THE ENEMY
Before the war Kipling had warned of the threat from Germany.
From the outbreak onwards he wrote about the barbaric and uncivilised behavour of the Hun.
CIVILIANS AS SHIELDS
It was not worth while to record how the people of Ypres brought hot coffee to the Battalion as it passed through, the day before (October 20); and how, when they halted there a few hours, the men amused their hosts by again dancing Irish jigs on the clattering pavements while the refugees clattered past; or how it was necessary to warn the companies that the enemy might attack behind a screen of Belgian women and children—in which case the Battalion would have to fire through them.
Vol 1. 21st October 1914.
BAYONETING THE WOUNDED
A French regiment (Territorials) on the right also took over part of the trenches of our depleted line. Forty-four men were known to have been killed, 205 wounded and 88—chiefly from the blown-up No. 3 Platoon—were missing. Of officers, Lieutenant K. R. Mathieson had been killed (he had been last seen shooting a Hun who was bayoneting our wounded).
Vol 1. November 1st 1914.
NOT A CONVENTIONAL WAR
Sniping on Hun lines was a novel experience to the Battalion. They judged it strange to find a man apparently dead, with a cloth over his face, lying in a hollow under a ridge commanding their line, who turned out to be quite alive and unwounded. His rifle was within short reach, and he was waiting till our patrols had passed to get to his work. But they killed him, angrily and with astonishment.
Vol 1. 15th September 1914.
WHITE FLAGS
.......the Battalion had its first experience of the German use of the white flag; for Lieutenant J. S. FitzGerald with No. 8 Platoon and a party of Coldstream under Lieutenant Cotterel-Dormer found some hundred and fifty Germans sitting round haystacks and waving white flags. They went forward to take their surrender and were met by a heavy fire at thirty yards’ range, which forced them to fall back.
Vol 1. 14th September 1914.
RUM
One grim incident stays in the minds of those who survived—the sight of an enormous Irishman urging two captives, whom he had himself unearthed from a cellar, to dance before him. He demanded the jigs of his native land, and seemed to think that by giving them drink his pupils would become proficient. Men stood about and laughed till they could hardly stand; and when the fun was at its height a chance shell out of the darkness to the eastward wiped out all that tango-class before their eyes. (“’Twas like a dhream, ye’ll understand. One minute both Jerries was dancin’ hard to oblige him, an’ then—nothin’, nothin’—nothin’—of the three of them!”)
Vol 1. 29th September 1916.
PERMISSIONS
German soldiers on the way to the front in 1914.
By Unknown German war photographer - http://www.greatwar.nl/germany/fransman.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11072391
German soldiers using a flamethrower.
By Bundesarchiv, Bild 104-0669 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5481417
Demobilization of German soldiers after the war.
By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R34275 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5368378