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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ commander]. The French are well hidden…. The fire increases with every moment…. We push on in jumps. Fire increases from the left. We have to pass this oat field, the French must be there. We reached the oat field, where the French stand up here and there, fire a shot, and hide again. We have to capture this field by force. Hard as rock, the oat hinders our march. The French sit in the middle of the field. We push on slowly and carefully. Our line thickens, supported by other units, but we do not lose contact. We ready cold steel and rifles. Suddenly, two French heads come up two steps in front of us and fire simultaneously. We are fast enough to evade them and avoid death. At the same moment, our companions came out from the left and managed to knock them down…. There are so many dead bodies as sheafs on the field. We hear a trumpet. It is a signal to attack. From the left, we begin to hear a constant “Hooray!” There are fewer shots ahead. “Assault!” We run. Several fall. Each step a fallen man. We finally reach the line, but the French are not there. Where are they? We scramble from the line toward the hilltop, but we cannot look to the other side. Every man who does that – immediately drops dead. Bodies of soldiers, rifles, satchels, and helmets, they all roll down the mountain. The entire viaduct is covered with injured ←69 | 70→who cry for help. The dying wheeze, shiver, and roll their eyes. Those no longer in need are stretched in unimaginable poses.¹⁸⁹

Rossignol

      On August 22, 1914, the Upper Silesian regiments underwent their baptism of fire in the battle against the French near the Belgian village of Rossignol, in Wallonia, precisely in the triangle between Luxembourg and the French border, near Tintigny, in the province of Luxembourg. This small village at the foot of a low hill was hid in the forests. Its name became the symbolic first place of mass Polish deaths in the Kaiser’s Army from the Upper Silesian regiments who fell during the First World War. It was in Rossignol where the soldiers learned what consequences await the civilians, when the former witnessed the execution of inhabitants on the order of a German commander. The fights for this village exemplify the tactics of the German troops at the very beginning of the war.

      The entire battle area lied within the zone subject to the VI Army Corps, whose commander had two infantry divisions at his disposal (the 11th and the 12th), while the French had three divisions supported with artillery corps and two colonial divisions. The Upper Silesian regiments were to conduct the assault.

      When the Upper Silesian division approached the village from the east, German scouting reported that the French troops are rather small. But the reconnaissance was imprecise; what probably hindered it were dense forests and well-hidden subunits of the Colonial Corps. While approaching Rossignol, the Germans unexpectedly encountered strong fire of the French avant-garde from the forest near the village. It was then when the subunits of the Regiment No. 157 first encountered the advance guard:

      The advance of the Second Battalion of the Regiment No. 157 was very slow due to forest density and strong enemy resistance; the commanders of companies and platoons had to get used to a constantly changing situation; squads and individual shooters always shifted fire to greater distances, but it soon turned out that the enemy hides on the trees. Our musketeers were especially delighted in shooting down those “tree shooters” like sparrows.¹⁹⁰

      With toil and considerable losses, they tried to push through the forest step-by-step, to its southern edge that went along the road from the village of Les Fossés. Initially, their own artillery did not conduct fire because it was unable to fire at ←70 | 71→the forest with German infantry mixed with small French subunits or even individual soldiers. Meanwhile, support French troops reached Rossignol and forced the German Second Division to intensify its offensive. It was the 63rd Infantry Regiment that was to perform the assault from the west. Similarly, this direction required the soldiers to push through a dense forest, not to mention they had to follow a scheduled azimuth and not along the road. Dense underwood made it difficult for the soldiers to move capably. On the other hand, the French knew these positions well, so they assaulted from hiding and immediately retreated whenever the companies of the 63rd Regiment were about to concentrate. Even the cavalry subunits that moved along forest clearings participated in those counterattacks. The “tree shooters” also participated in this action. When the frontline regimental units finally reached the edge of the forest, before a small hamlet of Termes, they found themselves in front of the fields between the two villages. The terrain was flat and bare for about two kilometers. It was under fire from Termes, conducted by perfectly hidden shooters able to precisely observe the German offensive. The commander of the Infantry Regiment No. 157 abandoned his plan of the frontal attack on Rossignol due to the lack of support from the West and, instead, decided to head toward the French units in Termes that attacked him from the flank. From now on, they could rely on artillery support on open ground so, with the help of the battery from the 57th Field Artillery Regiment and a machine guns company, they managed to drive the French out of Termes.¹⁹¹

      Thanks to that, they could use the artillery to cannonade Rossignol, which allowed the infantry to exit the forest under covering fire and gradually approach the town. The war diary of the 57th Field Artillery Regiment describes this crucial part of the battle as follows:

      To our joy, at four in the afternoon we finally received the order to prepare the battery for the attack. The Second Unit was the first to exit the forest [from the direction of Termes]. It moved west from the road. The Fifth Battery under the command of captain Ulrici moved from our side, the first to exit the forest [north of Rossignol]. Its commander quickly found good ground and fired from a howitzer at the church tower. His shot was spot-on as we could immediately see fire and the machine gun’s cannonade ceased. Happy with the success, the entire battery then bombarded the village with enemy troops, which started fires everywhere. The artillery men could see it clearly because there appeared white smoke from every window and rooftops under fire. However, the ←71 | 72→French also shot precisely, using both their artillery located on the hill behind the village and their shooters. Those were the well-trained and experienced colonial units.¹⁹²

      Despite artillery support, the infantry assault on the village unexpectedly claimed many lives. It was the Infantry Regiment No. 157 that incurred particularly large losses:

      The enemy still stood fast; our units were completely pulverized; many commanders died or were injured. The non-commissioned officers took over their tasks; Seidel, Lauterbach, Michalski, Pownug, the battalion drummer Heinze, and others who managed to regather the units and platoons and continue attacking. As the only one with relatively small losses, the Twelve Company finally showed up on the road that led to the village; however, its soldiers were so scattered [after the fights in the forest] that it forced captain Troschke to form them into a company from scratch. He did it so loud that the battalion commander beside him exclaimed: “Troschke, if you keep on yelling, the French will begin to flee.” There was a large oat field to the south of the forest, but the oat was reaped, and oat ricks lay all around the field. The French shooters of the colonial units craftily hid behind or even inside them. In order to check the ricks, the soldiers had to pierce each with a bayonet, which gave much joy to our soldiers, who mostly came from villages. Musketeer Gukatsch, who skillfully and jocularly performed his task, called his neighbor: “Darn it [pieronie], Józek, do the French pay you for helping them with the harvest?”¹⁹³

      German propaganda tried to paint the soldiers of colonial units in a bad light by stereotypizing certain groups. Due to the fact that all of the Allies – the French, the English, and the Belgians – had colonial troops, the propaganda started to depict the war as a racial conflict, contrasting German culture (Kulturvolk) with uncivilized people of color. Playing cards for the soldiers turned out to be a good medium to spread this idea since СКАЧАТЬ