RECOUNTS OF WWI: Quiren Groessl

"We learned many things from the French who had been in this awful war for 4 years, and other things from our own experiences.

We learned to eat, sleep and live in the trenches that were knee deep in water and mud. We learned to live like animals being hunted down; to live with rats and to bear the sight of blood. We saw our friends being shot by machine gun and rifle fire and others carried back on stretchers with an arm or leg blown away. We gradually grew hardened to the sight of men blown to bits, and their insides scattered over the ground. We lived in constant fear of death and wasn't sure of how much more we could take.

I soon learned that this was just the beginning; the breaking in of what was yet to come. We realized the truth when we were burying dead comrades in shell holes with the hope that they would be found, dug up and reburied in some government plot. We were seeing first hand the opposite side of the picture that had been painted to us. There are no flags flying or bands playing here. The only instruments heard are the instruments of death.

The singing we once heard by marching men were now the moans of cries and pains of wounded men. We were being killed and maimed for the old men who would not settle arguments by open discussion."

- Cpl. Quiren Groessl, F. Co., 5th Wisconsin Reg, 28th Inf., AEF, France 1918.