Four Weeks in the Trenches: The War Story of a ViolinistKreisler, Fritz
History
Four Weeks in the Trenches: The War Story of a Violinist
Kreisler, Fritz
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, Austrian
Supported by heavy artillery fire their lines rolled endlessly on and
hurled themselves against the barbed-wire fences. For a short time
it almost seemed, as if they would break through by sheer weight of
numbers. At that critical moment, however, our reserves
succeeded in executing a flanking movement. Surprised and
caught in a deadly cross-fire, the Russian line wavered and finally
they fled in disorder.
All these combined artillery, infantry, cavalry, and aeroplane attacks
had utterly failed in their object of dislodging our center or shaking
its position, each one being frustrated by the resourceful, cool
alertness of our commanding general and the splendid heroism and
stoicism of our troops. But the strain of the continuous fighting for
nearly the whole day without respite of any kind, or chance for food
or rest, in the end told on the power of endurance of our men, and
when the last attack had been successfully repulsed they lay mostly
prostrated on the ground, panting and exhausted. Our losses had
been very considerable too, stretcher-bearers being busy
administering first aid and carrying the wounded back to the nearest
field hospital, while many a brave man lay stark and still.
By eight o'clock it had grown perceptibly cooler. We now had time
to collect our impressions and look about us. The Russians had left
many dead on the field, and at the barbed-wire entanglements
which our sappers had constructed as an obstacle to their advance,
their bodies lay heaped upon each other, looking not unlike the
more innocent bundles of hay lying in the field. We could see the
small Red Cross parties in the field climbing over the horribly
grotesque tumuli of bodies, trying to disentangle the wounded from
the dead and administer first aid to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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