14 - Don, 7 February 1915

Don, 7 February 1915

[Sunday]

Dear family, 

I told you about my trip to here in my last letter. Today I would like you tell what it looks like here and how we live here. So there we go: Don is a rather small village about as big as Schwelm 

[Schwelm is a village east of Wuppertal], but it does not look as clean and neat.  The whole of the village resembles the “Petroleumviertel”, and the houses look like the workers cottages of Schlieper & Co in Laken [A machine factory]. They have all been built in the same style, and the one is even more dirty and derelict than the other.  The roads are like that too : they are all paved but they are covered in so much mud that you can pave over that again.  I don’t know whether this mud is from after the start of the war, but I don’t think so.

Drainage and sewers are out of the question of course, there is electric light though.

Furthermore there is a beautiful station that Don shares with the neighbouring village of Sanghin, and a few really nice villas, which belong to the few factory-owners here I should think.  They have beautiful gardens, in which snowdrops, crocus etc.  These beautiful gardens don’t really fit in this landscape, and make the rest look even worse.

The surrounding land itself is very boring landscape-wise. Everything flat, just fields and a few trees. 

All country roads are paved and in a perfect state.

In the fields the collapsed corn still lies, and the sugarbeets from earlier years are still in the ground.

The inhabitants find that normal. There are no men here anymore, just women, children, elderly people and remarkably many crippled people.

The people here are reasonably friendly, in any case friendlier than I expected.  They are not too bad really. I’ve bought 10 eggs in a shop, which I am going to enjoy.  The woman asked if she had to cook them for me. I immediately accepted her offer. The eggs cost me 1,50 Mk. I don’t find that expensive, especially because they were very good.

You can talk easily with the people here. They speak a very understandable French.

We soldiers, I mean recruits, are billeted in a factory. It looks like a sugar factory to me. The cavalry and artillery, who are with the Etappendienst, that is bringing food and ammunition to the front, and serve as watchmen, are billeted in the village.

The whole factory is now furnished as barracks.  Canteen etc all in place. We don’t have beds yet, we sleep on the floor on a bed of hay, on which we have laid our fieldblanket. I have slept very well up to now.

I rather have this than a bed with bugs. Undressing is of course out of the question, but you get used to that quickly. I feel very well, and I’ve also grown accustomed to the mud. You can wash yourself here only rarely, because there's not enough water for everyone.  All the water here is polluted and the waterfilter works only slowly, so there is never enough for everyone.  Today I have washed myself twice, to celebrate the day. Don’t get any grey hairs over it, you get accustomed to it very quickly.

The food is very good here. It’s soldier’s food but it tastes excellent. We don’t get much, but we won’t starve. There’s always enough coffee, chocolatemilk and bread. And I can always buy chocolate, oranges etc, but I hope you can send me some food. The things you can buy are not of the best quality.

My address is actually 2 Rekruten Batt.  Send me please, if possible, some spare batteries for my flashlight. I can really use them here.

Well, end. Many greetings from your Fritz.  I hope father is doing better.



*And this is where Fritz changes from Deutsche Kurrent script to Latin script :

the letter of 5 February 1915:

and his letter of 7 February 1915:

(Much to my relief actually, as Deutsche Kurrent is/can be a complete nightmare to decipher!)

Does put into context that puzzling sentence from letter #8 - Kevelaer 27 January 1915 :
"I will come back, when needed, to the suggestion about the Latin characters"

Fritz did have one relapse into Deutsche Kurrent , but apart from that one time all his further letters/cards are in Latin script.