“North, South, East, West, soldiers die like heroes, and their German mothers dressed in mourning full of proud, if you trust the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. History is repeating: The German youth keeps on dying while shouting: Long live the Kaiser! Long live the fatherland! Heil Hitler! The men fall to the roll of drums and to the sound of trumpets and no mother, no wife, no sister cry to their heroes. It is not proper of a German woman. Who has talked about phosphor burns, who has spoken of sawed legs, of shattered brains, of open bellies, of gouged eyes? Somebody crazy, a defeatist, a traitor. No hero dies that way. This is something never mentioned in history books. Glittering uniforms, brave soldiers marching and singing, chest full of medals, flags waving, military brass bands. Only liars talk about human cattle writhing in the mud of the trenches, about dying youngsters who call their mothers, while trying to keep their intestines from spilling out of open bellies, about the men cursing the responsible, those who have sent them to face a rain of fire and steel. However, war is this, I know. I was one of these grey soldiers on the German front.”
