Stefan Westmann The Great War Interviews

BBC Four Collections -

specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.

For this collection, Max Hastings has selected

interviews with Great War veterans

filmed in the 1960s.

More programmes on this theme

and other BBC Four Collections

are available on BBC iPlayer.

The German Army of the Kaiser

consisted of 800,000 conscripts.

There were hardly any

professional soldiers.

Amongst these 800,000 men,

they had

10,000 who were called

One Year's Volunteers.

That means mostly students

and men with higher

certification of education.

The medical students had to serve

only for half a year with the Infantry.

And then, after they were qualified,

the

next half year as doctors,

as Medical Officers.

In February, 1914,

I, as a

medical

student, received my call up

papers

ordering me to report

for military duty

in a clean state

and free of vermin

at an

Infantry

Regiment in Freiburg in Baden.

The 1st of April, I joined up

and after approximately four months military training,

I was a full soldier in my regiment.

We had no idea of any impending war.

We had no idea that

a danger of war exists.

We served in our

blue

and red uniforms,

but, on the 1st of August, 1914,

mobilisation orders came.

We had

to put on our

field grey uniforms

and, at 2 o'clock in the morning,

of the 4th August, 1914,

we

marched

out of Fribourg with torches.

Silent, without any music,

without any singing. No enthusiasm.

We were really

packed

down by our luggage

and our kit which weighed,

per man, 75 pounds.

We crossed the Rhine

over a very

wobbly pontoon bridge into Elders.

We marched, mostly at night,

until

we approached a huge forest

in front of the Elders town of Mulhouse,

or, as we called it, Muhlhausen.

The focus of attention

of the whole

world

was centred almost

exclusively

to the northern most

part of the fighting line,

namely to that part

of the

German Army

which invaded Belgium.

Nobody had any idea outside France

and outside the French General

Staff,

that the whole French Army,

the First French Army,

was poised to

jump into

Alsace,

to cross the

Rhine

and to go into Southern Germany.

We came to this big forest.

Miles and miles

of nothing

but forest

with dense under wood.

And there, a whole division,

the 29th

German Division, was hidden.

A solitary French aeroplane came, didn't see a thing,

and returned.

The French Army, in the meantime,

had entered Mulhouse,

or Muhlhausen,

and there they celebrated victory.

They brought with them

coloured

posters

which proclaimed that

victory would be there...

La gloire,

la

liberation d'Alsace...

Which, by the way, was

completely

German speaking

and German

inhabited

part of the world.

And they celebrated and got drunk.

They didn't even care

to put out

sentries

at approaches to the

town,

and at 4 o'clock in the morning on the 10th of August,

we left our hideout,

we marched in single line

through

very high cornfields

and without

saying a word,

in complete silence,

we entered the town of Mulhouse.

There we found the

French soldiers

partly drunk,

partly asleep,

and

only comparatively

small resistance

was put up by Alpine troops.

The French retreated

in such

a haste

that we actually had to run after them.

At first, we found heaps of

French

army blankets

which the soldiers had thrown away.

Then we found French greatcoats.

Then we found French knapsacks.

Then we found French belts

with

ammunition pouches

full of cartridges.

And finally, in barns, hidden,

or

sitting just on the roadside,

the exhausted French soldiers,

who

waited only to be taken prisoner.

The French 7th Army Corps retreated

till they came really under

the muzzles of the big guns

of the French quarters of Belfort.

We took the French soldiers with us

and then we came to

a

place

called Altkirch.

Altkirch saw some action before,

in

so far as the

French Army Corps

attacked two German

squadrons of Light Cavalry

which

held them up for ten hours.

In Altkirch, we were stationed,

we were billeted in a factory.

We were fast asleep

when, all of a sudden,

a terrific

infantry fire started.

We rushed out and

we fired

in the direction

where the bullets came from.

The reason for this firing was

that the German sentry

challenged

a light,

and as there was no reply,

he fired at that light.

The bullet hit a wall next to

another German sentry,

who

thought that he was

fired

on, and

he fired back.

And so two German companies

fired at each other like mad.

And the whole reason was

that the

midwife attending

the birth of a baby moved

about with

a lamp in her hand.

