Mazingheim, France 25/11/1918.
Dear Father.
We are still marching and are now at the above village 15 kilo from Bohain. We left this morning and arrived about 2 PM after a bad march through the mud and slush and the drizzling rain. This village is in the area which was fought furiously for about six weeks ago and is consequently display? ? about when the British reached Bohain, the Huns moved the civilians back to the Belgium border and it was only during the past day or so that they have come back to what was once their home which in most cases is now nothing but a heap of rubbish. Some will be returning civilians have not had any bread for 10 days and are living on practically nothing. As usual, they have plenty of stories to tell of bad treatment from the Huns and are all glad to be back from captivity even if they have lost their all. We gave the people we are with two tins of bully beef and some jam and bread and they were delighted. A good number of Allied prisoners of war are also making their way back through our lines up further and all have the horrible stories to tell of the atrocities of the Huns.
The Huns are absolutely insanely brutal and some of the things I have heard convince that the average German has a diseased brain. For instance, in Germany, one Frenchman says that amongst the prisoners of war were some Poles and Cossacks. The Poles on one occasion were stripped naked in the snow and were marched up and down the street in front of some Polish women also stripped naked. The Hun population roared with laughter at the wonderful joke. They were then all put together in the barn and left all night in the cold.
Cossacks were always noted for their appetite and they were systematically starved until they went mad with hunger. All prisoners of war were staved to the pitch of madness and the Huns used to delight to see them fight for scraps of food which they had thrown into a latrine. They would not even give the prisoners scraps of food without first throwing them into a latrine. In this village, there is an idiot and because of some silly thing he did, a Hun broke a billet of wood over his head.
The tales are all the same and most must be true because the people of one village are not in touch with the people of the next and they all have been through the same agony. It makes us feel now that we are sorry that there is an armistice because we all feel like fighting the Huns again to get some of our own back. The poor children have not known a kind word from anyone for so long that they wince and cringe if anyone speaks to them. Personally, I delight in giving the men cigarettes and kiddies pennies and bread and jam and I give them anything I had if it was it would make the poor beggars happy.
However, I suppose all this horrible things are a necessity accomplishment of war and I hope this world never goes crazy again. You in Australia can’t possibly ever get the slightest idea of what war means until you actually saw what we are seeing. Words cannot express the suffering and misery of these people.
Will close now with love to all from yours affect
Walter