Family & Other Stories

Family Stories - Charles Rosenmeyer

Extracts from Arthur Rosenmeyer's Great War memories
(my grandfather)

I was called up on 7th August 1914, in fact with the rank of senior N.C.O. After a few weeks I became a warrant officer. I was appointed to the command of a munitions platoon and at the same time of the principal baggage train of the 21st Reserve Division. We had no combat uniforms, so that on the advance we had to wear our [peacetime] blue uniforms, which produced the unpleasant result that our own side took us for French soldiers and shot at us. Our advance took us via Grandpre to the Rhein-Marne Canal. I remember clearly how one evening I was bringing ammunition forward and en route the order came to "about face" on the spot. The reason was that we had come right up behind another division. It was at the end of the First Battle of the Marne. Our retreat proceeded at the greatest speed; I sometimes spent 24 hours in the saddle. We then reached the town of St Servon, which was assaulted and then immediately occupied by us as a holding position. I had my observation post in a church tower. The only means of illumination was a single candle in an antique 18th Century candlestick. A direct hit in the immediate vicinity rocked the church tower so badly that I fell below. I was still frantically grasping the wonderful candlestick in my hand. I was permitted to keep it as a keepsake of an extremely perilous moment.

On the move [again] we passed a champagne house in the cellar of which the young wine was maturing. The cellar was emptied and bottles were passed from hand to hand. Soon afterwards, up and down the street, there were gunners squatting with lowered breeches. The young champagne had had a purgative effect!

We also came upon a cheese dairy in which enormous Camemberts were ripening. There was barely a free nook or cranny in the whole artillery and munitions columns in which this cheese was not stowed away. In the evening when we bivouacked the cheese had become runny and stank atrociously.

Trench warfare started for us in the small woods around Ville-sur-Tourbe.

Initially there was absolute peace there despite the War. I had ambitions to become an officer. My commanding officer tried by all and any means to dissuade me; I was then nearly 40 years old, a married man and a father and could simply do my duty as the leader of a munitions platoon. I overcame the objection and was listed as a prospective officer for a battery, whose officer-in-charge greeted me with the memorable comment that he had been unable to sleep all night when he heard that a Jew wanted to become an officer in his battery! His father was a Prussian general and in the Prussian army it was unheard of for a Jew to become an officer. But perhaps the War had overturned pre-existing norms. Nevertheless at the same time he made it clear that he would demand from me far more than from other aspiring officers. This battery commander, one Captain Spohn, became from that moment a good friend and helped me where he could. But I was still not yet an officer, so I made so bold as to effect a small coup de main [in the following way].

Increasingly often I was ordered to act as a forward look-out for the battery. One day the division called up to ask why I had not reported that the French infantry had pushed their trenches forward in order to be ready to launch an assault. I responded that the intelligence about the infantry was false; what concerned them was a French forward post which had been flooded and the French had had their work cut out to bale out the water. As proof of my statement, I sent in a photograph. Between the trenches was a distance of between 10 and 20 metres. In the middle stood a tree. In the very early morning I had approached the tree in order to take a photograph from there as far as it was possible. I had failed to take into account the fact that it was already October and the cover of tree leaves was no longer available. Carefully, I crept up behind the tree; but the French must have noticed the movement and I was soon aware that I was the unwelcome target of machine gun fire. Like a hare I ran back in a zig- zag and finally fell into our trench still clutching my photographic apparatus. When as a matter of routine I reported this small occurrence to my battalion commander, he was much pleased and then dismissed me. But I remained standing there and when he asked me whether I wanted anything else, I said, "Yes, I wish to become an officer." Again, the negative response included all the usual contrary pretexts, and in particular that the agreement of the officer corps to the appointment would be necessary. I responded that I knew which officer in particular was against me; that he was looking forward to leave in Brussels; and that he should be approached following his leave with the proposal for my promotion.

And so it happened; on 27th January 1915 I became a Landwehr officer. But before that I had been awarded the Iron Cross [2nd class], the Hesse Medal for Bravery and the Hamburg Hanseatic Cross.

I still remember some pleasant scenes from this quieter period of the War. There was hardly any shooting, though in some areas the trenches were barely six metres apart. I befriended the French employee of a lawyer's office in Lyon. He received chocolate; I received cigarettes. Then I sat him next to a relief observer in a roomy shell hole and took a photograph. As soon as this picture came to the attention of the division, I had to take over the negative and was on the receiving end of a thorough dressing-down.

Between the trenches was a village pond, full of fish. My French friend found it was possible to drain the water. Next morning on the slopes of the trenches sat the Germans on the one side and the French on the other, gutting fish.

At that time we formed part of the 5th Army Corps. It published a field newspaper. I overheard the following exchange between two infantrymen;

"Do you believe everything printed in the field newspaper?"

"Nope, but it keeps you cheerful!"

Next to my dug-out there was a chicken coop. One day we were under fire and the noise of the falling shells was significantly louder than usual. We established that the French were firing gas shells. At that time our only protection was a handkerchief sprinkled with eau-de-Cologne. Gas masks had not yet been issued. We waited patiently for the French to attack over the top. All of a sudden, I saw that the hen coop had been blown open by a shell and that the hens and the rooster were strutting around our dug-out. This was sufficient proof that the gas was not toxic.

Senior officers generally preferred to visit the forward trenches only when it was not dangerous. On the day of my birthday I was in charge of an observation post for the division named "Prince Eitel Friedrich". I remember the day well as my wife had sent me six bottles of Bols liqueur as a present. The adjutant of the prince called me up to say that His Royal Highness wanted to come to the Front in order to see things for himself through binoculars. I informed him that it was so foggy that you could not see your hand in front of your face. Nevertheless High Royal Highness appeared and ascertained for himself that one could really not see anything and that it was very quiet. After he had left, I found that my six bottles of Bols had all been drunk. Such was the princely visit to the Front, about which we naturally read in the division's newspaper -though the events were not reported in full!

Our advance terminated at the Rhine-Marne Canal. One night as I was loading munitions into an ammunition dump I was stopped by an officer; it was "as you were" as we were to join another division. My battery was then employed in both the Champagne and the Argonne theatres of war with the result that we frequently had to move our positions. I remember one particular episode in which I, as the duty officer, defended an older man against a charge of disobedience in the face of the enemy. The warrant officer [who made the complaint] had been posted for a week to a position which the older man knew inside out. As it was decided that it was merely a disciplinary matter, I managed to get the man acquitted.