[…]
1026. 11.17. Slept magnificently at the hotel, after having led a dirty gypsy’s life since last Saturday. Cologne is sensational, polished to a smoothness, and large. Particularly impressed by it last night! The affluence in the main streets, those people in uniform! The mad railroad station. Right in front of it, that more-than-lifesize museum piece, the cathedral. The Hohenzollern bridge, totally dark and heavily guarded. The river. The sharp beams of four wily searchlights. Far above the towers of the cathedral, the bright little bar of a Zeppelin, manoeuvring gracefully, speared by one of the beams. I have never seen any city put on such a nocturnal spectacle, truly a solemn festival of evil.
Stroll over the bridges. Had coffee for breakfast. Museum: Bosch, Breughel, ‘Crucifixion’ by the Master of the ‘Life of Mary’. Cathedral. Lunched at the Red Cross by the main railroad station, then went to the Artists’ Association, then to the Deutsche Ring, as a courtesy to Wildermann, and had a look at his sculptures on the children’s playground. Strolled along the Rhine, pastry shop, dinner again at the station, left for Frankfurt at 8 p.m.
[…]
1917
1089. 10.22. Arrived safely here, was glad I took the next to last train. Found much work waiting for me. Paymaster away on a trip. ‘It must be done and shall be done. We’ll manage it.’
10.24. Just enough work. The doctor went on leave yesterday, amid much fussing and protracted preparations. I hurry so as to have some free time, since the office is now very peaceful and makes a good studio in the evening.
10.26. I again work more in black and white than in colour. Colour seems to be a little exhausted just now; new reserves have to accumulate. If it weren’t for the duties, this might be a good time to push my plastic experiments further. This is probably the only damage inflicted on me by the war. For whether I’ll catch up on it later is questionable; perhaps I shall then stand at a point outside of this domain.
1090. 10.27. No miracle occurred. As the only one present, I had to be on duty and shall have to be on duty again tomorrow morning, since there will be flying. Otherwise I might at least lock the office. Perhaps the weather will be favourable in the afternoon and I’ll be able to pay a last visit to the meadows along the Lech, which have become so dear to me, before the end of autumn. I worked yesterday and today as if I were at home; the only difference being that I work in my drawer, which protects me against surprises.
It was a black day for the flying school; in the morning one cadet crashed and broke a number of bones; in the afternoon a lieutenant crashed to his death from a considerable height. Guten Appetit for tomorrow’s Sunday flying. To be sure, I sit here safe and warm and feel no war within me. The battle of Isonzo, which is becoming a disaster for the Italians, is, moreover, only being fought there so we can return home a bit sooner.
Tagore is not very heavy reading. I prefer to read the excellent futuristic lansquenet’s song about the battle of Pavia or some other good work about this area. I wonder whether civilians can still travel unhampered or whether they need a pass? This is also very important.
[…]
1918
1106. 2.21. This week we had three fatal casualties; one man was smashed by the propeller, the other two crashed from the air! Yesterday, a fourth came ploughing with a loud bang into the roof of the workshop. Had been flying too low, caught on a telephone pole, bounced on the roof of the factory, turned a somersault, and collapsed upside down in a heap of wreckage. People came running from all sides; in a second the roof was black with mechanics in working clothes. Stretchers, ladders. The photographer. A human being pulled out of the debris and carried away unconscious. Loud cursing at the by-standers. First-rate movie effect. This is how a royal regiment celebrated a golden wedding. In addition, three smashed airplanes are lying about in the vicinity today. It was a fine show.
1107. 2.25. Another Sunday in camp! Paymaster suddenly forced to go on leave. I worked a lot, at least. Painted and drew and ended by forgetting completely where I was. In amazement, I caught sight of the horrible warrior’s boots on my feet.
