Les Eparges

The young green of the woods shone in the morning light. We went by concealed ways to a narrow gorge behind the front line. It had been given out that the 76th Regiment was attacking after twenty minutes’ artillery preparation, and that we were to stand by in reserve.

Precisely at twelve noon our artillery began a violent bombardment that echoed and reechoed through the forest gorges. It was here we understood for the first time that dreaded word, “drumfire.” We sat on our knapsacks and waited in suspense. An orderly dashed up to the company commander. Hurried words. “The three first lines are in our hands. Six guns captured.” We broke into a cheer and the spirit of the offensive woke in us.

At last came the longed-for orders and we moved off in file in the direction of the faint crackling of rifle-fire. It was war.

Beside the path in a dense plantation of firs there were dull crumps, and earth and twigs came showering down. The laughter was a trifle forced when one of us, overcome by his nerves, flung himself on the ground. Then the warning cry of death came flitting along the ranks from in front, “Stretcher forward!”

Soon we passed the point where we had broken through. The wounded had already been sent back. Bloodstained fragments of equipment and flesh were caught on the bushes all round⁠ ⁠… a strange and oppressive sight that made me think of the red-backed shrike that spits its prey on the thorns.

The Grande Tranchée was full of troops hastening forward. Wounded men implored water and cowered against the wall of the trench, prisoners carrying stretchers went panting rearwards, chargers careered madly through the fire. On every side shells churned the soft ground. Heavy branches fell to earth. Right in our way lay a dead horse with gaping wounds and, beside it, smoking entrails. A bearded Landwehrsman leaned against a tree. “Boys, now for it. The French are on the run.”

We were in the battle-tossed empire of the infantry. In a circle all round the breakthrough, the artillery fire had made a clean sweep of the trees. On the tortured ground lay the dead and dying that the attack had cost us, their faces towards the enemy and their grey coats scarcely visible against the ground. A gigantic fellow whose red beard was smeared with blood stared into the sky, his fingers clutching the loose soil. Another, younger, lying in a shell-hole, stirred and turned over. The sallowness of death was already on his face. He did not seem to like our looking at him. With a listless movement he drew his cloak over his head and lay still.

From here we went on in file. Shells were screaming over all the time. Where they struck there was a flash and the soil of the clearing was whirled aloft. “Stretcher-bearers!” We had our first casualty. A shrapnel bullet had severed Fusilier Stoller’s carotid artery. Three bandages were saturated instantly, and within a few seconds he had bled to death. Near by were two guns that could not keep quiet and drew on us even heavier fire. A gunner lieutenant, who was looking for wounded, was knocked over in a column of smoke that went up at his feet. He picked himself up with marked composure and came slowly back. We were greatly impressed.

It was getting dusk when orders came to advance. We went by an endless communication trench through thick undergrowth much wrecked and torn by shellfire. The trench was strewn with kit and equipment thrown down by the flying French. Near Les Eparges we had to dig ourselves in in rocky ground, for there were no other troops in front of us. At last I sank down into a bush and fell asleep. Often as I dozed I could see high overhead the shells of some artillery or other describe their ellipses in a train of sparks.

“Here, get up, you! We’re moving forward.” I woke on grass wet with dew. As we were swept with machine-gun fire, we made haste back into our communication trench again and took possession of an abandoned French position on the outskirts of the forest. My attention was caught by a sickly smell and a bundle hanging on the wire. Jumping out of the trench in the early morning mist, I found myself in front of a huddled-up corpse, a Frenchman. The putrid flesh, like the flesh of fishes, gleamed greenish-white through the rents in the uniform. I turned away and then started back in horror: close to me a figure cowered beside a tree. It wore the shining straps and belt of the French, and high upon its back there was still the loaded pack, crowned with a round cooking utensil. Empty eye-sockets and the few wisps of hair on the black and weathered skull told me that this was no living man. Another sat with the upper part of the body clapped down over the legs as though broken through the middle. All round lay dozens of corpses, putrefied, calcined, mummified, fixed in a ghastly dance of death. The French must have carried on for months without burying their fallen comrades.

Before midday the sun broke through the mist and sent out a pleasing warmth. After I had slept for a bit on the floor of the trench I walked along its deserted bays. Taken by the attack of the day before, it was heaped high with mountains of provisions, munitions, equipment, weapons, and newspapers. The dugouts resembled plundered pawnbrokers’ shops. Here and there lay the bodies of those who had fallen at their posts; their rifles were still on the parapet. A trunk with head and neck shot away was clipped in among some riven woodwork. White cartilage shone out from the red and blackened flesh.

