F. A. Voigt

“ Had I been living in Germany during the war I would have felt a powerful tendency to defend the cause of the Allies, to excuse their misdeeds, to overrate their ability, while being highly critical and censorious of every German shortcoming.
A nation at war is a mob whose very blatancy, injustice and cruelty drive one to hatred and opposition. The enemy mob seems less detestable because it is out of sight and one thinks almost involuntarily: "It cannot be as bad as our own." ”

“ Both His legs had been blown off at the knees and His nose and mouth had been carried away by some flying shell-fragment or shrapnel-ball. All the graves had been thrown into confusion by the violence of innumerable explosions. Bits of bone—femurs, ribs, lower jaws—lay scattered about. The hip of a soldier who had been buried in his clothes projected from the soil with the brown mass of maggot chrysalids still clinging to it. Two bent knees of a greenish-grey colour, that had only begun to decay, emerged from a patch of trodden mud. ”

“ Rusty tins and twisted, rusty sheets of shrapnel-riddled corrugated iron littered the sodden mud. Water, rust-stained or black and fetid, stagnated in pools and shell-holes. The sides of the trench were moist with iridescent slime. Dead soldiers lay everywhere with grey faces, grey hands and mouldering uniforms. Their pockets were turned inside out and mud-stained letters and postcards, and sometimes a mildewed pocket-book or a broken mirror, were dispersed round every rotting corpse. In front of my tent the white ribs of a horse projected from a heap of loose earth. ”

“ Not one of us left the tent. There was a second blast of the whistle, louder and more prolonged than the first, followed by an angrier "On Parade!"
We stepped out into the cold air one by one and splashed and plodded through the slush in surly reluctant fashion. The day had just begun to dawn, and in the grey twilight I could perceive innumerable dingy figures moving slowly towards the parade ground amid the falling snow.
A long double line of men had already formed up. The Sergeant-Major blew his whistle a third time and shouted "On Parade—get a bloody move on!" ”

“ Then there came the long-drawn familiar whine, and the black smoke arose behind some trees a hundred yards away and the thunder-clap followed. A jagged piece of steel came whizzing by and lodged in a stack of timber behind us.
We pushed the wheel up the ramp and returned to fetch heavy coils of wire, bundles of picks and shovels, sacks and barrels of nails. Our backs and shoulders ached, our hands and finger-tips were sore.
Another shell came whining over. It burst by a little cottage. Its thunder made our ears sing. The fragments of flying metal made us duck or scatter behind the stacks. ”

“ Near by a boot with a human foot inside emerged from the black scummy water at the bottom of a shell-hole. An evil stench hovered in the air.
We buried all the dead that lay within the camp-lines. Then darkness descended and we crept into our tents.
We were lying on wet, oozy clay, thinly covered with wisps of soaked grass and decaying straw—there had been a cornfield here a year ago.
There were thirteen of us in one tent. We were wedged in tightly, shoulder to shoulder, our feet all in one bunch. ”

“ I had hardly spoken when there was a faint muffled boom in the distance and a long, deepening howl, and then a loud explosion that shook the building.
A few minutes after a second shell passed overhead and exploded somewhere in the town.
Then, without the usual warning, there was a roar that seemed to split our heads and an impact that sent us reeling backwards against the wall. The room was filled with dense, pungent smoke and dust that choked and blinded us. Above the violent droning in our ears we could hear the clatter of falling bits of plaster and masonry. ”

“ Then I heard someone singing ironically: "When you come to the end of a perfect day." I began to feel warm and was filled with a sense of intense comfort. I could hear the water dripping on to my coat, but I had become indifferent to it. My limbs were so tired that to rest them was an exquisite luxury. And then sleep came with a sudden, overwhelming rush.
We felt refreshed and yet indolent when we heard the steps of the Police Corporal splashing through the mud at half-past five the next morning. He banged the tent and shouted: "Reveillé—breakfast at six, parade at six-thirty." ”

“ If a horde of British and a horde of German soldiers engage in mutual butchery, and if the maimed, broken remnants of the British horde have just enough order left to drive back the remnants of the German horde, leaving innumerable dead and wounded and for ever darkening the lives of countless friends and wives—in other words, if the British army wins what our infamous Press would call a "glorious victory"—then all that is evil in the life of the nation is encouraged and justified. ”

