Shortly before noon, my group got its first wounded man. He was also a South Jutlander, by the name of Johannes Ralgen, a cool and completely calm fighter. Like Mads, he had a sharpshooter’s rifle and used it just as well, paying no heed to any possibilities for cover.
He received a very painful but harmless shot, entering one side of his buttocks and exiting the other. Mads now took over my machine gun, and then I had to put a temporary bandage on the wounded man. It was a damned job in the midst of the rain of bullets, for it was difficult to keep properly covered while working with such things.
Out there it was almost impossible to bandage such a wound. Ralgen lost a great deal of blood and became quite weak before we were finished. By then I was smeared with blood on my hands and arms, like a butcher.
I now had to transport him to the medical station together with two stretcher-bearers. It was a very difficult task, through forest and swamp and without being entirely sure of the way there. While the bearers moved the wounded man forward by having him between them, I walked ahead and had to find and clear the way for them.
It became a terrible journey, and all four of us were more dead than alive when we arrived. Through the thickest brush and bottomless swamp we had to go, and all the while with the utmost caution so as not to lose our way. <\/p>\n
Once, when we broke out of some brushwood, we saw before us a long narrow path, and just as we were about to step onto it, a Russian reconnaissance patrol marched onto it further ahead.
How it could happen that it was behind our lines, in broad daylight, I cannot explain. It was one of the many surprises that one could expect in this impenetrable wilderness.
One moment it could be completely quiet, and one could feel far removed from the war, as if walking through a peaceful forest, and the next second a hell of fire could break loose, and the enemy could attack from all sides without one being able to determine where they came from.
At least, that was how it felt in the first period, and it was not particularly pleasant. But one did not have time to think about the danger.
The war had taken us by surprise. Everything we had previously dreaded to see\u2014dead and mutilated people and the like\u2014appeared before our eyes without giving us time to think about it, and before one had found oneself again, one had already seen so many horrors that one no longer took it so seriously.
The nerves no longer reacted to it; it could no longer make an impression on us. <\/p>\n
We finally succeeded in bringing our wounded comrade through and safely handing him over into the doctor’s care.
At the medical station there were already many wounded and dead. It was a dreadful sight, and I felt quite sick at seeing all these mutilated people. One was not yet sufficiently hardened to possess the indifference toward such things that I mentioned earlier.
And although dead and wounded men later became such an everyday sight that one no longer thought much about it, I have never seen anyone fail to help a wounded comrade, even at the greatest risk to his own life.
Even the dead were always brought back from the battlefield, although this was almost always very difficult and extremely dangerous, since it prevented those giving assistance from seeking the necessary cover from enemy fire.
For that reason, the Russians always fired particularly heavily at us. <\/p>\n
After chatting with acquaintances at the medical station, we made our way back to the H.K.L. again, and the fighting continued throughout the day.
In the afternoon, we had to withdraw about fifty metres in order to take cover in the dense forest, but now it turned into real guerrilla warfare.
The fighting now took place in the forest, and the enemy could, under the cover of the trees, get right on top of us. It was a damned nerve-racking struggle.
We looked into the trees, looked at the ground, and ran from place to place wherever Russians came swarming forward. One always had to be ready to fire at a second’s notice. Whoever was not quick enough died because of it.
But what comradeship and courage there was! Even in the worst of the shooting there was always a Danish joke to be heard. They were men in good spirits, and for them nothing existed except the fight and the will to throw the enemy back.
And as evening approached, everything suddenly became completely quiet.
There was now not a single \u201cIvan\u201d left in our area, apart from the dead he had left behind on the battlefield, for the Russians did not have enough respect for their dead comrades to bother carrying them back and burying them in a proper manner.
To them, it was only a broken weapon that was thrown away. <\/p>\n
We were glad for the peace we now had, for we had endured 36 extraordinarily hard hours and were gradually in need of some sleep.
But of course there was not much of that, for we still had to stand guard. We relieved one another and thus got a few hours lying on our backs beneath a wet tree, soaked to the skin and with our rifles in our hands.
Yet we could sleep as never before, even though from time to time a burst of machine-gun fire passed over our heads. We had already heard that sound so often that it was no longer capable of disturbing us.
As always in that sector, a couple of \u201ccoffee grinders\u201d dropped a few bombs on us. <\/p>\n
On the day described here, the Frikorps lost one of its best soldiers and bravest men, namely Untersturmf\u00fchrer Just Nielsen.
He was a former Second Lieutenant in the Danish Army. He was a platoon leader in the 1st Company and conducted himself as one of the few men whom I dare call a true hero.
Wearing a steel helmet and carrying a submachine gun in his hand, he went ahead of his men and fought like a wild man, dragging wounded and dead comrades back from the most exposed positions and remaining in constant energetic action.
He did everything to ease the fighting for his men and carried out the hardest work there was\u2014something he did not need to do as a platoon leader. But he was possessed and tireless.
He became the first and last Dane to be mentioned in a bulletin of the High Command for heroic service.
He was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st Class, after his death and after two days of fighting. His company had been committed one day before us.
We now experienced several days of short and scattered fighting, but nevertheless some damned days for several reasons.
This sector thereafter was always referred to as \u201cMosquito Valley\u201d, because day and night, without a minute’s pause, we were plagued by enormous swarms of mosquitoes, which it was impossible to keep away, whether asleep or awake. <\/p>\n
During the first days, we had large blisters on our faces and hands from the bites, and it was painful and infectious, and many were carried away with swamp fever.
An utterly debilitating illness, which makes it impossible to eat anything without it coming up again, and one becomes miserable and indifferent to everything.
But soon we became accustomed to the mosquito bites as well, and the blisters disappeared.
We had become accustomed to the poison; it no longer affected the body. <\/p>\n
We now had nothing else to do but eat and stand guard, but guard duty at the front is also endless and extremely exhausting.
Day and night one could stand behind the same tree and study the same bushes or whatever else lay before one’s eyes, and nothing else was seen.
One had to remain alert all the time, for \u201cIvan\u201d could appear at any second of the day or night, and while on guard one bore responsibility for all one’s comrades who were behind, and through carelessness one could become responsible for unforeseeable consequences for the entire fighting unit.
During these days, however, there was usually something to keep us awake, for we almost never managed to get complete peace in this sector.
From time to time a few shells, bombs, or a burst of machine-gun fire would arrive, but we had no respect for that sort of aimless shooting, and for the most part one could take cover from it.
It was not often that it claimed victims. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2273,"template":"","personer":[104],"class_list":["post-2713","litteratur_og_kilder","type-litteratur_og_kilder","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","personer-aage-mariegaard"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/litteratur_og_kilder\/2713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/litteratur_og_kilder"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/litteratur_og_kilder"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"personer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fkdanmark.simsoft.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/personer?post=2713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}