It was hard to understand. Near by a young fellow lay on his back, his glazed eyes and his fingers fixed in their last aim. It was a weird sensation to look into those dead and questioning eyes. It gave me a shudder that all through the war I never quite lost. His pockets were turned inside out, and beside him lay his pitiful plundered purse.⁠ ⁠…

Although I made up my mind to omit all comments from this book,1 I should like all the same to say a word or two about this first glimpse of horrors. It is a moment so important in the experience of war. The horrible was undoubtedly a part of that irresistible attraction that drew us into the war. A long period of law and order, such as our generation had behind it, produces a real craving for the abnormal, a craving that literature stimulates. Among other questions that occupied us was this: what does it look like when there are dead lying about? And we never for a moment dreamt that in this war the dead would be left month after month to the mercy of wind and weather, as once the bodies on the gallows were.

And now at our first glance of horror we had a feeling that is difficult to describe. Seeing and recognizing are matters, really, of habit. In the case of something quite unknown the eye alone can make nothing of it. So it was that we had to stare again and again at these things that we had never seen before, without being able to give them any meaning. It was too entirely unfamiliar. We looked at all these dead with dislocated limbs, distorted faces, and the hideous colours of decay, as though we walked in a dream through a garden full of strange plants, and we could not realize at first what we had all round us. But finally we were so accustomed to the horrible that if we came on a dead body anywhere on a fire-step or in a ditch we gave it no more than a passing thought and recognized it as we would a stone or a tree.⁠ ⁠…

I strolled along the devastated trench without being troubled by enemy fire. It was the brief respite before midday that often on many a battlefield I learned to welcome as a breathing-space. I used this time now to have a look at everything quietly and comfortably. The enemy accoutrements, the darkness of the dugouts, the miscellaneous contents of the haversacks, everything was new and puzzling. I put French cartridges in my pockets, unbuckled a silk-soft groundsheet, and carried off a water-bottle covered with blue cloth, and after three steps threw all away again. I was induced by a fine striped shirt, lying near an officer’s ransacked valise, to pull off my uniform and change my linen, and I was delighted by the fresh, clean feel on my skin. In those days no one imagined going on leave during a war or being able to have a change of clothes. We fought till we were wounded, and wore the old shirt till the acquisition of a new one allowed us to throw it away. It was the length of the war that drove us back at last to humdrum ways. Even Colonel von Oppen, who had sworn a mighty oath that there were three things he would never do during the campaign⁠—have his beard trimmed, change his patched cloak for a new one, or take a pen in his hand⁠—had at last to forswear himself.

Now that I was rigged out afresh, I looked for a sunny nook in the trench and, sitting on a piece of timber, I opened a round tin of beef and had lunch. Then I lit a pipe and read the numerous French newspapers lying all round. Most of them, as I saw from the date, had been sent into the trenches the day before from Verdun.

Visibility was now good, and a German battery in a small wood just behind the trench began firing. It was not long before the enemy made the appropriate answer. Suddenly I was frightened out of my wits by a mighty crash bebind me, and a cone of smoke rose high up in the air. Unused as I still was to the multiple din of the war, I was not able to disentangle the whistle and hum of our own guns from the rending crash of the enemy shells that fell with ever briefer pauses. And what puzzled me most of all was why it went on from all sides, as though the whizzing shells crossed each others’ paths in a senseless maze above the maze of little trenches in which we were dispersed. I could see no occasion for all this activity, and it disturbed and puzzled me. I was still without experience of the fighting, and saw it as a recruit. The battle seemed to me to proceed as strangely and disconnectedly as though it went on upon another planet. At the same time I had no fear. For I felt that I was not seen, and I could not believe that anyone aimed at me or that I should be hit. Indeed, when I rejoined my section I surveyed our front with complete calm. It was the courage of ignorance.

Towards midday the artillery fire rose to a wild dance. It broke round us without a pause. White, black, and yellow smoke mingled their clouds. The shells with black smoke, called “Americans” or “coal-boxes” by the old soldiers, exploded with a fearful detonation. In between one heard the familiar twittering of the falling fuses, like the song of canaries. It was odd that the birds in the forest did not appear to be in the least put out by this hundredfold clatter. They sat peacefully above the swathes of smoke in the shattered branches, and in the brief intervals of silence we could hear their love-calls and untroubled songs. Indeed, it seemed that they were urged on to sing by the sea of noise that tossed around them.

I sat with another man on a bench fixed into the wall of the trench. Once there was a report on the boarded loophole through which we were looking, and a rifle bullet passed between our heads and plunged into the soil.

We were having casualties all the time. I could not tell what went on in the other parts of the trench, but the constant call for stretchers showed that the shelling was beginning to take effect. Now and then someone hurried by with a fresh white bandage that shone out on head or neck or hand, and disappeared to the rear. According to the superstition of the trenches, there was no time to be lost in getting safely out of it with a light wound, as it was often the forerunner of a serious one.

My comrade, a volunteer named Kohl, displayed that North German cold-bloodedness which seems peculiarly designed for such situations. He bit and squeezed at a cigar that never after all would burn, and he looked very sleepy. His composure was not disturbed when suddenly there were reports as of a thousand rifles behind us. The shellfire had ignited the forest, and huge flames climbed crackling up the trees.

