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Updated: June 7, 2025
We would shout "Gott strafe der Kaiser!" That would put them up in the air higher than a balloon. We would feel like getting out and hitting one another, but we dare not even raise a finger because a sniper would take it off.
Nor was there any check in the throngs of merchant-vessels shuttling the ocean for the Allies. And that disgusted the Germans. Their promises to Mr. Wilson irked them. They lusted again for their old policy of "ruthlessness"; "Schrecklichkeit" joined "Gott strafe" in familiar speech, and Germany added America to her "Hymn of Hate."
When the time came around they were taken away but refused to work and so they were knocked about quite a bit. One was shot in the leg and another bayoneted through the hip, and all were sent back to camp, where they were awarded six weeks in the punishment camp, known as the strafe barracks. This was a long hut in which were two rows of stools a few paces apart.
He complained in the end to our brigadier, but the answer he got was: "What are you there for? What's your business?" After this, whenever we had our strafe on this flank, they would squeeze up to their centre leaving fifty yards unmanned between us. These men were brave enough, and in a raid the same major held the trench with great bravery under a severe bombardment and attack by a strong force.
It was a big trench mortar, and we soon found that if you saw it in time you could dodge it. Fritzie had a special spite at the "Glory Hole," and every little while he would strafe it. About this time we received our first supply of trench mortars, and I assure you we enjoyed using them. They were big round balls weighing about sixty pounds, and they looked something like the English plum pudding.
At ten of the clock we were in our machines, saying good-bye to a band of lucky pilots who stayed at home to strafe the Zeppelin and be petted in the picture press and the Piccadilly grillroom. "Contaxer!" called a mechanic, facing the flight-commander's propeller.
Almost every afternoon, about 4-30 p.m., the usual trench mortar "strafe" would commence, and would last for an hour or so. A few months later Railway Wood became a scene of much mining activity, and mines and camouflets were sprung either by the British or the Germans almost daily.
I began turning the handle of my camera. This time it was successful. "That's all I want," I said. "I'm off. Hand me up my camera. And with due respect to your gun," I said to the T.M. officer, "you might cease fire until I am about fifty yards away. I don't mind risking Brother Fritz's 'strafe, but I do object to the possibility of being scattered to the four winds of heaven by our own shells."
You feel as you listen to him that he regards his enemy as brutal and abominable, but also as swollen, flatulent, and somewhat ridiculous. "Fritz" and not "Boche" is our own invention in the way of a name for the enemy. It expresses just what the men feel. "Fritz" whom we "strafe" continually is in the main a ridiculous person, and any healthy-minded man wants to rag him.
He dived into a dug-out at the first shell which burst near. At that moment another "crump" crashed down and exploded with a crunching roar, throwing a large quantity of earth all around me. One after another came over in quick succession. "Where the devil is that fellow?" I said to . "He's got my aeroscope. When brother Fritz has smoothed down this little 'strafe' I will try and find him."
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