Salt Lake Tribune | 1914-10-11 | Page 15 | Light and Shadow in Soldier's Life

LIGHT AND SHADOW 1 SOLDIER'S LIFE German Officer, in Letter to Mother, Paints Picture of Days of Warfare ENGLAND MUCH HATED No Mercy to Be Shown if Opportunity to Slay Britishers Brit-ishers Is Offered (Correspondence of the Associated Press ) ROTTERDAM Sept 19 The follow ing letter of a reserve off cer to h s mo her publ shed n the Cologne Ga zette of recent date throws an ilium nat n" 1 ght on subs stence cond t ons in the German forces now in France It S nstructive also n a number of other respects It s a hot mo ng the men are busy d gg ng trenches and now the crash of art Uery wh ch kept up all morn ng s no longer heard I am s tt ng under a tree read ing again and aga n your dear let ter and the rema nder of my mall Indeed dear mother if it could be done I would telegraph you every day But that is lmposs ble so now wh le I have the t me I will wr te you as long a letter as poss ble One never knows what the future will bring Th s is a very idylllo spot I am d sturbed now and then in a most agreeable manner Ripe plums fall from the tree most consoien t ously I eat them I have break fasted well and the eompany bar ber gave me a Bhave which was needed badly In addition I have managed to get some washing done and now I feel again like a gen tleman Some Good Fortune As I already told you the com m ssary off cer of our battalion and I went to the same college I ha e been obliged to pay for this happy co ncldence with many a bite I needed myself But yesterday he tgld mo that he had managed to get two honeBt to goodness real and otherwise bonaf de hams I lost no t me accept ng my share t was fine and will last unt 1 to n ght To the great surprise of the capta n I managed to get one e ghth of a pound of butter from a farm Comn lssary bread ham and b tter what a Luscullan ftast I had last n ght But there s noth ing to smoke Kindly send me a few c garettes and Bome pipe to bacco The owner of the farm where I got the butter is a woman 33 years old and rather wealthy She left the place not because she fea ed the Germans but the French as her manager told me I w sh these people had sense enough to rema n on the r farms We do them no mi ry and pay for e ery th ng we take wh le the property of those who run away is natural ly without owner and thus not protected pro-tected There is no evidence here of volkskr eg (v, ar carr ed on by the pop lat on as n Belg um) The people are rather afra d and do everyth ng to get along w th us Everyth ne is ups de down nowa days dear mother Master alone is the sold er r ght and wrong are matters wh ch he rules on all power and respons bil ty has been placed on h s shoulders I thank God that our hands are clean and that o r off cers conduct s bo yond cr t c sm In I asked a woman whether she had a com plaint to make aga net our sol d ers and she sa d No the Ger man sold ers are good lads Why Towns Were Tired But with th s the burn ng of vil lages has noth ng to do Most of them are set afire by art llery shells and when they are burned down purposely t s done because the n hab tants have fired upon our eoI d ers In the villages and no stone rema ned in place Some of the hussars entered them and were treacherously shot down The example has brought good re suits We regretted that we had to do t and now that the people have been ro ght to the r senses further measures of that sort have been proh b ted In the village of T saw an old man s t n a house which had been destroyed In front of him stood a venerable grav old man the pnest who surveyed the remnant of h s congregat on with sorrow I entered the v llage at the head of two battal ons and when the old pnest saw me he looked at me n a way that cut into my soul Then with the sudden mo tion of fear, he took off his hat and held it in his hand until the last man had passed h m I th nk he feared that a refusal to greet us would be taken as an offense What went on in the mind of the old priest would be interesting to know But th s s war, and we did not want the indescribable misery which it has brought on Malice Toward English Last night at roll call we heard the news of the German victory over the Engli h Frenoh and Bel gians We especially appreciated the news concerning th TVnjfTn.