[12:33 a.m.] : [2002-06-24]
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Trench fighting is desperate and fierce beyond even the imaginings if war. John M. Ford-Chain Home, Low In the summer of 1916, in a trench in Belgium, a German soldier named Gottfried Himmels received a letter from home that filled him with an unidentifiable fear. Himmels had been in the trenches for almost a year, and got frequent letters from his wife; they were mostly about his daughter Magdalen. A few months ago, Himmels had sent home some of his pay-he said, "It is a foolishly large sum, but in mad times one ought to be allowed foolishness"-to buy Magdalen a coveted doll for her eighth birthday. Frau Himmels's next letter had gone on for two full pages about the party, and the doll, and Magdalen's delight. This letter said, "Magdalen is happy." Not a word more. A few days after the terrible letter, there was a trench raid on Himmels's sector. Men carrying bayonets and Mills grenades wired to sticks as crude maces-weapons from half a mellinnium ago-tumbled through the mines and the wire in the wet dark. They fought in silence for a while, except to gasp or groan when a knife or a rifle butt or the odd bullet struck home, and then they began to shout to one another, because all of them were so covered in mud and slime and each other's blood that only the sound of a voice could separate friends from enemies. They yelled name, or "Kamerad" or "Ami" or "Kommen Sie an" or "A bas les Boches"; the sound counted more than the words. What Gottfried Himmels was shouting, over and over as he beat and stabbed and shot at faceless muddy men, was "Magdalen freut sich"- Magdalen is happy. |
