[5] All numerals relate to stories herein told—not to chapters in the original sources.
"FORCED TO FIGHT"—THE TALE OF A SCHLESWIG DANE
"What My Eyes Witnessed in East Prussia"
Told by Erich Erichsen, A Soldier in the German Army Translated from the Danish by Ingebord Lund
This is a tragic story of a Dane who was forced to fight in the German Army. He was mobilized at the beginning of the War and forced to serve on the Western and Eastern fronts. He wrote the first revelations of life in the German trenches. This is the first authentic account of how Germany makes war from the lips of a German soldier. After being wounded, disfigured for life, and a cripple, he went home where his own father and mother hardly knew him. Twenty editions of his book have appeared in Danish but for obvious reasons, its sale in Germany has been prohibited. The experiences herein related are by permission of his American publishers, Robert M. McBride and Company.
[6] I—STORY OF SUFFERING ON THE RUSSIAN FRONT
On the East front I took part in the great offensive against the Russians. My old comrade was there also; he was still alive. But there were many new faces in my division. The bloody days before Liège, the horrors of the fight through Belgium, and the long strife in the trenches of Flanders, had cost many men their lives or their reason....
I remember how Belgium was laid waste. But to tell the truth, things were much the same in East Prussia. Before the invasion, it was in many parts a melancholy country. But it looked more pitiable than ever, as we marched through it, with the Russians retreating before us. Trampled fields, ploughed up by shells, burnt farms, property wantonly injured or destroyed, towns in ruins and human beings in despair, robbed of all they had, their happiness, their joy, their future. It was an indescribable scene of misery and woe. But at the same time it was exceedingly touching to see how the greater number of the people clung to the devastated home, whose master was probably in the fighting line, if he were not already killed. The wretched hovels and the ruined farms still sheltered human creatures, who did their work as best they could, and hid themselves from the night and the rain in some cramped space, between half-charred boards and ends of beams, or whatever they could find to hand.