But the shambles that came closest to the general public was the casualty lists published by the German government as a sort of supplement to the Berlin Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the semi-official organ of the German Imperial Government. At times this list would contain as many as eight thousand names, each with a letter or several after it—"t" for dead, "s v" for severely wounded, "l v" for lightly wounded, and so on.
It was thought at first that the public would not be able to stand this for long. But soon it was shown that literally there was no end to the fortitude of the Germans.
I was to spend some time on the Somme front. I really was not anxious to see that field of slaughter. But certain men in Berlin thought that I ought to complete my list of fronts with their "own" front. Hospitals and such no longer interested me. Wrecked churches I had seen by the score—and a ruined building is a ruined building. I said that I would visit the Somme front in case I was allowed to go wherever I wanted. That was agreed to, after I had signed a paper relieving the German government of all responsibility in case something should happen to me "for myself and my heirs forever."
The front had been in eruption three weeks and murder had reached the climax when one fine afternoon I put up at a very unpretentious auberge in Cambrai.
The interior of the Moloch of Carthage never was so hot as this front, nor was Moloch ever so greedy for human life. Battalion after battalion, division after division, was hurled into this furnace of barrage and machine-gun fire. What was left of them trickled back in a thin stream of wounded.
For nine days the "drum" fire never ceased. From Le Transloy to south of Pozières the earth rocked. From the walls and ceilings of the old citadel at Cambrai the plaster fell, though many miles lay between it and the front.
Perhaps the best I could say of the Somme offensive is that none will ever describe it adequately—as it was. The poor devils really able to encompass its magnitude and terrors became insane. Those who later regained their reason did so only because they had forgotten. The others live in the Somme days yet, and there are thousands of them.
I could tell tales of horror such as have never before been heard—of a British cavalry charge near Hebuterne that was "stifled" by the barbed wire before it and the German machine-guns in its rear and flanks; of wounded men that had crawled on all-fours for long distances, resting occasionally to push back their entrails; of men cut into little pieces by shells and perforated like sieves by the machine-guns; and again of steel-nerved Bavarians who, coming out of the first trenches, gathered for a beer-drinking in an apple orchard not far from Manancourt.
But that seems de trop. I will leave that to some modern Verestchagin and his canvases.
There is a "still-life" of death that comes to my mind.