The Overture to the Somme Offensive

In mid April 1916 I was detailed to attend an officers’ training course at Croisilles, a little town behind the divisional front. The course was under the personal charge of the general of the division, Major-General Sontag. Theoretical and practical instruction was given in a whole series of military matters. The lessons in tactics on horseback with Major Jarotzky were particularly attractive. We made a number of expeditions to see the great organization that had been conjured up practically out of nothing in the back areas; and it gave us an idea, accustomed as we were to look down on all that went on behind the fighting line, of the immense amount of work that went on in rear of the fighting troops. We saw the slaughterhouses, the commissariat depot, and the equipment for the repair of guns at Boyelles, the sawmills and pioneer park in Bourlon wood, the dairy and the pig farm and plant for turning carcases to account at Inchy, the aviation park and the bakery at Quéant. On Sundays we motored to the neighbouring towns of Cambrai, Douai, and Valenciennes, “in order to see women for once.”

I had not been at all pleased to leave the front line and my platoon, to which I had grown more and more attached; but still I used the time to rid myself completely of war and its clamour. I had books sent me, and I read and wrote and rode and went long walks and made a collection of beetles, and in order to fight my rooted tendency to solitude I was glad to spend my evenings in the mess, where there soon grew up that cheerful, careless spirit that is characteristic of a body of Prussian officers.

It would not be right, in a book so full of bloodshed that I am afraid the reader may weary of it, to suppress a little adventure in which I played a somewhat comic part. When our battalion in the winter had been the guests of the King of Q⁠⸺, I had, as a newly commissioned officer, to inspect the guard for the first time. As I was leaving the place in search of a small guard posted in a railway station, I lost myself, and had to ask the way at a little cottage standing alone. The only occupant was a seventeen-year-old girl called Jeanne, whose father had died not long before. She now kept house there alone. After giving me the information I asked, she smiled and said: “Vous êtes bien jeune. Je voudrais avoir votre avenir.” I gave her the name of Jeanne d’Arc, because of the martial spirit that inspired these words, and when I was back in the trenches I often thought of the bare and lonely cottage.

One evening, at Croisilles, I suddenly had the impulse to ride over there. I had a horse saddled, and the town was soon behind me. It was an evening of May, as though designed for a romantic excursion. The clover lay in dark red billows over the meadows, whose hedges were white with may and the chestnuts were like giant candelabra standing lit up in the dusk before the villages. I rode through Bullecourt and Ecoust without ever dreaming that two years later I should be going over the top in an attack on the ruins of these very villages that now lay so peacefully with their ponds and the hills behind.

At the little station where I had inspected the guard, civilians were still unloading gas-containers. I stayed watching them a while, and next the cottage gleamed out at me between its lilacs and red hawthorn, with its dark red tiles and the round lumps of moss. I knocked on the shutters, for they were already closed.

“Qui est lá?”

“Bon soir, Jeanne d’Arc!”

I was given as friendly a welcome as I could have hoped. When I had tied up my horse I went in, and was invited to supper: eggs, white bread, and butter, which was most appetizingly put on a cabbage-leaf. My small hostess meanwhile displayed that ease of manner that one finds so often in France among quite simple girls.

So far there would have been no fault to find, but later, when I was leaving, a military policeman flashed a torch at me and asked for my credentials. My talk with the civilians, the care with which I had observed the unloading of the gas-drums, and the unfamiliarity of my appearance in a district where there were few soldiers billeted, had all combined to awake a suspicion of espionage. Of course, I had forgotten my paybook, and so I was haled before the King of Q⁠⸺, who was as usual still in conclave at the round table.

King and court alike behaved towards me with humour and discretion, and I was welcomed as one of the company. This time I saw the King in another light. The hour was late, and he discoursed of primeval tropical forests in which he had been employed for years laying a railway. He spoke well and vividly. We saw coast towns, with low white buildings gleaming out over the sea, caravans vanishing within forests aswoon with heat, blue butterflies spreading their iridescent wings, and clusters of crimson orchids blooming in festoons from trees that hung over mighty torrent-beds.

The strange figure of the King was indeed a sign that even the strictest army organization cannot so entirely mop up the personal element in life that nothing remains of man but his functions. Here was an oddity luxuriating from the grey soil of the war, and I was too little of the soldier pure and simple to be annoyed at it.

Hence too came the charm of my little adventure, to which there were other chapters to be added. Its charm lay in the contrast between its tender rural colours and the brazen background. The little pleasures that life offered borrowed an unimagined enhancement from the unceasing thunder of the guns and from the destiny whose oppression never left one’s mind. The colours were more affecting. The wish to knit oneself with life in enjoyment was more urgent. For the thought crept into everybody’s mind: “Perhaps this is the last spring you will see.” This gave an indescribable intensity to every expression of life, and after such an experience one can understand the peculiar wish of Stendhal, “La perfection de la civilisation serait de combiner tous les plaisirs délicats du 19me siècle avec la présence plus fréquente du danger.” Or, as Schiller expresses it in a manlier way without the taint of decadence:

“Be the summons tomorrow, yet today let us taste
The crest of each moment too precious to waste.”

