Regniéville

On the 4th of July 1917 we got out of the train at the famous Mars-la-Tour. The 7th and 8th Companies were quartered in Doncourt, where for some days we lived an almost contemplative life. The only source of conflict for me was the shortage of rations. It was strictly forbidden to forage in the fields, and yet the military police brought me reports nearly every morning with the names of men whom they had caught potato-lifting by night. I had to punish them, for the crime of being caught, as it stood in my (perhaps unofficial) code.

I had to learn, too, during those days that wrongdoing never comes to any good. Tebbe and I had brought with us a princely lord-mayor’s coach from an abandoned Flemish mansion, and had contrive to include it in the transport unobserved. Now we planned a magnificent expedition to Metz, in order to taste life at the full once more. So we harnessed up one afternoon and drove off. Unfortunately, the coach had no brakes, since it was designed for the Flemish plain, not for the hills of Lorraine. Before we were out of the village we had already begun to roll, and soon found ourselves embarked on a mad career that boded no good. The first to jump for it was the coachman; then Tebbe, who fell full-length on a heap of agricultural implements, and lay there. I remained alone on the silken upholstery, but certainly not at my ease. A door flew open, and was knocked straight off by a telegraph pole. Finally, the coach leapt down a bank and crashed against the wall of a house. I left the wreckage by a window, and ascertained that, with my usual luck, I was none the worse.

On the 9th the company was inspected by the commander of the division, Major-General von Busse, who praised us for our conduct in the recent fighting. We entrained on the next afternoon for the neighbourhood of Thiaucourt. Thence we marched straight on to our new position in the line. It lay along the wooded heights of the Côte Lorraine, opposite the much-shelled village of Regniéville, so often mentioned in the orders of the day. I inspected my front the first morning. It struck me as being of very generous length for one company, and it consisted of a maze of trenches half fallen in, and by no means easy to take stock of. Besides all this, the front line had been flattened out in many places by a species of heavy mortar bomb commonly used on this front. My dugout was a hundred metres behind in the so-called Commerce trench, near the road from Regniéville. It was the first time for a long while that we had the French opposite us.

The trench walls were of chalk, and this withstood the weather much better than the clay we were accustomed to. In places the sides of the trench were even carefully walled, and the floor of it concreted for long stretches, so that even in the heaviest rain the water could soon run away. The reddish-white rock abounded in fossils. Every time I went to my dugout with a pocketful of mussels, starfish, and snake-stone. My dugout was deep and drippy. It had a peculiarity very little to my liking, though I am a passionate entomologist. Instead of the usual louse, we had here its far livelier relative. These two varieties appear to have the same enmity to each other as the brown and common rat. It was no good adopting the usual remedy of a change of clothes, for the nimble parasites lay in ambush in the straw palliasses. At last the victim leapt up in desperation, and could have said with Mephisto:

I give the old rug another shake
And still one more to flight does take;
Up! and away! with all my soul
Go find yourselves another ’ole!

Rations, too, were very poor. Beyond the thin midday soup, there was nothing but the third of a loaf, and something infinitesimal to eat with it, usually half-mouldy jam. Most of mine was always eaten by a fat rat, for which I often lay in wait, but in vain.

This sparse living, which left us always half-fed, brought about a most unpleasant state of affairs. The men often suffered literally from hunger, and this led to pilfering of rations. It surprised me to find that I, though used to good and plentiful food, seemed to bear the privation much better than the men. Cabbage soup was their only thought. When it comes to food, the good manners that in Europe are mostly whitewash are soon scratched off. A man shows his real superiority when hunger is part of the meal, not at festive tables. Privation and danger tear away all that has been acquired, and then good form survives only in those in whom it is born.

The companies in reserve and on rest occupied hutments in picturesque situations deeply hidden in the forest. My quarters in reserve were particularly delightful. The camp was in a blind corner on the edge of a narrow forest gorge. My little hut was built half into the bank, and curtained with hazel and cornel bushes. From the window I had a view of the wooded hillside opposite and a narrow strip of meadow traversed by a stream. A collection of bottles of all sorts stacked at the back showed that many hermits had already spent meditative hours there, and I, too, strove to live up to its time-honoured associations. When the evening mist rose from below and mingled with the heavy white smoke of my wood fire, and I squatted in the open door at dusk between the warm fire behind and the keen autumn air in front, it always seemed to me that only one drink was appropriate⁠—red wine and cognac, half-and-half, in a big-bellied glass. These intimate communings consoled me for the fact that a gentleman from the depot, who had seniority over myself, had come to take over my company, and that I was once more discharging the boring duties of a platoon commander in the trenches. I endeavoured to kill the endless hours on trench duty by frequent warlike excursions in my old style.

