Zweibund — the Dual Alliance — Germany and Austria-Hungary united, were the core of the Central Powers, and here join hands. The bars of Germany's flag border the top left, and those of the Habsburg Austrian Empire and ruling house the bottom right.
Schulter an SchulterUntrennbar vereintin Freud und in Leid!'Shoulder to shoulderInseparably united in joy and in sorrow!
"Yesterday I talked with a priest. He and most of his calling voluntarily accepted at the beginning of the war the fearful task of burying the dead. It sounds very simple, does n't it? Do you realize what it means? It means handling terrible objects covered with blood-soaked clothing, that once had the shape of human beings. It means taking from these forms all articles of apparel that might prove serviceable and searching through these red-stained clothes for any letter or identification. Some of these shapes are hardly of human outline, very stiff and cold. Some are mere fragments, no longer of any recognizable form. That is a little of what burying the dead means. I spare you more detail. And this is the work the priests of Peace are doing in France. Wonderful, you think? No, it is French temperament, French courage."
Excerpt from a letter of September 14, 1915, by Leslie Buswell, a driver with the American Ambulance Field Service, a volunteer organization attached to the French Armies. Buswell was stationed at Pont-à-Mousson, France, north of Nancy.
Ambulance No. 10; Personal Letters from the Front by Leslie Buswell, pp. 133, 134, copyright © 1915, and 1915, by Houghton Mifflin Company, publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, publication date: 1916
1915-09-14, 1915, September, bury, dead, priest, France
