GERMAN STUDENTS TELL WHAT SHERMAN MEANT
Three Confessions from German Soldiers
Told by Walther Harich, Wilhelm Spengler and Willie Treller
What the educated German soldier thinks about the war, how he is affected by the strain and the brutalities and the heroisms of life consequent of it, is described with a fresh, powerful vividness in a book of war letters from German students issued under the editorship of Professor Philipp Witkop, of Freiburg ("Kriegsbriefe Deutscher Studenten"). Translations of some of the impressions on the German youth are here presented.
I—"DRIVEN TO DEATH BY ME"
Of the worst of all I have not written.... It is not the slaying, not the mounds of dead, which we are always passing, and not the wounded (they have the morphine needle and they lie quiet and peaceful in the straw of the requisitioned peasant carts). To me the worst is the distress and suffering to which man and beast are constantly subjected by the terrible strain. We have just buried my first mount, a glorious animal, virtually driven to his death. Driven to death by me! Can you imagine that a person as peaceable as I could find it possible to drive a horse to death with whip and spurs?
There is no help for it. The word is forward—always forward!
Oh, this everlasting driving on!
One stands beside a team that can go no further and compels the drivers, with kindness or threats, to force the impossible out of the horses. The poor animals are all in, but one grabs the whip himself and mercilessly beats away at the miserable beasts till they move again. That is the shocking thing—that one is constantly compelled to make demands upon the poor animals to which they are not equal. Everything here is beyond one's strength. The impossible is made possible. It must go—till something or other breaks.
Or picture this to yourself: Shaken with fever and with burning eyes, a boy comes to me, whimpering—he can endure no more—and I ride into him and drive him back to the front. Can you picture that? But it must be!
Everything here is beyond one's strength. My God! We ourselves must do impossible things. But can one demand that of the others? We know that the struggle is for the German idea in the world—that it is to defend German understanding, German perception against the onslaught of Asiatic barbarism and Romanic indifference. We know what is on the cards if we do not do our utmost.
But the men? How often since we came to this God-forsaken region did we tell ourselves that it was impossible to go forward at night. It is really impossible. And then came an order—an order which could not be carried out during the day, so it went at night. It went because it must. Because "the order" is the great unavoidable—something that must be carried out—Fate, the all-determining. We know what "the order" means now! It is that which gives our people the ascendancy over the whole world.
Walther Harich.
II—HORRORS OF "NO MAN'S LAND"
Near Maricourt, December 17, 1914.
Soon after 11 we were awakened by the retiring sentries. As tired as dogs though we were, we crawled out into the open. It was still raining wet strings—a cold, ugly December night; not a star to be seen. Every once in a while the sound of a shot came to us from the other side of the stream.
"You," remarked Hias suddenly, "listen! Hear anything?"
"What do you mean?"
"Now."
It was a long, wailing cry for help. I could hear it distinctly.
"There is a poor devil out there, wounded," said Hias.
Great heavens—in this weather! And he must have been lying there without help since early yesterday.
He couldn't be in the wood anywhere, for we had gone through that thoroughly. Perhaps he had been caught by a shrapnel splinter during the retreat across the field. Well, what was it to us? Let his comrades get him. He must be just a few meters from the French trenches, anyhow.
Released at 1, we went back to our tents to get some sleep, cursing the French who left their comrade to perish so miserably.
At 3 the next afternoon, when I went on duty again, the poor devil was still calling for help, keeping it up all day. We could not help; we did not see him. And to expose ourselves to the French was a proceeding not to be lightly recommended. It was a horrible feeling to be condemned thus to inaction while a wounded soldier called for help.
When the wind changed one could hear the poor devil whimper and weep and then suddenly rouse himself and send out a call for help, "Oh, la, la!"
Why didn't the French take him away? There was no danger. We could not shoot, for we saw nothing. And we had no intention of doing that. I was glad when my hour was up.
At 8 o'clock I was at my place again with Hias. The poor Frenchman was whining more pitiably than ever. For half an hour we listened; then Hias lost his patience.
"What a tribe of pigs," he broke out, "to leave a comrade to die like a dog! He can't last much longer."
"Well, Hias," I said, "what can we do? I am sorry for him myself, but there is no help. He must die."
After a few minutes a terrible scream: "Oh, la, la, la, la!" pierced the night. Then there was quiet. God be praised! Now he is dead and at peace, I thought. And quietly I repeated a few prayers for his soul. But after a while we heard his cry again.
"Well, it's enough now," exclaimed Hias. "I can't stand this any longer. I'm going to get him, with or without permission." He spoke and disappeared.
