The Great Offensive

The battalion was quartered in the château of Brunemont. We were told that we were to march up the line on the night of March 19th⁠–⁠20th, and to occupy the dugouts in the line near Cagnicourt, ready to go over the top on the morning of March 21st. The task assigned to the regiment was to break through between the villages of Ecoust-St.-Mein and Noreuil, which we knew from 1915⁠–⁠16, on the first day. I sent Lieutenant Schmidt⁠—who because of his amiability was never called anything but “little Schmidt”⁠—on ahead to make sure of our quarters.

The regiment marched out of Brunemont at the appointed hour. Their morale was excellent in spite of pouring rain. I overlooked a drunken fellow who reeled bawling between the files of my company, for now any harsh words could only do harm. Training was over; and now we came to business, not a wheel of the machine was to be checked.

From some crossroads where guides awaited us the companies went forward independently. When we got as far as the second line, where we were to be quartered, it came out that the guides had lost their way. Now began a chase to and fro over the dim and sodden shell-hole area and a questioning of innumerable troops, who knew as little where they were as we did. To prevent the complete exhaustion of the men I called a halt and sent out the guides in all directions.

Sections piled arms and crowded into a gigantic crater, while I and Lieutenant Sprenger sat on the edge of a smaller one. There had been single shells falling about a hundred metres in front of us for some while. Then there was one nearer; the splinters struck the sides of the shell-hole. One of the men cried out and said he was hit in the foot. I shouted to the men to scatter among the surrounding shell-holes, and meanwhile I examined the man’s boot to see if there was a hole. Then the whistle of another shell high in the air. Everybody had that clutching feeling: “It’s coming over!” There was a terrific stupefying crash⁠ ⁠… the shell had burst in the midst of us.⁠ ⁠…

I picked myself up half-unconscious. The machine-gun ammunition in the large shell-hole, set alight by the explosion, was burning with an intense pink glow. It illumined the rising fumes of the shell-burst, in which there writhed a heap of black bodies and the shadowy forms of the survivors, who were rushing from the scene in all directions. At the same time rose a multitudinous tumult of pain and cries for help.

I will make no secret of it that after a moment’s blank horror I took to my heels like the rest and ran aimlessly into the night. It was not till I had fallen head over heels into a small shell-hole that I understood what had happened. Only to hear and see no more! Only to get away, far away, and creep into a hole! And yet the other voice was heard: “You are the company commander, man!” Exactly so. I do not say it in self-praise. I might as well say: “When God gives an office, He gives the understanding for it.” I have often observed in myself and others that an officer’s sense of responsibility drowns his personal fears. There is a sticking-place, something to occupy the thoughts. So I forced myself back to the ghastly spot. On the way I ran into Fusilier Haller, he who had bagged the machine-gun on my November patrol, and took him along with me.

The wounded men never ceased to utter their fearful cries. Some came creeping to me when they heard my voice and whimpered, “Sir⁠ ⁠… Sir!” One of my favourite recruits, Jasinski, whose leg was broken by a splinter, caught hold of me round the knees. Cursing my impotence to help, I vainly clapped him on the shoulder. Such moments can never be forgotten.

I had to leave the wretched creatures to the one surviving stretcher-bearer and lead the faithful few who remained and who collected round me away from the fatal spot. Half an hour before I had been at the head of a first-rate company at fighting strength. Now the few who followed me through the maze of trenches where I lost my way were utterly crestfallen. A young lad, a milksop, who a few days before had been jeered at by his companions because during training he had burst into tears over the weight of a box of ammunition, was now loyally hulking one along on our painful way after retrieving it from the scene of our disaster. When I saw that, I was finished. I threw myself on the ground and broke into convulsive sobs, while the men stood gloomily round me.

After we had hastened on for hours and to no purpose, and often menaced by shells, along the trench ankle-deep in mud and water, we crept, dead tired, into some ammunition bays in the side of the trench. My batman spread his groundsheet over me, but the state of my nerves kept my eyes wide open, and thus, smoking cigars, I waited for daybreak.

The first light of dawn revealed an utterly incredible sight. Countless troops, all over the shelled area, were still in search of their appointed shelter. Artillerymen were humping ammunition; trench-mortar men were pulling their mortars along; signallers were laying wires. There was a regular fair a thousand metres in front of the enemy, who, incomprehensibly, appeared to observe nothing.

By good luck I ran across the commander of the 2nd Machine-gun Company, Lieutenant Fallenstein, an old front-line soldier, who was able to show me the way to our shelter. The first thing he said was: “What makes you look like that, man?” I led my men to a large, deep dugout that we had passed a dozen times during the night. There I found little Schmidt, who knew nothing of our disaster. The guides, also, were there. After that day, whenever we moved into a new position I always chose the guides myself and with the greatest care. The lessons of the war are thorough but costly.

After settling-in the men who had come with me, I went back to the horrible scene of the night before. It was a ghastly sight. In a ring round the burst were lying over twenty charred corpses, nearly all of them unrecognizably mutilated. Some, indeed, we had to report as missing, as nothing of them was to be found.

I came on some soldiers of another unit busied in extracting the bloodstained possessions of the dead from out of the hideous mess, in the hope of booty. I chased the hyenas off, and told my orderly to collect the pocketbooks and valuables, as far as could be done, so that we could send them to their people. We had, in any case, to leave them behind when next morning we went over the top.

I was delighted to see Lieutenant Sprenger come out of a dugout near by with a number of men who had spent the night there. I told the section leaders to report, and ascertained that I still disposed of sixty-three men. I had set out the night before in the best of spirits with a hundred and fifty! I succeeded in accounting for over twenty dead and over sixty wounded, some of whom died later from their injuries.

