Poles in Kaisers Army On the Front of the First World War. Ryszard Kaczmarek
108 Rossignol inhabitants were arrested and accused of attacking German soldiers; ninety-one were executed.212
The German soldiers’ fear of the French partisans not always had a rational basis as it did in Rossignol. Sometimes, it was just an excuse for robberies, as mentions by one of the Greater Poland soldiers who fought in France along the Bavarians:
We approach a village. Assault it and clear of Franktireurs. The Germans rule this place as if it was their own already on the first day. One house is still closed. They use gunstocks to open the door and windows. Our two Bavarians move inside fist. The kitchen, they again use stocks to open cabinets and drawers. A clatter of shattered pots and, in a flash, there is a big pile of shards in the middle of the kitchen. They use stocks to open the next door. Thebedroom. A pale young woman in bed. They remove the eiderdown that covers her, she sits upright on the bed and points out at the baby lying next to her that was born a couple of days ago. They hit her thigh with a stock. She jumps off the bed and folds her hands, begging them to save her and her baby. “Are you crazy! To treat a ←77 | 78→sick woman like that” – Zaklicki tells them, interceding for her. “Oh, you must be her friend! She may hide a Frankiteur under her bed” – two Bavarians answer him…. The woman lies in her underwear with the child on the floor next to the wall, she trembles, looks lurid, but cries and begs no more. They turn the bed upside down, threw everything out of the wardrobes in the niches, they even broke the paintings that hang on the wall and throw them at the middle of the room. Because a Franktireur could have also hidden behind a painting. The house is full of soldiers. They look everywhere. The same destruction in every room. All the things onto a single pile. Savage lust of destruction.213
Similar civilian tragedies occurred in the first months of the war in front of many Poles. Bogdan Hulewicz recalls two particularly dramatic situations. The first is the bombardment of the already-seized Belgian Louvain by the German artillery. All the inhabitants had to leave their houses for an attack on a German patrol. However, before that happened, the Germans attacked with incendiary ammunition, which caused a sudden fire that overtook the majority of houses and burned nearly 1000 houses; many Belgians remained at homes as they did not believe that the Germans would decide to bombard an unprotected town.214
A Polish officers candidate suffered even more during the execution of two innocent young Belgians who were thought to be spies:
The boys came from a nearby village. They rode down the road on bikes and every one of them was thought to be a spy. There was an order to shoot down every cyclist close to the brigade (Alle belgische Radfahrer im Bereich der Brigade sind zu erschiessen). Bikes are good, they will be useful to the company. Boys received an order to dig ditches: they were executed on the spot. Until the very end, they did not understand what is going on. They rode this road every day; they were sixteen years old…. During the bivouac, the soldiers commented on the bombardment and burning of Louvain. No one mentioned the execution of “the cyclists-spies.” They knew that captain Rabius did not like it. They praised the bombardment of the city: “after all, they did not shoot at us when we were in transport. The Franktireurs are criminals, they deserve punishment, they shot at us.”215
There is quite a grotesque story about the use of this – popular during the war – word to describe French infiltrators. In 1914, at the very beginning of the war, the state prohibited the use of many popular French words in German language. The sole exception was the word “Franktireur” because, as it was explained, it signifies “the enemy’s disgrace so no one could possibly replace it with a German word.”216
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Other regiments also underwent their baptism of fire, although, it was not always as bloody as under Rossignol. In all cases, it happened in the third decade of August, 1914.
Moving to the fortress of Longwy, the 22nd Infantry Regiment came under artillery fire behind Niederkorn (near Esch). It was the first time that the soldiers could witness the consequences of field artillery shrapnel and light bullets assault. The troop did not suffer any losses. Everything was like during the maneuvers. When the fire stopped, the local civilians treated the soldiers to milk and buns.217 At the beginning of the war, the fear of shrapnel fire was very high because they wreaked havoc among the infantry and the cavalry in the nineteenth century. Cartridges, usually filled with more than 200 leaden bullets, usually exploded in the middle of a column or in front of an assaulting infantry.218 Kazimierz Wallis describes his first encounter with such a weapon as a dramatic experience:
At 5 am, there began shrapnel fire from both sides. The shrapnel exploded at our left, behind nearby trenches. The shrapnel are something terrible when you see it for the first time. Only slowly can you get used to it. Way off in the distance, you see a flash of the shot, then a few seconds of silence. Soon, you can hear a hum and whizz of approaching shrapnel. After that, they explode with a bang louder than the sound of any powerful grenade heard from close distance, and then thousands of iron fragments spray in every direction. You see a fireball, how it blows out with a crash, particularly in the darkness. If a shrapnel explodes right above the ground, then an entire cloud of soil and stones rises above the ground. Yesterday, we sat in dugouts during the fire. Only after each shot could we check to see the effects of each shot. In a half an hour, the shrapnel fire stopped.219
After the transition to trench warfare, the effectiveness of such ammunition considerably decreased. Shrapnel were only effective in open field combat.
On August 21, the German soldiers finally crossed the French border near Hussigny. The village was already conquered, there was a German flag on the church tower. The effects of war were quite clear here: Hussigny was partly burned and ruined while few civilians, including women and children, stood frightened in front of the houses that were left. Here also occurred an attack that many associated with the French infiltrators, when someone fired the German dragoon cavalcade.220
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For the 22nd Infantry Regiment, the baptism of fire happened during the clash near Cutry, on August 22–23. The unit’s task was to break the line between the fortress in Verdun and Longwy. The fortification was surrounded by the ring of villages conquered by Germans in the French department Meurthe-et-Moselle in Lorraine. After reaching the hills near Cutry, a regiment found itself under artillery fire that fell the first soldiers. Two companies of the Third Battalion turned into an extended line to the east of the village, in which the French shooters hid in houses, still perfectly visible due to their red trousers (“visible as poppy blossom”). A single machine gun fired from the church tower and ceased only after a gunshot exchange with the German machine gun company. Nevertheless, the German infantry assault collapsed; but after the arrival of the heavy artillery at the nearby hills, the German’s could shell the village and the church. It was then that there occurred a rare instance of a classic line infantry assault, unusually in this trench warfare:
They were so sure about their victory that they started an assault without waiting for the cover of their own artillery. With the bayonets, drums, and trumpeter’s command “Forward!”, they reached the burning village, totally oblivious to the fire of their cannons, as they ran screaming “Hooray!” They pushed the enemy out of Cutry after a short fight, also with civilian participants.221
At 3.30 pm, the French conducted a counterattack preceded with artillery fire. They completely destroyed two batteries of the German 11th Field Artillery Regiment on a hill. All horses and almost entire cannon