Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XI. To Belgium
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igS WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
contain a single word of fussy and squeamish complaints about
food ? No, one would read nothing but humorous and almost
affectionate jests about the Erhsenkanone (" pea-shooter"), the
field kitchen, which is always there at the right moment when
the soldier’s belly is empty. Doubtless there are many who
have not touched food for forty-eight hours, if they have
been lying under heavy fire in a trench. But to complain
would never occur to them. They would only say what a
wonderful sensation it was to get the hot pea-soup with its
lumps of fat into their stomachs. Besides, they would probably
have forgotten all about their misfortune by the time they
wrote.
This is the way they talk in their letters. And probably
they write about the shell fire and the bayonet charges as if
they were part of the routine of daily life. Every letter in the
big book would contain affectionate but never sentimental
greetings to father and mother, to wife and children, to sweet-
hearts and sisters. So we were in excellent company, Miiller,
Fuchs and I, as we sat there and shook and jolted among the
mail-bags on the twenty-eight mile journey to Sedan. That
mail wagon carried a few days’ war history, disintegrated into
atoms. I could not help time and again casting a glance at the
bags and wondering what they had to say. I thought of the
many farewell greetings they contained from soldiers for
whom the fatal bullet had been cast and who would write no
more field postcards, of the greetings from the wounded who
would soon lose consciousness for ever, to be carried out to the
great common grave in the local churchyard.
My companions had much to tell about these things. But
everything moved so swiftly and the wagon rattled so noisily
that I forgot the greater part as fresh impressions came
crowding into my mind. One of my new friends, after some
fight was over, had gone up to a French soldier who lay on the
ground with a nasty wound in the abdomen. He had stopped
to see if he could help the wounded man before the ambulance
arrived. The Frenchman wept bitterly and pulled out of his
breast pocket the portrait of his sweetheart, which he showed
the German officer. After he had looked at it eagerly for
a couple of minutes, it slipped out of his benumbed hand and
he sank back and died. Frenchmen also know how to die,
and there are no words to express their bravery and heroic
contempt of death.
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