Frontline Memories

mats

Banned
this is the beginning of a Tl i inteded to write some time ago and now i decided to post it here. (In WW1 the fight is taken to Germany itself) here in the beginning it's pretty much the same as our TL. it's was written as a short novel at first though...

Frontline Memories
New York, USA, 1974
I
Am Edward O’Connor, and these are my memories of the front of 1915 and the rest of my life.
But anyway let’s get started:
I was a 17- year old boy when I arrived at the front together with some other guy’s from Dover we made a group: the Dover boys. Of course then we didn’t knew what was waiting for us. The horror of the trenches, blood and bodies just everywhere, and each and every thing was covered with mud especially during the fall and spring. And then de disease not rarely caused by poison gas of the Germans. We thought we’d be back by the falling of the leaves. We were horribly wrong. My chief commanding officer was lt. Brady a good fellow from Liverpool he wasn’t happy with the war and the nonsense infantry attacks that would cost millions of young boys their lives. He told me a story about the Christmas of 1914: in the days before Christmas the fighting stopped because of the weather and the British soldiers visit the Germans and they sat around a Christmas tree and exchanged gifts. The day after there was a soccer match (the Germans won with 5 – 1). The soldiers warned each other for attacks and when a commanding officer would come and inspect the troops then they would say to the Germans that they would shoot over their heads. But one time an officer saw trough the set-up and said to a young soldier; why don’t you shoot that old bearded man who has his head above the trench? Why would I, he does that every day, replied the soldier. Because he is the enemy! Said the officer but he didn’t do me any harm! The soldier repelled. The generals were furious if this would happen the next Christmas then the men’s of the always loyal artillery to point their guns at the Germans and the infantry who were celebrating Christmas with them. And so it never happened again. But this gave only distraction for a short time. Lt. Brady said that soon we would ‘go over the top’. I was wondering what that would mean so I turned to a bunch of veterans. They immediately turned away but one man with his uniform in a dozen pieces hanging around his body stayed he said: you don’t want to talk about that kid. It means that we are going to attack the Germans soon. A lot of them will die cause’ the machinegun fire you could better just hide in a bomb crater. I was stunned I didn’t know that I would be confronted with the danger so soon. But I knew that it couldn’t be always fun and games.

Chapter 2
Over the top
I
n the early morning of April the 15th we got the message: this afternoon you are going over the top to attack and obliterate the Germans! For king and country! We knew we were dead men walking there was no chance to get past the mines, barbed wire and machine gun fire and still be able to kill of some German soldiers. But then at 2:00 pm I went over the top for the first time with no training at all. They had send us in there like a cows to a slaughterhouse, there were ripped-off body parts everywhere because of the artillery constantly shooting. And the Germans too send their man in a counter-attack now it was fighting not only with rifles but also with bayonets, knives and even with bare hands. And then a giant grenade shell had hit the enemy in front of me first I thought that there were no survivors but then I heard a scream, a scream of pain, fear and agony; it went right through my bones. When I walked up to the bomb crater I didn’t believe at first that there was actually somebody in the crater but when I got there I couldn’t believe my eyes : there was a German in the crater! But I saw that there was little that I could do for him except give him some water I stayed with him until he died but before that he gave me a letter and said with his last breath if I could give it to his mother. And who am I to refuse someone’s last wish; German or not and suddenly the bombing stopped and both armies went back to their trenches I prayed for his soul and then I too went back
I saw that a lot of men were dead. Some bodies were recovered but most still laid in no-man’s land those bodies would be eaten by some birds that would come by. It was a horrific sight I never fully recovered. And now we had to wait for the German counter-attack and repel it. Often soldiers went over the bodies of men died in the last attack it was disgusting and sometimes we encountered men who were still alive, we could do nothing more but give them a coup de grace. More and more men died and more and more man came from all around the world and one by one they died in reckless attacks on the trenches of the enemy: Pakistani, Australians, new Zealanders, Americans they all walked into their horrific dead but the generals kept sending more and more men into their dead. I was lucky to survive I was one of the last of my regiment who survived. When I returned to England that’s when is said farewell to arms like in Ernst Hemmingway’s famous novel


Chapter 3:
The homeward bound

W
hen I got back to England I went straight to my parents house to tell them that my visit would be brief and that there was business not yet done in Germany and that I didn’t know when I’d come back .

It was in the late summer of 1921 that I could travel to Germany and whilst I was travelling to Berlin were the military archives were I saw the destructions of the Great War and all the loss that was caused by the repaying that Germany had to do after the treaty of Versailles and when I finally got to Berlin it was hard to find the address of the soldier but I did it. I could finally deliver the letter to his mother. She lived in Bonn it wasn’t a pleasant journey because I was nearing the former battlefields, now a hilly landscape ploughed by artillery shells although this was not in Germany itself. And so I arrived in Bonn I went straight to the house, were I found his mother at first she tried to keep me away because I was an Englishman but then I showed her the letter and she tried to hug me. Then she called her daughter, she was beautiful her eyes were deep blue as the sea her blond hairs as a thousand sunbeams her voice like a bird singing it’s most beautiful song and when she saw me she smiled my hart melted. We fell in love instantly and when I returned to England a year later she was my wife my son was born in the spring of 1923 we called him William after the dying soldier Wilhelm that I met on that bloody day at the Somme. Of course my parents and the other people in our neighbourhood were not at all glad that I married a German girl so we couldn’t stay in England. We decided to move to New York.
 
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