Flanders Again

On the very day that I came back from leave we were relieved by the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 5. We then went into quarters in Labry, a village in the neighbourhood dirty enough to be typical of it. The vain search for a water-closet is the outstanding memory one has of the villages of Lorraine. Baths appear to be unknown. I have had some strange experiences of this description in France. One has to pass with a smile over certain shady sides of even the most magnificent mansions. Much as I esteem the French, I cannot help thinking that this is a characteristic side of their life. I know indeed that hostile races always call each other dirty, and that we were ourselves called “sales Boches” by the French. Nevertheless, I feel we are fully justified in returning this compliment to the Latin races.

On the 17th of October 1917 we were entrained, and after a day and a half trod the soil of Flanders once more, after an absence of two months. We spent the night in the little town of Iseghem, and next morning marched to Roulers or, in Flemish, Rouselaere. The town was in the first stages of devastation. Things were still for sale in the shops, but the inhabitants were already living in their cellars, and their ordinary way of life was being broken up by frequent bombardments. A milliner’s window opposite my billet seemed to me to be very much out of place in the tumult of war. By night looters tried to break into the houses of those who had already left.

I was the only person in my billet in the Ooststraat to occupy rooms above the ground-level. The house belonged to a cloth-merchant, who had fled at the beginning of the war and left an old housekeeper and her daughter to look after it. They took care of a small orphaned girl whom they had found during our advance, forsaken by her parents and wandering lost in the streets. They knew neither her name nor her parents. They had an extreme fear of bombs, and besought me almost on their knees to have no light upstairs, in case of attracting the hateful bombers. However, I found I had laughed once too often. I was standing with Lieutenant Reinhardt at the window and watching an English machine skim low over the roofs in the beam of a searchlight. Suddenly an immense bomb burst close by, and the window panes flew in splinters about our ears.

I was appointed intelligence officer in the coming operations, and attached to the regimental staff. To get my bearings I went, before we took over, to the headquarters of the 10th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, that we were to relieve. I found the C.O. very friendly, though at first he growled something about my “red band.” By that time I had long given up attaching any importance to a war-worn uniform. The new hand is known everywhere by other tokens than these.

Two orderlies took me to the so-called Meldekopf, which was said to give a very good view of the front. We had scarcely left headquarters when a shell fell near us. I was still, apparently, to be “the well-beloved son of Chaos.”

Towards midday the shells came over in an incessant thunder, but my guides cleverly avoided them by the course they took across a country that was marked by numerous little poplar plantations. They worked their way forward through the lovely autumn landscape, with the instinct of the soldier of modern warfare, who even in the heaviest fire can hit on a path that at least offers even chances.

We arrived at a lonely farm, where there were signs of recent shell-bursts. At the yard gate a dead man lay face downwards.

“Settled him!” said one of the sturdy Bavarians.

“Dirty weather!” said the other, and hurried on after a look at the sky.

The Meldekopf lay on the far side of the much-shelled Passchendaele-Westroosebeke road. It was an intelligence clearing-station like the one I had had in my charge at Fresnoy. Situated near a house that had been shot to a heap of rubbish, it was so little protected that the first honest hit would blow it to pieces. Three officers were leading a sociable cave-life there, but they were very much delighted by the prospect of a speedy relief, and gladly told me all I wanted to know about the enemy, and the front, and the approaches to the line. After this I returned to Roulers by way of Roodkruis and Oostnieuwkerke, and made my report to the commanding officer.

As I went through the streets of the town I read the homely names of the numerous little inns that express the snug Flemish life so well. Who would not be drawn by a signboard with the title “Die Zalm” (salmon), “De Reeper” (heron), “Die Nieue Trompette,” “De Drei Königen,” or “Den Olifant”? Does it not echo Teniers and de Coster? At the very outset one is put at one’s ease by the homely speech and the confiding du. May this enchanting country get back its old life again after the frightful wounds of war!