On the 16th of June we were dismissed to our units after a brief address by the general, from which we learned that the enemy were getting ready for a big offensive on the western front, and that the left flank of it would be just opposite our part of the line.

It was clear to us after joining the regiment that something was in the air, for we were told by the others of the increasing activity of the enemy. The English had twice⁠—without success, to be sure⁠—attempted a raid in force against C sector. We had retaliated, after heavy preparation, by an attack of three officer patrols on the so-called trench triangle, and had taken a good number of prisoners. During my absence Lieutenant Wetje was wounded in the arm by a shrapnel bullet, but was again in command of the company soon after my return. My dugout had altered also. A direct hit had reduced it by half. The English, on the raid above mentioned, had smoked it out with bombs. The officer in command in my place succeeded in escaping by the skylight, but his batman was killed. The blood was still to be seen in large brown stains on the lining boards.

On the 20th June I was detailed to discover by listening in front of the enemy trench whether mining was going on, and at eleven o’clock I clambered through our pretty high wire entanglements with Fähnrich Wohlgemut, Lance-corporal Schmidt, and Fusilier Parthen felder. We covered the first stretch stooping, and then crawled on close together through the long grass and weeds. Memories of school reading-books came back to me as I crept on my belly through dewy grass and thistle stems, painfully anxious to avoid cracking the least twig, for fifty metres in front the English trenches rose as a black streak in the half-light. The bullets of a distant machine-gun fell almost perpendicularly round us; here and there a Verey light went up and threw its cold illumination on the desolate plots of ground.

Once there were loud crackling sounds behind us. Two shadows passed along swiftly between the trenches. Just as we made ready to jump on them they vanished. Immediately after, the thunder of two bombs in the English trench told us it was two of our men who had crossed our path. We crawled slowly on.

Suddenly the Fähnrich clutched my arm: “On the right, quite close⁠—gently, gently.” Directly after, I heard sundry rustlings in the grass ten metres to our right. With one of those lightning intuitions that come to one on such occasions I saw the whole situation. We had been crawling the whole time along the English wire. They had heard us and now had come out of the trench to examine the ground in front of them.

Such moments on the prowl by night are unforgettable. Eyes and ears are stretched to their utmost. The sound of the enemy’s feet coming nearer through the tall grass assumes a remarkable and portentous distinctness that takes almost entire possession of one. The breath comes in gasps and it is all you can do to suppress the noise of it. The safety-catch of your revolver goes back with a little metallic click⁠—a sound that goes through the nerves like a knife. The teeth grate on the fuse-pin of the bomb. The fray will have to be short and murderous. You are aquiver with two violent sensations⁠—the tense excitement of the hunter and the terror of the hunted. You are a world in yourself, and the dark and horrible atmosphere that broods over the waste land has sucked you in utterly to itself.

A succession of indistinct figures rose up close behind us. Whispering voices came to us. We turned our heads in their direction. I heard Parthenfelder, a Bavarian, bite on the blade of a dagger.

They came still a few steps nearer, but then began to work on the wire, apparently without having observed us. Without taking our eyes off them we crawled slowly back. Death, after towering up between the two parties in eager expectation, took himself off in disgust. After a time we got on to our feet and were soon safely back in the trench.

The happy issue of our excursion inspired us with the thought of taking a prisoner, and we resolved to see about it the next evening. In the afternoon, when I had just lain down to get a little rest in view of our plans for the night, I was scared out of my wits by a terrific crash close to the dugout. The Englishmen were sending toffee-apples over which, in spite of the moderate report they made when fired off, were of such weight that the splinters from them smashed the stout tree-trunk posts of the revetment clean through. I clambered cursing from my coucher and into the trench, intending to jump down the nearest deep dugout with a shout of “Bomb left!” as soon as I saw one of these black fellows describe his circular course through the air. We were so generously provided with trench-mortar bombs of every calibre and description during the next weeks that it became second nature when going along the trench to keep one eye aloft and the other on the nearest deep dugout entrance.

That night, then, I once more prowled about between the trenches with three companions. We crawled on all-fours right up to the English wire and there took cover behind scattered clumps of grass. After a while several English appeared dragging a roll of wire. They stopped just in front of us and began cutting at the roll of wire with wire-clippers and talking in whispers. We crept nearer together in order to hold a muttered consultation. “A bomb in the middle of them and then grab him.”

“But there are four of them, man!”

“Don’t talk rot!”

