Horrors and Atrocities of the Great War: Including the Tragic Destruction of the LusitaniaMarshall, Logan
History
Horrors and Atrocities of the Great War: Including the Tragic Destruction of the Lusitania
Marshall, Logan
World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities
How foe helps foe when the last grim hour comes is revealed in the
letter which a French cavalry officer sent to his fiancée in Paris:
“There are two other men lying near me, and I do not think there is much
hope for them either. One is an officer of a Scottish regiment and the
other a private in the Uhlans. They were struck down after me, and when
I came to myself, I found them bending over me, rendering first aid.
“The Britisher was pouring water down my throat from his flask, while
the German was endeavoring to stanch my wound with an antiseptic
preparation served out to them by their medical corps. The Highlander
had one of his legs shattered, and the German had several pieces of
shrapnel buried in his side.
“In spite of their own sufferings they were trying to help me, and when
I was fully conscious again the German gave us a morphia injection and
took one himself. His medical corps had also provided him with the
injection and the needle, together with printed instructions for its
use.
“After the injection, feeling wonderfully at ease, we spoke of the lives
we had lived before the war. We all spoke English, and we talked of the
women we had left at home. Both the German and the Britisher had only
been married a year. . . .
“I wonder, and I supposed the others did, why we had fought each other
at all. I looked at the Highlander, who was falling to sleep, exhausted,
and in spite of his drawn face and mud-stained uniform, he looked the
embodiment of freedom. Then I thought of the Tri-color of France, and
all that France had done for liberty. Then I watched the German, who had
ceased to speak. He had taken a prayer book from his knapsack and was
trying to read a service for soldiers wounded in battle.”
“SAME PAIR OF BLUE EYES”
Sergeant Gabriel David, of the French infantry, who saw seven months of
continuous service in the trenches of the Argonne Forest, described the
odd effect of peeping over the top of a trench for weeks into the same
pair of German blue eyes.
“I don’t know who this man was or what he might have been,” he said,
“but wherever I go I can yet see those sad-looking eyes. He and I gazed
at each other for three weeks in one stretch; his watch seemed to always
be the same as mine. We came to respect each other. I am sure that I
would always know those blue eyes, and I would like to meet that man
when the war has ended.”
FIGHTING WITHOUT HATE
There is yet to appear an authentic letter from a private or officer on
either side that contains a tithe of the virulence and bitterness shown
in the statements and writings of many non-combatants.
“One wonders,” runs a letter of a British officer, “when one sees a
German face to face, is this really one of those devils who wrought such
devastation--for devastation they have surely wrought. You can hardly
believe it, for he seems much the same as other soldiers. I can assure
you that out here there is none of that insensate hatred that one hears
about.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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