In the evening the town was bombed once more. I went down to the cellar, and found the women huddled in a corner. I turned on my electric torch to comfort the little girl. She was crying for terror in the dark, for a bomb had extinguished the light. Here was another sign of the tenacity with which people cling to their homes. In spite of the violence of their fear, these women embraced the very soil that might at any moment be their grave.

On the morning of the 22nd October I started for Kalve with my troop of four men. It was here that the staff of the regiment was to take over in the course of the morning. There was very heavy shelling on the front, and the flashes gave the early morning mist the appearance of an effervescent bloodred vapour. A house at the entrance of Oostnieuwkerke was hit by a heavy shell, and collapsed with a roar when we were not far from it. Bits of stone rolled about the road. We tried to make a detour, but had to go through the town as we did not know the way by Roodkruis. As I was hurrying by, I asked the way of a N.C.O. who was standing at a cellar entrance. Instead of replying, he dug his hands into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. I had no time to lose, considering the shells that were coming over; so I leapt upon this blunder of military education and extorted the information at the point of my revolver.

This was the first time I ever found anyone in the fighting area who made difficulties, not from cowardice, but just because he wanted to. Though this state of mind naturally grew more general in the last years of the war, yet such an expression of it in the course of operations was extremely unusual, since battle is like an opiate whose immediate effect is to stimulate the nerves, though the subsequent effect is to deaden them. On the other hand, it was when marching out of the line after a “show” that you found clearest indications of crumbling morale.

Matters became more serious round Roodkruis, a small farm at a fork of the road. Limbers were going like mad along the shelled road, infantry wound in file through the fields on either side of it, and a string of wounded dragged themselves along to the rear. A young artilleryman had a long jagged splinter sticking out from his shoulder. We turned off the road to the right to regimental headquarters, which were in a ring of shellfire. Two signallers were laying telephone wire in a field of cabbages near by. A shell went up close beside one of them. We saw him fall, and took it he was finished. However, he picked himself up and with admirable sangfroid continued unrolling his wire. As headquarters were no more than a tiny concrete blockhouse, where there was scarcely room for the commanding officer and his staff, I had to seek quarters elsewhere. With the intelligence, gas, and trench-mortar officers I shared a flimsy wooden hut that was scarcely the ideal of a bombproof shelter.

In the afternoon I went up the line, as a report had come in that the enemy had that morning made an attack on our 5th Company. My way took me over the Meldekopf to “Nordhof,” a farm shelled out of all recognition, beneath whose ruins dwelt the commanding officer of the battalion in reserve. Thence a track that was still just to be discerned led to the C.O. of the troops in the line. The vast field of shell-holes had been turned into a sea of mud by the heavy rain of the last days. Its depths were particularly dangerous in the low-lying ground of the Paddebeek. On my zigzag course I passed many a lonely and forgotten corpse. Often only a head or a hand projected from the shell-hole whose circle of dirty water reflected them. Thousands sleep like that, without one token of love to mark the unknown grave.

I crossed the Paddebeek after the utmost exertions, and only with the help of some poplars that a shell had flung across it; and found the officer in command of the 5th Company, Lieutenant Heins, in a giant shell-hole, with what remained of his company around him. Their shell-hole line lay on a slope, and, since it was not entirely flooded, might be called habitable by the unassuming front-line soldier.

Heins told me that the English had come on in line that morning, but had disappeared when fire was opened on them. The enemy had, however, shot a few men of the 164th Regiment who had lost their way and ran for it at their approach. Apart from this all was in order; and I returned forthwith to headquarters and made my report to the commanding officer.

On the following day we were most rudely interrupted at lunch by a few shells planted right in front of the door. Descending fountains of soil beat long tattoos on our tarred roof. There was a rush for the door. I fled to a farm close at hand, and as it was raining I went inside. In the evening the same performance was repeated; only this time, as it was fine, I stood outside the farmhouse. The next shell fell right in the middle of it. Such are the chances of war. Here more than anywhere it is a case of little causes and great effects. Seconds and millimetres make the difference.

