Sources 20.1: Experiences on the Battlefront

“Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine guns, hand grenades — words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.” Such was the strained effort of German war veteran Erich Maria Remarque in his novel All Quiet on the Western Front to find language to describe what he and millions of others had experienced on the battlefield. The four sources that follow present individual experiences of those battlefields. Source 20.1A derives from a letter that British officer Julian Grenfell wrote to his parents, describing the early stages of trench warfare, in which lines of entrenched men, often not far apart, periodically went “over the top,” only to gain a few yards of bloody ground before being thrown back with enormous causalities on both sides. Source 20.1B shows a particular instance of this process as depicted by the British painter John Nash (1893–1977), an official war artist who took part in such an operation in 1917. Only twelve men out of eighty in his unit survived the attack depicted. Source 20.1C provides a perspective from a German soldier, twenty-three-year-old Hugo Mueller, while Source 20.1D offers commentary from an Indian soldier, Behari Lal.

Questions to consider as you examine the sources:

Source 20.1A

Julian Grenfell

Letter from a British Officer in the Trenches, November 18, 1914

They had us out again for 48 hours [in the] trenches. . . . After the shells, after a day of them, one’s nerves are really absolutely beat down. I can understand now why our infantry have to retreat sometimes; a sight which came as a shock to me at first, after being brought up in the belief that the English infantry cannot retreat.

[We are] in a dripping sodden wood, with the German trench in some places 40 yards ahead. . . . We had been worried by snipers all along and I had always been asking for leave to go out and have a try myself. Well, on Tuesday . . . they gave me leave. . . . Off I crawled through sodden clay and trenches going about a yard a minute. . . . Then I saw the Hun trench. . . . So I crawled on again very slowly to the parapet of the trench. . . . Then the German behind me put his head up again. He was laughing and talking. I saw his teeth glistening against my foresight, and I pulled the trigger very slowly. He just grunted and crumpled up. . . .

[Something similar happened the next day.] I went back at a sort of galloping crawl to our lines and sent a message to the 10th that the Germans were moving up their way in some numbers. Half an hour afterward, they attacked the 10th and our right, in massed formation, advancing slowly to within 10 yards of the trenches. We simply mowed them down. It was rather horrible.

Source: Laurence Housman, ed., War Letters of Fallen Englishmen (London: E. P. Dutton, 1930), 119–20.

Source 20.1B

John Nash

Over the Top, 1918

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Over the TopOver the Top. 1st Artists’ Rifles at Marcoing, 30th December 1917, 1918 (oil on canvas), by John Northcote Nash (1893–1977)/Imperial War Museum, London, UK/© IWM (Art.IWM ART 1656)/Bridgeman Images

Source 20.1C

Hugo Mueller

Letter from a German Soldier on the Western Front, 1915

It has been extremely interesting to study the contents of the letter-cases of French killed and prisoners. The question frequently recurs, just as it does with us: “When will it all end?” To my astonishment I practically never found any expressions of hatred or abuse of Germany or German soldiers. On the other hand, many letters from relations revealed an absolute conviction of the justice of their cause and sometimes also of confidence in victory. In every letter, mother, fiancée, children, friends . . . spoke of a joyful return and speedy meeting — and now they are all lying dead and hardly even buried between the trenches, while over them bullets and shells sing their gruesome dirge. . . .

War hardens one’s heart and blunts one’s feelings, making a man indifferent to everything that formerly affected and moved him; but these qualities of hardness and indifference towards fate and death are necessary in the fierce battle to which trench warfare leads. Anybody who allowed himself to realize the whole tragedy of some of the daily occurrences in our life here would either lose his reason or be forced to bolt across the enemy’s trench with his arms high in the air.

Source: Philipp Witkop, ed., German Students’ War Letters, translated by Anne F. Wedd (London: Methuen, 1929), 278–79.

Source 20.1D

Behari Lal

Letter from a Soldier in the British Indian Army, 1917

There is no likelihood of our getting rest during the winter. I am sure German prisoners could not be worse off in any way than we are. I had to go three nights without sleep, as I was on a motor lorry, and the lorry fellows, being Europeans, did not like to sleep with me, being an Indian. [The] cold was terrible, and it was raining hard; not being able to sleep on the ground in the open, I had to pass the whole night sitting on the outward lorry seats. I am sorry the hatred between Europeans and Indians is increasing instead of decreasing, and I am sure that the fault is not with the Indians. I am sorry to write this, which is not a hundredth part of what is in mind, but this increasing hatred and continued ill-treatment has compelled me to give you a hint.

Source: David Omussi, ed., Indian Voices of the Great War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 336–37.