Military Songs of War

Military Stories, Poems, News and Information…

Diary of Pvt. Henry Grossman - Part 3

Thursday March 02nd 2006, 2:30 pm
Filed under: WW1 Soldier Diaries

There are many funny incidents in war, and one I particularly remember was that there were three or four of us in a group when a piece of shell dropped almost in our midst. There was not any great force in it, because before falling it had struck a tree; but as it dropped we started turning up the collars of our coats and rolling ourselves into balls—just as if things like that would make any difference to a bursting shell. However, it is amusing to see how men act like children at such times.

— Pvt. Henry Grossman

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Diary of Pvt. Henry Grossman - Part 2

Wednesday March 01st 2006, 2:42 pm
Filed under: WW1 Soldier Diaries

Swallows and martins are numerous in the war zone, in spite of four years of war. In most French villages the peasants are very superstitious about the swallows and house martins, and consider that ill luck will follow the destruction of a nest. At present these birds’ nests are everywhere. Several occupied a shed in which the gunners were billeted during a “rest.” The shed was ’strafed’ and a shell broke a large hole in the roof, but failed to explode. The swallows had previously used the doorways as an entrance, but promptly saw the convenience of the shell hole in the roof and almost before the dust of the broken roof had subsided they were calmly flying in and out with food for their young ones. Possibly young swallows and martins require more food than other nestlings, for the parent birds were feeding them from the earliest dawn until it was almost too dark to see the birds. Yet the baby birds never ceased squealing for more. Shells might burst and shatter the adjoining sheds, even a “dud” pierce the roof that sheltered them, but still they cired insistently. Perhaps that explains why the visiting mothers of the battle fields take matters so placidly. They have no time to waste, but must feed their young in spite of war’s wild alarms, and, after all, it is the quantity of food that matters and with the sod being constantly torn up by shells they appear to have food in plenty. At any rate, the swallows are entitled to be classed as brave birds.

— Pvt. Henry Grossman

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Diary of Pvt. Henry Grossman

Monday February 27th 2006, 10:43 pm
Filed under: WW1 Soldier Diaries

The Argonne Forest, that terrible tangle of underbrush, so dense that it was all one could do to cut one’s way through, of ravines and hills, of the lurking machine-guns that a man could not see until he was ten feet from them, of Germans clad in body armor, hiding there with their helmets camouflaged with twigs and painted green and brown.

— Pvt. Henry Grossman

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