Orainville

The train stopped at Bazancourt, a small town in Champagne, and there we got out. With unbelievable awe we listened to the slow pulsation of the machinery of the front, a tune to which long years were to accustom us. Far away the white ball of a shrapnel shell melted into the grey December sky. The breath of the war passed by us with its peculiar horror. Did we imagine that nearly every one of us would be swallowed up in the days when that dull muttering over there broke out into unceasing thunder⁠ ⁠… one earlier, another later?

We had left lecture-room, classroom, and bench behind us. We had been welded by a few weeks’ training into the corporate mass inspired by the enthusiasm of one thought⁠ ⁠… to carry forward the German ideals of ’70. We had grown up in a material age, and in each one of us there was the yearning for great experience, such as we had never known. The war had entered into us like wine. We had set out in a rain of flowers to seek the death of heroes. The war was our dream of greatness, power, and glory. It was a man’s work, a duel on fields whose flowers would be stained with blood. There is no lovelier death in the world⁠ ⁠… anything rather than stay at home, anything to make one with the rest.⁠ ⁠…

Our fevered thoughts cooled down as we marched through the heavy chalk loam of Champagne. Pack and ammunition and rifle weighed on us like lead.

At last we reached the village of Orainville, the rest-place of the 73rd Fusiliers, a little spot typical of that neighbourhood, consisting of fifty cottages built of brick or flint round a park-enclosed château.

The traffic in the village street was strange to eyes accustomed to peace conditions. There were only a few uneasy and unkempt civilians to be seen. Everywhere there were soldiers in worn and torn coats, with tanned faces and thick beards, who went to and fro with long swinging strides, or lounging in small groups at the cottage doors assailed us newcomers with chaff. At one place there was a cooker smelling of bean soup and surrounded by a ration-party clattering dixies. The Wallenstein-like romance was heightened by the incipient dilapidation of the village.

After spending our first night in a huge barn, we were paraded before the adjutant, Lieutenant (as he then was) von Brixen, in the courtyard of the château, and told off to our companies; mine being the 9th.

Our first day of the war was destined to make a very distinct impression on us. We were sitting in the schoolhouse, where we were quartered, having breakfast. Suddenly there was a series of heavy explosions close by and soldiers rushed from every house and crowded to the entrance of the village. We followed their example without knowing why. Again there was the peculiar whisper and fluster overhead that we had never before heard, drowned in a terrific crash. I was surprised to see the men round me crouching as if bent under terrific pressure.

Immediately after, black groups appeared in the empty village street, bearing black bundles on stretchers or on joined hands. A feeling of unreality oppressed me as I stared at a figure streaming with blood whose limbs hung loose and who unceasingly gave a hoarse cry for help, as though death had him already by the throat. He was carried into a cottage with the Red Cross flag over the door. What was all this, then? The war had shown its claws and torn off its pleasant mask. It was so mysterious, so impersonal. One had scarcely given a thought to the enemy carrying on his secret and malignant existence somewhere behind. The impression of something arising entirely from beyond the pale of experience was so strange that it was difficult to see the connection of things. It was like a ghost at noon.

A shell had hit the entrance of the château and had struck a mass of stones and masonry into the doorway just as the inmates, terrified by the previous shell-burst, were flocking out. There were thirteen casualties⁠—among them the bandmaster, Gebhard, whom I knew well by sight from the Promenade Concerts at Hanover. A horse standing tied up at the steps realized the danger before the human beings, and breaking loose galloped unhurt into the courtyard.

I could tell from talking to my companions that this episode had somewhat damped their martial ardour. It had affected me too. I seldom heard the rumble of a passing lorry without mistaking it for the sound of that deadly shell.

In any case, however, it was our fate all through the war to start at any sudden and unexpected sound. Whether a train clattered by, or a book fell on the floor, or a cry rang out at night, the heart always stood still for a moment in the belief that some great and unknown danger threatened. It was the sign of living four years under the shadow of death. The effect upon the dark regions that lie beneath the consciousness was so deep that at the least interruption of the usual course Death started up with warning hand, or as he does in those clocks where he appears above the dial at every hour with sandglass and scythe. It was a sensation over which habit could not prevail, since the instinct of self-preservation remains always the same. The notion that a soldier becomes hardier and bolder as war proceeds is mistaken. What he gains in the science and art of attacking his enemy he loses in strength of nerve. The only dam against this loss is a sense of honour so resolute that few attain to it. For this reason I consider that troops composed of boys of twenty, under experienced leadership, are the most formidable.

