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!
"I was ready to follow my two buddies, when, all of sudden, I was overcome by an indefinable sensation of worry, anguish, fear. I was sure of it; this was the imminence of danger which I was feeling. . . .Many have escaped death, guided by intuition that they didn't even know they had. Everything may depend on the degree of sensitivity of our nerves, or how impressionable they are. . . .Therefore, of all the veterans of the 13th Squad, I was the only one left still fighting, along with the rationer Terrisse. All the others were killed or wounded. When would my turn come?"
Extracts from events of July 18, 1915, from the notebooks of French Corporal Louis Barthas. Barthas had joined two friends at their company's field kitchen, set up at a crossroads, when the sense of 'the imminence of danger' struck him. Thinking his comrades would deride him if he spoke of his fear, he went into a shop, and was browsing postcards when shells landed at the crossroads, wounding twelve men of his company including four critically injured cooks.
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918 by Louis Barthas, pp. 101, 102, copyright © 2014 by Yale University, publisher: Yale University Press, publication date: 2014
1915-07-18, 1915, July, Barthas