HORACE PIPPIN (1888–1946) was an African-American painter, born in Pennsylvania to a domestic worker. He fought in France as a corporal in the U.S. Army in 1917 and was shot in his painting arm. He was sent home in 1919. No changes have been made to the following letter, written around 1943.
my Dear friends
my life story of art. that is my art. and no one else, I will not go in to detail of all of my life. But I will hit on some of the hilights. for instant when I were a Boy I loved to make Pictures, no one paide me aney minde. But the sunday school gave a fistival this is in Goshen n.y. the A M. E [African Methodist Episcopal] — Churtch. for the sunday school members were to Give somtheing to sell. so I went to a stor and got a yard of muslin and cut it into 6 pieces and fringed them, then I drew Pictures on them such as Jesus ascending in to Heaven and so on, they were sold that night, to some one, a weeke after a old lady called me and said, did you — make them 6 doilies. I tole her I did and she said to me look at this and showed me one of the doilies. and said I washed them this is all that I have of them. and I seen a cleen pice of matieral in her hand. she did not realier that they were made with crayon; so time went on. on tell the war of 1917. I went over seas with the old 15th n.y. inf. fighting no 369 inf; this Brought out all of all the art in me. I made some seens of france, something like a hundred of them yet at last i hatto to given them up, But I can never forget suffering, and I will never forget sunset. that is when you could see it, so I came home with all of it in my mind, and I Paint from it to Day, I no nothing this is my – feature art – it came the hard way with me; I thank you,
Horace Pippin
327 W. Jay st
West Chester
P.A.
STEPHEN GRAHAM (1884–1975) was a writer born in Edinburgh. He fought in the Scots Guards as a private during the war, and wrote about his experiences in A Private in the Guards (1919). He also published works of travel writing, detailing his journeys around Russia, Jerusalem and the Rockies. The passage below is from another work of travel writing, The Challenge of the Dead (1921). In this book he visits the battlefields of the Western Front after the war.
But no rhyme in any language ever expressed that lurid splash on the night-sky when a bomber was destroyed, that effusion of crimson which caused men’s eyes to dilate looking up at it, that sense of dreadfulness and awe and satisfaction, that banishment of pity through fear’s reaction which steeped men’s minds, as if on the floor of their souls an answering red glow appeared. It was tragical to be bombed, but how much more so to see the bomber die. They died most dreadful deaths, those Zeppelin crews and aero-bus teams, and yet of course they merely died. They met the common soldier’s destiny— Nevertheless you could not lessen the sensation of watching an airman’s death by reasonableness. In the lurid spectacle in the heavens men saw not death but a hieroglyphic – a sign.
Men did not liken them to Lucifer cast from heaven, but their fall was like the rebel angels’ fall –
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition.
Day-flying was different and affected the mind in an entirely different way. Even the stricken night-bomber, when his charred remains were seen by daylight, became in enemies’ eyes nothing but honourable. The triumph over him was forgotten in a sort of triumph in him. There was a naturally chivalrous attitude towards dead airmen. That chivalry was sometimes spoiled by human jackals – but the majority nevertheless instinctively preserved it.
Many of the graves of our airmen were marked by crosses which are adorned with carven wings, and in this speaks not only a military but a human pride. Foot-soldiers did not see in the aeroplane a mere mechanical contrivance but a new human victory over matter. The feats of airmen flattered pedestrian souls, who knew thereby that they could fly if they would, flattered us all. Because men had to enter some section of the fighting services thousands chose to fly and fight
who otherwise would not have been tempted off the firmer elements of land and sea. They conquered the first nausea of fear, and learned to live with danger as with a wife. They tumbled above us and we marvelled, not taking anywise into account the war-sting which started them, bidding neither sit nor stand but go. One is not sorry that the guns speak no more. One is not sorry that the night-bombers and Zeppelins have ceased to menace us. But the emptiness of the heavens by day has its sadness now in France, its human wanness and melancholy. One realises that the war brought out the flier – as it were before his time, and we must wait long ere we see in peace the state of air society which he prefigured.
