Behind the Scenes in Warring GermanyFox, Edward Lyell
History
Behind the Scenes in Warring Germany
Fox, Edward Lyell
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
We then sat in the lobby for two hours, buying beer for the
convalescents and listening to their stories. One man told us how, with
two hundred soldiers, he had hid in a Russian barn, and that a shrapnel
shell flying through the window had exploded, killing and wounding
nearly every one in his company. Another told how he had been on outpost
duty with seven other men, and that the Russians had begun machine gun
fire at night. All his comrades were either killed or wounded, and he
said that although he was only wounded in the arm, he did not dare to
get up because the Russians maintained a steady fire for four hours,
and that all he could do was to hug the ground with the bullets whizzing
over him, knowing that he was growing weaker and weaker every moment.
Another had a most interesting experience. While in a shallow trench, he
had been hit in the arm and in the leg. The hospital corps got him. The
stretcher bearers were taking him back, when suddenly it got too hot for
them, and they had to drop him and run for cover. The firing ceased,
and, seeing he was alone, the soldier crawled over to a dead German and
picked up his rifle. He was half sitting with this in his lap, when he
saw some Russians coming. He raised the gun and they ran, and then he
discovered they were hospital men. He was cursing his luck, when one of
his comrades, a little fellow, who had come back to find him, discovered
him. They traveled back to the German lines at intervals of ten minutes,
the little fellow having to put him down to rest every so often. Then
the doctor began to tell me something about the wounds he had seen as
the result of this war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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