Letter of the Duke of Altenburg
From a letter written from the front by the Duke of Altenburg on Sept. 5, and published in the Altenburger Zeitung.
WE have lived through a great deal and done a great deal, marching, marching continually, without rest or respite. On Aug. 10 we reached Willdorf, near Jülich, by train, and from the 12th of August we marched without a single day of rest except Aug. 16, which we spent in a Belgian village near Liége, until today, when we reached ——. Those have been army marches such as history has never known.
DJEMAL PASHA
The Turkish Minister of Marine, Who Shares with Enver Pasha
the Control of Turkish Affairs.
(Photo © International News Service.)
EMIR ALI PASHA
Vice President of the Turkish Parliament, Who Was Sent to Berlin to Take
Back to Turkey Mohammedan Prisoners Captured from the Allies.
(Photo from Press Illustrating Co.)
The weather was fine, except that a broiling heat blazed down upon us. The regiment can point back to several days' marches of fifty kilometers ——. Everywhere our arrival created great amazement, in Louvain as well as in Brussels, into which the entire —— marched at one time. At first we were taken for Englishmen in almost every village, and we still are, because the inhabitants cannot realize that we have arrived so early. The Belgians, moreover, in the last few days almost invariably set fire to their own villages.
On Aug. 24 we first entered battle; I led a combined brigade consisting of ——. The regiment fought splendidly, and in spite of the gigantic strain put upon it, it is in the best of spirits and full of the joy of battle. On that day I was for a long time in the sharpest rifle and artillery fire. Since that time there have been almost daily skirmishes and continual long marches; the enemy stalks ahead of us in seven-league boots. On Aug. 26 we put behind us a march of exactly twenty-three hours, from 6:30 o'clock in the morning till 5:30 the next morning. With all that, I was supposed to lead my regiment across a bridge to take a position guarding a new bridge in course of construction; but the bridge, as we discovered in the nick of time, was mined; twenty minutes later it flew into the air.
After resting for three hours in a field of stubble, and after we had all eaten in common with the men in a field kitchen—as we usually do—we continued marching till dark.
The spirit among our men is excellent. Tonight I am to have a real bed—the fourth, I believe, since the war began. Today I undressed for the first time in eight days.