We were then entrained,

48 men in

cattle trucks,

48 men or six horses

was ridden on these cattle trucks,

and we were taken to Strasbourg.

And from there, into Lorraine,

where

another French Army had attacked.

There we had to join battle,

and here we counter attacked

and had terrific losses.

My battalion was on a field

which

included a gravel pit,

and in this gravel pit,

we took our wounded

and, later on, our dead comrades.

And when night came,

we retreated to the Rhine-Main canal

under heavy artillery fire.

Again, the French retreated,

and again, we followed them.

And on the field of battle,

I approached a wounded French

soldier,

who spoke to me

in fluent

German

asking for a drop of water.

He was a student in Berlin.

We entered the village,

the company

of approximately 200 men,

and we

were just taking

off our knapsacks

and queuing up for the soup kitchen

who wanted to give us some food,

when a terrific firing started.

From all sides we were fired at.

The cook and his mate were killed.

Quite a number of our soldiers

were

wounded and killed too.

We stormed into the houses

where the

firing came from,

but all

we could find

were

some

innocent

looking peasants in blue

blouses.

But when we searched the houses,

we found infantry rifles

still

hot from firing.

The patrol of 20 men heard

the firing in the village,

turned around,

and all of

sudden they

saw

approximately 30 cyclists coming

out of the village

and cycling

like mad

towards the next village.

They stopped them

and they found that each of them

had an infantry rifle with them.

Of course, they took them

prisoners, and

I saw it myself.

They were marched off

to be court

martialled

and most probably shot.

After this incident with Franc-tireurs,

as we used to

call them,

the German high command

gave orders to take hostages.

We usually took the Mayor

and the high ups

in his village or

little town

and kept them

until the

Field Security Police took over.

We marched on and on and on.

We never dared to take off our boots

because our feet were so swollen

that we didn't think

it would

be possible

to put them on again.

And, in a small village,

the Mayor came and asked

our Company Commanders

not to allow

us to cut off the hands of the children.

These were atrocity stories

which

they heard about the German Army.

At first, we laughed about it,

but, when we heard of other

propaganda things said

against the

German Army, we became angry.

There was, under the British blockade,

not an ounce of fat in Germany.

And so the order came

that

every horse

and every animal

had to be

used for fat.

Every ounce of fat

had to be taken

out

and to be used mostly for soap.

Immediately, when British,

especially

British papers, heard about it,

they made out of these

abattoirs

or knackers yards,

factories which

extracted

the fat

from fallen British

and French soldiers

and made

out

of this propaganda which we hated.

We only went on and on and

then

we were entrained again in cattle

trucks

to be

brought

against the fortress of Antwerp.

Meanwhile, Antwerp had fallen,

and we were marched through Valenciennes

and Douai

into the coal

district

of the Pas des Calais.

There we dug at first small

trenches, slit trenches,

each man for himself.

Then we connected the trenches

and then the whole

trench

system

from the North Sea

to

the

Alps was formed.

In front of our trenches

near La

Bassee

was a brickworks.

The French

used to put

their bricks together

as

high as houses, and on top of these houses,

there were machine guns

which

prevented us from going near them.

One day, we got the order to

attack

these brickworks

and to take them.

The only possible means to take them

was by a surprise attack

in full

daylight,

and we got orders to do so.

We cut zigzag lines

through our barbed wire entanglements

and, at noon, we went over the top.

We ran approximately a hundred yards

when we came under machine

gun fire

which

was

so terrific that the losses were

so staggering and

we got

orders to

lie down

and to seek shelter.

Nobody dared to lift

his head

because,

the very moment

the machine

gunners saw any

movement,

they let fly.

And then the British

artillery

opened up.

And the corpses and the

hats

and the arms

and the legs

flew about

and we were cut to pieces.

All of a sudden,

the

enemy

fire ceased.

Complete silence came over

the battlefield,

and one

of the chaps in my

shell hole

asked

me,

"I wonder what they're up to?"

Another one answered,

"Perhaps they are getting tea."

The third one says,

"Don't be a fool.

Do

you see what I see?"

And we looked over

the brim of our shell hole,

and there, between the brick heaps,

out there came a British soldier

with a Red Cross flag which he waved,

and he was followed by stretcher bearers

who came slowly towards us and collected our wounded.