On the 28th we were driven from the huts by eight o’clock, and one of those opposite us got a direct hit at the second shot. Others fell in the waterlogged meadows. They made less noise, but they scooped out some fine holes. Prompted by the experiences of the day before, I sought out a lonely shell-hole, of dimensions to inspire confidence, in the cabbage-field behind headquarters, and I would never leave it again until a considerable safety margin had elapsed. I heard that day the news, particularly distressing to me, of the death of Lieutenant Brecht. He had met his heroic death in the shell-hole area to the right of the Nordhof, while acting as a divisional observation officer. He was one of those few who were encircled by a nimbus of romance, even in the most material of wars, owing to their insatiable daredevilry. Men like him always stood out from the common run; they laughed every time an attack was ordered.

The morning of the 26th was occupied by drumfire of unusual intensity. Our artillery, too, doubled its fury when the signals for a barrage went up in the front line. Every little bit of wood and every hedge was crammed with guns, and behind them the half-dazed gunners were kept hard at work.

As the reports of the wounded about an English attack were confused and exaggerated, I was sent forward at eleven with my four men to obtain more exact information. We had to pass through a sharp fire, and met a great number of wounded, among them Lieutenant Spitz, commanding the 12th Company, wounded in the chin. Even before reaching the headquarters of the battalion in the line we were in a direct machine-gun fire, a sign that the enemy must have broken through. This fear was soon confirmed by Major Dietlein, commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion. I found the old gentleman in the act of creeping out of the entrance of his blockhouse, which was three parts under water, and fishing zealously for his meerschaum cigar-holder, which had fallen into the mud. The enemy had broken through the front line and taken a ridge from which he commanded the important area of the Paddebeek and battalion headquarters situated there.

After I had marked the alteration of the front in blue chalk on my map, I set out on a fresh steeplechase through the mud with my men. We ran at full speed over the exposed ground till a slope gave us cover, and then we proceeded more slowly to Nordhof. Shells were falling to right and left in the boggy ground, and throwing up large mountains of mud surrounded by countless smaller ones. Nordhof was being shelled with H.E. in a nerve-shattering manner, and we had to reach it in jumps. The noise these things made was really most hideous and quite deafening. They came over in groups at short intervals. The only thing to do was to cover the ground in short darts, and then wait for the next shots in a shell-hole. The interval between the first distant howl and the explosion near by is marked by a peculiarly painful emphasis upon the instinct of self-preservation, since the body is reduced to a state of defenceless and motionless waiting. But I am afraid my insistence on the fact that the war was no child’s-play will become burdensome. The picture of every day was at last made up of such experiences.

There was shrapnel, too, among the rest. One of them scattered its bullets with a clatter among us, and one of my men was hit on the hind rim of his helmet and thrown to the ground. After he had lain stunned for some while, he picked himself up and ran on. The ground round Nordhof was strewn with terribly mutilated bodies.

As we carried out our job in a sporting spirit, we were often in places that had just ceased to be possible. In this way the unseen events of the battlefield came to our eyes. We were everywhere pressing on the heels of death. It was almost as though not one living soul was to be found in this desolation. Here lay a group behind a tattered hedge, their bodies covered by the still fresh earth that showered on them after the shell had burst; there, two runners near a shell-hole, from which the suffocating vapour of the explosives still exhaled. At other spots there were many corpses scattered over a small surface⁠—a carrying-party caught in a vortex of shell-bursts, or a strayed platoon coming up in support, had found an end here. We appeared, took in the drama at one glance, and disappeared into the smoke again.

When we had safely crossed the much-shelled bit of ground behind the Passchendaele-Westroosebeke road, I was able to give intelligence to the commander of the regiment.