The only grain of comfort was that it might have been worse. Fusilier Rust, for example, was standing so close to the burst that the carrying strap of his box began to burn. The N.C.O. Peggau, who, it is true, was killed the next day, was standing between two men, both of whom were torn to bits, while he had not a scratch.

We spent the day in poor spirits, sleeping mostly. I had to go again and again to the C.O., as there was always something to do with the attack to arrange. Apart from this I lay on a bunk talking to my two officers about trifling matters, in order to escape the torture of our thoughts. The constant refrain was: “Thank God, we can only die once.” I said a few words to the men, who crouched together in silence on the steps, with a view to cheering them up; but it seemed to have little effect. Nor was I myself in an encouraging mood.

At ten o’clock in the evening a runner brought orders to move into the first line. A wild beast dragged from its lair, or a sailor who sees the last plank swept from his grasp, may, perhaps, have feelings comperable to ours when we were compelled to leave the warmth and safety of the dugout. Yet not one of them was tempted to stay behind unobserved.

We hurried along the Felix trench under sharp shrapnel fire and got through without a casualty. While we passed along the trench below, guns crossed by bridges over our heads to take up forward positions. The section of the trench allotted to the battalion was quite narrow. Every dugout was filled with troops in a moment. The rest had to dig themselves holes in the sides of the trench so as to have some shelter at least during the bombardment preceding the attack. At last after much scrambling to and fro everyone had found his hole. Once more Captain von Brixen assembled the company commanders for his last remarks. When we had synchronized watches for the last time we shook hands and separated.

I sat down on the steps of a dugout with my two officers to wait for 5:05 a.m., the moment when the artillery preparation was to begin. The atmosphere was slightly more cheerful, as the rain had left off and the clear, starry sky promised a fine morning. We passed the time eating and talking. Everyone smoked hard, and the water-bottles went the round. In the early hours the enemy artillery was so lively that we were afraid the English had smelt a rat.

Just before zero the following flash signal was given us: “H.M. the Kaiser and Hindenburg are on the scene of operations.” It was greeted with enthusiasm.

The hands crept on. We counted the last minutes as they marked them off. At last they stood at 5:05. At once the hurricane broke loose. A curtain of flames was let down, followed by a sudden impetuous tumult such as was never heard, a raging thunder that swallowed up the reports even of the heaviest guns in its tremendous reverberations and made the earth tremble. This gigantic roar of annihilation from countless guns behind us was so terrific that, compared with it, all preceding battles were child’s-play. What we had not dared to hope came true. The enemy artillery was silenced, put out of action by one giant blow. We could not stay any longer in the dugouts. We got out on to the top and looked with wonder at the wall of fire towering over the English lines and the swaying bloodred clouds that hung above it.

Our delight was lessened by the tears and the burning of the mucous membrane caused by the fumes of our own gas-shells that the wind blew back on us. Many of the men were forced to pull off their masks when the unpleasant effects of our Blue Cross gas threw them into fits of choking and coughing. I was very uneasy, yet I felt sure that our command could not have made a miscalculation from which our destruction would necessarily follow. Meanwhile I exerted all my energy to keep the first cough back so as not to increase the irritation. After an hour we were able to take off our masks.

It was now daylight. The terrific tumult behind us rose higher and higher. In front stood a blind wall of smoke, dust, and gas. Men were running along the trench and shouting delightedly into each other’s ears. Infantry and artillery, engineers and signallers, Prussians and Bavarians, officers and men, were all alike in transports over this elemental expression of German power and were burning with impatience for 9:40, when we were to advance to the attack. At 8:45 our heavy trench-mortars, that stood almost touching one another behind the front line, started up. We could see the great two-hundred-weight bombs fly in a steep trajectory through the air and fall to the earth on the other side with Hephaestean explosions. Their bursts made a close chain of craters in eruption.

The very laws of nature seemed to have lost their validity. The air shimmered as though on a day of summer heat. The changing index of refraction made fixed objects dance to and fro. Black streaks of shadow fitted across the mass of smoke. The roar had become a norm and one heard no longer. One could scarcely hear the thousands of machine-guns in our rear that swept the blue sky with swarm upon swarm of lead.

The last hour of the artillery preparation was unhealthier than all the four preceding ones, during which we had walked about unheeding on the top. The enemy brought a heavy battery into action that landed shell after shell into our crowded trench. I went to the left to avoid them, and ran into the adjutant, Lieutenant Heins, who asked me if I had seen Lieutenant Baron von Solemacher: “He must take over the battalion at once. Captain von Brixen has just been killed.” I was shocked at this bad news, and went back and sat in a deep burrow in the earth. By the time I left there I had utterly forgotten the news I had heard. My brain had only one link with reality⁠ ⁠… 9:40. It seemed, though, that I was behaving very courageously, for everybody smiled approvingly when they looked at me.

The N.C.O. Dujesiefken, a comrade of the Regniéville patrol, came to a stop in front of my burrow and asked me to come out into the trench, as even a light shell bursting anywhere near might precipitate the whole mass of soil on my head. An explosion took the very words from his mouth. He fell to the ground with a leg torn off. I sprang over him and fled to the right, where I crept to earth again in a hole already occupied by two engineers.

The heavy shells were falling in a narrow circle all round us. Suddenly from a white cloud hurtled black lumps of soil; as for the detonation, it was lost in the general roar. Indeed, the sense of hearing was lost. In the piece of trench near us to our left three men of my company were torn to pieces. One of the last hits, a dud, killed poor little Schmidt, who had not left the dugout steps.

I was standing with Sprenger, with my watch in my hand, in front of my burrow, and waiting for the great moment. The rest of the company had collected round us. By jokes of a coarseness that unfortunately prevents me setting them down here, we succeeded in cheering and distracting them. Lieutenant Meyer, who peeped for a moment round the traverse, told me later that he thought us out of our minds.