On the evening of the same day came the moment we had so long desired, when, heavily laden, we set out for the line. Our way led through Betricourt, whose ruins stood up fantastically in the dusk, to a lonely ranger’s lodge concealed in pine woods, known as the Fasanerie. This was battalion reserve, and the 9th Company was in reserve till that night. The officer commanding was Lieutenant R. Brahms.

We reported and were detailed to our platoons, and soon found ourselves surrounded by bearded, mud-caked companions, who greeted us with a certain ironical good-humour. They asked us how things were going in Hanover and whether the war was going to end soon. Then the talk fell to laconic remarks about trenches, cookers, shellfire, and other matters of trench warfare.

After a while there was a shout to “turn out” at the entrance of our hut-like shelter. We fell in with our sections, and at the command “Laden und sichern” we put a clip of live cartridges into the magazine with secret joy.

Then in silence and in single file we went across country through the night, in a landscape studded with clumps of woodland. Now and then a single shot rang out, or a rocket fizzed up and after a brief and ghastly illumination left the darkness blacker than before. The dull clink of rifles and entrenching tools was varied by the warning cry, “Look out: wire!”

Then suddenly a rattle and a crash, and a curse: “Can’t you open your mouth when there’s a shell-hole coming?”

The corporal takes up the tale. “Shut up, blast you! Do you think the French have mud in their ears?” We get on quicker. The dark of night, the glimmer of a Verey light, the slow flicker of rifle-fire, induce a tremulous, alert state of the nerves; occasionally a chance bullet sings by, cool and thin, overhead and is lost in the distance. How often since then have I gone up the line in a mood half of excitement and half of melancholy through scenes of utter desolation!

Finally we were lost to sight in one of those trenches that wind like white serpents through the night to the front line. Once there, I woke to find myself alone and shivering. I was staring intently over the parapet at a row of firs in front of the trench, among which my fancy conjured up shadowy figures on every side, while now and then a stray bullet crashed through the branches. The only change during these almost endless hours was that an older hand took me by a long, narrow sap to a post in front of the line, and there we occupied ourselves, as I had done before, in keeping a lookout. For two hours after that I was allowed to sleep the sleep of exhaustion in a bare hole in the chalk. By dawn I was as white and chalky as the rest. I felt as though I had lived this mole’s life for months.

The regiment’s front was opposite the village of Le Gauda in the chalk hills of Champagne. On the right was the destroyed Garnet wood; then the line zigzagged through large fields of sugar-beet, among which the red trousers of those who had fallen in the previous attacks were conspicuous, and ended in low ground where touch with the 74th had to be maintained by means of night patrols. The beck flowed over the weir of a destroyed mill, surrounded by gloomy trees. It was an eerie spot to be in when the moon threw shifting shadows between rifts of cloud and when strange sounds seemed to be mingled with the murmur of the water and the whisper of the reeds.

Trench life here was as exhausting as it well could be. The day began before dawn, when every man had to be standing-to. From ten p.m. to six a.m. only two men from each section might be sleeping, which worked out at two hours sleep per man, and even this, owing to being wakened earlier or having straw to fetch and one thing or another to attend to, was often illusory.

Either we were on guard in the trench or else we went out to one of the numerous posts which were connected with the front line by long saps. These posts were intended to add security to the front line, but as trench warfare developed they were found too exposed and were given up.

This endless and terribly exhausting round of night guards was endurable in fine weather and even in frost. They were a positive torture when it rained, as it usually does in January. When the wet penetrated first the ground sheet pulled over your head, then coat and tunic, and then trickled, hour after hour, down your skin, there resulted a state of depression that was impervious even to the cheering sounds of the relief wading along towards you. The first light of dawn shone on exhausted chalk-smeared figures that, with chattering teeth and white faces, threw themselves down on the dirty straw of the dripping shelter. Those shelters! They were holes hacked out in the solid chalk wall of the trench and covered with a layer of boards and a few shovels of soil. When it rained they dripped the whole day after. With a certain gallows humour they were called “dripping wells,” “men’s baths,” and so on. If more than one desired to take their rest in them they were compelled to put their legs in the trench, where they formed excellent mantraps for passersby. Under these circumstances there was little question of sleep during the day, even if there had not been two hours on guard, cleaning the trench, fetching food, coffee, and water, and a lot else.

It may be imagined that this unaccustomed life came very hard on us, particularly as the old soldiers were quite knowing enough to take advantage of us in every possible manner. They brought this habit with them from life in barracks, and in this way added some bitterness to days hard enough already. There was an end to it, however, when we had once been under fire together. The common soldier could not easily swallow the fact that we were volunteers. He took it to be a sort of bumptiousness on our part. I often encountered this notion during the war.