In a minute his brother took his place at my side, while he himself ran up to the trenches. He was back in about ten minutes. He had the permission. The lieutenant also was going and asked if I would come along, as I knew something of first aid and could speak a little French.
When we got to the lieutenant three more men, splendid fellows, on whom one could rely, had volunteered. In a twinkling we had gathered tent cloth, side arms and saws and were running singly across the meadow. Of course, the sentries were notified that we were out in front.
We entered the wood. While two men worked with knives and saws to cut a way through, the others held themselves ready for anything that might develop. We stumbled over bodies, weapons and knapsacks. At last I found a little path which the French had made a few days previously.
I rested a while and was just about to return to my comrades when a hand gripped my foot. Great God, I was frightened! For a second I was paralyzed; then, tearing out my sword—
"Pitie! pitie!"
Some one under my feet was whining for mercy. My teeth chattered. I could hardly move or answer.
"Oh, m'sieur camarade; pitie! pitie!"
Suddenly the lieutenant appeared and I found my control again. Getting down on my knees, I carefully groped for the body.
"Look out now," whispered the lieutenant. "It may be a trap."
"Give me your hand," I ordered the Frenchman. A cold, moist, trembling hand was put into mine.
"Where is your weapon?" I asked. He had lost it as he pulled himself along till he was exhausted.
Suddenly from somewhere near we heard the horribly familiar call, "Oh, la! la!"
"Well, now," said the lieutenant, "we have one man, but not the right one."
I asked the wounded one whether we would be seen if we tried to get the other man.
"Oui, mon brave camarade, Allemand." The lieutenant hesitated, but resolved nevertheless to go on.
One man remained behind with the Frenchman—a corporal, he said he was—with orders to stab him instantly if he called for help while we were working our way through the brush. We came to the edge of the wood at last and peered out.
We could make out the forms of many black objects—dead men, killed so near their own trenches, too! Hias was beside me, and with his sharp peasant eyes soon espied the body of the poor fellow we were after. The lieutenant crawled out, and we followed. Coming up to him, I called softly, "Camarade!" I did not want to frighten him; besides, he might scream for help, then we would be in a nice fix.
"Oh, oh, Dieu! Dieu!" he breathed and emitted sounds like the joyful whining of a puppy when he saw me.
He grasped my hand and pressed it to his breast and cheek.
I felt him over carefully. As I fumbled along his left leg I received a sudden shock. Just below the calf it ended. The foot was torn off above the angle and hung loosely on the leg. As his whole body was wet I could not tell whether he was still bleeding. I could only make out that a rag was tied about the wound. He had bandaged it with his handkerchief, as I learned later.
We soon had him beside his comrade.
The lieutenant went back to his command, leaving the rest to me. The others carried the corporal away to the nearest aid station, while I remained with his comrade, who, as he lay there, softly spoke to me about himself—his wife and his child—of the mobilization. This was his first day at the front. Fate had overtaken him swiftly. He was a handsome man, with big, black eyes, dark hair and mustache. His pale, bloodless face made him doubly interesting. His voice was so tender and soft that I was touched; I could not help it. I gently stroked him: "Pauvre, pauvre camarade Français!"
"Oh, monsieur, c'est tout pour la patrie."
I lay down and nestled up close to him and threw my coat over him, for he was beginning to shiver with fever and frost. Then it began to rain very softly. So we lay one-half, three-quarters, a whole hour. At last, after one and a half hours, the comrades returned.
My poor wounded one was crying softly to himself.
He was soon in the hands of a physician and an attendant. His wounds were looked after and he was given some cold coffee.
I had to go.
A look of unutterable gratefulness, which I shall never forget, a nod: "Bonne nuit, monsieur," and I was outside in the cold, damp December night.
Wilhelm Spengler.
III—A BELGIAN MOTHER AND HER BABE
Ingelmünster, November, 1914.
In Fosses, near Namur, I happened to be the only physician in the place, as all the doctors had fled. So it came about that the first prescriptions that I have ever written were in the French language. It was rather odd, but it went. The sixty-five-year-old apothecary and I have opened many good bottles of Burgundy in his bachelor apartment while he told of his student days in Geneva and Brussels; I of Germany and its glories.
One time I was called to a village an hour distant to the help of a young mother. And it may have presented a curious and unforgettable spectacle to the Belgian peasants when after two hours' hard work the "jeune docteur Allemand," shirt-sleeved, armed and girt with a woman's apron, presented the young mother with a tiny, howling Belgian, while outside the guns thundered in the distance, killing perhaps hundreds and hundreds of other Belgians.
Willy Treller.
(Translations by Julian Bindley Freedman for the New York Tribune.)