The officer patrols who were to cover our advance left the trench at 9:10. As our front line and the enemy’s were here eight hundred metres apart, we had to move forward even during the artillery preparation and to take up our position in No-man’s-land in readiness to jump into the enemy’s front line at 9:40. Sprenger and I climbed out on to the top after a few minutes, followed by the men.

“Now we’ll show what the 7th Company can do!”

“I don’t care for anything now.”

“Vengeance for the 7th Company.”

“Vengeance for Captain von Brixen.”

We drew our revolvers and crossed our wire, through which the first casualties were already trailing back.

I looked to the left and right. The distribution of the host presented a strange spectacle. In shell-holes in front of the enemy lines, churned and churned again by the utmost pitch of shellfire, the attacking battalions were waiting massed in companies, as far as the eye could see. When I saw this massed might piled up, the breakthrough seemed to me a certainty. But was there strength in us to smash the enemy’s reserves and hurl them to destruction? I was confident of it. The decisive battle, the final advance, had begun. The destiny of the nations drew to its iron conclusion, and the stake was the possession of the world. I was conscious, if only in feeling, of the significance of that hour; and I believe that on this occasion every man felt his personality fall away in the face of a crisis in which he had his part to play and by which history would be made. No one who has lived through moments like these can doubt that the course of nations in the last resort rises and falls with the destiny of war.

The atmosphere of intense excitement was amazing. Officers stood upright and shouted chaff nervously to each other. Often a heavy trench-mortar fired short and scattered us with its fountains of earth; and no one even bent his head. The roar of the battle had become so terrific that we were scarcely in our right senses. The nerves could register fear no longer. Everyone was mad and beyond reckoning; we had gone over the edge of the world into superhuman perspectives. Death had lost its meaning and the will to live was made over to our country; and hence everyone was blind and regardless of his personal fate.

Three minutes before the attack my batman, the faithful Vinke, beckoned to me, pointing to a full water-bottle. He recognized, in his own way, the need of the hour. I took a long pull. It was as though I drank water. There was only the cigar wanting, the usual one for such occasions. Three times the match was blown out by the commotion of the air.⁠ ⁠…

The great moment had come. The fire lifted over the first trenches. We advanced.⁠ ⁠…

The turmoil of our feelings was called forth by rage, alcohol, and the thirst for blood as we stepped out, heavily and yet irresistibly, for the enemy’s lines. And therewith beat the pulse of heroism⁠—the godlike and the bestial inextricably mingled. I was far in front of the company, followed by my batman and a man of one year’s service called Haake. In my right hand I gripped my revolver, in my left a bamboo riding-cane. I was boiling with a fury now utterly inconceivable to me. The overpowering desire to kill winged my feet. Rage squeezed bitter tears from my eyes.

The tremendous force of destruction that bent over the field of battle was concentrated in our brains. So may men of the Renaissance have been locked in their passions, so may a Cellini have raged or werewolves have howled and hunted through the night on the track of blood. We crossed a battered tangle of wire without difficulty and at a jump were over the front line, scarcely recognizable any longer. The attacking waves of infantry bobbed up and down in ghostly lines in the white rolling smoke.

Against all expectation a machine-gun rattled at us from the second line. I and the men with me jumped for a shell-hole. A second later there was a frightful crack and I sank forward in a heap. Vinke caught me round the neck and turned me on my back: “Are you hit, sir?” There was nothing to be seen. The one-year’s-service fellow had a hole through his arm, and assured us, groaning, that he had a bullet in his back. We pulled off his uniform and bound him up. The churned-up earth showed that a shrapnel shell had burst at the level of our faces on the edge of the shell-hole. It was a wonder we were still alive.

Meanwhile the others were on beyond us. We scrambled after them, leaving the wounded man to his fate, after we had stuck a bit of wood in the ground near him with a strip of white muslin as a mark for the wave of stretcher-bearers that were following the fighting troops. Half-left of us the great railway embankment in the line Ecoust-Croisilles, which we had to cross, rose out of the mist. From loopholes and dugout windows built into the side of it rifles and machine-guns were rattling merrily.

Even Vinke had disappeared. I followed a sunken road, with its smashed-in shelters yawning in its banks. I strode on in a fury over the black and torn-up ground, from which rose the suffocating gas of our shells. I was entirely alone.

Then I caught sight of the first of the enemy. A figure crouched, wounded apparently, three metres in front of me in the middle of the pounded hollow of the road. I saw him start at the sight of me and stare at me with wide-open eyes as I walked slowly up to him holding out my revolver in front of me. A drama without an audience was ready. To me the mere sight of an enemy in tangible form was a release. Grinding my teeth, I pressed the muzzle to the temple of this wretch, whom terror now crippled, and with my other hand gripped hold of his tunic. With a beseeching cry he snatched a photograph from his pocket and held it before my eyes⁠ ⁠… himself, surrounded by a numerous family.⁠ ⁠…

I forced down my mad rage and walked past.

Men of my company came jumping down into the sunken road. We were aglow with heat. I pulled off my cloak and threw it away. I still remember that I shouted very emphatically and more than once: “Lieutenant Jünger now casts off his cloak,” and at that the Fusiliers laughed as though I had made the most priceless joke. Above us everyone was going for it over the top without the least regard for the machine-guns, which were at the utmost four hundred metres away from us. The same impulse of annihilation drew me into the sheaves of fire. I ran straight for the embankment, spit bullets as it might. In a shell-hole I came upon a figure in a brown waterproof shooting with a revolver. It was Kius, who was in a like mood and stuffed a handful of cartridges in my pocket by way of greeting.

