Julius Koettgen - A German Deserters War Experiences: Fighting for the Kaiser in the First World War

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This edition published in 2013 by
Pen & Sword Military
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

This book was first published by B.W. Huebsch, New York, 1917.

Copyright Coda Books Ltd.
Published under licence by Pen & Sword Books Ltd.

ISBN: 9781783463176
EPUB ISBN: 9781473850118
PRC ISBN: 9781473850293

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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C ONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION

O UR ADVANCE TROOPS had suffered great losses; now our turn came.

In 1913 Julius Koettgen, a pacifist and a socialist, was drafted into the ranks of sapper battalion No. 30. He dutifully fought in the ranks of the Kaisers armies during 1914 and 1915 and saw action in France and Belgium where he describes the terrible events which were to become known as the rape of Belgium.

Koettgen faced the allied forces of the Belgians and the French army which was then supported by The British Expeditionary Force or BEF. This was the name given to the small force sent to the Western Front during World War I. Planning for a British Expeditionary Force began with the Haldane reforms of the British Army carried out by the Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane following the Second Boer War (18991902). Under the terms of the Entente Cordiale, the British Armys role in a European war was to embark soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force, which consisted of six infantry divisions and five cavalry brigades which formed the I Corps and the II Corps. In October 1914, the 7th Division arrived in France, forming the basis of the III Corps and the cavalry had grown to form the Cavalry Corps of three divisions. By December 1914, the BEF had expanded to such an extent that the First Army and the Second Army were formed.

German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm, who was famously dismissive of the BEF, reportedly issued an order on the 19th of August 1914 to exterminate the treacherous English and walk over General Frenchs contemptible little army. Hence, in later years, the survivors of the regular army dubbed themselves The Old Contemptibles. However it should be noted that no evidence of any such order being issued by the Kaiser has ever been found. It is highly likely that the order was in fact a British propaganda invention, albeit one often repeated as fact.

British troops from 4th Royal Fusiliers resting in the square at Mons 22nd August 1914, the day before the Battle of Mons .

Nonetheless by the end of 1914 - after the battles of Mons, the Le Cateau, the Aisne and Ypres - the old regular British army which Watson knew had indeed been wiped out, although it managed to do its duty and stop the German advance.

Koettgen details the extent of the fighting including being forced to form part of a firing squad, crossing the Meuse under heavy fire, using corpses as road building materials annihilating a cavalry charge hand to hand bayonet fighting, and the awful events of the disastrous German retreat from the Marne.

With the onset of trench warfare Koettgen also experienced the horrors of trench warfare and the famous Christmas truce of 1914 which he witnessed in the French sector. In 1915 he decided that enough was enough and escaped military life by deserting the colours and slipping through the lines to neutral Holland. His was memoirs were published by a gleeful allied press under the title A German Deserters War Experience.

This English translation provides a rare primary source insight into the German side during the crucial opening battles of the war and is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the Great War from the German perspective.

B OB C ARRUTHERS

T RANSLATOR S P REFACE

T HE FOLLOWING NARRATIVE first appeared in German in the columns of the New Yorker Volkszeitung , the principal organ of the German speaking Socialists in the United States. Its author, who escaped from Germany and military service after eleven months of fighting in France, is an intelligent young miner. He does not wish to have his name made public, fearing that those who will be offended by his frankness might vent their wrath on his relatives. Since his arrival in this country his friends and acquaintances have come to know him as an upright and truthful man whose word can be relied upon.

The vivid description of the life of a common German soldier in the present war aroused great interest when the story presented in these pages to the English speaking reader was published in serial form. For here was an historian of the war who had been through the horrors of the carnage as one of the Huns, one of the Boches; a soldier who had not abdicated his reason; a warrior against his will, who nevertheless had to conform to the etiquette of war; a hater of militarism for whom there was no romance in war, but only butchery and brutality, grime and vermin, inhuman toil and degradation. Moreover, he was found to be no mean observer of men and things. His technical training at a school of mining enabled him to obtain a much clearer understanding of the war of position than the average soldier possesses.

Most soldiers who have been in the war and have written down their experiences have done so in the customary way, never questioning for a moment the moral justification of war. Not so our author. He could not persuade his conscience to make a distinction between private and public morality, and the angle from which he views the events he describes is therefore entirely different from that of other actual observers of and participators in war. His story also contains the first German description of the retreat of the Teutonic armies after the battle of the Marne. The chief value of this soldiers narrative lies, however, in his destructive, annihilating criticism of the romance and fabled virtues of war. If some of the incidents related in this book appear to be treated too curtly it is solely due to this authors limited literary powers. If, for instance, he does not dwell upon his inner experiences during his terrible voyage to America in the coal bunker of a Dutch ship it is because he is not a literary artist, but a simple workman.

The translator hopes that he has succeeded in reproducing faithfully the substance and the spirit of the story, and that this little book will contribute in combating one of the forces that make for war - popular ignorance of wars realities. Let each individual fully grasp and understand the misery, degradation, and destruction that await him in war, and the barbarous ordeal by carnage will quickly become the most unpopular institution on earth.

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