Читать книгу Poles in Kaisers Army On the Front of the First World War - Ryszard Kaczmarek - Страница 19

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 the Old Maid was usually presented as a naked Zulu warrior, a Morrocan 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 staff managed to block the bleeding and avoid infection in most cases of the injured who managed to arrive at the field hospital.²⁰⁴

However, the amount of German losses was very high. The Infantry Regiment No. 157 lost eighteen officers and 163 soldiers. Among the injured were twenty-one officers and 379 soldiers; there was no information about 159 soldiers, ←75 | 76→even though some of them later turned up. The general loss in the German Army amounted to 1700 fallen and heavily injured soldiers, which was horrifying in light of the fact that it was a battle for a small town.²⁰⁵

But the amount of the French loss was even higher. The Third Colonial Division alone lost 1700 soldiers, according to the French reports. The overall French estimate of the loss suffered because of the situation amounted to 4000–5000 fallen and heavily injured. The French particularly suffered from artillery fire, but infantry actions were equally ruining.²⁰⁶

The memories of the French and German soldiers were the same. They all remember the masses of killed people:

On August 22…. What massacre! The busy road is full of broken carts, injured soldiers, dead horses, and fallen soldiers who lie in a bizarre tangle. Leaves and broken branches constantly fell and covered this maze. In a trench, I saw the commander of my artillery with pink foam coming from his mouth. The ambulance full of injured, shot by all kinds of bullets, yelling, groaning. A doctor major who sat at the wheel with a big red bloodstain on his chest seemed as if only waiting for his death.²⁰⁷

An unexpected epilogue to the Rossignol battle happened on the following day. The soldiers of the Upper Silesian regiments finally felt like conquerors in a partly ruined town, still crowded with civilians who did not leave the village with the French troops. The Upper Silesians started first war looting. During the scouring of houses, they often decided to exchange their sweaty military vests and pants for confiscated underwear, even one that belonged to women.²⁰⁸ Moreover, they no longer had to obey the rule that only the quartermaster units provide the supply by buying food from the local farmers in Belgium and Luxembourg, a rule meticulously obeyed until very recently. When a provisioner of the Regiment No. 157 found a bullock in the forest, he no longer cared about finding its owner. He immediately killed the bullock, however, he did that “not strictly in compliance with the art of butchery [he shot the bullock].” After quartering, the bullock ended up in the kitchen’s kettle.²⁰⁹ Similarly, another subunit of the regiment, after cleaning up in a nearby stream during the bivouac, brought another trophy. They “caught” a “wandering” chicken and found additional food ←76 | 77→products and wine. The supply officer indeed wanted to give a Belgian woman of nearby household a worthless requisition bill, but she refused to take it and said with anxiety that the chicken is not hers. The bill ended up at the door because the owner was unknown.²¹⁰

The following day, the situation in the village after the battle and robberies was very tense. At 8 am, when part of the Infantry Regiment No. 157 received the order to depart, some suddenly noticed shots coming from basements, windows, and attics. At that time, many French captives waited at the church square to be led to the front support area, as they found themselves in the middle of a chaotic firefight. Here and there, the Germans torched local houses in order to bring the situation under control (there were as many as 184 burned houses). Similarly, the 63rd Infantry Regiment found itself under fire during their bivouac. Armed infiltrators (Franktireurs) were burdened with the responsibility for the assault, because one could find civilian clothes in some satchels of captives. The commander of the Infantry Regiment No. 157 ordered his soldiers to meticulously search through the entire village. Two civilians with rifles were executed next to a burning church. The execution’s proceedings were dramatic. It happened in the middle of a burning village, next to the church that was its central point, from which – at the very moment of the death volley – “the cross fell [from its tower] to the ground on the bodies of the executed”.²¹¹ After the Upper Silesian division departed, 108 Rossignol inhabitants were arrested and accused of attacking German soldiers; ninety-one were executed.²¹²

The German soldiers’ fear of the French partisans not always had a rational basis as it did in Rossignol. Sometimes, it was just an excuse for robberies, as mentions by one of the Greater Poland soldiers who fought in France along the Bavarians:

We approach a village. Assault it and clear of Franktireurs. The Germans rule this place as if it was their own already on the first day. One house is still closed. They use gunstocks to open the door and windows. Our two Bavarians move inside fist. The kitchen, they again use stocks to open cabinets and drawers. A clatter of shattered pots and, in a flash, there is a big pile of shards in the middle of the kitchen. They use stocks to open the next door. Thebedroom. A pale young woman in bed. They remove the eiderdown that covers her, she sits upright on the bed and points out at the baby lying next to her that was born a couple of days ago. They hit her thigh with a stock. She jumps off the bed and folds her hands, begging them to save her and her baby. “Are you crazy! To treat a ←77 | 78→sick woman like that” – Zaklicki tells them, interceding for her. “Oh, you must be her friend! She may hide a Frankiteur under her bed” – two Bavarians answer him…. The woman lies in her underwear with the child on the floor next to the wall, she trembles, looks lurid, but cries and begs no more. They turn the bed upside down, threw everything out of the wardrobes in the niches, they even broke the paintings that hang on the wall and throw them at the middle of the room. Because a Franktireur could have also hidden behind a painting. The house is full of soldiers. They look everywhere. The same destruction in every room. All the things onto a single pile. Savage lust of destruction.²¹³

Similar civilian tragedies occurred in the first months of the war in front of many Poles. Bogdan Hulewicz recalls two particularly dramatic situations. The first is the bombardment of the already-seized Belgian Louvain by the German artillery. All the inhabitants had to leave their houses for an attack on a German patrol. However, before that happened, the Germans attacked with incendiary ammunition, which caused a sudden fire that overtook the majority of houses and burned nearly 1000 houses; many Belgians remained at homes as they did not believe that the Germans would decide to bombard an unprotected town.²¹⁴

A Polish officers candidate suffered even more during the execution of two innocent young Belgians who were thought to be spies:

The boys came from a nearby village. They rode down the road on bikes and every one of them was thought to be a spy. There was an order to shoot down every cyclist close to the brigade (Alle belgische Radfahrer im Bereich der Brigade sind zu erschiessen). Bikes are good, they will be useful to the company. Boys received an order to dig ditches: they were executed on the spot. Until the very end, they did not understand what is going on. They rode this road every day; they were sixteen years old…. During the bivouac, the soldiers commented on the bombardment and burning of Louvain. No one mentioned the execution of “the cyclists-spies.” They knew that captain Rabius did not like it. They praised the bombardment of the city: “after all, they did not shoot at us when we were in transport. The Franktireurs are criminals, they deserve punishment, they shot at us.”²¹⁵

There is quite a grotesque story about the use of this – popular during the war – word to describe French infiltrators. In 1914, at the very beginning of the war, the state prohibited the use of many popular French words in German language. The sole exception was the word “Franktireur” because, as it was explained, it signifies “the enemy’s disgrace so no one could possibly replace it with a German word.”²¹⁶

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