We must have spent a long while running to and fro among the shell-holes and engaging one target after another. In any case I found myself at last at the foot of the embankment, and I saw a dugout window quite close to me covered with a sandbag, from which I could see they were firing. I shot through the cloth. A man near me tore it down and threw in a bomb. A shock and a cloud of smoke welling out showed the result. Two ran along the bank and dealt with the other loopholes in the same way. I raised my hand to warn the men behind, for their bullets at very short range were whistling past our ears. They nodded back delighted. After that we clambered with hundreds more at one rush up the bank. For the first time in the war I saw large bodies of men in hand-to-hand fighting. The English held two terraced trenches on the rear slope. Shots were exchanged and bombs lobbed down at a range of a few metres.

I jumped into the first trench. Stumbling round the first traverse I collided with an English officer with an open tunic and his tie hanging loose. I did without my revolver, and seizing him by the throat flung him against the sandbags, where he collapsed. Behind me the head of an old major appeared. He was shouting to me, “Shoot the hound dead.”

I left this to those behind me and turned to the lower trench. It seethed with English. I fired off my cartridges so fiercely that I pressed the trigger ten times at least after the last shot. A man next me threw bombs among them as they scrambled to get away. A dish-shaped helmet was sent spinning high in the air.

A minute saw the battle ended. The English jumped out of their trenches and fled by battalions across the open. They stumbled over each other as they fled, and in a few seconds the ground was strewn with dead. Only a few got away.

A N.C.O. was standing near me gaping at this spectacle with mouth agog. I snatched the rifle from his hands in an uncontrollable need to shoot. My first victim was an Englishman whom I shot between two Germans at 150 metres. He snapped together like the blade of a knife and lay still.

After quite a time had been spent thus, we went on. The spirit of the attack had been kindled by success to a white heat of recklessness in every single man. There was no question of leading the several units. Nevertheless, one cry was on everybody’s lips: “On!” Every man went straight ahead.

As my objective I chose a little hill where the ruins of a cottage, the cross on a grave, and the wreckage of an aeroplane were to be seen. I went forward so blindly that I got into the zone of our own fire, and had to throw myself into a shell-hole for cover while waiting for the guns to lengthen their range. I found a young officer of another regiment close to me who, quite alone like myself, was rejoicing over the success of our first assault. The common enthusiasm brought us as close in those few moments as if we had known each other for years. The next spring forward parted us, never to meet again.

Even during these frightful moments something ludicrous occurred. A man near me whipped his rifle to his shoulder as though he were out shooting, to shoot at a hare that suddenly jumped up and ran through our lines. The episode was so bewildering that I had to laugh. There can indeed be nothing so horrible that some crazy fellow cannot cap it.

Near the ruins of the house lay a small length of trench which was being raked by machine-gun fire from the far side. I jumped in at one bound and found it unoccupied. Immediately after Kius and Wedelstädt appeared. An orderly of Wedelstädt’s, who came last, collapsed in mid-jump and lay dead, shot through the eye. When Wedelstädt saw this last man of his company fall headlong he leant his head on the edge of the trench and wept. And neither was he destined to survive this day.

Below us lay a strongly-held position in a sunken road. In front of it were two machine-gun nests, one on each edge of a hollow. The turmoil of our gunfire had rolled on over this strong-point and the enemy seemed to have recovered. At any rate he was pouring out lead as fast as it would leave the barrels. We were separated by a strip of ground five hundred metres wide, and across it the sheaves of fire buzzed like swarms of bees.

After a pause for breath we went on over the top at the enemy with a handful of men. It was a fight to the death. After one or two springs forward I lay opposite the left-hand machine-gun position, alone but for one man. I could clearly distinguish a flat helmet behind a low mound of earth, and close beside it a thin spiral of steam. I approached in quite short springs so as to allow no chance for aim. Each time that I lay down the man threw me a clip of cartridges and I fired a few carefully-aimed shots. “Cartridges⁠ ⁠… cartridges!” I turned round and saw him lying twitching on one side.

When I look back now to that blind dash across the open against a choice and well-furnished position, I see that we must have been inspired by a quite improbable degree of recklessness. And yet, where would be the success of war if it were not for individuals whom the thrill of action intoxicates and hurls forward with an impetus not to be resisted? It seemed often as though death itself feared to cross our path. From the left, where the resistance was weaker, there appeared a few men who were almost in a position to bomb the post. I set out on my last spring forward and stumbled over a barbed-wire entanglement into the trench. The English left their guns and ran, fired on from all sides, and made their escape to the nest on the right. The machine-gun was half concealed beneath a huge heap of empty drums. It was still nearly red-hot and smoking. The corpse of an athlete lay in front of it. A shot through the head had put out one eye, and I could claim the shot as mine. The enormous fellow with his great white eyeball and his smoke-blackened skull looked terrible. I was perishing of thirst and, unable to bear it any longer, I began to look for water. The entrance of a deep dugout seemed promising. I peered in and saw a man sitting at the bottom mending an ammunition belt on his knee. Instead of going for him at once, as in prudence I ought, I called out to him: “Come here! hands up!” He jumped up staring at me in amazement, and disappeared in the darkness. I threw a bomb after him. Presumably the dugout had a second entrance, for a man came from behind a traverse and said laconically: “We’ve just shot them. They’re done for.”

At last I came to a tin can full of cooling-water. I poured the oily fluid down in huge gulps, filled an English water-bottle, and gave some to the others who suddenly crowded into the trench.

Meanwhile, from the right-hand machine-gun nest and also from the sunken road, sixty metres in front of us, there was still a resolute resistance. The fellows put up a superb show. We tried to turn the English machine-gun on them, but we had no success with it. On the contrary, while I was busy with it a bullet flew by my head, grazed a Jäger lieutenant standing behind me, and wounded a man severely in the shoulder. A light machine-gun section had better luck. They got their gun mounted on the edge of our little crescent-shaped trench and raked the English from the flank.

