In October and November of 1914, we had there received our
baptism of fire. Fatherland love in our heart and songs on our
lips, our young regiments had gone into the battle as to a dance.
The most precious blood there sacrificed itself joyfully, in the
faith that it was preserving the independence and freedom of
the fatherland.
In July, 1917, we set foot for the second time on the ground
that was sacred to all of us. For in it the best comrades slumbered,
still almost children, who had run to their death with gleaming
eyes for the one true fatherland.
We old soldiers, who had then marched out with the regiment,
stood in respectful emotion at this shrine of 'loyalty and obedi-
ence to the death.'
Now in a hard defensive battle the regiment was to defend
this soil which it had stormed three years earlier.
With three weeks of drumfire the Englishman prepared the
great Flanders offensive. The spirits of the dead seemed to
quicken; the regiment clawed its way into the filthy mud, bit
into the various holes and craters, and neither gave ground nor
wavered. As once before in this place, it grew steadily smaller
and thinner, until the British attack finally broke loose on July
13, 1917.
In the first days of August we were relieved.
The regiment had turned into a few companies: crusted with
mud they tottered back, more like ghosts than men. But aside
from a few hundred meters of shell holes, the Englishman had
found nothing but death.
Now, in the fall of 1918, we stood for the third time on the
storm site of 1914. The little city of Comines where we then
rested had now become our battlefield. Yet, though the battle-
field was the same, the men had changed: for now 'political dis-
cussions' went on even among the troops. As everywhere, the
poison of the hinterland began, here too, to be effective. And
the younger recruit fell down completely — for he came from
home.