1St October 1914, Trop Belgium.
The gefreiter was a 27-year-old, from Schleswig, he had been called up from his normal job as a reporter with the local Danish language newspaper on the declaration of war. He didn’t really want to be in Belgium, he didn’t want to be German, he certainly didn’t want to be in the army. He was in his heart a Dane, more than once he heard his grandmother bemoaning the annexation and his family still exclusively spoke Danish at home. Many family members had moved to Denmark, but his family had a cannery and could not afford to sell up to go into exile.
He was a reluctant conscript and the progress of the war had worsened his morale, the rest of his squad were little better, like him they were all reservists, and all known to one another, there were 3 Danes and 3 Germans in the squad as well as himself. They were currently occupying a farmhouse about 800m in front of the village of Trop, the village was being held by the rest of the platoon as part of the outer screen for Brussels. Their orders were to act as a trip wire and send back word if Entente patrols were seen.
The gefreiter was sharing the noon watch with another Dane, they were speaking in Danish together, something which was forbidden by standing order, but which was common enough in regiment to pass without comment, certainly as the war news grew worse the use of Danish had risen. The rest of the squad was downstairs in the farmhouse kitchen, cooking lunch and making a nuisance of themselves with the elderly farmer’s daughter and his housemaid. Neither woman seemed in the least bit interested in the German soldiers and the fates of those Belgian girls who had been seen as being overly keen to collaborate was grisly, when their fellow Belgians had a chance to remonstrate with them.
The discussion had already covered the futility of the war, the defeat and capture of First Army, the worsening situation in Brussels itself and the shortage of food. The other Dane had just declared that a stint in a British Prisoner of war camp might well be a good thing. The gefreiter silenced him saying “that sort of talk will get you shot so keep your stupid mouth shut,” a frosty silence descended, made worse but the ribald German filtering up the stairs.
The silence and bad feeling endured for another 30 minutes till the watch ended, then the two men were relieved by another pair of soldiers from the squad. The danes heading downstairs to see what remained of the lunchtime rations.
As the Gefreiter had just sat down to a bowl of soup and the heel of a loaf of black bread, all hell broke loose upstairs, both sentry’s began shouting “Cavalry, Tommies” and then the shooting began. Dropping his soup the Gefreiter rushed up the stairs, the rest of the squad on his heels. Looking out the window, he could see a British Cavalry patrol disappearing behind a farm building some 400m from the farmhouse his men occupied. None of the shots his men had fired seemed to have hit anything, unsurprising considering the state of their rifle practice, with limited ammunition and the endless occupation and pacification patrols his men had been conducting. The calm lasted only a few minutes, then British rifle fire lashed back at his position, the glass in the window shattered and bullets crunched into the walls of the farmhouse.
Downstairs the maid was screaming, with both the farmer and his daughter shouting at her as they tried to push her down the stairs into the cellar. The gefreiter remembered his orders, detailing two men to return to the village with word of the British patrol, for it could only be a patrol. The firing from the British died down and an uneasy stalemate developed, none of his men had been wounded yet beyond some slight cuts from broken glass. The British troops were slightly higher up the slope than his position, the house with its two stories could see some distance but it was uphill to the British positions.
The firing resumed again but this time it was closer than before, the British had used dead ground to approach to within 200m of the farmhouse, the fire was coming from two directions now, pinning them in position. The squad was shooting back but with little effect, their position was secure the walls thick but the British bullets were cracking round the men’s heads now. Already there was a reluctance to draw fire or expose themselves, the squad was starting to be supressed. Again fire lashed into the building from another direction, the British Cavalry were using effective fire and movement tactics to keep his men pinned down and distracted whilst they moved closer to his position. He didn’t think it was more than a dozen men, but they had his own squad heavily outnumbered. Nobody had suffered any casualties yet on either side, but that was more by luck than anything else. The two runners sent back to the platoon had both been ethnic Germans, which left the Gefreiter with 3 Danes including the loudmouth and one German. The firing intensified again and this time a bullet found a target, one of his men was struck in the upper arm, the man began whimpering, obviously severely hurt. At this point the loudmouth snapped saying “I won’t die for the Kaiser, I am no damned German” he stood throwing his rifle out the window.
Unfortunately for him as he stood a British cavalry trooper had him neatly in his sights. The trooper who had once been a sergeant until reduced to the ranks for peculation, namely the misappropriation of three cases of brandy from the officers mess, was also an excellent shot. The trooper in question had suffered under Boer musketry in South Africa, and when the cavalry had been reequipped with the SMLE, he had been as keen as any man to hone his own skills. The squadron commander who had merely reduced him to the ranks for his crime rather than taking any more severe steps had recognised the value of a crack shot and the trooper was entirely unmoved as he took up the trigger pull on his rifle.
The rifle cracked and 37 grains of cordite deflagrated, the pressure inside the breach of the rifle rapidly increased and 174 grain bullet was accelerated down the barrel spinning within the rifling. The bullet had a mere 170 yards to travel and it did that in a fifth of a second, retaining the vast majority of it 2440 feet per second velocity. The bullet struck the loudmouth unironically in the mouth, blowing a hole through the back of his head. He dropped like a marionette with its strings cut, his blood and brains spraying like a bloody douche over the gefreiter.
General firing resumed with British rifles cracking with a metronomic cadence as a four man team rushed the farm house, the Germans were pinned unable to fire back, reduced to huddling behind the walls. The farmhouse door crashed open and more rifle fire crashed about the building, bullets were coming up through the floor now, the firing ceased and the shouts of “aufgeben and hande hoch” could be heard. Throwing down his own rifle, the gefreiter led his men down the stairs and into captivity.