“ Suddenly there was an outburst of anti-aircraft firing and a tumultuous whistling of shells overhead. It lasted for several seconds and then with a deafening, reverberating thunder-clap that shook the entire theatre, the first bomb fell. Before our ears had ceased drumming another bomb exploded and then another. The orderly, who had held his hands in front of his face, now gave way to fear. He darted madly to and fro and then scuttled beneath a table. The Sister, who had remained quite calm, said in an amused voice: "Pull yourself together, it's all over now." ”

“ We had been on parade for nearly half an hour. The torture of freezing toes was so acute that even men in the front ranks were trying to get warm by treading the mud or sharply raising and lowering their heels. The Sergeant-Major suddenly observed them, blew his whistle and shouted angrily: "Stand still there —— —— d'you hear? Stand still there. Can't yer understand English, damn yer?" We were convinced that we would hear the blast of his whistle and his angry shout in our nightmares to the end of our days. ”

“ The railway lines curved away until, in the far distance, they ran into a ghostly procession of tall, slim poplars that filed across the dim horizon and marked the passage of a main road. On one side of the lines long rows of dark squares in the snow showed where the sleepers had lain before we moved them. A brown stretch of churned and trodden mud and water connected them with the new stacks that extended in four rows along the other side of the lines. We had shifted five thousand eight hundred sleepers in all. ”

“ Bad weather and long working hours would provoke outbursts of grumbling and fretful resentment. A sunny morning and the prospect of a holiday would make us exuberantly cheerful and some of us would even assert that the army was not so bad after all. A slight deficiency in the rations would arouse fierce indignation and mutinous utterances. An extra pot of jam in the tent ration-bag would fill us with the spirit of loyalty and patriotism. If an officer used harsh, brutal words we would loathe him and meditate vengeance. ”

“ There was an ear-splitting roar and in a moment candles were swept away, benches and tables overturned, and the whole crowd of men was down on the floor, trembling and panic-stricken. Another detonation, and then another, shaking the ground and reverberating, and sending up showers of stones and loose earth that came rattling down on to the canteen-roof, while the huddled, sprawling mass of human bodies shook and squirmed with terror. The droning of propellers could be plainly heard, then it grew weaker and weaker, until it passed away. One by one the men got up. Someone lit a candle. ”

“ The air was heavy with the rank smell of stale tobacco. Several men lit cigarettes and the ends glowed in the darkness, each one illuminating a face as the smoke was drawn in. Someone lit a candle and the bright flame dazzled us at first. Another man got up and threw immense black shadows. The recesses of the tent were full of murky gloom.
"Have a look what the weather's like!"
I raised the flap and peered into the outer darkness. A cold gust of wind blew in carrying several snowflakes with it. ”

“ I doubted whether the Germans would even attempt to break through—I thought they would merely hold the Western Front and throw the Allies out of Macedonia, Palestine, and Mesopotamia.
The winter was over and the fine weather had set in. For several months we had been working in a wood-yard and saw-mills. Our lives had become unspeakably monotonous, but the coming of warm days banished much of our dreariness. The hazy blue sky was an object of real delight. I often contrived to slip away from my work and lean idly against a wall in the mild sunshine. ”

“ The night was warm and sultry. A storm threatened and it was necessary to close the tent flap. I blew out my candle and wrapped myself in my blankets. I was unable to stretch my legs because others were in the way. I was hemmed and pressed in on all sides. I felt an impulse to kick out savagely, but was able to control myself.
The stifling heat became unbearable, and at the same time the cold, clammy moisture from the soft sodden mud underneath began to penetrate ground-sheet and blankets. ”

“ The jubilation and the self-glorification of the crowd filled me with loathing, and I could only think of the intensified slaughter and misery that are the price of every victory. They who pay the price, they alone have the right to rejoice, but they do not rejoice. The German mob revealed its depravity when it hung out flags in the streets to celebrate the first German victories. ”