Down below the airmen trudged heavy-footed men. The airmen were literally supermen; those below were a sort of undermen. In heavily weighted boots, with backs bent and not straightened by war’s routine, with clumsily encumbered bodies, trudged under-humanity, through mud, along gullies, into holes and pits, down into subterranean chambers. The underman enjoyed no human exaltation except occasionally at the prospect of getting free; he had no mercurial lightness on his heels, no rapid quicksilver of mounting imagination; instead, he was gripped downward and held till he died or there was peace. It used to be a common saying that from the moment you stepped off at Havre you were a slave. You walked in the chains of the war. Men’s hearts hardened. They told themselves they wanted nothing and cared nothing. Their minds fell victims to a dull passivity or false boisterousness. They banished the bright ego and took up with a Cerberus, yowled the dog-language of the army, and got selfishly irate over biscuits and slops and bully-beef. They grew more and more dirty and came out in boils. Coarse hair grew apace, brows grew lower, hands that had any cunning in them grew to mere claws and clutches, eyes dullened, and the ear-gate stood ajar for the sound of animal noises and animal confessions. The war was a Bacchanalia for the animal in man.
MARTIN HIEBER (1891–1917) was a student of law at Tübingen and flew fighter planes over the Western Front in the war. He was born on 18 June 1891 at Tuttlingen, Germany, and was killed on 6 July 1917, near Brimont (Rheims).
December 4th, 1916.
… I have always disliked hearing people talk of the aviator as the ‘Conqueror of the Air’; of his pride in having fulfilled the dream, the longing of humanity; of the sublime sensation of being able to accomplish so much more than the feeble little beings crawling about down there on the earth, down there among the trees, roads and meadows. So much in the descriptions of those who had once ‘been up’ seemed to me exaggerated, or like the bragging of a scorching ‘road-hog’. The flying-man who really flies does not talk about his feelings, for when one knows that everything depends on such small details, then the super-man attitude vanishes. One has a roaring engine in front of one which effectually prevents any sensation of ‘boundless space and solitude’. Only gradually does one get, in addition to the consciousness of forming part of a branch of war-service where the individual man does still count for something, a real appreciation of the beauties which are continually revealed during a flight. And another feeling may be bound up with this – that of having a pull over the rest of mankind, who can’t see all these things, just as the Alpine climber prides himself on being superior to people who can’t reach such heights as himself.
The sensation of conquest is also, I think, only acquired by degrees. The Pilot is haunted at first by the stories of Daedalus and Icarus; but later, when he gains in self-confidence, he is certainly more to be envied than the Observer, who after all, during a flight, occupies more the position of looker-on. My heart swells when I look down on the sunlit earth and see the mountain ranges stretched below me and the streams finding their way through the marvellous colour-scheme of green woods and meadows, dark blue sea, violet mist on the vanishing horizon, and pink cloud. The almost flat landscape here on the Somme is exceptionally beautiful from above. The broad valley with its shimmering marshes; the villages with their lush meadows; the yellowish-gold of cornfields; the roads pencilling delicate lines through this mosaic; the intervening shadows of hills: all this constitutes such a wealth of colour and form that one can hardly take in all the details at once.
But beyond the Somme and farther north – the raging battle; the churned-up earth; the blazing and smoking ruins; the never-ceasing flashes and explosions of shells; the suddenly rising columns of smoke; the constant roar of drum-fire which smothers everything in dirt and smoke: this is a gruesomely beautiful spectacle.
One only receives these impressions by degrees; the war-picture, especially, only develops quite slowly because it takes time and leisure to grasp it all, and both these conditions are only possible on the Somme during ‘lucid intervals’. For here the feeling of ‘boundless solitude’ does not exist. About fifty aeroplanes are always whizzing about in the air. From one side a squadron of five machines is approaching; and there flies one of our Leader-Planes; there are so many observations to be made, and one must not lose touch with the rest of the Flight. Moreover it is all at the rate of 250 miles an hour. Over on the enemy’s side Caudrons and Farmans, Nieuports and B.E.’s are flying round. One can hardly distinguish friend from foe. A one-seater fighting plane goes up – one is on the alert to see if he drops – an anti-aircraft shell bursts close to one and one has to bank – four Nieuports are rising skyward, so one must get the machine-gun into position and signal to the Leader – a Nieuport is attacking a German plane – away to help him – a Halberstadt is swooping down on a Frenchman – one must have one’s eyes everywhere at once. And while a fight is going on in the air – when one hears the rattle of bullets – when a Nieuport is right on top of one – or (what has only happened once so far) when he is hit and hurtles to the ground – Hurrah! – one has not much time for enjoying the ‘boundless space and solitude’!
