Postcard of a German soldier guarding French POWs, most of them colonial troops, the colorful uniforms of a Zouave, Spahi, Senegalese, and metropolitan French soldier contrasting with the field gray German uniform. A 1915 postcard by Emil Huber.
Emil Huber 1915Reverse:Unsere FeldgrauenSerie II? preussischer Infanterie-SoldatPrussian Infantry SoldierLogo: K.E.B.
"March 29th.—Back in Cambrin Left since last night. The sector is now known as ZI or Auchy Left: here the original names of sectors are kept. Larks sing in bright sunshine, and buds are opening. In the parapet of Old Boots Trench a German has been buried, it must have been in the autumn of 1914. The weather has exposed a pulpy arm; there was a wrist-watch on it. Some whimsical passer wound the watch, it went, it was a repeater; passers-by would give the winding a turn, but soon a souvenir-hunter took the watch."
Entry for March 29, 1916 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 dozens of his comrades. Cambrin is west of La Bassée, France,in Artois. Bodies were buried, if at all, where they fell, beneath earth upended by explosions, into trench parapets. Because the Western Front moved very little during much of the war, bodies were exposed by weather, digging, and bombardment. The artist Otto Dix drew this horror. Many soldiers wrote of it, sometimes, as here, whimsically, touching a dead hand in passing or hanging a rifle on an exposed leg.
The War the Infantry Knew 1914-1919 by Captain J.C. Dunn, pp. 187, 188, copyright © The Royal Welch Fusiliers 1987, publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown and Company, UK), publication date: 1994
1916-03-29, 1916, March, Cambrin, Artois, German grave, German soldier