We got up, still completely

dumb from fear of death,

and helped them to

bring our wounded

into our trenches.

One hour later, a British Army

doctor came out,

again with a Red Cross flag,

and he arranged a truce for two

hours

to let us

collect

our dead ones.

I never forgot this

generosity of the British,

which, I must say,

took place shortly before Christmas, 1914.

Near La Bassee, in the slit trenches, we lay,

and, in front of us,

we

had the French trenches,

dug in, dug out...

We

really didn't know anymore what was

the first trench, the front trench

and what were the reserve trenches.

One day, we got orders

to

storm

a French position.

We got in and my comrades

fell right

and left of me.

But then I was

confronted by a French Corporal.

He with his bayonet at the ready,

and I with my bayonet at the ready.

For a moment,

I felt the fear

of death,

And, in a fraction

of

a second,

I realised that he

was

after

my life

exactly as I was after his.

I was quicker than he was.

I tossed his rifle away

and I ran my

bayonet through his chest.

He fell,

put his hand on the

place were

I had

hit him,

and then I thrust again.

Blood came out of his mouth

and he died.

I felt physically ill.

I nearly vomited.

My knees were shaking

and I was, quite

frankly, ashamed of myself.

My comrades -

I was a corporal there, then -

were absolutely

undisturbed by what had happened.

One of them boasted

that he had

killed a poilu

with the butt of

his rifle.

Another one had

strangled

a captain,

a French captain.

A third one had hit somebody

over

the head with his spade.

And they were ordinary men like me.

One of them was a tram conductor,

another one

a

commercial traveller,

two were students,

the rest were farm workers.

Ordinary people who never

would have

thought

to do any harm to anyone.

How did it come about

that they were

so cruel?

I remembered then

that we were

told

that the good soldier kills

without thinking

of his adversary

as a

human being.

The very moment he sees

in him

a fellow man,

he is not a good soldier anymore.

But I had, in front of me,

the...dead

man,

the dead French soldier...

and how I would have liked

him

to have raised his hand.

I would have shaken his hand

and we

would have been the best of friends.

Because he was nothing, like me, but a poor boy

who had to fight,

who had to go in with

the most cruel

weapons

against a man

who had

nothing against

him personally,

who only wore

the uniform of another nation,

who spoke another language,

but a

man who had

a father and mother

and a family, perhaps,

and so I felt.

I woke up at night sometimes

drenched in sweat

because I saw the eyes

of my fallen

adversary,

of the enemy,

and I tried to convince myself,

what

would have happened to me

if I wouldn't have

been quicker than

he?

What would

have

happened to me

if I wouldn't have thrust

my bayonet first into his belly?

What was it that we soldiers

stabbed each other,

strangled each other,

went for each other like mad dogs?

What was it that we,

who had

nothing against them personally,

fought with them to the

very end and death?

We were civilised people, after all.

But I felt that the

culture

we boasted

so much about is

only a very thin

lacquer

which chipped off

the

very moment

we come in contact with

cruel things like real war.

To fire at each other

from a

distance,

to drop bombs,

is something

impersonal.

But to see each other's

white in the eyes

and then to run with

a bayonet against a man,

it

was against my conception

and against my inner feeling.

- Anything else? - That was beautiful. Cut.

In June, 1915, I was wounded.

A shell exploded behind me

and

I caught several shell splinters,

one of them

which penetrated my pelvis.

I was brought back

to

a field hospital

and later to a base hospital

in St Quentin,

where they found that

I was otherwise all right,

apart from bruises and so on.

And then, in a few weeks time,

I was ready for duty.

I was just expecting my commission

as an Infantry Officer,

which

we called in those days

an

express

ticket to eternity,

because the life of a Subaltern

in the trenches

was not

counted by months,

but by days or weeks.

They found out that

I was a medical student

and so I was transferred

to the

Medical Corps

and was commissioned

with the

rank

of a Second Lieutenant,

or as you would call it in the

British Army,

a Probationer Surgeon.

As such...

- May I just stop? - Yes. Please cut.

For seven days and nights,

we were under incessant bombardment.

