GERMAN SOLDIERS ON VERDUN

Nelson Evening Mail, 21 July 1916, Page 7

GERMAN SOLDIERS ON VERDUN

A CHANGE FROM GALICIA. (From Mr 11. Warner Allen, special representative of the British press with the French armies.) PARIS. May 30. The following extracts from " letters written by German soldiers before Verdun and taken from their pockets whci the writers were. captured by the French provide an account of the battle from the German point of view:— From a letter written by Lieutenant Ellingen. of the 6th Reserve Infantry Regiment, and intended for despatch to another ' lieutenant belonging to the 202 nd Reserve Regiment : "April 3.—You can form some idea of our position from the fact that all our officers have been renewed. The losses of the regiment are high, for its position on the plateau of Vaux is simply 'disgusting.' Our battalions relieve one another, but our positions when in reserve or resting, receive, 1 " with fewexceptions, as many shells as the first line."

From a letter, dated 11th April, writ ten bv a private soldier named Schroder, of the 80th Infantry Regiment: "We are absolutely in a hell-hole here. The artillery fire night and day. I never imagined it would be like this. Yesterday a shell fell quite near the churn and killed three men and wounded nine others. You should have seen us run. If only this wretched war would come to an end. No reasonable man can justify such a butchery of men. . . We are ■+t present to the north-east, of Verdun in a position that is distinctly critical. . . This morning they have been smoking us out with asphyxiating shell ■i"d other diabolic! inventions. It is all 'kultur.' . . Though we have no*. been long in the firing-line we have all had enowrh of it. and are longing for peace. We should like to send to the front all these gentlemen who caused the war and who profit-from it. If we had done this we should have had peace long ago." From a letter written bv a soldier named Schmele. of the 208 th Reserve Regiment, dated 15th April. "You can't imagine how tired we are of life sometimes. We are made to toil there in every possible way. There is no rest until one falls on his nose in the mud. How absurd what they write in the newsnapers seems. Our beloved soldiers, if you knew what they have to "suffer, to say nothing of having their lives worried out of them, thev would not serve us up such lies. Yesterday the weather was still abominable, and we were again wet to the bone. Then we were asked why we were not singing; so in all our misery we had to sing."

-MORE CASUALTIES, MORE v COFFEE. A postcard written by a soldier named Tveilsch, of the 3rd Grenadier Regiment of Landsturm, to his son Fritz, dated 30th April : "Since Good Friday I have been before Verdun. It is terrible. We havealready had many casualties. We are in holes on the slope of a mountain, and we scarrelv dare put our noses out. The bombard.ment is incessant: sometimes it is too awful for words. It seems as if the mountain was collapsing. If I e*rape alive I shall remember this Easter. Our kitchens are two hours' walk in the rear. For Easter we had nothing to eat or drinlc except a quarter of a pint of coffee. There is not a drop of water here, but now we get a little more coffee, as iiir number is rapidly diminishing. From time to time one of us runs to the kitchens with our bottles."

Following are extracts from letters found on prisoners, which had been received from friends in Germany: "Ittlingen, March 2.—We suppose that you are "with the rest at Verdun. Over there it is death for everyone. There seems to be no way of getting through. The French are not the Russians, and their artillery cannot be si--lenced. Nobody believes any longer what is written in the newspapers. . To begin with, a great fuss was made about magnificent successes, but suddenly everything became quiet. . A few noisv people tielievedi that Verdun would fall in a few davs. It would be all right to march on Paris if the French artillery did not exist and if there were no Frenchmen between us and the capital." "Dated May 2. —I am convinced that the Germans will not get through, for tliev are mistaken as to the French, and particularly as to their artillery. Every soldier who comes back says the French artillery is very superior to ours. Things j are not going so easily as in Galicia."