Response from Helmut Schlieper

Date: 17th December 1919

Address: ???e Str. 30, Dortmund

From:Otto Schlieper

To: (Mr.Gray)

Dear Sir

I thank you very much for your letter from 11 of this month which I have received today. I also do not understand how I could find this Pay-Book last year. But it can be, that 1) your son has not been buried, or, 2) an other soldier, perhaps a friend of your son, has taken the Pay-Book and has thought, I shall give this book to his father, if the war has finished.

I cannot say where I have seen the body, because we have made the whole offensive last year. At first, beginning 21.III.1918 from La Fere, Chauny, north of Noyon till Rollos (in the sud of Montpelier?, then beginning at Laon, over Chavonne/Aime, Braine to Longport near Villers-Cotleb, where I was rather wounded. We have found many bodies of British and German soldiers who were not yet buried, although they were killed before long time. Do you not know a friend from your son, who was with him in action and who can say you, if he is, fallen or missing? And can this officer not say how that is? Where are his other papers and his other things. You have written: he is fallen. Who has written this to the British War-Office? He must have been on the side of your son in action, or not?? I have found only this book.

When I came wounded to Germany last year, ???, I took the book with me, to write you at once, if the war was over. But I must at once again in action, where I was caught and came to Holyport / Berkshire. More - I am sorry - I do not know. From Oct 17 till March 18 we were not in action. In summer 1917 we fought 5 1/2 months on the Chemin des Dames near Laon.

I am yours truly

Helmut Schlieper

From Wikipedia:
In France, the Chemin des Dames (literally, the "ladies' path") is part of the D18 and runs east and west in the département of Aisne, between in the west, the Route Nationale 2, (Laon to Soissons) and in the east, the D1044 at Corbeny. It is some thirty kilometres long and runs along a ridge between the valleys of the rivers Aisne and Ailette.

Three battles were fought along the Chemin des Dames east-to-west ridge located to the north of Paris during the First World War. All are named after the river which flows on the south side of the ridge. Their names are as follows:

• First Battle of the Aisne (1914) - Anglo-French counter-offensive following the First Battle of the Marne.
• Second Battle of the Aisne (1917) - main component of the Nivelle Offensive.
• Third Battle of the Aisne (1918) - third phase (Operation Blücher) of the German Spring Offensive.

The best-known battle, called the Second Battle of the Aisne, took place between 16 April and 25 April 1917. To soften up the German defenses, General Robert Nivelle, an artilleryman by training and experience, inflicted a six-day artillery preparation involving 5,300 guns. This, of course, provided ample warning that a major French attack was coming. Then, on 16 April, seven French army corps attacked the German line along the Chemin des Dames ridge. But Nivelle had underestimated the enemy's defensive preparations; the Germans had created a network of deep shelters in old underground stone quarries below the ridge, where their troops took shelter from the French barrage. The German positions also dominated the southerly slope over which the French attackers were progressing. On the first day, French infantry and some colonial Senegalese troops progressed to the top of the ridge in spite of intense German artillery counterfire and poor weather conditions. However, as French infantry reached the plateau, it was slowed down and then stopped by the intense fire of a very high number of the Germans' new MG08/15 machine guns. As a result, the French took 40,000 casualties on the first day alone. Furthermore, during the following 12 days of the battle, French losses continued to rise to 120,000 casualties (dead, wounded, and missing). The final count, when the offensive was over, was 271,000 French casualties and 163,000 Germans casualties. The German defenders suffered much less, but lost some 20,000 prisoners, 40 cannons, and 200 machine guns. The high French casualty count, in so few days and with such minimal gains, was perceived at headquarters and by the French public as a disaster. Furthermore, the agonizingly slow evacuation of the French wounded also demonstrated a lack of logistical preparations. Nivelle had to resign, and the French Army became plagued by many refusals to march amounting to mutinies in several infantry divisions.