On the 24th August the gallant Captain Böckelmann was wounded by a shell splinter. This made the third commanding officer the battalion had lost within a short time. On the 29th, with the N.C.O. Kloppmann, the stoutest fellow of the 7th Company, I paid a visit to the enemy’s lines.

We crept up to a gap in the enemy wire, cut by Kloppmann the night before. It was an unpleasant surprise to find that it had been mended up again. Nevertheless, we cut it through once more, with a good deal of noise, and climbed down into the trench. We crouched behind the next traverse and listened, lying in wait. After a quarter of an hour we went cautiously on, following a telegraph wire that came to an end at a bayonet stuck in the ground. We found the post defended by wire entanglements of all kinds and also a trellised door, but unoccupied. After we had taken accurate note of everything we went the same way back, and carefully connected up the wire again across our gap, so as not to betray our visit.

The next evening Kloppmann again reconnoitred the post. However, he was greeted by rifle-fire and the lemon-shaped bombs we called “duck’s eggs.” One of them fell close to his head, which was pressed to the ground⁠—without exploding. He had to take to his heels with all speed. The evening after that there were two of us again, and this time we found the front line occupied. By listening we accurately located four posts. One of them was whistling a very charming tune to himself. Finally we were fired on, and crept back.

When I was standing by myself in the trench again, Vogt and Haverkamp suddenly turned up. They had very obviously been having a jolly time, and the odd idea had come to them of leaving the comfortable reserve camp and journeying through a pitch-black night to the front line, in order to go, as they said, on patrol. I have always made it a rule to let anyone carry his own skin to market where he pleases; so I made no objection to them clambering out of the trench, though the enemy still continued in a high state of excitement. It is true that the sole purpose of their patrol was to look for the silk parachutes of French rockets; and that, having found them, they chased each other to and fro in front of the enemy’s wire, whirling these white tokens aloft. Naturally, they were fired on; but after a long while they came happily back. Bacchus had them in his tender keeping.

On the 10th September I went from the reserve camp to regimental headquarters to ask for leave. “I have been thinking of you,” was Colonel von Oppen’s reply; “however, the regiment has to make a raid in force and you are to lead it. Look out the best men and get them into training down in Soulœuvre camp.”

We were to enter the enemy’s trench at two points and endeavour to bring prisoners back. The patrol was in three parties, two for the attack and one to occupy the front line and cover our rear. I led the left party, Lieutenant von Kienitz the right. The men were all volunteers, and a few who were not required nearly wept when I left them out. My party, myself included, consisted of fourteen men, and among them were the Fähnrich Zglinitzky, the N.C.O.s Kloppmann, Mevius, and Dujesiefken, and two pioneers. The most reckless fellows of the 2nd Battalion found themselves united.

We trained ourselves in bomb-throwing for ten days, and carried out our enterprise against a carefully-built model of the strong-point we were to raid. It was a wonder, considering the excessive zeal of the men, that I had only two wounded with bomb-splinters before the event. For the rest, we were excused all duty; so that when on the afternoon of the 22nd September we proceeded to the second line, where we were to spend the night, I found myself in command of a somewhat wild but very useful band.

In the evening von Kienitz and I made our way through the dark forest to regimental headquarters. We had been invited to a farewell dinner by the commanding officer of the battalion, Captain Schumacher. After that we lay down to sleep in our deep dugout. It is a peculiar feeling when, knowing that next morning you have a fight to the death to go through, you give yourself a last audience before you fall asleep.

We were awakened at three, and we got up and washed and had breakfast made for us. I got into a temper at once because my batman had over-salted and so ruined the poached eggs I had treated myself to, both in honour of the day and for my own support.

We pushed back our plates and went through for the hundredth time every detail and contingency. At intervals we offered each other cherry-brandies, and von Kienitz gave us the benefit of several time-honoured jokes. At twenty minutes to five we got the men together and led them to the jumping-off places in the front line. Gaps in the wire had been cut, and long arrows, whitened with lime, pointed to our objectives. We separated with a shake of the hand and waited for what should come next.

