German WWI veteran describes killing a French soldier in a bayonet charge

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Channel: Gruboziarnisty

Views: 2,413,469

Rating: 4.9801631 out of 5

Keywords: soldier, wwi, war, kill, killing, combat, bayonet, charge, world, great, french, german

Id: XruYsAmKLyU

Length: 5min 15sec (315 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/uhh_khakis]

I can’t even imagine that experience

[u/HailSatanHaggisBalls]

The saddest thing about this is that now, in the modern day, that dimension of understanding gained from looking another person in the eye in battle has been replaced with technology that can cause magnitudes more violence from thousands of miles away.

You don't get this level of empathy and reflection when you can take someone's life from a comfy seat with an Xbox controller.

[u/CuckOfTheIrish]

To everyone celebrating bombings in Syria, the worthless war in iraq, or even hatred and violence of political enemies in the streets right or left, please listen to these people who actually killed because they were good soldiers "fighting for the side of good".

[u/EtsuRah]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trmG0mgrkM8&t=2s

Here is a very similar story from the other side of the battlefield.

[u/4strokes]

I always remember an interview I saw with Pte Dennis Collier who took part in Operation Market Garden and the Battle of Arnhem in 1944. This was put up in 2017, nearly 75 years after the events in question and the trauma of what he had done during the war still kept him up at night.

"These two soldiers come up to us, we both met in the thick wood, and they pulled their rifles up at us. My mate fired, and shot one of them and the other one come towards me, and I’d got nothing, only my fighting knife. And I just drawed that out, and as he come, I knocked his rifle on side and knifed him. And I’ve regretted it ever since because when we picked the rifles up they’d got no blooming bullets in their rifles at all. So, I’ll be quite honest, I still say it was murder really, cause they were unarmed, and I still say it was murder. It’s never gone out of my mind. If I ever see anybody on telly, kids, somebody being knifed, that’s the first thing that comes to me mind, and I’ve never forgotten it. In fact many a night I wake up dreaming about it, cause to me it was murder. And I’ve never forgotten it."

Dennis was one of a number of men who never spoke about their was experiences in much detail until they were much older. They just quietly endured the trauma and had to live with the things they had seen and had to do to survive. He unfortunately died a couple of years ago and his ashes were parachuted out of an aircraft before being buried at a military cemetery outside Arnhem as part of the 75th Anniversary commemorations in 2019.

[u/yafflehk]

Fuckin' tram conductors.

[u/QuadroonJoseph]

crazy to think that back in the day Roman legions, like before the battle of Trasimene, wanted to go back and avenge. Were they not regular people? They hacked people to death with swords and were fine with it

[u/knockinonevansdoor]

We’ve learned nothing from history, have we. We are truly a doomed species.

[u/TigheGuy]

Heart-wrenching story told beautifully and with great intention. Thank you.