A child soldier, the train station behind him, comes home with his gear and presents, through a city street decorated with German, Austrian, Hungarian, Turkish, and Bulgarian flags. Illustration by Carl Diehl.
Signed: Carl Diehl, BerlinGrad' aus dem Schützengrab'n komm' ich heraus,Strasse wie wunderschön siehst du mir aus!Gerade?Straight from the trenches I've come to my street,And how wonderful a sight does me greet.Reverse:Herzlichen Gruss aus der Heimat von deiner ? Gretchen? 29th [19]17Heartfelt greetings from the homeland, your ? Gretchen
"The Somme Despatch is enlightening as an expression of the views of G.H.Q., which differ from those of the infantry—notably on the fighting quality and morale of our and the enemy's formations. The German is not what he was, but his falling off seems, on contact, to be no greater than ours. Without our superiority in guns where would we be? The French seem to be far ahead of us in recent attack technique, formation, and the co-ordination of rifle-grenade and automatic rifle-fire."
Extract from the entry for January 2, 1917 from the writings — diaries, letters, and memoirs — of Captain J.C. Dunn, Medical Officer of the Second Battalion His Majesty's Twenty-Third Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and fellow soldiers who served with him. The Battalion was then serving in the Somme sector, in Vauchelles-les-Quesnoy where Dunn spent 'three dull weeks.' Dunn's assessment of the quality of the German and British soldier is consistent with that of others, as is his take on the French soldier, whom some German writers found more flexible than the British. All three armies had lost their professional soldiers in the two and a half years the war had in progress.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, page 288, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
1917-01-02, 1917, January