Next morning I was despatched to the front line at six o’clock, to ascertain whether and where the regiment was in touch with the units on its flanks. On the way I met Sergeant-major Ferchland, who had to take the orders to the 8th Company to advance on Goudberg and fill the gap, if there should be one, between us and the regiment on the left. The quickest way to carry out my task was to go along with him. After a long search we found my friend Tebbe, commanding the 8th Company, in an inhospitable part of the shelled area near the Meldekopf. He was not particularly pleased at the notion of executing the proposed movement in broad daylight. We lit cigars while waiting for the company to assemble, and conducted a laconic conversation in the dreary and oppressive surroundings that the morning light revealed.

Before we had gone a few steps we were under rifle-fire from high ground in front, and we had to go forward by jumps from one shell-hole to the other, each man on his own. As we went across the next rise the fire was so concentrated that Tebbe gave the order to take up a position in shell-holes until night came on. Smoking his cigar, he went with great coolness along the whole length of his front. I decided to go on and ascertain the width of the gap, and first I rested awhile in Tebbe’s shell-hole. Soon the enemy artillery began to resent the company’s imprudent advance, and got the range of the strip of ground we were on. A bit of shell that struck our refuge, throwing the soil over my map and into my eyes, gave me the tip to go. I bade farewell to Tebbe, and wished him good luck for the hours ahead. He called after me: “God send the night; the morning will come of itself.”

We made our way cautiously through the low-lying ground of the Paddebeek, which was overlooked by the enemy, taking cover behind the branches shot away from the poplars and using their trunks as a bridge. Now and then one of us sank in mud above the hips and would certainly have drowned but for the rifle-butts that the others stretched out to help him up. I chose as our objective a group of men standing round a concrete blockhouse. In front of us, moving in the same direction, there were four stretcher-bearers carrying a stretcher. It made me suspicious to see a wounded man being carried forward, so I took my glasses and then saw a line of khaki-coloured figures with flat helmets. At the same moment the first shots snapped out. As there was no cover to take, we ran, and the bullets spurted the mud up on all sides of us. The chase through the morass was frantically exhausting, and when completely pumped we had to stop for a while and give the English a good target; but a few H.E.s soon restored us to our first vigour. All the same, they had the advantage of concealing us from the enemy in their smoke. The worst feature of this run was knowing that a wound would drown one for certainty in a mud-hole. A suffusion of blood on the surface of a shell-hole here and there showed that many a man had vanished thus.

I was dead tired when we reached headquarters. I gave in my sketch and made a report on the situation.

On the 28th October we were relieved again by the 10th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, and quartered among the villages behind the line, to be put in again at any moment. The staff moved to Most.

In the evening we were sitting in a deserted inn. We were already in the best of spirits again and celebrating the promotion of Lieutenant Zürn, who had been mentioned in despatches and had just come back from leave. As a punishment for our lightheartedness we were awakened next morning by gigantic drumfire that blew in my windowpanes in spite of our distance from it. Immediately after, the alarm was given. There was a rumour that the enemy had broken through by the gap that still persisted on the regiment’s left flank. I spent the day waiting for orders at the artillery observation post, the neighbourhood of which was being sporadically shelled. A light shell went through the window of a small house and drove out three gunners, wounded and covered with brick-dust. The corpses of three others remained beneath the wreckage.

The morning after I had the following orders from the commanding officer of the Bavarians: “Owing to repeated attacks by the enemy the front of the regiment on the left flank has been still further pushed back, and the gap between the regiments greatly widened. As there was danger of our flank being turned from the left, the 1st Battalion of the 73rd Fusiliers counterattacked yesterday. Apparently, however, it was dispersed by the barrage and never reached the enemy. This morning the 2nd Battalion was sent forward to close the gap. So far no news has been received. Information is now required as to the position of the 1st and 2nd Battalions.”

I set out, and had only got as far as Nordhof when I met Captain von Brixen, commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, who had a sketch-map of the disposition of the troops ready to hand in his pocket. I took a copy of it, and with this my task was really completed. However, I went on all the same to the headquarters of the troops in the line, which I found in a concrete blockhouse, in order to make a personal reconnaissance.

