This week Sabine’s battlefield guide Saturday :
Kurt Zehmisch extracts from a diary by a German lieutenant
His diary was discovered in 1998 in an attic near Leipzig by his son Rudolf Zehmisch, he was at first unable to read his father’s 15 diaries sent back from the front in envelopes because they were written in an archaic form of German shorthand. He managed to track down an elderly professor who could decipher the text , but the man died. Rudolf Zehmisch then taught himself Gabelsberger shorthand and began the translation. His father was in charge of three or four companies. At one point he wrote: ‘We will not shoot against the British today’.”
Kurt Zehmisch 24 years old, a student teacher from Weischlitz in Vogtland (Saxony), and is about to take his state exams in English and French when he arrives on the Western Front in October 1914, had studied in France and also visited England. He went on a day trip to Folkestone in 1913. Kurt was mobilised in August 1914 and his unit, Königlich Sächsiche infanterie regiment 134 , was active in the area between Armentieres and Messines from mid-October 1914. Although diary writing is not encouraged during the war, Zehmisch writes down his experiences almost every day in notebooks that he sends home by field post. He also reports in detail on the Christmas truce.
Between Basseville near Warneton and St Yvon, the 1st Royal Warwickshires and the 2nd Company of the Royal Saxon Infantry Regiment 134 are facing each other. There had been almost continuous fighting over the previous nights. In one attack the English had reached the wire entanglements in front of the German positions, where they were stopped. Six hundred dead and wounded. The Germans abandoned the trench anyway. Too much mud, too much water, so a new one was dug during the day, also on 22 and 23 December. Just in time on the evening before Christmas, the Saxons were able to move into their new underground quarters. They set up a gift table. Nuts, apples, gingerbread . Lieutenant Kurt Zehmisch gave a short speech before the guards went to their posts.
In the ruins of a former sugar factory the next afternoon, when it is dark, he and his men listen to the regiment’s music band, then sing “Dies ist der Tag, den Gott gemacht” Lieutenant Zehmisch, orders his men after mass that “no shot will be fired from our side today on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day if it can be avoided”.
The following he wrote down : “Soldier Möckel from my company, who had lived in England for many years, called to the British in English, and soon a lively conversation developed between us.”
A couple of soldiers from each side then climbed out of their trenches, shook hands in no man’s land, and wished each other a merry Christmas. They agreed not to shoot the following day.
“Afterwards, we placed even more candles than before on our kilometre-long trench, as well as Christmas trees,” . “It was the purest illumination – the British expressed their joy through whistles and clapping. Like most people, I spent the whole night awake. It was a wonderful, but somehow a cold, night.”
On the 5th of March 1915 he confided in his diary how he had discovered a small periscope near the British trench. “The mirror in the periscope glitters in the sunlight, betraying itself. By long and keen observation with a good pair of binoculars I could even now and then see the face of one of the Englishmen clearly. With that mirror they could see the whole no-man’s-land up to our first line. My men did not want to believe me until they were finally convinced of the sincerity of my discovery. We made a great deal of fun about that mirror. Then, towards the evening, my men shot it to pieces.
Sources :
In flanders fields magazine Juli 2000
The guardian.com
Spiegel.de