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 Schulter

Untrennbar vereint

in Freud und in Leid!'



Shoulder to shoulder

Inseparably united

in joy and in sorrow!

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Sunday, December 5, 1915

"Two hours later, when we came back [from the work detail], we saw with horror that an enormous mound of earth had collapsed onto the very spot where we had earlier been lying. If not for this work detail, we would have been buried alive. They wouldn't have needed a grave digger to bury us.

A big shell had fallen onto the shelter a few days earlier, leaving a big crater which filled up with rainwater, which seeped into the ground, causing the landslide. Now the water was rushing into the shelter in multiple streams, and we had to struggle for several hours to dig out our blankets, our weapons, all our gear, and to seek out a slightly drier spot.

. . .

Despite our working day and night to keep the trenches in shape, they became more and more impassable. Some rationers met horrible deaths there, buried in mudslides. We worked for four hours to dig out a medical officer from the 296th Regiment. He was lucky that we were close enough to hear his cries for help."

Quotation Context

Excerpt from the Notebooks of French Infantry Corporal Louis Barthas from the first week of December, 1915 when his unit returned to the front after six days of 'rest' in Agnez-lès-Duisans, west of Arras, where heavy rain kept them indoors and hunting lice. The medical officer he helped dig out was fortunate. Struggling through mud and freezing water on their return to the trenches, Barthas and his men tried but failed to get one man out of the mud, leaving him with a shovel and a promise to return in the morning.

Source

Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, page 140, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014

Tags

1915-12-05, 1915, December, Barthas, trench, mud