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by Gilbert C. H. Goutsmit (Author)
The honest, intimate, sometimes bewildering, sometimes moving narrative of Lieutenant Julius Schödensack of the German Imperial Marine Infantry about his war in Belgium. The aspirations, the ideals, the comradeship, the disillusion, the doubt, the discouragement, the fatalism and hope, the horror and the anticipated death. The regiment gets its baptism of fire during the battle for Antwerp, attacking the Walem fort and the struggle for the Nete River; it is in line near Houthulst during the first battle of Ypres and leads the attack in the North Sea dunes on the 11th of November 1914. During this attack Lieutenant Julius Schödensack and an important part of his platoon is crushed by French artillery. His war lasted 98 days. He wrote 120 surprisingly honest letters and postcards to his wife and family. "At first I wanted to hide the truth from you but you must learn the whole truth and go through the war with me: if a bullet has been cast for me, then it will find me ..." This book contains the facsimiles of the original letters, their transcription to temporary German script and their English translation, annotated and historically situated by the author; maps and the original photographs of the characters and the war theatre as he lived it. A historical and anthropological time-capsule.