There was a moment of surprise, and it was turned to good account by the assaulting troops on our right. They charged the sunken road from the front, with our 9th Company, still intact, led by Lieutenant Gipkens, at the head. And now from every shell-hole figures rose, and with a terrific hurrah, brandishing their rifles, rolling their eyes, foam on their lips, they rushed upon the enemy’s position, out of which the defenders advanced by hundreds with their hands held high.

No quarter was given. The English hastened with upstretched arms through the first wave of storm troops to the rear, where the fury of the battle had not reached boiling point. An orderly of Gipkens’ shot a good dozen or more of them with his .32 repeater.

I cannot blame our men for their bloodthirsty conduct. To kill a defenceless man is a baseness. Nothing in the war was more repulsive to me than those heroes of the mess tables who used to repeat with a fat laugh the familiar tale of the prisoners marched in: “Did you hear that about the massacre? Priceless!”

On the other hand, the defending force, after driving their bullets into the attacking one at five paces’ distance, must take the consequences. A man cannot change his feelings again during the last rush with a veil of blood before his eyes. He does not want to take prisoners but to kill. He has no scruples left; only the spell of primeval instinct remains. It is not till blood has flowed that the mist gives way in his soul. He looks round him as though waking from the bondage of a dream. It is only then that he becomes once more a soldier of today and capable of addressing himself to the next problem of tactics.

This was the state we found ourselves in after the capture of the sunken road. A large body of the men had collected and stood in a mob, shouting confusedly. Some officers pointed out to them the continuation of the hollow ground, and the great battle horde with astonishing coolness lumbered on.

The hollow ran up into higher ground, and from there enemy columns were coming into sight. We advanced, now and then standing still to shoot, till we were held up by heavy rifle-fire. It was extremely painful to hear the bullets striking the ground near your head. Kius, who had come up again, picked up a flattened one that had been stopped half a metre in front of his nose. Making use of a brief pause, we got to a shell-hole. They had already become rare. We found a number of officers of our battalion there. It was commanded now by Lieutenant Lindenburg; for Baron von Solemacher had unfortunately been mortally wounded during the assault on the embankment. On the right side of the hollow, Lieutenant Breyer, attached to us from the 10th Jägers, was strolling along through the machine-gun fire, to the delight of everyone, with a walking-stick in his hand and a long green huntsman’s pipe in his mouth, and his rifle hung on his shoulder as if he were out shooting hares.

We told each other briefly our adventures so far, and handed round water-bottles and chocolate, and then the general wish was to go on again. The machine-guns, threatened apparently on the flank, had disappeared. We might perhaps have won three or four kilometres. The hollow was seething with the attacking troops. As far as the eye could see behind us there were men coming on in open order, ranks and columns.

We were unfortunately much too thick on the ground, and it was just as well we did not know in the heat of the attack how many were left behind, either dead or wounded.

We reached the high ground without opposition. A few khaki figures jumped from a piece of trench on our right, and we shot them down out of hand as they ran. Most of them were accounted for. The top of the hill was held by a row of dugouts. From some of them smoke was rising, and of these we made short work with bombs. From others the occupants emerged with arms uplifted and knocking knees. Water-bottles and cigarettes were taken from them, and as soon as the way to the rear was pointed out they hurried off with great speed. One young Englishman had already surrendered to me, and then suddenly turning round he disappeared again into his dugout. As he stayed in concealment in spite of my summons to come out, we made an end of his indecision with a bomb and went on. A narrow footpath went off down to the other side of the hill. A signpost showed that it led to Vraucourt. While the others still delayed in the dugouts, Heins and I went over the top of the hill.

Down below lay the ruins of Vraucourt. The flashes of a battery in action were to be seen in front, but the detachments fled into the village at the sight of the first wave of storm troops. The occupants, too, of a number of dugouts built in the sides of a sunken road rushed out and fled. I shot one of them as he jumped out of the entrance of the nearest.

With two men of the company who had reported to me meanwhile I went along the sunken road. There was a defended position to the right of it from which came a heavy fire. So we withdrew into the first dugout, over which very soon the shots of both sides were crossing. My Englishman lay in front of it, a mere lad. I had shot him right through the head. It is a strange feeling to look into the eyes of a man whom you have killed with your own hands.

We did not worry over the increasing fire, but established ourselves in the dugout and looked through the provisions left behind, as our stomachs reminded us that we had eaten nothing during the attack. We found here white bread, jam, and a stone jar full of ginger-beer. After refreshing myself I sat on an empty biscuit-tin and read some English newspapers that abounded in the most tasteless invective against the “Huns.” After a while we became tired of doing nothing, so we went back to the beginning of the sunken road in jumps, and there found a large body of men assembled. Thence we could see a battalion of the 164th near Vraucourt. We decided to storm the village, and hurried forward again along the sunken road. A little way before the edge of the village we were brought to a stop by our own artillery, which had the stupidity to go on shooting at the same spot till next day. A heavy shell landed among us when we were halfway and killed four men. The others turned and ran.

As I learned later, the artillery had orders to go on shooting at their longest range. This incomprehensible order took the finest fruits of victory from our grasp. Grinding our teeth with rage, we had to make a halt before the wall of fire.

In the hope of finding a gap in it we turned away to the right, where at that moment a company commander of the 76th was leading an attack on the Vraucourt line. We joined in with a cheer, but had scarcely got a footing in it before our own artillery shelled us out again. We stormed the trench three times, and three times had to retire again. Curse as we might, we could only occupy some shell-holes, and there a grass fire started by our artillery destroyed many wounded and caused us intolerable discomfort. The English rifle-fire, too, caused casualties, among whom was the volunteer, Grutzmacher, of my company.

Darkness came slowly on. Sporadically the rifle-fire blazed out in a final burst and then was silent all along our front. The men, utterly exhausted, looked round for shelter for the night, and the officers called their own names without ceasing in order to assemble the scattered companies.

