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

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СКАЧАТЬ in jellabiya, or an Indian in a turban.¹⁹⁴ Over time, this primitive propaganda proved successful. The fear of a sudden attack of the Senegalese or the Morrocan, creeping like a shadow, also greatly afflicted the Poles in Kaiser’s army, particularly during trench warfare, where there frequently were patrols that aimed at capturing enemies. A Kashubian in the German Army complains about that in his memoirs:

      Neither the English nor the French scare me, only the blacks; I would rather not meet them. Why? – I asked. Because they are masters in crawling on the ground. You stand ←72 | 73→listening at the front of the trenches in the middle of the night and the wind rustles, so you cannot hear this black devil sweep along the ground until you have a knife in your stomach. It is too late then. Eh – said Herman – you would have to be asleep, otherwise you would hear someone approach. – Believe me, you cannot hear this Morrocan devil approach, it is so shrewd. There were already cases of people found dead on their duty with bayonets in their chests on the hill 304 [near Verdun].¹⁹⁵

      The above banter about the Polish Upper Silesians fighting against the French hidden in haystacks evidences that the language barrier was still an issue in the German regiments. An officer of the 21st Field Artillery Regiment that took part in the battle frankly admits that the liaison officers who arrived with dispatch spoke German badly and the stress made him corrupt the language even more. In bad German and with some Silesian vernacular, the dialogue developed in the following manner:

      “Sir Major allows himself to say, should shoot 500 meters to the right” (Der Herr Major läßt sagen, 500 m nach recht soll geschossen werden). He sat on a bike and rode down the road. After about half an hour, he returned: “Sir Major allows himself to say, the fire is good but 300 metres further” (Der Herr Major läßt sagen, das feuer ist gut, aber 300 m weiter). He sat on the bike and rode down the road towards Les Bulles. Fearless and solitary.¹⁹⁶

      Equally humorous is a press coverage during the first months of the war that also emphasizes the clear distinction between the German regiments and those dominated by Poles. It was published as a war correspondent’s material in many Upper Silesian journals. It is hard to determine whether it was authentic, or was it written only for propaganda purposes. Entitled “Colonial Troops,” the text precisely illustrates the ethnic structure of the Upper Silesian regiments, known to the German commanders. According to this correspondent, the French doctor in captivity was to tell the following story in the field hospital:

      The Bavarians are unbeatable when it comes to melee combat. But – the French doctor added – there are other troops in the German Army that cause panic among the French ranks. Those people are unstoppable and indestructible. They speak a strange language that is not German, and they must belong to colonial troops. Every time, when it comes to fight with bayonets, they yell: “Hoppla pieronie nabok zpyskiem!” [Oy, rasacal, move your gob aside!]. They annihilate everyone who resist them. No one can stop their offensive and the hits of their rifles.¹⁹⁷

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      This grotesque depiction of the Upper Silesians purportedly aims at balancing the cruelty of the French colonial troops, who also fought against the Upper Silesian regiments in the beginning of the war.

      In reality, after the end of the fights on August 23, the scenery of the battlefield at Rossignol was bleak and did not correspond with the humorous press coverage. The trenches, that separated the fields, were full of fallen soldiers. Mixed German and French corpses lied behind hedges, on the grass, on the meadows, and in the fields.¹⁹⁸ The fights continued long after breaking into the town. After the battle, the morale was far from being euphoric. Despite the exhaustion, many of them could not fall asleep. The awareness that almost every company suffered great losses during the assault was overwhelming. All the time, one could hear the cries of the injured in the village abandoned by the French that gave the made other soldiers restless. “The premonition of imminent death, so imminent that it completely preoccupied their minds”¹⁹⁹ exaggerated the already depressive mood. These scenes also miserably affected the soldiers of regiments who did not participate in the battle but only observed. Although they were part of other regiments, the view of the fallen and injured soldiers deprived the members of the 21st Infantry Regiment of any satisfaction after the successful battle (only one member of this regiment died, while three others were injured): “We were not happy. We were glad because we managed to seize Rossignol, but we also witnessed those horrifying bloody losses.”²⁰⁰

      All the soldiers who participated in the fights for the first time felt the same. The image of corpses disheartened soldiers, particularly at the very beginning of the war, when their senses were not yet blunted, which was to happen after the experience of the never-ending trench warfare. A soldier from the Poznań regiment describes the moment when he saw the battlefield covered with corpses:

      We slowly and carefully press forward. We move again, once in columns, once in an extended line, and bury all the bodies we encounter. Most of the corpses are blackened. We have the impression that they are niggers. Puffed lips, eyes shine with whites, turgid bodies, bulging stomachs. Swarms of flies and worms all around the place. We do not have to look for them because the putrid smell can be sensed from afar. We usually bury them immediately on site. Two trowels deep – covered with ground, anonymous – only a clod of earth is a sign that there lies a soldier. We only take off his identity badge.²⁰¹

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      Also, it was quite a disappointment that the famous, supposedly perfectly prepared German war machine did not prove itself in logistics during the first battle. The care for the injured left much to be desired. There was a shortage of corpsmen and stretcher-bearers. Regimental musicians had to help with removing the injured from the battlefield. Initially, the entire medical staff observed the battle from a distance, in the style of nineteenth-century battles. Overloaded sanitary wagons could not transport the constantly rising number of injured from first-aid stations to the field hospital; they proved especially useless in places without roads. The injured had to be transported through forests on one’s shoulders or on stretchers. Due to the lack of direct contact with the troops, it was hard to properly locate first-aid stations to gather the injured. A desperate medic of the 63rd Regiment tried to reach the first line himself at the edge of the forest before Termes in order to assess the situation. All those faults were later amended, and the troops received an order to regularly inform the dressing stations about their location. Due to the fact that the sanitary wagons were too heavy for rural roads, they were deprived of excessive load, while the number of stretcher-bearers was increased to the decline in regimental orchestra posts.²⁰²

      The view of the injured made a strong impression on the soldiers who approached the first line of the front. The artillerymen were astonished and scared when they saw the first lightly injured infantrymen headed toward the rear on their own: “One of them sustained his arm with a bloodshot band, another one had his head muffled, some soldiers in pairs or trios walked without legs, sustaining each other. They called to us “Forward! Forward!” or “These bloody asses shoot from the trees.””²⁰³

      The medical care at the field hospital was better. Here, the long-time preparation and conclusions derived from previous wars in the second half of the nineteenth century proved especially useful: the requirement to select the injured and deliver medical care in a fixed order according to the level of injury. A doctor of the Regiment No. 157 reported after the battle that his СКАЧАТЬ