The situation here is still all confusion; we
cannot think of advancing--"
The last sentence is a broken one. For he died.
* * * * *
Morning came and he read his letters from home. They cheered him a
little; we can be glad of that, at least. And then he died.
That record is a great human document. It is absolutely genuine. He
was starving and cold. As fast as they built a bridge to get back it
was destroyed. From three sides he and the others with him were being
shelled. He must have known what the inevitable end would be. But he
said very little. And then he died.
There were other journels taken from the bodies of other German
officers at that terrible battle of the Yser. They speak of it as a
"hell"--a place of torment and agony impossible to describe. Some of
them I have seen. There is nowhere in the world a more pitiful or
tragic or thought-compelling literature than these diaries of German
officers thrust forward without hope and waiting for the end.
At six o'clock it was already entirely dark and raining hard. Even in
the little town the machine was deep in mud. I got in and we started
off again, moving steadily toward the front. Captain F---- had brought
with him a box of biscuits, large, square, flaky crackers, which were
to be my dinner until some time in the night.
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