We received our clothes with many jokes, which may, or may not, be usual in other armies. “Now then, be careful there with my grave-clothes. What am I to be buried in, if you go spoiling them already?” Witticisms of this sort were frequent. The German soldier is not the least squeamish about speaking of death. His songs are full of it. And the little books of devotion issued by his Government are written with great skill in order to make him feel that death is something pleasant and light, the entrance to a life of toilless ease. I never read these books without feeling an inclination to die then and there.
We marched off to the station in traditional German style, flowers in our rifles, flowers in our helmets, flowers in every nook and cranny of our uniform that would take a flower. The officers used to protest against this, saying that it made us look like prize oxen at the fair. Considering what the fate of prize oxen is, the simile was not altogether inapt. In any case, the fashion suited the peasant taste. Before we left, a short religious service was held on the parade-ground. The chaplain, who had already been awarded the Iron Cross, had gained my respect a few weeks before by a sermon he had preached to order on the special temptations of a soldier’s life. It was the only sermon of the kind that I have heard, which neither offended his hearers’ feelings nor in any other way violated the rules of good taste. But he was yet to show what he could do. At the end of the service he said, with indescribable unction, “Now let us all join in saying the Lord’s Prayer, and after that in singing, ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!’”
There was a great parade of secrecy about our destination. We were not supposed to know where we were going, and from the time we were selected for service we were not allowed to telegraph. As a matter of fact, the officials responsible revealed all that they ought to have kept secret, and we knew exactly for what part of the huge Russian front we were bound and all the details of our journey. And through us the whole of Cassel knew too.
Our life for the next three or four weeks till we reached our regiment was simply a jolly picnic. We were three hundred strong, under the command of two sergeants, genial fellows, who had never been to the front and who were anything but soldiers. Our train journey took us through Central Germany to Breslau, and thence viâ Cracow to a station beyond Rava Ruska, the name of which I have forgotten. In High Germany we were greeted with enthusiasm at every station, in German Poland no one took any notice of us, in Austrian Poland our reception was directly hostile. The Austrians treated us like “matter in the wrong place.” We reached Cracow at ten at night, and were to have had supper there. Nothing had been got ready for us and no one knew anything about us. We stood waiting in the rain for two hours, and then we had to pass in single file before a small window and each receive his basin of soup. At Kattowitz, the last German station, our transport, now swelled to a thousand men, had been fed in less than half an hour. The Austrians were sulky at having to trouble about us and took no pains to conceal their feelings, and the Germans were wild with rage at the way they were treated.
AUSTRIANS
This is, perhaps, the best place to speak of the relations between the Germans and the Austrians. There have been many discussions in the press as to whom the Germans hate most, whether it is the English or the Americans. I have no doubt at all that the German soldier hates the Austrian most. They felt themselves betrayed from the beginning of the war. When the Russians broke through at Rava Ruska, Hindenburg sent down an officer to find out what was wrong. He returned with the report: “Da ist eine bodenlose Schweinerei, wir werden alles selbst machen müssen” (“Things are in no end of a mess; we shall have to do everything ourselves”). Hindenburg used to allow himself witticisms at the expense of his Allies. Once he remarked, “I won’t have anything said against my Austrians. They serve to occupy the enemy till the military come up.” Stories were current of Prussian officers serving on the Austrian staff, who had discovered Austrian generals in the very act of telephoning to the enemy and had shot them dead on the spot. Meanwhile the Germans, by their behaviour, let the Austrians know that they remembered all these things. It was most amusing to watch Austrians attempting to fraternize with Germans. The Austrian, with his gay and careless elegance of manner, would approach the German and try to get into conversation with him. Most probably he would begin by asking where the other came from. The German would draw himself up stiff and straight till he looked as if he had swallowed the poker, and would put on an air as if he concentrated in his own person all the victorious majesty of his army. Then, in the sharp staccato dear to the Prussian drill-sergeant, he would answer, “Ich bin aus Cassel, Regierungsbezirk Cassel” (as who should say, “I am from Nottingham, Nottinghamshire”). The Austrian, recognizing the case as hopeless, would give him up with an amused glance and turn to something else. Meanwhile the German, having just wit enough to see that he was being laughed at but far too stupid to see what there was ridiculous about him, would go away, heaping fresh curses on the head of “Bruder Oesterreich” (Brother Austria).
The Austrian, if possible, hated the German just as bitterly. While we were on the march, we met an Austrian army corps going in the opposite direction. The officers deliberately rode their horses at us in order to edge us into the muddy parts of the road. It is significant that although we were some hours in contact with this army corps, we never exchanged a single greeting or taunt, such as is usual among soldiers meeting on the march. While it is true that there was much that was rotten in the Austrian Army, it must never be forgotten that some regiments fought magnificently, especially the Tyrolese. A common soldier of the Tyrol Rifles was wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians. As he lay in hospital, a general, making his rounds, came to his bed. On hearing who he was, the Russian general took off his helmet and saluted the Austrian private in honour of the splendid courage displayed by his regiment in the field.
The Austrians were in an unfortunate position, because their relations with the Hungarians were just as strained as with the Germans. The Hungarians, on the other hand, were extremely friendly with the Germans. They were good fighters in hand-to-hand fighting, indeed the most formidable troops in the armies of the Central Powers. They had never failed the Germans, who, in consequence, always treated them with especial respect. Prince Eitel Friedrich had at one time been studying Hungarian with a view, it was said, of becoming King of Hungary. The Austrians watched all these things with bitter jealousy and suspicion. They would affect to despise the Hungarian, and would tell you that he was not a European yet at all, and that Asia began at Buda-Pesth. The Hungarians never concealed their contempt of the Austrians. They did not value the union with Austria; all they wanted was an alliance with Germany. Three years ago Hungarian officers were openly talking of the coming revolution that was to drive the Hapsburgs out, make Hungary free, and to draw Hungary and Germany closer together.
On our journey we had plenty of opportunity to study Austrian feeling. The train took us through Galicia, and we passed the famous battlefields (now, alas! forgotten) of 1914-15, Jaroslav, the San, Rava Ruska, and so on. The large towns seemed to be in fairly good preservation, but in the country there was nothing but ruin and desolation. The fields were empty, and what peasants we saw scowled at us with hate. The hostility of the people we were supposed to be fighting for made a deeper impression upon us than the distress caused by the war.
ON THE MARCH