Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and HeardMcAuley, Mary Ethel
History
Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and Heard
McAuley, Mary Ethel
World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany
One German woman, Anne Marie Reimer, the wife of a doctor in East
Prussia, served seven months as the driver of an automobile truck, and
the result of her experiences is a very interesting book _Seven Months
on the East Front as a Driver_. In this book, she tells how she guided
her automobile right up to the firing line. Once, when the fighting
was very fierce she did not have her clothes off for four weeks. When
the Kaiser came to review her regiment, she passed in review in front
of him with the rest of the men. In February, 1915, she was taken with
fever contracted by the exposure. Her husband brought her to Berlin. In
her book she says that no one knows the unselfishness and the kindness
of soldiers toward each other, and she thinks that war has an ennobling
influence on the men.
The Russian prisoners in the German prison camp at Zossen went in a
body to the German major and asked him to have a Russian prisoner,
Nicholas Nisoff, removed from their barracks. He was possessed with
the devil, they said, and he was trying to cast a spell over them. The
major sent for Nicholas Nisoff, and he came pale and trembling.
"Nicholas Nisoff," said the major, "sit down and tell me what is the
matter. What have you done that you are silent all day and cry out all
night?"
It was below freezing in the major's barnlike office, but Nicholas had
to wipe the perspiration from his brow as he staggered into a seat. He
began in broken sentences.
"It happened in Galicia. In the morning we took two hundred Austrian
and Hungarian prisoners. We shut them up in different places, and in
one hut where thirty of them were, I was detailed on night watch. All
night long I paced up and down before the cottage. It was very quiet,
but at last I heard a noise. The window was slowly opened and some
one jumped to the ground. "Halt!" I cried, "Halt! Or I will fire." The
person did not stop, so I fired into the darkness. I took out my pocket
lamp to see what kind of a Hungarian I had shot, and there on the
ground a slender figure was lying. I looked again. I could not believe
what I saw. It was a woman! Her cap had fallen off and her long yellow
hair was streaming about her. I felt her heart. It had stopped beating.
And I, Nicholas Nisoff, had killed a woman. And since that time I
cannot sleep, and in the night she comes to me with her long hair
streaming around, and pointing her finger at me she says, 'Nicholas
Nisoff! Why did you shoot me?'"
When he had finished, Nicholas again wiped the sweat from his brow and
the major wrote down something on a paper. The next day Nicholas was
taken away and brought to Berlin where he was given employment on a
railroad. He is much happier now, and it is only now and then that the
ghost of the Hungarian woman comes to haunt him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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