On the East front I took part in the great offensive against the Russians. My old comrade was there also; he was still alive. But there were many new faces in my division. The bloody days before Liège, the horrors of the fight through Belgium, and the long strife in the trenches of Flanders, had cost many men their lives or their reason.... I remember how Belgium was laid waste. But to tell the truth, things were much the same in East Prussia. Before the invasion, it was in many parts a melancholy country. But it looked more pitiable than ever, as we marched through it, with the Russians retreating before us. Trampled fields, ploughed up by shells, burnt farms, property wantonly injured or destroyed, towns in ruins and human beings in despair, robbed of all they had, their happiness, their joy, their future. It was an indescribable scene of misery and woe. But at the same time it was exceedingly touching to see how the greater number of the people clung to the devastated home, whose master was probably in the fighting line, if he were not already killed. The wretched hovels and the ruined farms still sheltered human creatures, who did their work as best they could, and hid themselves from the night and the rain in some cramped space, between half-charred boards and ends of beams, or whatever they could find to hand. It was misery. It was poverty. It was wretchedness. But it was home--the one fixed point in their existence. If they once forsook that, they were exposed to the merciless uncertainty of life. So they clung to it obstinately and faithfully in spite of all they had to bear and suffer, both when the Russians advanced, and when they retreated. Among their other miseries they had also learnt to know famine. When the Russians advanced, they did not leave much behind. Many a time these people begged our last slice of bread from us, to stay the worst of their hunger. We gave to them willingly. I felt at times, that their lot was far worse than ours. We indeed might lose our lives in many different ways, and we also knew what it was to be hungry. But we had not to listen to our children crying for food, or see our tiny infants sicken and die because there was no milk to be had and the mother's breasts were empty. I can well understand why wherever we came, the people greeted us as their deliverers. I understand their joy and their often boundless gratitude in word and deed. I understand why the old men and the trembling women so often fell upon our necks with tears of joy.