At this moment a man appeared at the corner of our fire-bay and told us to follow on to the left. We did so, through clouds of smoke. It was the ration party, just got back, and hundreds of abandoned pots and pans were cooking on the parapet.

Who could eat now? A crowd of wounded with blood-soaked bandages pressed on past us, showing the state of their nerves in their white faces. Above, all along the edge of the trench, stretcher after stretcher passed along quickly to the rear. The feeling that we were in a tight corner began to take hold of us. “Look out for my arm!” “Look alive, man; keep touch!”

The trench ended in a wood. We stood aimlessly under giant beeches. Our company commander, a lieutenant, came up through the undergrowth and called for the senior N.C.O. “Swarm out and take up a line facing west. Then report to me in the dugout in the clearing.” With a curse the N.C.O. took over.

The impression made on the men by this occurrence was a standing lesson to me during the whole time I was in command myself. Later I got to know this officer, who distinguished himself on many occasions, and I learned that matters of importance had detained him. All the same, an officer should never be parted from his men in the moment of danger on any account whatever. Danger is the supreme moment of his career, his chance to show his manhood at its best. Honour and gallantry make him the master of the hour. What is more sublime than to face death at the head of a hundred men? Such a one will never find obedience fail him, for courage runs through the ranks like wine.

We deployed and, wondering what to expect, took cover in a row of flat pockets hollowed out by some predecessor or other. We were calling out to each other and joking, when we were cut short by a noise that shook us to the marrow. Twenty metres behind us clods of earth were whirled through a cloud of white smoke and rattled through the tree tops. Time after time the explosions rolled through the forest. With glazed eyes we stared at one another, and our bodies clove to the earth in utter impotence and prostration. Shell followed shell. Suffocating gases hung in the undergrowth, dense vapour wrapped the tree tops, trees and branches came crashing to the ground, loud cries rang out. We jumped up and ran wildly, hunted by lightnings and stunned by rushes of air. We ran from tree to tree seeking cover and chasing round the great trunks like hunted game. A dugout into which many ran got a direct hit that sent the heavy timber sky-high.

With the N.C.O. I ran panting to a mighty beech, like a squirrel pursued with stones. Automatically, and starting back at one shell-burst after another, I ran on after him, while he turned round now and again and stared at me with wild eyes and shouted: “What about these ones, eh? what about these?”

Suddenly there was a flash among the interlacing roots, and a blow against my left thigh threw me to the ground. I thought I had been hit by a lump of earth. Then I saw from the stream of blood that I was wounded. Later I discovered that a splinter as fine as a hair had given me a flesh wound after expending its force on my purse. The shaving cut from the thick leather was as thin as a sheet of paper.

I threw down my pack and ran to the trench we had left. From all sides the wounded converged upon it out of the shell-swept wood. The trench was frightful. It was blocked with severely wounded and dying men. One, stripped to the waist and with torn sides, leant against the trench wall. Another, from the back of whose head a triangular rent hung down, uttered piercing, agonizing cries without ceasing.⁠ ⁠… And still shell upon shell.

My nerve broke down utterly. Without regard for anyone I ran anyhow through the throng, and at last, falling back once or twice in my haste, climbed up out of the hellish tumult of the trench so as to have free passage in the open. I tore along like a bolting horse through the thick undergrowth, across tracks and clearings, till at length I found myself in a part of the wood near the Grande Tranchée.

Close by was a dressing-station, a dugout covered with branches. Here I spent the night among a crowd of other wounded. A worn-out doctor stood in the midst of groaning men, bandaging, injecting, and giving directions in a quiet voice. I pulled the cloak of one of the dead over me and fell into a deep sleep, disturbed by strange and feverish dreams. I woke once in the middle of the night and saw the doctor still at work by the light of a lantern. A Frenchman uttered every moment a piercing yell, and near me someone grumbled irritably: “Just like a Frenchman! Oh, well, if they couldn’t yell they wouldn’t be happy.” Then I fell asleep again.

When I was being carried out next morning a splinter bored a hole through the canvas of the stretcher between my knees. I was taken across the Grande Tranchée, which was still heavily bombarded, to the chief dressing-station, and then moved into the church of the village of St. Maurice. Near me in the jolting ambulance lay a man with an abdominal wound who implored his comrades to shoot him with the orderly’s revolver.

A hospital train stood under steam in St. Maurice Station, and in two days we reached Heidelberg. As I saw the slopes above the Neckar wreathed in cherry blossom I felt a vivid pang of homesickness. How beautiful a country, worth bleeding for and dying for!

The battle of Les Eparges was the first I was in, and it was not at all what I had expected. I had taken part in a great military operation without coming within sight of the enemy. It was later that I experienced hand-to-hand fighting, that supreme moment of warfare when the infantryman comes into the open and when the chaotic vacancy of the battlefield has its murderous and decisive interludes.