In the Russian Ranks: A Soldier's Account of the Fighting in PolandMorse, John
History
In the Russian Ranks: A Soldier's Account of the Fighting in Poland
Morse, John
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Poland; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British
The prisoners taken are not worth mentioning: the total of German
casualties was about 8,000 on a front that did not exceed two versts
(2,333 yards English measurement). They lay thickest in and about the
trenches. In the bottom of the advanced trenches there was a foot depth
of blood which had drained from the corpses. The holes dug at measured
intervals for the convenience of the troops (latrines) were full of it;
and the men occupying the position were compelled to stand in it
half-leg deep for several days until an opportunity came to clean the
trenches, when the congealed horror was removed in the camp tumbrels,
and buried by the ton in holes dug for the purpose. In one part of the
trench I helped to remove a heap of sixty-nine corpses, lying eleven
deep in the middle. No one of them had a breath of life left, though
some were not mortally wounded. They had been smothered under the weight
of their dead comrades, or trampled to death. Outside the trenches there
lay heaps of dead bodies, six or seven deep, and innumerable scattered
dead and wounded.
All the fighting that day was over before 2 p.m., and our Red Cross men,
and hundreds of volunteers, went out to succour the wounded. They were
immediately fired on by the German artillery and about twenty of them
killed or injured. A flag of truce was then sent out to inform the enemy
our sole object was to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded; and that
the German injured were receiving the same attention as our own men. The
flag was received at a farm used as an outpost by the Germans; and the
commander, a big, swarthy-faced man, declared he did not care a curse
what our intentions were, he would fire on anybody he saw walking about
the field of battle. I inquired the name of this officer and was told
it, and that he was a chief Staff Officer to Field-Marshal von
Hindenburg, who, it was declared, had personally directed the day's
fighting.
I believe a protest was lodged with this military churl, but, of course,
nothing could be done under his threat. After nightfall volunteers again
went out, and nearly a thousand wounded were brought in to the surgeons,
quite two-thirds of them being Germans. The total Russian losses were, I
should think, about 6,000 men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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