Twelve men of the 7th Company had collected round me during the last hour. As it was growing cold I led them to the little dugout in front of which my Englishman lay, and sent them out to collect blankets and cloaks from the fallen. When I got them all settled down I could no longer resist the curiosity I had to visit the gun-pit lying in front of us. I took Fusilier Haller with me, as I had the utmost confidence in his sporting spirit. We walked on with our rifles at the ready towards the pit, over which our artillery fire raged without ceasing, and next explored a dugout that had apparently been recently abandoned by English artillery officers. There was an enormous gramophone on the table that Haller at once set going. The gay musical-comedy song that whirred from the disc made a ghostly impression, and I threw the box to the ground, where after a wheeze and a gasp it lay still. The dugout was furnished with extreme comfort, even to a little open grate and a mantelpiece, on which lay pipes and tobacco, with a circle of armchairs round the fire. Merry old England!

Naturally, we took without compunction whatever we liked. I chose a haversack, underclothes, a little silver flask full of whisky, a map-case, and some most charming toilet articles by Roger et Gallet, no doubt tender recollection of a Paris leave.

A neighbouring room served as the kitchen, whose array of provisions filled us with respectful admiration. There was a whole boxful of fresh eggs. We sucked a large number on the spot, as we had long since forgotten their very name. Against the walls were stacks of tinned meat, cases of priceless thick jam, bottles of coffee-essence as well, and quantities of tomatoes and onions; in short, all that a gourmet could desire.

This sight I often remembered later when we spent weeks together in the trenches on a rigid allowance of bread, washy soup, and thin jam. For four long years, in torn coats and worse fed than a Chinese coolie, the German soldier was hurried from one battlefield to the next to show his iron fist yet again to a foe many times his superior in numbers, well equipped and well fed. There could be no surer sign of the might of the idea that drove us on. It is much to face death and to die in the moment of enthusiasm. To hunger and starve for one’s cause is more.⁠ ⁠…

After this glimpse into the enemy’s domestic circumstances we left the dugout and went into the gun-pit, where we found that two brand-new guns had been abandoned. I took a lump of chalk and chalked up the number of my company. I may observe that the right of capture was very little respected by the troops that followed after. Each unit obliterated the mark of its predecessor and put its own, till that of some labour battalion survived. This shows how very rudimentary the sporting instinct is among the people.

We returned to the others, as our own guns were throwing metal about our ears all the time. Our front line, dug in the meanwhile by the troops behind us, was two hundred metres in our rear. I posted two men in front of the dugout and gave orders for the others of the guard to keep hold of their rifles. After I had arranged the reliefs, had a little more to eat, and made a note of the events of the day, I went to sleep.

At one we were awakened by shouts and lively rifle-fire on our right. We seized our rifles and, rushing outside, posted ourselves in a large shell-hole. A few scattered Germans came back from in front of us and were fired on from our own lines. Two of them fell. Put on our guard by this, we waited till the excitement subsided behind us and, calling out to show who we were, we retired to our own lines. There we found the commander of the 2nd Company, speechless with a cold and wounded in the arm, with about sixty men of our regiment. As he had to go back to a dressing-station, I took command of his detachment, among which were three officers. Besides this there were the two companies of Gipkens and Vorbeck, jumbled up like the rest.

The commanding officer of the battalion was Captain Baron von Ledebur; and of the regiment, Major Dietlein, as Major von Bardeleben had been wounded early in the day.

I spent the rest of the night with some N.C.O.s of the 2nd Company in a little hole in the ground, where we were stiff with cold. I breakfasted in the morning from the plundered provisions, and sent a party to Quéant to fetch coffee and rations. Our own artillery began again with its cursed shelling, and, as a morning greeting, sent us a direct hit in a shell-hole which accommodated four men of the machine-gun company.

At dawn a platoon commander of my company, Vice-sergeant-major Kumpart, turned up with a few men. I had scarcely got my circulation going again after the cold of the night when I had orders to storm the Vraucourt line further to the right, taking with me what there was of the 76th Regiment as well. This line on our front was already partly in our hands. There was a thick morning mist as we moved off to the jumping-off position, a hill to the south of Ecoust, where many dead of the day before were lying. As is usual when the orders for an attack are somewhat vague, there was a tremendous palaver among the officers of the storm troops, which nothing but the play of an enemy machine-gun was able to bring to an end. Everybody jumped for the nearest shell-hole with the exception of the sergeant-major, Kumpart, who lay groaning. I hurried to him with a stretcher-bearer and bound him up. He was badly wounded in the knee. We extracted several pieces of bone from the wound with a forceps. He died a few days later. I felt it particularly, as he had been my drill-instructor three years before in Recouvrence.

I exposed the folly of a frontal attack in a discussion with Captain von Ledebur, since it was clear that the Vraucourt line, already partly in our hands, could with far less loss be rolled up from the left. We decided not to carry out the attack, and events proved us right.

Such episodes prove the futility of the system of higher command with its headquarters far in the rear, though of course I do not question the necessity. At the same time such orders show clearly a lack of experience of front-line fighting. The time for frontal attacks without preparation has forever gone by. The common soldier who has been taught his lesson by the enemy’s rifles could not fall into such a blunder. It succeeded only where the enemy was weak. The strong parts of the line then fell of themselves.

