Wooden cigarette box carved by Г. САВИНСКИ (?; G. Savinskiy), a Russian POW. The Grim Reaper strides across a field of skulls on the cover. The base includes an intricate carving of the years of war years, '1914' and, turning it 90 degrees, '1918.'
ПДМЯТЬ ВОИНЬ 1914-18To the memory of the soldiers 1914-18Reverse:19141918Г. САВИНСКИ (?)G. Savinskaya
"Everywhere we saw traces of death; it was almost as though there wasn't a living soul anywhere in this wasteland. Here, behind a disheveled hedge, lay a group of men, their bodies covered with the fresh soil that the explosion had dropped on them after killing them; there were two runners lying by a crater, from which the acrid fumes of explosive were still bubbling up. In another place, we found many bodies in a small area: either a group of stretcher-bearers or an errant platoon of reservists that had been found by the center of a ball of fire, and met their end. We would surface in these deadly places, take in their secrets at a glance, and disappear again into the smoke."
German Lieutenant Ernst Jünger on the battlefield over which the Third Battle of Ypres was fought. The Canadian Corps attacked on October 26, 1917, advancing 500 yards, and German wounded coming to the rear were making 'exaggerated and unclear statements about a British advance' (p. 197). Jünger was sent to get clear information, noted the new front line on his map, and returned under artillery and machine gun fire, encountering more wounded as he returned across the battlefield he describes. The Canadians suffered 3,400 casualties in the attack. The British Third Battle of Ypres was the German Second Battle of Flanders.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, page 198, copyright © 1920, 1961, Translation © Michael Hoffman, 2003, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: 2003
1917-10-26, 1917, October, Third Battle of Ypres, Third Ypres, Second Battle of Flanders, Second Flanders, dead, battlefield dead, Death
