TUESDAY, 4 AUGUST 1914
Elfriede Kuhr watches the 149th Infantry regiment leaving Schneidemühl
A summer evening. Warm air. Faint music in the distance. Elfriede and her brother are indoors, at home at Alte Bahnhofstrasse 17, but they can hear the sound. It slowly grows louder and they realise what is happening. They rush out into the street and away towards the yellow fortresslike railway station. The square in front of the station is swarming with people and the electric lighting is on—Elfriede thinks that the drab white light makes the leaves on the chestnut trees look as if they are made of paper.
She climbs up on the iron railings that separate the station building from the crowded square. The music is coming nearer. She sees a goods train standing waiting at Platform 3. She sees that the engine is steamed up. She sees that the wagon doors are open and through them she catches a glimpse of reservists, still in civilian clothes, going off to be mobilised. The men lean out and wave and laugh. Meanwhile the sounds of the music are growing louder and louder, ringing out clearly through the air of the summer evening. Her brother shouts: "They're coming! Here comes the 149th!"
This is what everyone has been waiting for: the 149th Infantry Regiment, the town's own unit. They are on their way to the Western Front. "The Western Front"—a very new term indeed, and Elfriede has never heard of such a thing until today. The war is about the Russians, isn't it? Everyone knows that. The German army is mobilising in response to the Russian mobilisation and everyone knows that the Russians are going to attack soon.* It is the threat from the east that is occupying the minds of people living here in Pomerania, and Schneidemühl is no exception to that. The Russian border lies less than a hundred miles away and the main railway line from Berlin to Konigsberg runs through the town, which will presumably make it a self-evident target for the powerful enemy in the east.
The same thing is true, more or less, of the people of Schneidemühl as of the politicians and generals who, fumbling, groping and stumbling, have led Europe into war: information exists but it is almost always incomplete or out of date, and for lack of facts has been padded out with guesses, suppositions, hopes, fears, idees fixes, conspiracy theories, dreams, nightmares and rumours. Just as in tens of thousands of other towns and villages all over the continent, the picture of the world in Schneidemühl these days has been formed out of hazy and deceptive material of that kind—rumour, in particular. Elfriede Kuhr is twelve years old, a restless and intelligent girl with sandy-coloured hair and green eyes. She has heard people say that French planes have bombed
Nuremberg, that a railway bridge near Eichenried has been attacked, that Russian troops are moving towards Johannisburg, that Russian agents tried to murder the Crown Prince in Berlin, that a Russian spy attempted to blow up the aeroplane factory on the edge of town, that a Russian agent tried to infect the communal water supply with cholera and that a French agent has tried to blow up the bridges over the River Küddow.
None of this is true, but that emerges only later. Just now people seem prepared to believe anything, the more unbelievable the better.
For the people of Schneidemühl, as for the majority of Germans, this is ultimately seen as a defensive war, a war that has been forced on them and which they have no choice but to see through to its conclusion. They and their counterparts in similar towns and villages in Serbia, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, Belgium and Great Britain are filled with both fear and hope and, not least, with a warm and powerful feeling of self-righteousness because they are now facing a momentous struggle against the forces of darkness. A wave of emotions surges over Schneidemühl, Germany and Europe, sweeping everything and everyone before it. But what we perceive as darkness is to them light.
Elfriede hears her brother shouting and then she sees it for herself. Here they come, row upon row of soldiers in grey uniforms, short boots of pale, untanned leather, huge knapsacks and pickelhaubes with grey cloth covers. A military band is marching in front and as they approach the great crowd of people at the station they strike up the tune that everyone knows so well. The soldiers sing it and, when they come to the chorus, the spectators immediately join in. The song roars out like thunder in the August night:
Lieb' Vaterland, magst ruhig sein
Lieb' Vaterland, magst ruhig sein
Feststeht und treu die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein!
Fest steht und treu die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein!**
The air reverberates to the sound of drums, the tramp of boots, the singing and the cheering. Elfriede notes in her diary:
Then the 149th marched up shoulder to shoulder and streamed onto the platform like a grey tidal wave. All the soldiers had long garlands of flowers around their necks or pinned on their breasts. Asters, stocks and roses stuck out of the rifle barrels as if they were intending to shoot flowers at the enemy. The soldiers' faces were serious. I had expected them to be laughing and exultant.
Elfriede does, however, see one laughing soldier—a lieutenant whom she recognises. His name is Schon and she watches him bidding farewell to his relations and then pushing his way through the crowd. She sees the bystanders patting him on the back, embracing him and kissing him. She wants to shout to him, "Hello, Lieutenant Schon," but she doesn't dare.
The music plays, a sea of hats and handkerchiefs waves above the crowd, the train with the civilian-clad reservists whistles and pulls away, and everyone in the crowd cheers, shouts and waves. The 149th will soon be leaving too. Elfriede jumps down from the railings. She is swallowed up by the throng and feels as if she is being smothered. She sees an old woman, eyes red with weeping, who is screaming in heartrending tones: "Little Paul! Where is my little Paul? Let me at least see my son!" Elfriede, standing there crushed in this jostling and jolting mass of backs and arms and bellies and legs, does not know who Paul is. Shaken, or possibly simply thankful to have something to focus on in this overwhelming confusion of images and sounds and emotions, Elfriede says a quick prayer: "Please God, protect this Paul and bring him back to the woman! Please God, please, please, please!"
She watches the soldiers march past and a little boy alongside her sticks his hand pleadingly through the cold bars of the iron railings: "Soldier, soldier, goodbye!" One of the grey-uniformed men reaches out and shakes the hand: "Farewell, little brother!" Everyone laughs, the band plays "Deutschland, Deutschland, iiber alles" and some of the crowd sing along with it. A long train, decorated with flowers, puffs into Platform 1. At a call on the bugle the soldiers immediately begin to climb aboard to the sounds of oaths, jokes and commands. A soldier hurrying to catch up with the rest passes Elfriede as she stands there behind the railings. She plucks up courage and stretches out her hand to him, shyly mumbling, "Good luck!" He looks at her, smiles and takes her hand as he passes: "Until we meet again, little girl!"
Elfriede's eyes follow him and watch him climb into one of the goods wagons. She sees him turn round and look at her. Then the train jerks into motion, slowly at first and then faster.
The cheering rose to a roar, the soldiers' faces crowded in the open doors, flowers flew through the air and all at once many of the people in the square began to weep.
"Until we meet again! We'll be home with you soon!"
"Don't be afraid! We'll soon be back!"
"We'll be back to celebrate Christmas with Mum!"
"Yes, yes, yes—come back in one piece!"
And from the moving train comes the sound of a powerful song. She can catch only part of the refrain: ".. . in der Heimat, in der Heimat, da gibt's ein Wiedersehen!"*** Then the wagons disappear into the night and are gone. Into the darkness and warm air of summer.
Elfriede is deeply moved. She walks home, choking back tears. As she walks she holds the hand the soldier touched out in front of her as if it contains something very valuable and very fragile. As she climbs the badly lit steps to the porch of Alte Bahnhofstrasse 17 she kisses her hand, quickly.
* Which was quite true: before the end of the month there were two Russian armies on German territory.
** "Dear fatherland, put your mind at rest, / Fast stands, and true, the Watch, the Watch on the Rhine!" "Die Wacht am Rhein" had the status of a kind of unofficial German national anthem from the middle of the nineteenth century.
*** "... at home, at home—that's where we'll meet again."
~ From The Beauty and the Sorrow by Peter Englund, p. 6