I was in full array: two sandbags in front of my chest, each with four stick bombs, the left-hand one having instantaneous, the right-hand with time fuses; in the right-hand pocket of my tunic I had an .08 revolver on a long cord; in my right trouser pocket a small Mauser pistol; in my left tunic pocket five egg bombs; in the left trouser pocket a phosphorescent compass and a policeman’s whistle; in my belt spring hooks for pulling out the bomb pins, a dagger, and wire-cutters. There was a pocketbook in my breast pocket and my home address, and in the pocket of the back of my tunic a flat flask of cherry-brandy.

We had taken off our shoulder-straps and Gibraltar badges so that the enemy should have no information as to our unit. We wore a white band round each arm so as to know each other.

Four minutes before five the division on our left opened fire as a blind. Exactly at five our artillery and trench mortars suddenly opened out. I was standing with Kloppmann in front of the dugout entrance and smoking a last cigar; we had to take cover, however, as many of the shells fell short. Watch in hand we counted the minutes.

Exactly at 5:05 we left the dugouts and made for the prepared gaps in our wire. I ran forward, holding a bomb aloft, and in the half-light I saw the right-hand party rushing on to the attack.

The enemy wire was poor and I jumped over it in two bounds; but I fell over a trip wire behind it and tumbled into a shell-hole. Kloppmann and Mevius pulled me out.

“In!” We jumped into the front line without meeting opposition, while from our right came the sounds of a bombing engagement. Without worrying about that we crossed by the sandbag barricade that blocked the next trench, and jumped from shell-hole to shell-hole till we came to a double row of “knife-rests” that separated us from the second line. As this trench was in a state of confusion and gave no hope of prisoners, we hurried on without pausing down a communication trench. It was blocked, so I next sent the pioneers forward to clear the way, but time being short I took the lead myself.

At the junction of the third line the red glow of a cigarette-end fell to the ground in front of me. I gave the men a signal, grasped my bomb tighter, and crept warily along the well-built trench, against whose walls leaned any number of abandoned rifles. At such a moment the memory unconsciously fastens upon the most trifling objects, and now the sight of a saucepan with a spoon in it where the two trenches crossed was imprinted on my mind. To this fact I owed my life twenty minutes later.

Suddenly we saw shadowy figures disappear in front of us. We ran after them and came to a sandbagged sap in whose wall was the mouth of a dugout. I went forward and shouted “Montez!” A bomb was the only answer. Apparently it was one with a time fuse. I heard the little snap and had time to jump back. It burst at the height of my head against the opposite wall, tore my silken cap, wounded my left hand in several places, and tore away the top of my little finger. The pioneer sergeant standing near me had a hole bored through his nose. We retreated a few steps and bombarded the danger-spot with bombs. One of us, in an excess of zeal, threw a smoke-stick into the entrance and made further attacks on it impossible. We turned back then and followed the third line in the opposite direction, hoping to get a prisoner at last. Arms and equipment had been thrown down everywhere. The question, where were the owners of all these rifles and where were they lying in wait, made a more and more uncomfortable impression on us; but on we hurried all the same, undeterred, on and on through the deserted trenches, with bombs ready and revolver outstretched.

It was only by thinking it out later that I made out our course after this. We had turned without noticing into a third communication trench and by this time were well into the middle of our own barrage, and approaching the fourth line. Here and there we pulled open the boxes of bombs built into the sides of the trench and stuck a bomb in our pockets as a keepsake.

After we had gone to and fro and up and down trenches running parallel and across, no one had any longer the least idea where we were, nor in what direction the German lines lay. By degrees we all got the wind up. The needles of our compasses danced in our hands, and when we looked for the Polestar all we had learned at school evaporated and left us in the lurch. The sound of voices in the next trenches warned us that the enemy had recovered from the shock of surprise. He would be bound soon to realize our position.

After turning about once more I suddenly saw, as I brought up the rear, the muzzle of a machine-gun waving to and fro over a traverse of sandbags. I made a jump at it and came upon Kloppmann and Fähnrich Zglinitzky busy with the gun, while Fusilier Haller was searching a bloodstained body for papers. Without troubling any more about our surroundings we began fiddling with the machine-gun in feverish haste so that we might at least take back something with us. I tried to loosen the retaining screw, another cut off the loading belt with wire-cutters; at last we got hold of the thing, tripod and all, meaning to take it with us without dismounting it. At this moment we heard a voice from a trench running parallel to us. It came from the direction in which we supposed our lines to be. “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?” At the same time a black blob flew over towards us, indistinctly seen against the dim sky. “Look out!” It burst between Mevius and me, and a splinter got Mevius in the hand.

