northern France. By the end of the month, Stramm had been awarded the Iron Cross (Second Class) for courage under fire. In a letter on February 14, 1915, Stramm wrote, "But there is horror in me, there is horror around me, bubbling, surging around, throttling, ensnaring. There's no way out anymore." On February 23, 1915, he wrote, "Germany needs brave soldiers. Nothing else will do. We have to go through with it, however much we condemn the war." According to Patrick Bridgwater, "While Stramm is known to have enjoyed his peacetime role of reserve officer, he was too sensitive to have any illusions about the war, which he hated (for all the unholy fascination it held for him). On 12 January 1915 he wrote to Walden from the Western Front, 'I stand like a cramp, unsteady, without a foundation, without a brace, anchored, and numb in the grimace of my will and stubbornness,' and a few months later he wrote to his wife from Galicia that everything was so dreadful, so unspeakably dreadful. Thus while he was always absolutely sure where his duty lay, he did not write a single chauvinistic war poem even at the time when nearly everybody else in Germany - or so it seemed - was doing so. Nor did he write overtly anti-war poems, which his conscience would not have allowed him to do. In retrospect it seems extraordinary that the poem Feuertaufe ("Baptism by Fire") should have caused a scandal in the German press in 1915, for its only conceivable fault is its utter honesty, its attempt to convey the feeling of coming under enemy fire for the first time and its implicit refusal to pretend that the feeling in question was one of heroic excitement." According to Jeremy Adler, "Although the letters testify to profound inner turmoil, Stramm was a popular officer and a brave soldier." At the end of April 1915, Stramm's regiment was transferred to the Eastern Front, in order to serve under the command of General August von Mackensen in the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive against the Russian-occupied Austro-Hungarian Crownland of Galicia. According to Patrick Bridgwater, "Stramm distinguished himself and was at one point acting Battalion Commander, in which role he was involved in the attack on the Russian positions at Ostrow. It was here that he won the Austrian Kriegsverdienstkreuz and was recommended for the Iron Cross (First Class)." After the