On the way I passed great numbers of recent casualties. The white faces stared out of the brimming shell-holes or were already so mud-bespattered that the human face was scarcely recognizable. I was sorry to see the blue Gibraltar badge on most of them. The commanding officer was a Bavarian, Captain Radlmaier, a very energetic officer. He gave me full details of the position that Captain von Brixen had hastily told me of. Our 2nd Battalion had suffered heavy losses, among them the adjutant and the officer commanding the valiant 7th Company. The fate of the adjutant, Lieutenant Lemière, was particularly tragic, as his brother had been killed the April before at Fresnoy, in command of the 8th Company. Both brothers belonged to the principality of Liechtenstein, but they had joined the army out of enthusiasm for the cause of Germany. It is fatal for two sons to be in one regiment in wartime. We had four pairs of brothers among the officers of the regiment. Of these eight, five were killed, and two, one of whom was my brother, were severely wounded. I was the only one to come through in a fairly sound state. This little example shows the losses of the Fusiliers.

The captain pointed to a concrete post about two hundred metres in front of our line, which had been defended with particular heroism the day before. Shortly after the attack began, the commander of this little strong-point, a sergeant-major, saw an Englishman who was taking off three German prisoners. He shot the Englishman and added the three to the strength of his garrison⁠—though it did not appear that he found in them an exactly heroic trio. When they had shot away their ammunition they tied an Englishman in front of the entrance as a peaceful signboard, and at dark succeeded after all in escaping unobserved.

Another strong-point, commanded by a lieutenant, was summoned to surrender. Instead of making an answer, the German leapt out and, seizing the English officer, dragged him inside before the eyes of his bewildered men.

That day, for the only time in the war, I saw small bodies of stretcher-bearers moving about in the open with the Red Cross flag without a shot being fired. Such a sight was unknown to the front-line soldier in this subterranean war except when matters were very desperate. Nevertheless, I heard later on that some of our stretcher-bearers had been shot by English snipers.

This fact may seem astounding, and yet I can explain it to myself. Weak natures are prone to the atavistic impulse to destroy; and it takes hold of the trench fighter in his desolate existence when anyone appears above ground. I have felt it myself only too often.

I had an unpleasant time on my way back owing to the irritant gas of the English shells. The ground was saturated with it. It smelt of rotten apples and made the eyes run. After making my report to headquarters I met two stretchers just outside the dressing-station at Kalve. On each, severely wounded, was an officer whom I knew well. One was Lieutenant Zürn, in whose honour we had made a night of it only two evenings before. Now he lay half-undressed on a door. His face had that hint of yellow which is the certain precursor of death, and he looked at me with fixed eyes when I went up to take his hand. The other, Lieutenant Haverkamp, had the bones of a leg and an arm so shattered by a shell that an amputation was extremely probable. He was as white as death, and he lay on his stretcher with his features heroically set, smoking a cigarette.

Our losses in young officers were again frightfully heavy during these days. Every time afterwards that I heard prejudice and depreciation on the lips of the mob, I thought of these men who saw it out to the bitter end with so little parade and with so fine an ardour. But after all⁠—what is the mob? It sees in everything nothing but the reflection of its own manners. It is quite clear to me that these men were our best. However cleverly people may talk and write, there is nothing to set against self-sacrifice that is not pale, insipid, and miserable.

On the 3rd of November we entrained at Gits, whose situation was familiar to us from our earliest Flanders days. We found that the two Flemish girls had lost their old freshness. They, too, seemed to have lived through days of battle in the meantime.

Next, we were for some days in rest at Tourcoing, an imposing sister-city of Lille. For the first time and the last during the war, every man of the 7th Company slept on a featherbed. I occupied a magnificently furnished room in the house of an industrial magnate in the Rue de Lille. The first evening, with an open fire, the indispensable marble mantelpiece, and an armchair, was unspeakably delightful.

The few days were passed by everybody in enjoying life that had been so hardly won. It was still scarcely believable that death had been escaped, and it seemed a necessity to assure oneself of it by enjoying life in every aspect.