We scattered in all directions, entangling ourselves deeper and deeper in the maze of trenches. With me there were only the pioneer sergeant and Mevius. Our one hope was the Frenchmen’s alarm; for they did not venture yet to come out of their holes. However, it could only be a matter of minutes before we ran into a strong party of them, who would do us in with delight. I debated whether I would not simply whack the first I met on the head with one of the stick bombs that had an instantaneous fuse. There was no thought of hands-up.

When I had given up all hope of getting safely out of the wasps’ nest, a cry of joy escaped me. My eye had fallen on the saucepan with the spoon, and now I knew my direction. As it was now quite light, we had not a moment to lose. We jumped out of the trench and made for our own lines over the top, as the first bullets whistled round us. In the French first line we came on Lieutenant von Kienitz’s party. When the cry of “Luttje Lage!” rang out, we knew we had the worst behind us.

Most unfortunately, in jumping into the trench I came right on a man who was severely wounded and lay in the trench among the others. Kienitz hurriedly told me that he had bombed a French working party in the front line and had driven it back, and that at the very start, when advancing further, he had suffered losses in dead and wounded from the fire of our own artillery.

After waiting a longish while, two more of my party turned up, the N.C.O. Dujesiefken and Fusilier Haller. Haller brought me at least some small consolation. He found himself in his wanderings alone in a little sap, and there he discovered three abandoned machine-guns, one of which he had unscrewed from its stand and brought with him. Now, as it was growing lighter every moment, we hurried over No-man’s-land into our own front line.

Of the fourteen men who had gone out with me only four came back, and Kienitz’s patrol, too, had heavy losses. I was very crestfallen; but some words of the worthy Oldenburger, Dujesiefken, cheered me up a little. He was recounting his experiences to a group of the men in front of the dugout where I was having my hand dressed, and he concluded by saying: “But Lieutenant Jünger has won my respect; lads, lads, you should see him clear the blocks!” Then we got together again and marched through the forest to regimental headquarters. Colonel von Oppen gave us coffee. He was very much disappointed at our lack of success, but he expressed his admiration all the same for what we had done. Then I was put into a car and driven to the division, which required exact information. A few hours before, I was storming shell-shot trenches in forlorn bombing attacks; now I enjoyed to the full all the luxury of leaning back in a powerful car as it purred along over a good road.

The general staff officer received me in his office, and tried in vain to impress upon me that I owed the loss of my men to an ill-considered and overhasty advance. I thought: “You can tell me a lot, sitting here twenty kilometres behind the line,” and I gave him to understand that in the enemy’s front line I had neither a green table nor the packs of cards upon it. Besides that, all the part I had had was the fighting itself; as for the plan, that had been thrust on me ready-made, though there was much in it to take exception to. I had asked that the objective should be altered to the well-marked line of the paved road, or at least that coloured lights might be fired from our lines in case any of us lost our way. The reply had been that this would draw the enemy’s fire. But what the devil did the enemy’s fire matter to me? I was used to it. But I was not an owl to see my way in the dark!

The divisional commander was more agreeable, and soon dissipated my low spirits. I sat next him at lunch in my torn tunic and with my hand bound up, and remembering the saying, “Only fools are modest!” I took care to put our doings of the morning in their true light.

Next day Colonel von Oppen inspected the patrol again, and distributed iron crosses and gave each of us fourteen days’ leave. At midday those of the fallen who were brought in were buried in the military cemetery at Thiaucourt. Among this year’s graves are some of 1870⁠–⁠71. One of these old graves had a mossy stone with the inscription: “Far from our sight but always near our hearts.” Cut on a large tablet of stone were the following lines:⁠—

Heroes’ deeds and heroes’ graves
Rank themselves beside the old.
How to win and how to keep⁠ ⁠…
Here is told.

In the evening I read in the French communiqué, “A German raid near Regniéville failed. We made prisoners.” It was not stated that the prisoners were taken only because we lost our way in seeking an enemy who had fled before us. Had the French defended their trenches as soldiers of courage do, it would have been a different story.

I had a letter some months later from one of the missing, Fusilier Meyer. He had lost a leg in a fight with bombs. After long wanderings he and three others had been engaged by the enemy. When the others, among whom was the brave N.C.O. Kloppmann, had fallen, he himself had been taken prisoner, severely wounded.

I have been in many adventures during the war, but not one was more uncomfortable. It gives me the blues even now whenever I think of our wanderings through those unknown trenches in the cold light of dawn.