The Great War. Aleksandar Gatalica

      Not only did the French have to wash their underwear, darn their socks and fit bullets into their cartridge belts, but they had to put up with insults and beatings, as well as address their masters with pretentious titles such as ’Your Countship’ or ’Your Excellence’. That was, of course, ridiculous and sad at the same time, and, seeing as I couldn’t help the others, I decided to at least relate to my prisoner as a human being. You know me, dear parents — I don’t have the heart to hate. I took a liking to a Pole by the name of Stanislaw Witkiewicz. It turned out that he spoke German and was familiar with our great minds, Goethe and Schiller, because he had studied in Paris before the war.

      You can imagine what good friends we became. I’d sometimes yell at him, too, and make him clean my boots, but he knew I was only doing it so we wouldn’t look suspicious. When things were quiet, we’d talk at length, recite poetry to each other and pledge that our camaraderie would continue after the war. But those vows of post-war friendship were easily made. We had only that one week of autumn on French soil to spend together. I told him about you, about home and Heidelberg, and about German science, which will entwine with that of Oxford and the Sorbonne one day to end this terrible war. He confided in me that he had betrothed and married a beautiful young woman in Paris during the blackout and siege. He spoke of her as a nymph: with pure, pearl-like skin, long flaxen hair and eyes as blue as the lagoons of warm seas. His description of her was so vivid that I fell in love with Mrs Witkiewicz on the spot and was greatly saddened when he told me a few days before we parted forever that his beloved was no more — she now slept among the stars and he was a widower.

      I mourned with him but also hoped that his solitude would strengthen our friendship; the two of us could become a symbol of a new and different Europe, a Europe of friends, not of enemies. I imagined our first meeting after the war: I arrive by coach at the far end of Lazienki Park in Warsaw. I get out, pay the coachman, and Stanislaw runs towards me elated yet relaxed, his hair tossed by the afternoon breeze. I too spread my arms to embrace him, a dear friend I haven’t seen for so long, much too long; and all at once the senseless charging and killing and dying are gone, and the German and Polish and French. All that remains is friendship — a friendship I thought would last forever. But how could I have known, dear parents, that it would end just a few days later?

      I found out on 15 September that the end was nigh, but I didn’t tell my dear Polish friend until the last moment. There was to be a heavy artillery barrage and aerial bombing to destroy the enemy positions, to be followed by an irrepressible assault of our massed cavalry and infantry. When the hour came for the charge, each German soldier was to push his prisoner out in front of him as a human shield and expose him to ’friendly fire’ from the French lines. I couldn’t believe it. My comrades-in-arms, those rude ’uhlans’, now simply went wild at the news. Bruises and black eyes were harmless compared to the injuries which the masters now inflicted on those poor wretches in the last few days. They only made sure not to maim them so badly that they’d be unable to walk in front of them when the whistle blew.

      When the whistle blew . . . the prospect of that day haunted me with a mixture of horror and revulsion which war raises to the throat of every civilized man. My good Pole noticed that something was going on at our positions and asked me anxiously what it was about, and I, like a good doctor of death who spares his patient the news of his impending demise, didn’t tell him the truth. On the last day of our friendship I looked at him tenderly, but I realized I couldn’t help him. On the afternoon of 17 September, the artillery fell silent. The order came to tie ourselves to our prisoners with rope and stand them in front of us, facing away. At that, a screaming and shrieking began. My Pole burst into tears too, and I used the occasion to hug and kiss him for the last time.

      Then dozens of sergeant’s whistles sounded all at once. We jumped out over the breastwork. The French tied in front of us screamed inhumanly, almost squealing like swine, in fact. My comrades prodded them with their bayonets, swore at them and drove them like cattle. Some of the French called out and tried to warn their compatriots not to shoot, others persistently shouted things in French so the other side would see that a line of Frenchmen was moving towards them. But salvos resounded from a range of about one hundred metres and began cutting swathes through the line of prisoners. We were under orders to run with them as far as we could, to cut the rope connecting us as soon as they were hit, and to stay lying there. I had spent the whole night pondering what would be best for me and my Pole: for us to hang back and try to save his neck through hesitation, or to charge out ahead of the others and get him killed before he suffered too much. I decided on the latter.

      I caressed him one last time before the charge, and at the sound of the whistle I started running as fast as my legs, or rather our legs, would carry us. I thought for one last time that we were tied together and ready to die together, the way it should be, like in Plato’s Feast. I planned to cut the rope as ordered when he was hit, but instead of falling to the ground I’d continue the charge and collect some French bullets myself. But it didn’t turn out that way. For Stanislaw Witkiewicz, the Great War ended fifty metres across no man’s land when the first friendly French bullet struck him just above the heart. For me, the war is still going on. I admit that I only briefly considered uttering a cry for both of us and continuing the advance. How far? Another twenty or thirty metres maybe, in a futile attempt to reach the French lines. But I didn’t do it. Coward that I was, I hit the ground, having got the furthest of all my comrades. I managed to look and saw the field littered with dead Frenchmen like discarded old sacks. The faces of my comrades were panic-stricken, and mine probably was too. The sergeants screamed: ’Look at Stefan, you stupid rabble, look how far he’s got!’ And they made the others advance to reach me.

      It was all over in the evening. We achieved a small breakthrough in our section of the front (I’m not allowed to tell you where it is). Instead of a meal of Dutch cheeses, which our army supply office had been constantly feeding us, we now found tins of French meat called ‘Madagascar’ along with garlic left behind by the enemy. We ate that meat with zest, like the greatest delicacy, until someone told us it had been rumoured among the French that the tins contained not beef but monkey meat. We were disgusted and threw away the remainders, leaving the ’Madagascar’ monkey meals for the French, since we knew they’d be taking back the trenches the next day. They quietly and hurriedly collected the dead they themselves had riddled with bullets. Our commanders swore they’d take the positions again, and yesterday I was awarded the Iron Cross. Me — the biggest coward, who was afraid to die even when his friend was cut down by a hail of lead! My only consolation is that Stanislaw Witkiewicz earned the medal. In my eyes, he is the only Pole from the French Foreign Legion to be decorated with the German Iron Cross, 2nd Class.

      I’m ashamed to write to you about my weaknesses, but the shame would be much greater if anyone could look into my heart, where he would see only ice. Esteemed Father and Mother, my dearest parents, I beg you to pardon my weaknesses and commend my soul to God, who saw all of this but did nothing to stop the carnage . . .

      Farewell. Your son Stefan (still alive, for the time being).

      * * *

      Our positions,

      I know where they are but won’t write it because the censor will black it out anyway.

      Dear Father and Mother,

      This war is hilarious one moment and tragic the next. I didn’t tell you in my earlier letters that we’ve invented a new form of warfare. We and the Boches now consolidate our positions by digging deep holes which we crawl into like moles. It all began when we suffered terrible losses from just one machine-gun fired by a single dug-in uhlan machine-gunner. Each little entrenched position like that was able to halt our advance north of the Aisne for several days.

      It seems both we and they got the idea that you can hold a position with trenches for much longer, so for a day or two both we and they threw aside our rifles and took up spades and shovels. At first, we dug holes for a short stay, shallow like soldiers’ graves, which we were convinced we’d soon fill with our own bodies. Then we started joining those holes into trenches, passages and redoubts, and in the end we made a whole little city four metres down. All the moles in France must have envied us. In places we had aisles ten metres wide and almost fifty metres long. In the