Prellbock, 6
September 1915
[Monday]
Dear
family,
I received
mother’s letters of the 28th and 1st, and upto now parcels nr 297, 298, 299,
300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305. Many thanks for everything.
Yesterday I
mailed you filmroll nr 4 with the following exposures:
No. 1
failed, No. 2 Heinrich Mais, No.3 nothing, No. 4 me, No. 5 someone else, No. 6
N.N., No. 7 nothing, No. 8 N.N., No. 9 group with French machinegun, No. 10 the
enlisted gentlemen of the Prellbock,
No. 11 The gentlemen Feldwebel Lieth
from Elberfeld and Offizierstellvertreter
Scheffel from Barmen, who goes on holiday on the 8th and would
like to pick up the photographs at yours,
No. 12 H.Pass
etc with the Scherenfernrohr at the Stammheim [Company-headquarters] [*1]
No. 1-9
were taken in the Stennes trenches
near the Prellbock, No. 10-11 at the Prellbock itself, and No. 12 in the Stammheim. 3 failed unfortunately, I
wasn’t quite awake yet when I took those. Number of prints as per usual. Maybe
this time, by exception, 2 of No. 9 for
every person on it, same for No. 10 and 3 for the Feldwebel, No. 11 and 5 also 3 prints.
I didn’t
mention No. 11, those are both the Feldwebels
of the Prellbock.
And now to
mother’s letter of 28th August. I am happy mother read Sanghofer’s
book [*2]. I’ve read it too, here in the library.
Please have
mother send Mr. Ganghofer my regards, and that I thank him for the compliment
he made us, but for the future I do hope he has the goodness to be so kind as
to go and write novels again, it suits him better.
You can
better read the similar book by Sven Hedin[*3]. I can’t really stomach the twaddle
by that other young man.
I’m glad to
hear the song I wrote you about is not known in Barmen. It seems to be sung
more in Cologne and surroundings. [See letter nr 74].
It greatly,
really greatly, surprised me you guessed that those tins are in fact
handgrenades, also because it says on the rim: “Before use – not “don’t shake”-
but “Insert detonator””, which in reality is already in there.
And you know
everything about the use of mirrors too! One thing you don’t know is that we
don’t use large mirrors but small ones. We dó have large mirrors in wooden
boxes, but they’re shot to pieces too often, as you can see on Photograph nr
30, in the right hand corner. [*5]
It’s a
sport for me these days to shoot at Tommy’s mirrors/perioscopes, and I’ve hit a
whole lot of them already, including one Scherenfernrohr.
[*4]
The fight I
described you was only an exercise [see letter nr 74], and our Leutnant did not get the Iron 1st
for thát, it was awarded to him at that time for proven bravery before. As I already wrote you he really díd deserve
it, through his patrols etc. He is not one of those officers who hides in his
bomb-free dugout, and pulls the blankets over his head, when the going gets a
little tough.
Unfortunately
officers like that dó exist. Take e.g. a Leutnant
of the M.G.K. (Machine Gewehr
Kompanie = the machinegunners). If he shows up at the Prellbock, and he
irritates the Machinegun guys in one way or the other, then one of them –
without him seeing it of course – throws a handgrenade over the parapet, and
one minute later Herr Leutnant is
gone again, thinking Tommy is firing
grenades.
Now to mother’s
list of questions from the 1st of this month.
First of
all those mysterious things from the earlier letters, which you cannot place,
but then nobody can. Well, I can just as well write you what it is. In about
6-7 weeks I’m eligible for holidays. Every week 10 men of the Kompanie go away for 10 days. I really wanted
to surprise you by waltzing in one fine morning.
But
because, as they tell us here, vast amounts of troops are sent here from the
East, I don’t think anything will come from it, and we’ll be on our way to
London by then. I’d expected Mrs Mais to have spoken to mother about that
already.
But to the
photographs now: [see letters 73 and 74
for the photographs]
No. 1 and 2
are both from my group, No. 1 from Barmen, No. 2 from Schwelm.
By the way:
during the day we have to stand guard for 2 hours, and at night 2 x 2 hours.
Sitting is actually forbidden.
