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Authors: Peter Englund
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between Saint-Pierre and Tours, he eavesdrops on a conversation between two families: “Both of them talked of the men they had lost in terrifying tones of resignation, as if they were simply talking about the victims of a natural catastrophe.”
In Angoulême a man on a stretcher is carried on board and placed in a neighbouring compartment. The man has been wounded in the back by a shell splinter and is now lame. He has a nurse travelling with him to tend his wound. There is also a blonde woman whom Corday takes to be either the injured man’s wife or his mistress. He hears the woman say to the nurse, “He refuses to believe that I still love him.” When the nurse goes to wash her hands after examining the wound, the blonde woman and the injured man begin to kiss passionately. When the nurse returns she pretends not to notice and just looks out into the night.
A small non-commissioned officer is sitting in the same compartment as Corday. He has just returned from the front. The two men chat. At four o’clock in the morning the train stops at a station and the soldier gets off. A girl throws herself at the little man and clings tightly to him. “Just to think that so much love, the love of all the mothers, sisters, wives and girl-friends, has so far proved powerless against all this hatred,” he thinks.
The kiosks at the stations they pass display rows of cheerfullycolourful illustrated papers, all of them with a publication date in the first days of August. No more have been printed since then. It is as if a new era has begun.
Laura de Turczynowicz and an acquaintance spend today in the Augustów Forest near Suwalki, searching for deserted or orphaned children. (They have already found several, including a four-year-old carrying a baby of six months, who were so desperately hungry they had been eating earth.) She meets a man who tells her that their summer villa has been destroyed by the Germans, but he has found Dash, the children’s white dog, alive. She writes:
Every hut was burnt down; gruesome work it was. Many times we saw dead men. I wondered why we struggled so to save our lives when so many had gone down. Going through the forest at dusk, we heard a child’s cry, but could not locate the sound. In our search a wounded horse plunging through the underbrush came upon us. He passed so near I could have touched him. Frightened, I clung to a tree for dear life.
WEDNESDAY , 4 NOVEMBER 1914
Pál Kelemen is wounded north of Turka
It is a beautiful night—starry, cold and with a bright moon. Pál Kelemen’s horse is reluctant to leave its warm stable and venture out in the chill, biting wind. The army is once again in retreat: forwards and back, forwards and back again. Since a new line of defence is being established, their orders are to see that the retreating units do not get stuck and come to a halt. By about two o’clock in the morning the new line should be ready and, hopefully, occupied by the fresh infantry that are already on their way up to the pass. The task Kelemen and his hussars have been given is close to impossible since it is difficult to gain any kind of overall picture of the situation in the darkness. The road is already in chaos. They ride slowly up against the flow, through a sluggish, grey stream of men, horses, wagons, guns, ammunition carts and pack-mules.
In the moonlight he sees what look like long, black streaks in the white snow: they are the freshly dug trenches. He can hear the sound of rifle fire—the Russians have begun to push forward there. He notes that the stream of retreating men has thinned out but that there are still scattered groups of fleeing troops. Kelemen and his men point them in the right direction. The road is icy and slippery as glass. They have to dismount and lead their horses. Kelemen writes in his journal:
Meantime the Russian artillery has commenced firing along the whole length of the front sector. I get into the saddle again and push ahead that way.
In Angoulême a man on a stretcher is carried on board and placed in a neighbouring compartment. The man has been wounded in the back by a shell splinter and is now lame. He has a nurse travelling with him to tend his wound. There is also a blonde woman whom Corday takes to be either the injured man’s wife or his mistress. He hears the woman say to the nurse, “He refuses to believe that I still love him.” When the nurse goes to wash her hands after examining the wound, the blonde woman and the injured man begin to kiss passionately. When the nurse returns she pretends not to notice and just looks out into the night.
A small non-commissioned officer is sitting in the same compartment as Corday. He has just returned from the front. The two men chat. At four o’clock in the morning the train stops at a station and the soldier gets off. A girl throws herself at the little man and clings tightly to him. “Just to think that so much love, the love of all the mothers, sisters, wives and girl-friends, has so far proved powerless against all this hatred,” he thinks.
The kiosks at the stations they pass display rows of cheerfullycolourful illustrated papers, all of them with a publication date in the first days of August. No more have been printed since then. It is as if a new era has begun.
Laura de Turczynowicz and an acquaintance spend today in the Augustów Forest near Suwalki, searching for deserted or orphaned children. (They have already found several, including a four-year-old carrying a baby of six months, who were so desperately hungry they had been eating earth.) She meets a man who tells her that their summer villa has been destroyed by the Germans, but he has found Dash, the children’s white dog, alive. She writes:
Every hut was burnt down; gruesome work it was. Many times we saw dead men. I wondered why we struggled so to save our lives when so many had gone down. Going through the forest at dusk, we heard a child’s cry, but could not locate the sound. In our search a wounded horse plunging through the underbrush came upon us. He passed so near I could have touched him. Frightened, I clung to a tree for dear life.
WEDNESDAY , 4 NOVEMBER 1914
Pál Kelemen is wounded north of Turka
It is a beautiful night—starry, cold and with a bright moon. Pál Kelemen’s horse is reluctant to leave its warm stable and venture out in the chill, biting wind. The army is once again in retreat: forwards and back, forwards and back again. Since a new line of defence is being established, their orders are to see that the retreating units do not get stuck and come to a halt. By about two o’clock in the morning the new line should be ready and, hopefully, occupied by the fresh infantry that are already on their way up to the pass. The task Kelemen and his hussars have been given is close to impossible since it is difficult to gain any kind of overall picture of the situation in the darkness. The road is already in chaos. They ride slowly up against the flow, through a sluggish, grey stream of men, horses, wagons, guns, ammunition carts and pack-mules.
In the moonlight he sees what look like long, black streaks in the white snow: they are the freshly dug trenches. He can hear the sound of rifle fire—the Russians have begun to push forward there. He notes that the stream of retreating men has thinned out but that there are still scattered groups of fleeing troops. Kelemen and his men point them in the right direction. The road is icy and slippery as glass. They have to dismount and lead their horses. Kelemen writes in his journal:
Meantime the Russian artillery has commenced firing along the whole length of the front sector. I get into the saddle again and push ahead that way.
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