Fallen Russian soldier caught on barbed wire on the Eastern Front, ca. 1915
Fallen Russian soldier caught on barbed wire on the Eastern Front, ca. 1915
The following is excerpts of 21-year-old Danish-German soldier Johannes Jessen's account of his experiences on the Eastern Front in early May 1915. Translated by myself:
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"On one of the first days of May, the Russians began showering us with shells. We ran like mice from one end to the other to save our bacon. I had placed myself well behind some large planks, but suddenly I hurried away, and when I returned it was all wrecked by a large caliber shell.
Later in the afternoon, a comrade and I ran into a dug-out which was still intact, but shortly after we deemed it too dangerous as well. As we exited, Karlemann crawled inside and was killed by a direct hit, which destroyed the dug-out.
We were constantly on guard since as soon as the heavy artillery would cease they would storm our positions - that we knew. They fired all day long and when it got dark they came; our listening post hurried back and alarmed us.
Those of us who were still able to began firing at the approaching enemies with our rifles; many of them reached our trenches, but they were quickly annihilated. The rest of them fell back, but when the sun rose we found out that they had dug trenches in the middle of No Man's Land between our positions, meanin that we could flank them.
In the morning a white flag was hoisted as a sign of surrender, but there were barely any survivors. They all lay dead in their own trenches, but we had suffered heavy losses too. A few days later we were to attack ourselves and get revenge, but it was luckily called off in the last minute."
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