This week Sabine’s battlefield guide Saturday
Alcohol
The British had rum, the French red wine and the Russians vodka. German soldiers were entitled to 10 cl. of brandy a day, well known is schnapps, but the Bavarians drank beer.
Knopp quotes a German soldier who fought in the Battle of Verdun in 1916: “It’s possible that you’ll collapse even more afterwards, but half an hour of happy, cheerful mood is half the kingdom of heaven for a soldier in such a situation.” It was the “finest moment” of the day, one Briton declared.
„Man kann den Krieg führen ohne Frauen, ohne Munition, sogar ohne Stellungen, aber nicht ohne Tabak und schon gar nicht ohne Alkohol“, schrieb der Schriftsteller Arnold Zweig in seinem Roman „Erziehung vor Verdun“.
The military leadership also deliberately used alcohol as a drug to get their soldiers to leave the cover of the trenches and rush into no-man’s land and probable death under enemy fire. Before the major attack on the Somme in mid-1916, rum was served to British units in large quantities. Since many soldiers had not eaten before for fear of abdominal wounds, the effect was corresponding.
Alcoholism weakened the troops
The soldiers’ daily consumption of alcohol was not to remain without consequences. Many of the men developed a serious addiction that was quite dangerous for their troops. Alcohol excesses increasingly undermined the morale of the group. Or they led to hair-raising actions that were truly no credit to the soldiers. For example, a very special incident is recorded for posterity in the files of the Innsbruck Standschützen Battalion. “Standschütze Kreidl, as the driver of a rum supply truck, got so drunk that he fell unconscious into the ditch and the truck arrived alone at the unloading point. It is only due to the fact that the horses’ instinct was greater than the man’s intellect that neither the wagon nor the crew suffered any significant damage,” the paper says. Incidentally, the drunken rifleman’s superior refrained from pressing charges, but as punishment he was shackled for three consecutive days.
The British were not spared the increasing alcoholism of their soldiers. There were units that were barely able to climb ladders leading to the open battlefield because they were far too drunk to do so. On the other hand, however, a Scottish medical officer had to admit that “we would hardly have won the war without daily rum rations”.
Sources :
Guido Knopp: Der erste Weltkrieg die Bilanz in Bildern
Images : Bottles and glasses are in my own collection