On the Run by Kent Graeme

Author:Kent, Graeme [Graeme Kent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849546379
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2013-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

14

‘BE GLAD THAT YOU ARE HERE!’

We have taken the open course of severing, by our own act, all connection with the British State and army, and of giving ourselves to the service of our Country to fight for Irish Independence.

– Part of a declaration issued by the Irish Brigade

Few records survive of German deserters executed in the First World War, but it is estimated that around fifty might have been shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy. Those Germans who did desert tried to reach the safety of a neutral country like the Netherlands or Switzerland. It was not advisable to abscond while serving on the front line as soldiers on both sides were just as likely to shoot enemies running towards them, even with their hands in the air.

One deserter who did make it across no man’s land only to see his luck run out more than fifteen years later was Private August Jaeger. On 13 April 1915, he sprinted across no man’s land from the German trenches and surrendered to a French unit. Under interrogation he told his hosts all that he knew about his unit’s dispositions and movements. He also informed the French of an impending gas attack by the Germans. This gave the French commander General Ferry time to move many of his troops and minimise the full force of the attack.

Unfortunately for Jaeger, long after the war had ended Ferry wrote a newspaper article mentioning Jaeger’s assistance in defending against the gas raid. This news offended many German patriots. The long-released and demobilised Jaeger was arrested, tried, and in 1932 sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.

Perhaps the longest distance covered in a break for freedom made by a deserter in the First World War was that of an anonymous German soldier who managed to get from Germany to the USA.

In 1917, the New Yorker Volkszeitung, the newspaper of the German-speaking Socialists in the USA, published the first comprehensive account of a deserter’s story in the First World War. The articles, published anonymously, were later translated and published in book form as A German Deserter’s War Experience. The protagonist, a young sapper in an engineers’ battalion, fought for almost a year in France. He gave a graphic description of the adversities of life in the trenches and of his growing determination to desert.

In 1915, the soldier went home on leave. Come the end of his time away, he departed in his uniform, as if he were returning to his unit. He later changed into civilian clothes, bought false identity papers and caught a train to Dusseldorf and then made his way to the borders of neutral Holland, hoping to find a way across.

He reached the frontier village of Herongen and from a villager obtained information about the frequency of German border patrols. For three days and nights the deserter hid among trees, confirming the routine of the border guards. Then he made a dash for Holland.

A patrol fired upon him but the soldier crossed the border safely.

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