Zak Erickson

Professor Blake
History 1110
10:00-10:50
October 24, 2014

Document Analysis
Two Soldiers' Views of the Horrors of War is a compilation of two letters written by soldiers
during World War I. The two soldiers were Fritz Franke and Siegfried Sassoon. Fritz Franke was from
Germany and fought for the Axis powers. Siegfried Sassoon was from Great Britain and fought for the
Allies. Since the two letters are written from soldiers on different sides of the war readers have a
unique opportunity to compare and contrast how each side felt about the war.
Fritz Frank starts out his letter describing the battlefield. He does this particularly well by
saying, All the trees shot to pieces; the whole ground churned up a yard deep by the heaviest shells;
dead animals; houses and churches so utterly destroyed by shell-fire that they can never be of the least
use again. This description provokes images from a post-apocalyptic Hollywood movie, but this was
the reality for the soldiers that were fighting on the Western Front during World War I. In contrast
Siegfried Sassoon starts out his letter by describing a counter-attack. Sassoon talks about the different
aspects of the counter-attack. He says, We held their line, with bombers posted, Lewis guns well
placed, and clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench. Sassoon's writing style seems more poetic
and less dreary than that of Franke's. This difference might be due to the fact that Sassoon was an
officer and might not have been doing as much of the dirty work that a lower ranking soldier would
have been asked to do.
Another difference between the two letters is when they are talking about the trenches. Sassoon
goes into lots of detail when talking about what the trench is like. He said, The place was rotten with

dead; green clumsy legs high-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps and trunks, face
downward, in the sucking mud, wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled; and naked sodden
buttocks, mats of hair, bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime. And then the rain began the
jolly old rain! This sounds like the most miserable place that you could possibly imagine being in.
Franke talks about how close you come to death while in this miserable holes in the ground called
trenches. He said, There is every variety of sound whistling, whining, ringing, crashing, rolling . . .
the beastly things pitch right above one and burst and the fragments buzz in all directions, and the only
question one asks is: Why doesn't one get me? Often the things land within a hand's breadth and one
just looks on. So not only are you in these small miserable trenches, death will rain down from above
and come just a few inches away from taking your life. The conditions were so bad it even seems like
Franke was hoping that one of these shards of death would hit him and end his misery.
Both Sassoon and Franke wrote about how the enemy would strike without warning at any time.
Franke wrote, One just lives one hour to the next. For instance, if one starts to prepare some food, one
never knows if one mayn't have to leave it behind within an hour. This means that the men had to
constantly be on edge and ready to go fight if the other side decided it was time for the fighting to
resume. Sassoon wrote about the chaos that would ensue when one of these attacks broke out. He
wrote, An officer came blundering down the trench: Stand-to and man the fire-step! On he went . . .
Gasping and bawling, Fire-step . . . counter attack!. Chaos and high stress environments can often
lead to mistakes, and mistakes, in this situation, would be life-ending.
Even with all of this horror, Franke was still able to find a bright side to it all. He talks about
getting to see lovely country in beautiful weather. He also talks about how you get to learn a lot about
human nature because people act according to their own instincts since their lives could end any day.
He said, That brings much that I good and much that is ugly to the surface, but in every one there is a
large amount of truth, and above all strength strength developed almost to a mania! This must be
true, because in order to stay positive while facing all of these horrors of war a man would have to be

tremendously strong.
While these letters are different in their presentation and the aspects they focus on, they do have
one major theme in common, war is horrible. The conditions that they had to fight in were the worst
places imaginable. They had to constantly be on alert, because the enemy would attack without
warning at any moment. When this happened death would be flying past you just a few inches away in
the form of bullets, shrapnel, explosions, etc. Somehow the men found the strengthen to look on the
positive side of things and enjoy some of the beauty that the land they were in had to offer, or the nice
weather when it was their. This is very inspirational, and makes it seem like everyday problems are
nothing. I feel like everyone should read these two letters so that they can gain a better understanding
of the horrors of war. More importantly though, people should read these letters so that they can see
that even when life can be at its worst, human nature is strong enough to push through and find the
positive aspects.

What I Learned
This assignment taught me how to read two different sources and compare and contrast them
with each other. While they were written during the same time period the authors took different
approaches in presenting the situation. By using critical thinking skills the reader of these two
documents can gain a broader understanding of the horrors of war than if they just read one of the
letters.