A letter from an Austrian soldier in Servia told this story: The soldiers didn’t always have the time to bury their dead comrades with the dignity that heroes deserved. A few days ago they found a little child, perhaps one year old, lying dead on the roadway. They wondered what could have happened to the parents. The sergeant commanded the soldiers to shovel a grave while he made a wooden cross on which he wrote a little verse. Everyone spoke a prayer for the little Serbian child and many men cried and thought of their home and beloved family.
(„Eines Kindes Begräbnis in Feindesland“, Berliner Journal, 17 February 1915)