Behind the German Lines: Soldiers at Rest, WWII (XX0015)

Behind the lines — the part of the war that was waiting

No fighting is taking place in this scene, and that is the point. An infantryman spent far more of the war behind the line than in front of it: waiting, eating, writing home and reading whatever had arrived. What is painted here is the ordinary condition rather than the exceptional one.

The despatch rider

The standing figure in the long rubberised coat is a Kradmelder, a motorcycle despatch rider, goggles pushed up on his helmet and a machine pistol slung. Before radio became general at every level, written orders and reports moved by hand, and the man who carried them was usually the man who brought the post as well. He is handing something to the soldier on the right — the small event a rest area actually revolves around.

Signal

The illustrated magazine being read is Signal, published by the German High Command from 1940 and printed in some twenty languages for distribution across occupied Europe. It was propaganda produced to a very high technical standard — colour photography, good paper — and it is worth noticing what it is doing in this picture: propaganda reached the soldier as an ordinary object to pass the time with, not as a speech.

Field post

The man writing at the table is engaged in the single most common off-duty activity of any army in the war. The German Feldpost handled billions of items over the course of the conflict, free of charge to the sender, and it was treated as a logistical priority for a practical reason: it was the cheapest available way of holding morale together.

What the uniforms show

Field caps instead of helmets, tunics unbuttoned, an officer’s peaked cap on the man reading the newspaper — the visual grammar of being out of contact. The damaged house and the broken fence place the scene in a village taken some time earlier and now serving as a billet. Most of the war happened in places like this one.