a battery of 60 pounders across, we worked until dark, and slept on the
job.
22 October 1918
Making a heavy raft and using a barge to make it, the job would have
been a complete success but for Lieutenant Kelsey who messed the job up, and after six
hours work the blessed concern sunk crossways in the River Lys, and made a hash of
everything, about £50 worth of tools were lost also.
Diary of an Anonymous American Soldier
25 August 1918: Base Hospital at Neuilly: Has the Lord ordained that from hideous
mangling of flesh beautiful things should come? The decaying fetid flower by the roadside,
sweetening the fields of tomorrow. Hard to find meaning in torn bodies and torn hearts,
forget the shining grains of life ground between stones of circumstances to make bread that
62
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
will nourish souls as yet in the making. Can't evade it—there is sublimity in war. Man made
in mold of divinity, and more than a flavor of his origin still clinging to his soul. The cheer of
these lads, their quiet grave resignation, too beautiful for marring touch of praise. Life has
buffeted them sorely; for some it has not yet given its hardest blows. But no quarreling with
terms of the game; they carry on.
One comes away from this eddy of human wreckage, a little sick at heart. But one presently
forgets the bodies shattered, the faces marred, the freshness of lives become stale and useless,
and remembers only that "God fulfills himself in many ways." The singular evangelism of
blood. Coming out of this shadow-place into the sunlight, with some new measure of
religion. Not freshened respect for dusty words, molding thoughts, stupid priest-craft,
fantastic divinities—NO! But the soul is revived in this tabernacle of agony, and one comes
out from the temple as from a revelation, more religious, essentially, more ready to bend the
knees in simple worship—of Man! This sounds like a YMCA preacher, just 4 days over!
Blah, perhaps, not expressing what I feel. Words can't. Damn it!
18 October 1918: Three hundredth day from Hoboken! Damned cold. Shivering, fingers
numb as lead, and not even November yet. Bought Liberty Bond, leaving me strapped. One
of those "Doing his bit," etc. Thrilling! Rough and simple soldier, risking life on bloodsoaked fields of France, also helping pay own salary! Race between Kaiser and my pants
still on. Vital interest in early termination of conflict! Each day another seam opens or
another button drops from fatigue—and can't keep pants up by merely gritting teeth. Each
morning, scan communiques first— then breeches. Strain beginning to tell.
After the war problems of readjustment, hitherto kept in background, going to make all sorts
of trouble. League of Nations, not mere imaginative. sentimental Utopia, but only practicable
solution of world in chaos. Reorganization of society going to require pooling of brains and
resources. Real job begins when peace treaty is signed. Lord Buckmaster has the right dope:
"The real victors in this war will be determined 10 or 20 years afterwards, and they will be
the nation who will be the best able to face the growing discontent of a disillusioned people,
to ward off impending famine, and to save their people from the appalling consequences of
the universal bankruptcy to which Europe is speeding every day with increasing pace."
Vast amount of nonsense about Germany. Silly idea of demanding huge indemnities, and in
same breath refusing to allow access to raw material, i.e., ask tree to give fruit, but shut off
sun and air. No disposal of Germany after war by merely gnashing teeth. Got to take hold
and make something out of mess, or war will have been waste of time. Won't do to slaughter
dragon. Got to bury carcass, or turn it into fertilizer or soap—or it will be worse offense dead
than alive.
Policy of forgive and forget not merely laudable on moral grounds. Only way out. Does
current squeak about "punishment" mean poisoning remaining Germans—or even
63
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
childbearing females? . . . Either slaughter entire Teutonic race, or take them back and try to
make something of them. No middle ground. No sense hating Germans. Only proper object
for hate, to anyone with brains God gave little snails, is an idea. And can't destroy ideas, or
crush them, or punish them. Can only substitute good ideas for bad ones.
This life hard on illusions. Not many left. A hell of a way from best of all possible worlds,
and man certainly a son-of-a-bitch when he puts his mind to it. But hope not to travel too far
along road on which so many realists stub their silly toes, of believing there is no angel worth
mentioning in poor, complex human heart. Heaven and hell both there.
The War in Retrospect
Recollections of Rifleman Fred White, King's Royal Rifle Corps
Us fellows, it took us years to get over it. Years! Long after when you were working,
married, had kids, you'd be lying in bed with your wife and you'd see it all before you.
Couldn't sleep. Couldn't lie still. Many's and many's the time I've got up and tramped the
streets till it came daylight. Walking, walking—anything to get away from your thoughts.
And many's the time I've met other fellows that were out there doing exactly the same thing.
That went on for years, that did.
Edmund Blunden (1896-1974) II Peter ii.22 * 1922
Hark, the new year succeeds the dead,
The bells make haste, the news is spread;
And day by day
"Farther Away,"
"Farther away" tolls through my head.
Here slinking Slyness rules the roost
And brags and pimps, as he was used;
Before the day,
Now far away,
Saw him to's puny self reduced.
And Quarrel with her hissing tongue
And hen's eye gobbles gross along
To snap that prey
* Written in 1922 about 1916. The biblical citation reads: "How well the proverb fits them: 'The dog returns to
its vomit,' and 'A sow bathes by wallowing in the mire'."
64
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
That marched away
To save her carcass, better hung.
Come, infant Hour, though much I fear
That bright will show more blackly clear
How day by day
Far fade away
The heights which crowned a deadlier year.
Doubtlessly the most famous poem to come out of the war was written only a
few months before it ended. Its author, Wilfred Owen, was killed at the
Sambre Canal only a week before the armistice.
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918): Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in Time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gurgling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
65
John L. Heineman (ed)
World War I Experienced
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
66