LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Wallis constantly misses diversity in food, so as he may avoid eating only bread all mornings and evenings: “Send me just a box of butter, three-quarters of lard can is too big to carry in the backpack;”¹⁰² “Don’t send me sausages, I still have fat and honey, and that’s enough for me.”¹⁰³ Sometimes, he sent an entire list:

Send me lard, but wrap it in parchment, because I already found a suitable box, and there is not enough space for the second can; also one notebook, one pair of footwraps, writing paper (a few copies may be with the header of The Catholic), a tiny bottle of cherry juice, salt in paper, one pair of thick stockings with for change, ten Patenknöpfe [press studs], a few (5) newspapers because paper is useful, a little bread, not much, because I can’t find white bread anywhere without money, don’t send me sugar nor ←41 | 42→Eucaleptuz [eucalyptus sweets] because I still have some. Include a little bit of rubber plaster (Kautschukpflaster).¹⁰⁴

In this first period of duty, free time was an exceptional luxury for soldiers. Wallis mainly spent his free time writing letters and organizing his wardrobe. Exceptions were Sundays and holidays, if he was not on guard duty, when he could use his time on his own. These days the main attraction were more abundant and more varied meals. In the morning, the conscripts went for mass to a nearby church, divided by the confession Catholic and Evangelical confession.¹⁰⁵ After returning to the barracks, all had time off. Since the soldiers initially could go to the city, Wallis spent his free time on what he liked the most, namely reading. Everyone waited for the festive dinner: “For dinner was goulash, dried fruits, and unpeeled potatoes. It tasted great,”¹⁰⁶ he wrote on a Sunday in January. There was an exceptionally attractive meal on the occassion the Emperor’s birthday: “For dinner 3 noodles with sauce, pork, and apricots compote. It all tasted great. After dinner, each of us received a small bottle of beer…. We had sausage and coffee with bread for the supper.”¹⁰⁷

      Karol Małłek, who resided in Ostróda, was much more critical when it came to the relationships in the training units. The Mazurs who trained there suddenly found themselves at the very center of the centuries-old Prussian drill, in which non-commissioned officers and officers treated them as second-class people, while the training almost resembled the eighteenth-century Frederician system. It only lacked corporal punishments, abolished long ago. Małłek describes his first day of duty in the field artillery regiment as follows:

A wake-up call at 5.45 am…. Punctually, we heard the sound of trumpet. There was murmur and rumble in the barracks. We ran toward the stable…. The first stable initiation happened there, allegedly because we were late, even though it was five to six. Lance Corporal Hesse beat those unlucky, and he soon was to concentrate on our group. Hesse was a forty-year-old Alsatian of outstanding merit, because he wore the Iron Cross of the second class…. Our Lance Corporal was called Bäckle…. He arranged us in line according to height and began to tell us about our duties. “Everything here must be in order, understood?”, he started, “The guy, who arrives at the stable after me, will be beaten,” he threatened. Bäckle assigned horses to us…. Then Hesse gave each of us a currycomb and a brush and yelled: “Putz! Putz!” We started to clean the horses as good as we could. Farmers knew how, so they began from the horse’s head to the hind ←42 | 43→legs. Moreover, they used the cloth. They put the horse’s dirt through the brushes to the currycomb and with the currycomb to the porch. But those with no rural background were in a bad position! They brushed the horses here and there without any order. The two Lance Corporals strolled around the stable in a porch and closely watched their subordinates. Suddenly, they started whipping the our backs: “You wayward lices!” … After such a morning “warm-up,” we quickly washed manure off of our hands and sweat of our foreheads with stable tap water, then we ran to the barracks to wash ourselves more thoroughly, put on clean uniforms and long shoes, and breakfast…. At eight…. we started to trained the drill and listened to commands “Attention!” and “At ease!” The Corporal first showed us the basic movements and then told us to repeat them. We did everything excellently. He particularly liked my movements. I learned them already from Wendt during gymnastics classes at the Brody school. After two hours of exercises, we mastered this introductory lesson. It was time for break. We ran to the stable…. Everyone stood by their “assigned” horse, facing the porch. “The horses and harnesses that hang on the poles belong to you. All this must be kept clean and tidy! Understood?” shouted groom Breisack. Then, Breisack gathered us by my Quatern and described this horse, the saddle, and the individual parts of the harness. Next, he showed us how to fold and unfold the felt, put it on the horse’s back, and how to fit the girth, tie and untie it, and bridle the horse…. Finally, the sergeant began to teach us how to get on the horse and ride bareback…. Finally, after an hour of that torture, we heard the command yelled by the two Lance Corporals, “Go to the stable! Putz! Putz!” … It was only after feeding and watering the horses that we washed our hands and ran to eat lunch. It was already half past noon. They cheated half an hour from us again. For dinner we had pea soup with potatoes and some canned food. We ate it all and went home. Almost an hour. We went to beds and immediately started snoring. In half an hour, we heard: “Aufstehen!” Oh, how unwilling we were to get up! Some of us cried that we had to go to the square again and be ready for further activities. We marched off to the lecture hall to listen to the sergeant who told us about field artillery and batteries. We listened to him without any clue what was going on, because he spoke in a very difficult manner for a long time, while we were all tired and sleepy…. After the lecture, we quickly put on our drill uniforms and again ran down to the stable. Here, both Lance Corporals shouted: “Putz! Putz!” … During the assembly, the Head of the Battery introduced us to tomorrow’s schedule, which did not differ from today’s … The only difference was that three of our friends were assigned to twenty-four-hour stable duty. We performed it every sixth day. For dinner, we received half of mess tin of tea, ninety g[rams] of liver sausage, and one kilogram of bread for two days…. We barely ate and rested a little when it was already eight o’clock, time for cleaning. We started to clean our uniforms, shoes, leather, and other things. After an hour, everything was squeaky clean. Shortly before ten in the evening, we were in beds, waiting for the sound of the trumpet, and for the lights to go out.¹⁰⁸

      ←43 | 44→

      Interestingly, this kind of rigorous training did not differ much from the training of one-year volunteers; the only difference was that the superiors did not use violence toward their subordinates in the latter case. However, all the emphasis was on the implementation of thoughtless automaticity of behavior on the battlefield, and this was achieved by repeating the same actions in constantly induced stress; through haste, screaming, and physical effort at the verge of human capability:

Duty was very hard in the first half of the year. At least three hours every day were devoted to learning stunts with rifles. Excellent precision was attained by a huge amount of energy and effort and a complete stupefaction of recruits who started to move like automatons. Blisters appeared on their hands, knees stiffened, muscles contracted. We exercised on empty stomachs from five to six in the morning, then one hour after breakfast, and again one hour in the evening. After a few weeks, field duty started. The non-commission officers had here the opportunity to go hard on those intelligentsia-students! We were hurried until we passed out in the midst of sharp insults, screams, and rants. We listened to juicy vulgar vocabulary and amazing associations of concepts, for example, “You stand like a pregnant canary,” “Quicker! Curl up like an oiled lightning!”, “You walk like a lice on stomach!” And if someone made a mistake in a stunt or a phrase, he heard the terrible sentence: “Eine Stunde nachexerzieren!”, an hour of disciplinary punishment. Let’s add to that those disciplinary exercises – an opportunity for the corporal for extraordinary abuse

Скачать книгу