For the time being we established ourselves in the shell-holes on the high ground. The sun came through by degrees and English aeroplanes appeared, which sprayed our refuges with machine-guns, but were soon driven off. Below Ecoust we saw a battery drive up, an unusual sight for old trench-soldiers. It, too, was soon shelled. One horse only tore itself free and galloped over the field. It was an uncanny sight⁠—this panic-stricken beast against the wide and deserted stretches of country hung with the drifting smoke of the bursting shells. The enemy fliers had not been long gone before we began to be shelled. At first a few shrapnel broke over us, then light and heavy shells in plenty. We lay as though on a silver salver. Several unquiet spirits drew worse fire by losing their heads and running to and fro instead of lying low in their shell-holes and letting the stuff sweep over their heads. In such situations one must be a fatalist. I took this text to heart as I consumed the really glorious contents of a tin of gooseberry jam that I had carried off as booty. In this fashion the morning slowly drew to an end.

We had observed movement for some time past on our left in the Vraucourt line. Now we saw straight in front of us the curved flight and the white bursts of German stick-bombs. This was the moment we waited for.

I gave the word to advance. We reached the enemy line without encountering much fire, and jumped in, eagerly welcomed by a storm troop of the 76th Regiment. Headway was slowly made bombing along the trench, as at Cambrai. The enemy artillery soon found out, unfortunately, that we were obstinately eating into their lines. We were pretty sharply shelled with shrapnel and light shells, but the reserves who were streaming up to the trench over the open caught the worst of it. We did our utmost to clear the trench of the enemy so that we could take cover from the artillery fire.

The Vraucourt line was still in course of digging, and many stretches of it were only marked out by the removal of the turf. When we rushed these pieces, we had all the fire in the neighbourhood concentrated on us. In the same way we had the enemy under our fire when they crossed these spots as they gave way before us, so that these short stretches of ground were soon heaped with corpses. It was a nerve-scourging spot. We dashed over the still warm muscular bodies, displaying powerful knees below their kilts, or crept on over them. They were Highlanders, and the resistance we were meeting showed that we had no cowards in front of us.

After we had gained a few hundred metres in this fashion we were brought to a halt by the bombs and rifle-grenades that fell more and more thickly. The men began to give way.

“Tommy’s counterattacking!”

“Bliew stahn!”

“I’ll just see that we’re in touch.”

“Bombs forward! Bombs forward!”

“Look out, sir!”

It is just in trench fighting, the fiercest fighting of all, that such recoils are most frequent. The bravest push to the front shooting and bomb-throwing. The rest follow on their heels automatically, in a herd. In the hand-to-hand battle the fighters jump back and forward, and in avoiding the murderous bombs of the enemy they run back on those behind them. Only those in the forefront know what the situation is, while further back a wild panic breaks out in the crowded trench. Perhaps a few even jump over the top and get shot, whereat the enemy of course are much encouraged. Indeed, if they seize their opportunity all is lost; and it is now for the officer to show that he is worth his salt, though he too may have the wind up.

I succeeded in getting together a handful of men, and with them I organized a nucleus of resistance behind a broad traverse. We exchanged missiles with an invisible opponent at a few metres’ distance. It took some courage to hold your head up when they burst and whipped up the heaped soil of the traverse. A man of the 76th, close to me, shot off cartridge after cartridge, looking perfectly wild and without a thought of cover, till he collapsed in streams of blood. A shot had smashed his forehead with a report like a breaking board. He doubled up in his corner of the trench, and there he remained in a crouching attitude, his head leaning against the side. His blood poured on to the ground as though poured out of a bucket. The snorting death-rattles sounded at longer intervals and at last ceased. I seized his rifle and went on firing. At last there was a brief pause. Two men who were in front even of us made an attempt to dash back over the top. One fell into the trench shot through the head. The other, shot through the body, could only creep after him.

We sat in the bottom of the trench and waited and smoked English cigarettes. Now and then a well-aimed rifle-grenade came arrowing over. The man shot in the belly was a young lad, and he lay between us and almost contentedly stretched himself like a cat in the warm rays of the setting sun. He slipped over to death smiling like a child.

It was a sight that had nothing sad or painful in it. I was touched by nothing but a clear feeling of affection for the dying man. The groaning, too, of his comrade gradually ceased. He died where he lay, after fits of shuddering.

We tried several times to work our way forward by crawling flattened out over the bodies of the Highlanders across the undug part, but we were driven back each time by machine-gun fire and rifle-grenades. Every casualty I saw was a fatal one. In this way the forward part of our trench was gradually filled with dead; and in turn we were constantly reinforced from the rear. Soon there was a light or a heavy machine-gun behind every traverse. I stood behind one of these lead squirts and shot till my forefinger was blackened with smoke. When the cooling-water had evaporated, the tins were handed round and to the accompaniment of not very polite jokes and by a very simple expedient filled up again:

In anxious moments we must bring
Ourselves to much that’s not the thing.

The sun was far down in the sky. It seemed that the second day of battle was over. For the first time I took a careful look round and sent back a report and sketch-map, overtaken once more by the thought: “You are not a fighter only, but a soldier!” The trench we were in cut the Vraucourt-Mory road at a distance of five hundred metres in front of us. The road was camouflaged by hangings fastened to the trees. Enemy troops were hurrying over the slope of a hill behind, shells bursting round them. Streamers of black and white and red crossed the cloudless blue of the evening sky. The beams of the sunset dipped them in a tender rosy red so that they resembled a flight of flamingoes. We unfolded our trench-maps and spread them out to see how far we had penetrated the enemy lines.

A cool evening breeze promised a sharp night. Wrapped in an English trench-coat I leaned against the side of the trench and talked to little Schultz, the comrade of my Indian patrols, who, like a good friend, had turned up with four heavy machine-guns just where there was most need for them. Men of all companies sat on the fire-steps. Their features were youthful and clear-cut beneath their steel helmets. Their leaders had fallen and it was of their own impulse that they were here and in their right place. We set about putting ourselves in a state of defence for the night. I put my revolver and a dozen English bombs beside me and felt ready for all comers, even though they were the most pigheaded of Scotsmen.