“ Some had their arms in slings. Others had hands so thickly swathed that they looked like the huge paws of polar-bears. Many were caked with mud and wore tattered uniforms. Some limped or hobbled along. Others could walk unaided. Some leaned heavily on our shoulders and some we had to carry on our backs.
As each one entered the waiting-room—a little wooden shed opposite the swing-doors of the operating theatre—we took off his boots and tunic and made him sit down in front of the glowing stove. From time to time an orderly would shout across from the theatre:
"Next man!" ”

“ It was dark when we stopped work. We reached camp after an hour's wearisome marching. We waited in a long queue outside the cook-house. The cooks served out the greasy stew as quickly as they could, but we were so tired and ill-tempered that we shouted abuse at them without reason and without being provoked, and banged our plates and tins. The war, the advance, the slaughter were forgotten. We were conscious of nothing but weariness, stiffness, and petty irritation. ”

“ The wounded came and went in an unbroken stream. The tables were always occupied. I went from one to another, unwound bandages, held up limbs for amputation, fetched splints, padding, gauze, or new bandages. I was too busy to think or to feel any horror. I was vaguely conscious of nausea and of a hot, stifling atmosphere heavy with the fumes of chloroform and ether.
Some of the wounded had arms that hung by shreds of muscle and sinew. Others had feet that were nothing but masses of clotted blood, lumps of torn flesh, and bits of bone tied up in blood-sodden linen parcels. ”

“ The firing ceased, but the droning noises continued louder than ever. The German aeroplanes seemed to be above us like a swarm of angry wasps, and above us they seemed to remain, hovering and circling. We awaited the downward rush and the deafening thunder-clap that would destroy us all. One man was groaning loudly. Another shivered. I could hear the chattering of many teeth. My neighbour trembled violently and cowered beneath his blankets. But his fear grew so strong that he could not bear it any longer. ”

“ We came to a litter of wreckage that had once been a village and then we left the main road and entered a little wood, or rather an assembly of scarred tree-trunks leaning at all angles. It was crossed by a zig-zag trench and all the refuse of battle lay scattered about.
An Australian soldier lay on a low mound. His head had dropped off and rolled backwards down the slope. The lower jaw had parted from the skull. His hands had been devoured by rats and two little heaps of clean bones were all that remained of them. The body was fully clothed and the legs encased in boots and puttees. ”

“ The sweet, sickly smell of bodies that had not been decaying long, and the rank, pungent smell of those that were approaching total dissolution emanated from under heaps of wreckage and from hidden cellars.
The devastation increased with every mile and the shell-holes came closer and closer together. Dead horses, shattered guns, wagons, and limbers lay overturned in the ditches. At one spot on the roadside the legs and buttocks of a man, all brown and shrivelled, slanted upwards from a deep, wide rut, many heavy wheels having passed across the small of his back. ”

“ There's been many a fellow who's quite decent at heart who's murdered a helpless prisoner thinking to avenge some abominable outrage that was never committed, but only dished up by some skunk of a pen-pusher who's never seen any fighting in his life. I don't know much about Fritz, he may be worse than us or he may be better, but I've seen our fellows do some bloody awful things. Anyhow, I know the German soldier's doing his bit just as we are. He thinks he's in the right and we think we're in the right, and he's just as much entitled to his opinion as we are to ours. ”

“ At the same time I felt ashamed of not joining in the general jubilation, and bitterly disappointed that my own thoughts—always my worst enemies—should obsess me at this supreme hour. But I knew that the war had lasted too long and that the world's misery had been too great ever to be shaken off. I also knew that all the dead had died in vain. In order to escape from my intolerable meditations I sat up and began to talk to my neighbour:
"I suppose it'll be read out officially to-morrow morning?" ”

“ The Press, the cinema, the atrocity placards, and propagandist leaflets, they all practised the same deliberate and colossal deceit and kindled hatred against the enemy. And so successful was this diabolical conspiracy that hatred became second nature to vast masses of people. To think evil of the enemy was an article of national faith, and to question this faith, or still more to repudiate it, that was heresy of the most heinous kind. ”

“ It is for every nation to discover its own faults. There are many Germans of courage and honesty who will condemn their country for the crimes she has committed. But condemnation from outside is useless and is always discredited. In all probability the Allies and the Central Powers are both equally bad, and to denounce the enemy only is mere yelping with the rest of the savage, vindictive pack. ”