"One day we got orders to storm a French position. We got in and my comrades fell right and left of me, but then I was confronted by a French Corporal.
For a moment I felt the fear of death and in a fraction of a second I realised that he was after my life exactly as I was after his. I tossed his rifle away and I ran my bayonet through his chest. He fell as blood came out of his mouth and died.
I felt physically ill. I nearly vomited. My knees were shaking and I was quite frankly ashamed of myself.
I remembered then that we were told that a good soldier kills without thinking of his adversary as a human being. The very moment he sees in him a fellow man, he is not a good soldier anymore. But I had in front of me a dead man.
A poor boy who had to fight, who had to go in with the most cruel weapons, against a man who had nothing against him personally, who only wore the uniform of another nation, who spoke another language.
What was it that we soldiers stabbed each other, strangled each other, went for each other like mad dogs? What was it that we, who had nothing against them personally, fought with them to the very end and death?
We were civilised people after all. But I felt that the culture we boasted so much about is only a very thin lacquer which chipped off the very moment we come in contact with cruel things like real war
To fire at each other from a distance, to drop bombs is something impersonal. But to see each other’s white of the eyes and then run a bayonet against a man it was against my conception and against my inner feeling." – Corporal Stefan Westmann, 29th Infantry Division, Imperial German Army, La Bassée, France 1914 #ww1 #reality #stayzero #zerofoxtrot