Poles in Kaisers Army On the Front of the First World War. Ryszard Kaczmarek

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СКАЧАТЬ usual, we headed for the march exercise at 7.15 am. Feldmarschmäßig [in full marching order] with military bags and boots, with drill clothes and cleaning brushes. Everyone received ten blind cartridges. We marched with the 1st Company, there were ←37 | 38→two trumpeters, three drums, and three flutes at the front. We walked through various villages. After almost four hours of marching, we came to the manor Buhl. Here we did Gefecht in offenenen Gelände [battle engagement in open terrain]. The 1st Company marked the enemy. We reached the distance of one hundred meters and started shooting. It was difficult to see the enemy through the fog. After shooting, we carried out an assault on enemy positions. Then we stopped in the forest for half an hour. Then we marched once again. At three o’clock, we headed via Danitsch to Steinau. We were very tired after the long march, so there was lunch.⁸⁶

The first month of training also conveyed shooting exercises were. The issuing of weapons was always a major event. Already since the beginning of the twentieth century, Gewehr 98 was the basic weapon of a German infantry regiment. The Upper Silesian regiments received it in 1902–1903.⁸⁷ It took several days to get to know this rather complicated gun. The conscripts learned by heart the names of all its elements, practiced folding and unfolding it, cleaning, and troubleshooting.

Wallis got his own rifle already after five days at the unit. Under the supervision of an officer, the head of the company, and all non-commissioned officers, the whole company learned to hold, load, and unload their Gewehr 98.⁸⁸ Afterward, they learned how to shoot and, interestingly, still in 1915 in a file, often in standing position, despite the experiences of trench warfare in the West.⁸⁹ They did these exercises even when the troop was on the frontline:

I have just returned with a few of my shooting companions from Schiesstadt [the shooting range], which was temporarily set up here. A thick wall, a heap of ground in front of it to catch bullets at a distance of thirty meters, and a machine gun with auxiliary gun carriage that made the shooting hard because you have to use your bare hands to hold all the pressure and control it, but it is easier to carry than the heavy machine guns. And we had to shoot at a twelve-centimeter-high target with figures four centimeters high and wide. You had to aim precisely to shoot something. We shoot away 1000 bullets…. After that, we clean the rifles, which means completely disassembling them. Then, we are free.⁹⁰

      The conscripts also spent much time on bayonet fighting exercises. This skill was very important in the two previous centuries, but decreasingly useful on the frontlines of the First World War. However, the training system still considered ←38 | 39→it decisive in infantry’s frontal attack. The trainers wanted to accustom soldiers to attack at full strength, without any rules. As a result, there quite often occurred injuries, even serious ones:

Once the downpour stopped, there continued bayonet combat training with masks and without masks; everyone received a wire mask to protect their face from thrusts. In addition, everyone received a thick armor filled with hemp to protect the breasts and abdomen from stabbing. A thick glove for the left hand. Then, the stabbing begins. One thrusts while the other avoids it, then the other way around, and so on. It is up to dexterity to push a thrust away and quickly thrust the opponent before he lifts the rifle in defense. There are no rules during the fight, but everyone aims at making the opponent incapable of fighting. If one has no more strength to thrust or defend, he catches the rifle in both hands, the barrel in the left and the breech in the right and strongly throws it in the opponent’s face, so that the opponent falls or quickly jumps towards the opponent, throws the rifle aside, and they start to fist fight and wrestle.⁹¹

After a short time, the military training also included tactical exercises. Until 1914, despite some need to hide the shooter, trenching was still usually absent from training. The emphasis was on attack as the only type of maneuver. Both officers and soldiers were reluctant even to think about any tiresome “digging,” while the creation of complex positions on the trench line, during tactical exercises, was completely absent from the tactical training instructions.⁹² However, when Wallis was in Ścinawa, the situation started to change. As he wrote after two months: “At the moment, we are only marching, practicing bayonet combat, digging trenches, and throwing hand grenades.”⁹³

      Over time, all the acquired skills were combined – including long marches, shooting at the target, and combat training – into a full-day training with all the elements. It was very tiresome, which made the soldiers complain:

Yesterday, we had marching exercises. We left Steinau at 7.15 in the morning…. Then, we did the Gefecht im Felde [field fight] exercise. We shot with the blank bullets. Then, we attacked. After the exercises, we retreated. At three in the afternoon, we were back in Steinau. One could only imagine, how tired we were after seven hours of marching. We ate dinner, there was sea fish and mashed potatos. And it tasted very good after the march. For supper, coffee and sausage. At nine, we go to bed.⁹⁴

      They also often imitated the real battlefield by shooting right over soldiers’ heads to make the conditions resemble real war:

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Yesterday afternoon, we marched. We left at two in the afternoon. Then, we rested from four to quarter to five. The sun shined nicely. Lieutenant Walter came after us. We kept on marching. Here in the forest, we had exercises in setting up outposts. We split into two units. One unit quartered in the forest at a distance of 600 meters from us. We performed Feldwach [field guard], unteroficierposten [non-commissioned officer post] and, hidden in the forest, we headed forward. It was getting darker, we could not see the enemy when suddenly dark enemy figures started to crawl out of ditches from all sides. We violently fired blank cartridges and after a while the enemy retreated. We called back the patrols that were sent out, and we marched with singing to Steinau. We reached home at eight in the evening. We had seasoned herring and coffee for supper.⁹⁵

Such exercises often happened at the nearby training ground in Nowa Kuźnia near Żagań. Even before 1914, it was one of the traditional training grounds for the Upper Silesian regiments, next to the nearby Łambinowice.⁹⁶

      Nevertheless, the training was conducted both at the unit and on the military grounds in conditions that were not bad enough to complain. Interestingly, the conscripts themselves and Kazimierz Wallis himself admitted in the wartime that such tiresome exercises are necessary to have a chance of survival on the frontline:

I’ve been doing well so far, of course that the service is unpleasant, but still bearable. We thought that now, after Neuhammer [Nowa Kuźnia], we would rest more, but it is not the case. Now, we will have General’s inspection in three weeks. So they goad us to work more than before. Sometimes, I get tired of everything, when I feel like it is too much, but the thought that it will all pass and will not always be like that returns balance to my mind.⁹⁷

      Since Wallis was an eternal optimist, as he wrote many times in his letters from war, he even found the positive sides of his stay in the Prussian regiment and accepted the Prussian drill:

Military duty is difficult but only occasionally, for example СКАЧАТЬ