Then there came a new outbreak of bombing from the right, and on the left German light-signals went up. From somewhere a faint hurrah came on the wind. That roused us. “They’re surrounded! They’re surrounded!” In one of these moments of enthusiasm that herald great exploits, everyone seized his rifle and rushed forward along the trench. After a short encounter with bombs a body of Highlanders made hurriedly for the road. There was no holding us now. In spite of warning shouts, “Look out, the machine-gun on the left is still firing!” we jumped out of the trench and in an instant reached the road, where there was a stampede of Highlanders. A long, thick wire entanglement cut off their retreat, so that like hunted game they had to run past us at fifty metres’ distance. On our side there broke out a tumultuous hurrah that must have struck their ears like the trump of the last judgment, and a hurricane of rapid fire. Machine-guns mounted in haste made a massacre of it.

While I was cursing at a jam that prevented me firing, I felt a blow on the shoulder. I turned round and saw the face of little Schultz, distorted with rage. “Look⁠ ⁠… they’re still firing, the cursed swine!” I looked where he pointed and saw a row of men in a little trench across the road, some loading, some shooting. In a moment, though, the first bombs were thrown from the right, and the whole trunk of one of them was flung into the air.

Reason bade me stay where I was while we finished off the enemy at our leisure with a few rounds. Instead of this I threw away my rifle and rushed with clenched fists on to the road between the two sides. Unluckily, I was still wearing the English coat and my cap with a red band. In the very transport of victory I felt a sharp blow on the left side of my breast. Night descended on me. I was finished!

I was convinced I was shot through the heart, yet I felt neither pain nor fear as I awaited my immediate death. When I found to my astonishment that I had not fallen, and discovered no hole in my shirt either, I turned on the enemy again. At that, a man of my company rushed up: “Sir, take off that coat!” and snatched the dangerous garment from my shoulders.

Another hurrah rent the air. From the right, where ever since the morning bombing had been going on, a number of Germans sprang over the road to our help, with a young officer in a brown waterproof at their head. It was Kius. By good luck he tripped over a low entanglement just as our English machine-gun fired its last shots, and the stream of bullets flew by over his head. The Scottish were annihilated in a few furious moments by rifle-fire and bombs. The road was strewn with dead, and what few survived were followed by our fire.

When I was standing talking to Kius in the captured trench I felt a moist feeling on my breast. Tearing open my shirt I saw that I had been hit just over the heart. The bullet had gone through me just above my Iron Cross, leaving two holes in my body and two in my shirt. There was no doubt that I had been shot for an Englishman by one of our own men (I strongly suspected the one who had torn off my coat) at a range of a few paces.

Kius bound me up and with great difficulty induced me to leave the battlefield at this interesting moment. We parted with “See you in Hanover!”

I chose myself an escort, looked for my map-case (it contained my diary) on the fire-swept road, and went back through the trench that we had fought our way along.

Our battle-cries had been so powerful that the enemy artillery had broken out at once. Over all the ground beyond the trench, and particularly on the trench itself, lay a barrage of unusual intensity. It was scarcely likely we could get safely through it. We went in jumps from traverse to traverse. Suddenly there was a shattering crash on the edge of the trench close by me. I felt a blow on the back of the head and fell forward stunned. When I came to, I was hanging with my head down over the breech of a heavy machine-gun and staring into a pool of blood that grew larger at an alarming rate. The blood poured so fast that I gave up all hope of survival. As my escort, however, assured me that nothing of my brain was to be seen, I picked myself up and went on. I had paid the penalty now for my folly in going into an attack without a helmet.

In spite of the double loss of blood I was in great excitement and implored everyone we met in the trench, as though possessed by one idea, to hurry forward and join in the fight. We were soon beyond the zone of the light field-guns and slackened our pace, as only a bird of ill-omen need expect to be hit by an isolated heavy.

In the sunken road leading from Noreuil I passed Brigade headquarters, and reported to Major-General Hobel, whom I had already informed of our success, and begged him to send reserves to support the attacking force. The general told me that I had been reported killed the day before. It was not the first time in the war.

In Noreuil a great pile of boxes of bombs was burning merrily by the roadside. We hurried past with very mixed feelings. Beyond the village I got a lift in an empty ammunition wagon. I had a sharp encounter with the officer commanding the ammunition column, who wanted to have two wounded Englishmen who had helped me along over the last part of the way thrown out of the wagon.

The traffic on the Noreuil-Quéant road was amazing. No one who has not seen it can form any idea of the endless columns of troops that go to make an offensive. Beyond Quéant the throng was incredible. It was a sad sight when I passed the little cottage of Jeanne d’Arc. Nothing but the foundation was left. I went up to an officer with a white armband, denoting that he was in control of the traffic, and he procured me a seat in a private car as far as the field-hospital at Souchy-Couchy. We often had to wait half an hour when wagons and lorries got mixed up and blocked the road. The doctors in the operating theatre of the field-hospital were feverishly busy. Nevertheless, the surgeon who attended me could not repress his astonishment at the fortunate nature of my wounds. Even the bullet that had passed in and out of the back of my head had not injured the skull.

After an excellent sleep I was sent next morning to the casualty clearing-station at Cantin, where I had the luck to meet Lieutenant Sprenger, whom I had never seen again after we went over the top. He had had a rifle-bullet through the thigh.

After a short stay in the Bavarian Field Hospital 14 (Montigny) we were conveyed to Douai and there put into a hospital train for Berlin. There, after fourteen days’ nursing, my wounds healed up again as well as their five predecessors had done.

To my sorrow I heard in Hanover that little Schultz, among many others I had known, had fallen during the hand-to-hand fighting. Kius had come out of it with a harmless abdominal wound. Anyone who saw us celebrating our meeting in a little Hanover bar would hardly have believed we had parted only fourteen days before to other music than the peaceful click of billiard balls.