Otto
Mertens is not grim at all, but very funny most of the time, just like I am not
at all so trauerklötig [depressed, gloomy]
as I appear on photographs. No. 7 is
indeed in the Uhrgraben (still
written with an h).
I don´t
have a print anymore of No. 8 so I unfortunately can´t answer mother´s question.
No. 12 is
not a lock, but the harbour of Auchy . Then I’d like to know why the person on
No. 13 would be Herr Pätzold. The
young man is still called Herr Gumpertz,
the very poetic editor of our Schützenzeitung.
Furthermore, as travelling salesman in cigars and cigarettes, and as K.I. [Korpsintendant?], a chatterbox/bletherer
first class.
And of
course everyone, of whom the photograph turned out okay, is véry happy. Surely
that goes without saying. Mother shouldn’t worry about that. By the way, as “Kompaniephotograph” [Company’s
photographer], I now get many invitations to come and have something to eat,
baked potatoes or Reibekuchen [Potatoe-pancakes],
which of course I always accept. Or somebody comes by “Shall I get you water
today?”, which I then decline.
Really a
shame some heads are missing on some photographs. My legs turned out well
though on No. 21.
No. 24: those
six guys are not ín the Stollen
[tunnel], that’s the group that works in Stollen
1. How do you imagine Stollen look like? As far as I know Stollen are still beneath the earth, and
it’s much too dark there to take photographs.
And why do
you think it’s cooks on No. 25? Those are Mineurs
[Miners]. Our fieldkitchen is in Auchy, and someone goes and gets the food
every afternoon in large kettles. Maybe mother thought they were cooks because
of that fine hat on the right, made out of a sandbag?
No. 26, the
straps are from a Brotbeutel [Breadbag].
On the post on the left hangs an alarm horn. This young man is called Herrn
Stoffel, his father is a Bandwirkermeister
[weaver] in Ferkesdorf [probaly a
nickname for an industrial town/area near Barmen].
No. 27 is
very old already, he is 22, and also from Barmen.
The 4 guys
on No. 29 did not capture that French machinegun themselves. I don’t know where
it comes from. In any case it’s not there on the Prellbock as a piece of art,
but to shoot at Tommy.
By the way:
those French machineguns are really not that good. Our German, and also
English, machineguns are much much better.
The cap on
No. 33 came from a shop in Auchy. Or did you not think we stripped Auchy of
everything to furnish our dugouts? Nowadays there’s hardly anything left there,
you have to go to La Bassée now if you want to find anything of use.
I’m
delighted to hear you have me, 100x enlarged from photograph no. 35, hanging
above the writingdesk. But it’s still a little too small for my liking. The
same size as the photograph of Aunt Vollmer, which hung above the heater upstairs,
would have been much nicer and more suitable, don’t you think? But well, the
photograph can rejoice about me not coming for a holiday.
Don’t have
any special wishes at the moment. Oh wait, there is one: please send me some
gun-oil again, and some sheets of sand cloth. And I’d like to remind you of my
special wish in my previous letter!
I hope you’re
contented with this letter, you see: it all goes fine if only I have questions
to answer.
With many
warm greetings also to everyone who asks after me.
Your Fritz.
[*1] Scherenfernrohr: a stereoscopic trench
periscope, seen here on the right.
Fritz most
probably writes about this book “Reise
zur deutschen Front 1915”, issued in 1915, a propagandistic book,
romanticising the war, about his trip to the front in January/February 1915.
Text freely
available here:
[*3] Sven
Hedin, a Swedish explorer.
[*4] From
the war-diary of 2nd Worcestershire Regiment (who were at Givenchy
at the time, on the other side of the canal from Fritz. So Fritz did not do
this, but it illustrates that other regiments had taken up this sport too)
18th
September 1915 (Givenchy)
“2nd Lieut. D.C.James was wounded
(while looking into a periscope, the upper part being hit by a German
sniper broke the glass which fell through the periscope and wounded this officer
in the right eye”
[*5] Photographs of the third roll of film, nrs
25-36
Of these I
have nrs 26 and 29. 25, 27, 30, and 31 I
plucked from the Internet.
Nr 28, 35
and 36 remain missing for the time being.
Nr 25
Nr 26
Nr 27
Nr 29
Nr 30
Nr 31
Nr 32
Nr 33
Nr 34