Day and night,

the shells,

heavy and light ones,

came upon us,

our dugouts crumbled.

They fell upon us

and we had to dig

ourselves and our comrades out.

Sometimes we found them suffocated,

sometimes smashed to pulp.

Seven days and seven nights.

Soldiers in the bunkers

became

hysterical.

They wanted to run out

and fights developed to keep them

in the comparative

safety of our deep bunkers.

Even the rats became hysterical.

They came into our flimsy shelters

to seek refuge from this terrific artillery fire.

Seven days and seven nights.

We had

nothing to eat, nothing to drink,

but constantly fire,

shell after shell burst upon us.

And then the British Army

went over the top.

The very moment we felt

that the

British artillery fire

was

directed against the

reserve

positions,

German machine gunners

crawled

out of the bunkers, reddened eyes,

sunken eyes, dirty, full of blood

from the blood of their

fallen comrades,

and opened up terrific fire.

The British Army had horrible loses,

and they'd estimated

that they

lost within

the first ten minutes of

the

Battle

of the Somme.

14,000 dead.

Our regiment lost approximately

75% of its men,

and, after ten days in the

front line, we

were withdrawn.

Ten minutes before the

French attack

was due,

the German batteries opened up

and the fire was

so

tremendous

that hardly any French

soldiers went over the top.

After a while,

the Germans

sent

patrols

to find out what

happened.

And

there they

found

the French trenches deserted,

except for the wounded and the dead.

Full of dead.

And the French were supposed to

have

lost,

in one day,

100,000 casualties.

A week or so before the beginning

of the German offensive in Flanders,

in April, 1918,

I was attached to

Infantry Assault Battalion,

and my orders were to establish

and advance a first aid post.

We went over the top

against Portuguese divisions.

They didn't offer much resistance,

and we took them

prisoner,

or they ran away faster

than we could even run.

Near Merville,

I came to

a British

field hospital,

completely intact,

and there I

saw, for

the first time since years,

the

abundance of material,

of equipment

which we didn't know anymore about.

Amongst other things, I found

cases

full of surgical gloves.

The German doctors had to

operate

with their bare fingers.

They had to go into the purulent

and

contaminated wounds with their bare

hands,

and the only thing

to wash our

hands with

was a kind of sand soap.

Two parts of sand, one part of soap.

And here I found actually

thousands of pairs

of rubber gloves.

I went out to catch some

ammunition

carts,

which came back

empty from the firing line

and to hand them

these cases

to bring them back to the

rear.

I returned in a few minutes time,

and there I found a whole

batch of German soldiers

playing

with these rubber gloves.

They blew air into them

and let them fly as balloons.

On the barrack square of Freiburg,

where I was

an Officer Cadet,

I learnt to

shout

commands,

and this came

to

good use for me

because I ordered them out,

and so I saved the rubber gloves.

Amongst other things,

I found bandages.

Real bandages.

You know that the German Army

and the German doctors

didn't

have any bandages?

What we used was scrap paper

to wind

round the wounds of the soldiers.

And one can imagine

how

long that lasted.

They just dissolved as quickly

as many of the greatcoats

our soldiers had to wear,

which

were

made out of paper fabric.

We didn't have any

cotton

wool anymore.

The only thing we had

was a kind

of cellulose

and this we put

on

the wounds

because we didn't

have even

gauze.

Or this little bit of gauze

we had

which was soaked

in

blood

and puss

had to be washed again

and

again,

sterilised again and again

until it freely fell to pieces.

Such was the shortage

at the end of the war.

At the beginning of the war,

the German Army,

like the British Army,

didn't have

any anti-tetanus antitoxin.

And when we marched

through

the villages,

we found,

in

front of field hospitals,

thick layers of

straw, knee deep,

and we had

to go through that.

And these

layers of straw were used

to reduce

the vibration caused

by

the

passing

of guns

and heavy ammunition carts.

These vibrations in turn

brought about

the dreadful

convulsions of the

soldiers

infected with tetanus.

And mind you,

statistic showed

that 1% of every

soldier

in France,

in those

early days

of the war,

was

infected

with tetanus and died of tetanus.

- All right? - Remarkably good.

Good.