It was not much better when the company was in reserve. Our quarters then were small mud huts covered with branches of fir trees near the Fasanerie or in Hiller wood, where the ground, deep in manure, gave at least the pleasant warmth of a hotbed. Many a time one waked in a puddle inches deep. Though up to now I had known rheumatism only by name, it was not many days before I felt it in every joint through being always wet to the skin. Here, too, the nights were not for sleeping. They were used for deepening the numerous communication trenches.

A ray of light in this scene of dreary monotony was the arrival of the cooker every evening at the corner of Hiller wood. When the lid was taken off the dixies a wonderful smell of beans-and-bacon or something else as delightful was wafted abroad. But here too there was a dark spot: desiccated vegetables, reviled by fastidious gourmets as “wire entanglements” or “damaged crops.”

Under January 6th I even find in my diary the following indignant observation: “In the evening the cooker waddled up and brought a filthy mess, probably stewed up out of frozen turnips.” On the other hand, under the 14th there is the enthusiastic entry: “Wonderful bean soup, four rations, pangs of satiety. We had an eating competition and disputed which position was the best for putting it down. I was for standing to it.”

The days of rest at Orainville were the best. They were spent in having one’s sleep out, cleaning equipment, and training. The company was quartered in a huge barn which had two stepladder stairs as the only way in. We had stoves in spite of the building being full of straw. One night I rolled against one of them, and was only awakened by the attentions of several of my pals who were making violent efforts to extinguish me. To my horror I found that my uniform was badly charred behind, and in consequence I had to go about for a considerable time in a species of frock-coat.

After a short while with the regiment we had pretty well lost the illusion with which we had set out. Instead of the dangers we had hoped for, only mud and work and sleepless nights had fallen to our lot, and the conquest of these called for a heroism that was little to our taste. This continuous exhaustion, too, was in part the fault of the higher command, which had not yet grasped the spirit of modern trench warfare. In a short war of movement the officer both can and must take it out of his men without regard; but in a war that drags on, this leads to physical collapse. The immense number of posts and the continual digging were for the most part unnecessary and even harmful. Trenches are not the first thing, but the courage and freshness of the men behind them. “Battles are won by iron hearts in wooden ships.”

Certainly in the trenches we heard a few bullets whistle, and now and then had a few shells over from the Rheims forts; but these small experiences of war were far beneath our expectations. All the same, we were often reminded of the murderous reality that lay behind these apparently aimless incidents. For example, on the 8th January a shell hit the Fasanerie and killed Lieutenant Schmidt, the adjutant of the battalion.

On the 27th January, in honour of the Kaiser, three hurrahs rang out, and along the whole length of the front “Hail to thee in conqueror’s wreath” was sung to the accompaniment of the enemy’s rifle-fire.

During these days I had a most unpleasant experience which nearly brought my military career to an untimely and inglorious conclusion. The company was on the left flank, and towards dawn, after a night entirely without sleep, I and another had to do double sentry-go in the low-lying ground. Owing to the cold, I had, against orders, thrown my blanket over my head and was leaning against a tree. My rifle was resting on a bush close beside me. Suddenly there was a noise behind me. Out went my hand⁠ ⁠… the rifle was gone. The officer on duty had slipped up behind me and got hold of it without being observed. As a summary punishment he sent me armed with a pickaxe towards the French posts, about a hundred metres away, a Red Indian idea that nearly cost me my life. For during the course of my remarkable penalty patrol, a patrol of three volunteers crept forward through the rushes and was seen and shot at by the French. One, called Lang, was hit and never seen again. As I was standing close by, I got my share of one of those platoon salvoes then so much in favour, and the twigs of the willow beside me whistled round my ears. I clenched my teeth and stood where I was, out of pure cussedness. I have never been able to forgive this N.C.O.⁠—who soon after was severely wounded and got his discharge⁠—for this dirty trick.

We were all heartily pleased when we heard that we were at last to be taken out; and we celebrated our departure from Orainville by a tremendous beer-drinking in the huge barn. On the 4th February ’15 we were relieved by a Saxon regiment and marched to Bazancourt.

That month, the hardest of the whole war for me, was a good schooling all the same. It made me thoroughly familiar with the whole round of trench duties and fatigues in their severest form. This experience stood me in good stead later, when without it I might as an officer have demanded the impossible of my men.