Stephen Kurt Westmann - Surgeon with the Kaisers Army

Surgeon with the Kaisers Army — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Surgeon with the Kaisers Army" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...45

Surgeon with the
Kaisers Army

Surgeon with the
Kaisers Army

Stephan Kurt Westmann

Edited by
Michael Stephen Westman

Pen & Sword

MILITARY

First published in Great Britain by
PEN AND SWORD MILITARY

an imprint of
Pen and Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Copyright Michael Stephen Westman 2014

ISBN 978 1 47382 170 5

The right of Michael Stephen Westman to be identified
as the editor of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including
photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Printed and bound in England by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Typeset in Times by CHIC GRAPHICS

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of
Pen & Sword
Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery,
Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics,
Railways, Select, Social History, Transport, True Crime, and
Claymore Press, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press,
Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Wharncliffe.

For a complete list of Pen and Sword titles please contact
Pen and Sword Books Limited
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England
E-mail:
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

Introduction

I can just remember my grandfather Stephan Westmann when I was a little boy. He was kindly and greeted me warmly in his heavily German-accented English. We played chess together and his Hertfordshire home was full of interesting artefacts from his life as a surgeon in Germany and Britain.

After he died in 1964, the interviews he gave to camera as part of the BBC Great War series were broadcast into Britains homes. It was the days of black and white television and the series had been made to commemorate fifty years since the start of the war to end all wars.

As an adult, it began to dawn on me that this man had led a double life. Born into a well-to-do Berlin family in 1893, he had volunteered for the Kaisers army as a young medical student while at Freiburg University. That he survived over four years in the front line has always amazed me. One of lifes high achievers, he won both Iron Crosses and a hatful of other medals for the Fatherland. He proved his mettle on the front line, killing enemy soldiers in gruesome hand-to-hand combat and then as a medical officer saving the lives of many others British as well as German. After the war, being both an outspoken anti-Nazi and Jewish, he was among a number of prominent Berliners whom the Nazis wished to silence as soon as they seized power in 1933 and he fled to Britain prior to the start of the Second World War.

The names of the battlefields where he served will be familiar to all school-age historians and those with an interest in the First World War. What is different about this book is that it was written from a German perspective. As a first-language English speaker myself, I have rewritten my grandfathers book from start to finish, updating the language and the word order in particular. It seems that he wrote the original in German and then had it translated; it is this translation from which I have worked. However, I have been careful to leave in the authors first-hand experiences and the views and attitudes of others warts and all. His writing (wonderfully politically incorrect by todays standards) covers the social, political, intellectual, religious, medical and economic aspects of wartime life under the Kaiser in vivid detail. His views remain as he wrote them in the early 1960s.

It is hoped that this book will give the reader a further insight into the prevailing politics and zeitgeist and life from the enemy side of the First World War. It has been rewritten to commemorate one hundred years since that awful war started.

Michael Stephen Westman
Skye
October 2013

Part I

(1914)

If, therefore, war should ever come between these two countries, which Heaven forbid it will not, I think, be due to irresistible natural laws, it will be due to the want of human wisdom.

Andrew Bonar Law, speech to the House of Commons, November 1911

The events of 1914

28 June	Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his Archduchess in Sarajevo.
30 July	Russia mobilizes.
1 August	Germany declares war on Russia; France and Germany mobilize.
2 August	Germany demands that Belgium give free passage for her troops.
3 August	Germany declares war on France.
4 August	Britain issues ultimatum to Germany over Belgium. War declared at midnight.
11 August	General Joffre invades Alsace with six divisions. Mulhouse taken but then recovered by the Germans.
14 August	French cross Alsatian frontier aiming to attack the Germans from the south. Six days later, the French armies are driven back towards the frontier by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavarias troops.
September	The Race to the Sea: Allied troops race north and German troops wheel via Belgium, striving to outflank each other.
10 October	Fall of Antwerp, releasing more German divisions (many volunteers are under the statutory military age) to concentrate their forces near Lille. Rupprechts troops are brought up from Lorraine.
12 October	British advance between La Basse and Armentires is beaten back by Rupprechts infantry. However, great losses inflicted on the Germans.
20 October	The Battle of Yser: the Germans attack across a line from the coastal town of Nieuport to the La Basse canal.
30 October	The First Battle of Ypres the Massacre of the Innocents. Great losses sustained by both sides.
11 November	German offensive at Menin Road.
December	Joffre attacks in Artois and Champagne without success.Trench warfare starts.

Chapter 1

If War Should Ever Come

The bells of Berlin had rung in the New Year of 1914. Together with some friends, the Westmann family celebrated this event at home on the Kufrstendamm and toasted in the New Year with the traditional Prosit Neujahr. Everyone was happy and the atmosphere was carefree. We set off some fireworks, told the customary New Year jokes and let loose little tin mice which glided across the floor and under the long skirts of the shrieking Fruleins.

According to another old German tradition, shortly after midnight each of us melted a small piece of lead in an old spoon over a flame. The liquid lead was then quickly poured into a basin of cold water where it immediately formed all kinds of figures resembling ships, people, wild beasts and fantastic mythical creations. Out of these weird shapes we tried to foretell the future and my grandmother Dora was considered an expert in this mystical art. She frowned and predicted tempests and a series of grave events. We did not believe her. On the contrary, we were convinced that the New Year was bound to be happy and prosperous.

Next page

1234567...45

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Surgeon with the Kaisers Army»

Look at similar books to Surgeon with the Kaisers Army. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Kurt Schlichter

Indian Country

German Emperor William II

The Kaisers Memoirs

Dominik Richert

The Kaisers Reluctant Conscript

Kurt Newman

Healing Children: A Surgeons Stories from the Frontiers of Pediatric Medicine

Martin Middlebrook

The Kaisers Battle

Kurt Schlichter

Peoples Republic

Stephen Bull

German Army Uniforms of World War II

Kurt Vonnegut

Love Kurt: The Vonnegut Love Letters, 1941-1945

Gödel Kurt

Incompleteness: the proof and paradox of Kurt Gödel

Cobain Kurt

Never fade away: the kurt cobain story

David Stone

The Kaisers Army: The German Army in World War One

Stephen B. Adams

Mr. Kaiser goes to Washington: the rise of a government entrepreneur

Discussion, reviews of the book Surgeon with the Kaisers Army and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.