SIDNEY ROGERSON (1894–1968) published his First World War memoir, Twelve Days, in 1933. The memoir focuses on a brief period of what B. H. Liddell Hart, in the foreword, described as the ‘fag-end’ of the Battle of the Somme (1916).
For two reasons it is difficult to convey a satisfactory impression of that camp’s surroundings. First, one had lost the habit of looking afield. This was due to the cramping effect of trench life, where a man was a member of a very small community from which, sleeping or waking, he was never separated, and was confined for days at a stretch within the narrow limits of a trench. ‘Keep your head down’ was a piece of advice which became second nature, with the result that, metaphorically speaking, he slunk about from hole to hole, from one piece of cover to the next, his head down, not daring, or else forgetting, to look about him. His vision changed, he began to lose the wider view, and instead to see falconwise the minutest details around, details which will ever survive in his memory. How many men who fought and lived around Ypres or Arras for months carry any mental picture of the general aspect of the countryside? But ask them to describe the Kirchner pictures pinned to the walls of their dug-out, the particular brand of bully-beef tin which hung on the wire, and they will find little difficulty.
Secondly, we had grown accustomed to living in a region where almost every natural landmark had been obliterated. Country that had once been the twin sister of the Sussex Downs, with little comfortable villages nestling round their churches in the folds of the hills, had been battered into a vast monotony of drab. Churches, houses, woods, and hedgerows had all disappeared. Our landmarks were provided for us in the shape of military noticeboards in the back areas, or by such débris as wrecked aeroplanes, derelict tanks, dead horses, and even dead men nearer the front line.
Suffice it, therefore, to say that the camp was situated on an open space of what had once been grassland between the mangled remains of Trones and Bernafay Woods. The distance was shrouded by rain and mist, from out of which the boom of gunfire came distant and muffled.
‘Camp 34’ itself was a camp in name only – a few forlorn grounds of rude tarpaulin-sheet shelters huddled together, as though they shrank from the surrounding desolation. One or two b
ell-tents there were, it is true, here and there, but even they looked as unhappy as if they knew themselves to be but insecurely at anchor in the rising sea of mud. Though even these few tarpaulin-sheets and bell-tents might have been sufficient shelter for the pitiful remnant of the Scottish regiment, they were entirely inadequate for a Battalion more or less up to strength. Since no shelter had been prepared for us, necessity forced us to take steps to procure it for ourselves. In other words, we were reduced to looting, or in the more picturesque language of the ranks, ‘scrounging’ additional cover. With the grim determination of the British soldier, bedraggled men set off with the hearty approval, if not the verbal permission, of their officers to see what they could find. I am not ashamed to confess that, unofficially, I strongly encouraged the more experienced soldiers – who were therefore less likely to be caught! – to scour the dripping countryside for anything likely to improve the company’s accommodation, and even gave them permission to leave the camp ‘to visit the canteen, sir.’ Needless to say, that canteen was never discovered, but other valuable things were.
So far as I was concerned, the first incident was the arrival of the Colonel, imperturbable as always, though inwardly raging at the lack of organisation which subjected men going in to battle to such experiences. Behind him, looking indescribably sheepish, stood my young servant, Briggs.
‘I congratulate you on your servant,’ the Colonel said casually. ‘Why, sir?’ I queried. ‘Well, as I walked into the very commodious trench shelter reserved for Battalion Headquarters, I saw your man walking out at the other end with the stove. And you hadn’t been in camp five minutes! A good boy, that. But I’m sorry I could not spare the stove!’ The Colonel smiled, and moved on.
Every minute saw an addition to ‘camp stores’, the greatest triumph being the purloining, by Privates Purkiss and Kiddell, from under the very noses of the rightful owners, of a huge balloon tarpaulin which proved big enough of itself to house more than half the company! In less than a couple of hours I was satisfied that reasonably dry and warm quarters had been contrived for every man, of B Company at least. Meanwhile, a hot meal had been issued from the cookers and – the rain stopped. Spirits began to mount again, and as a setting sun was wanly mirrored in the water-logged shell-holes, snatches of song began to rise with the smoke of braziers from the improvised shelters.