“Mind, mind!” My warning came too late; as I looked up, the English crept like lizards under their wire and disappeared in the trench. We now felt somewhat uneasy. The thought that they would lose no time in bringing a machine-gun into action gave me a nasty taste in the mouth. The others, too, bad the same anxiety. With much rattling of weapons we retreated on our bellies. There was a great stir in the English trench, hushed voices and a loud pattering of feet to and fro. Swish!⁠—a Verey light! All round us it was light as day while we endeavoured to hide our heads in clumps of grass. Another Verey light. Painful moments. If only one could sink into the earth or be anywhere else than ten metres in front of the enemy’s trench. One more, and then ping⁠ ⁠… ping⁠ ⁠… the unmistakable report of rifle-shots at short range. They’ve spotted us.

Without more ado we shouted to each other our intention of making a dash for it, and jumping up we raced for our own lines in a hail of bullets. After a few steps I stumbled and fell into a small and shallow shell-hole, while the three others, thinking I was done for, careered past me. I flattened myself to the ground and let the bullets sweep over me through the long grass. The burning pieces of magnesium from the falling Verey lights, many of which burned out close to me, were not much pleasanter. Gradually the fire slackened, and after another quarter of an hour I crept from my refuge, slowly at first and then as fast as hands and knees would carry me. As the moon had set meanwhile, I soon lost all sense of direction, and had not the least idea where either English or Germans were. Not a glimpse could I see of Monchy Mill on the horizon. Now and then a shot from one side or the other whistled by with a very ugly sound. At last I lay down in the grass and determined to wait for dawn. Suddenly I heard a whisper close by me. Once more I put myself in fighting trim, and then prudently uttered a few sounds that might proceed equally from an Englishman or a German, determined to reply to the first word of English with a bomb. I was glad to find they were my own fellows, who were just unbuckling their belts to carry in my corpse on them. We sat together for a bit in the shell-hole and rejoiced over our fortunate reunion. Then we returned to our own trench, from which we had been absent three hours.

I was out again on trench duty at five. In No. 1 platoon I found Sergeant-major H. in front of his dugout. I was surprised to see him at this early hour, and he told me that he was lying in wait for an enormous rat whose gnawing and scratching prevented him sleeping. He took the opportunity of showing me his dugout, which was absurdly diminutive, and which he had christened the “bantam’s perch.”

While we were standing together there was a dull report which certainly did not betoken anything out of the way. H., who on the day before had very nearly stopped a large mortar-bomb and was consequently very nervous, went like a flash for the nearest dugout steps and, taking the first fifteen sitting, put the remainder to good use in three somersaults. I stood above in the entrance and laughed till I cried over this painful interruption of a rat-hunt. The poor victim meanwhile was tenderly rubbing various parts of his body and attempting to put back a dislocated thumb. The unlucky fellow told me that he had been sitting at his supper when the mortar-bomb arrived, and not only had his food been entirely smothered in dust, but on that occasion as well he had fallen downstairs.

After this enlivening interlude I repaired to my dugout, but I was not destined today, either, to have the refreshment of sleep. From early morning we were bombarded by trench-mortars with ever-lessening intervals. Towards midday it got too lively for me altogether. With the help of a few men I got our Lanz mortar into action and started firing on the enemy trenches. It was, I must say, but a poor return for the heavy stuff with which we were so generously favoured. We crouched on the sun-cracked ground in our little gun-pit, and sweating sent over bomb after bomb. The English were not at all put out, so I had recourse with Lieutenant Wetje to the telephone, and after mature consideration sent off the following S.O.S.: “Helen is spitting into our trenches. Nothing but great big bits. We want potatoes all sizes.”

We had recourse to this rigmarole in case the enemy might be listening in. Very soon there came the comforting reply from Lieutenant Deichmann that the fat sergeant-major with the stiff moustache and a few of his younger brothers were coming forward. Immediately after, the first of our two-hundredweight bombs hurtled into the enemy’s trench with an incredible detonation. It was followed by a few salvoes from the field artillery, and after that we had peace for the rest of the day.

At noon next day, however, the ball was opened in an even livelier fashion. At the first shot I went by my underground gallery to the second line, and from there to the communication trench where we had made our mortar emplacement. We opened fire, and for every toffee-apple that came over we returned a Lanz. After we had exchanged about forty bombs it appeared that the enemy had marked us down and was aiming for us. Soon they fell to right and left of us. But we kept on firing till one came straight for us. We pulled through our trigger-line once more at the last moment and then ran for it. I had just reached a muddy trench blocked with wire when the brute exploded close behind me. The rush of air sent me flying over a bundle of barbed wire into a shell-hole full of green slime, with a shower of hard clods hurtling after me. I got up half-stunned. I was in evil plight. Breeches and boots were ripped with barbed wire. My face and hands and uniform were plastered with mud, and one knee was bleeding from a long scratch. Somewhat put out of action, I crept back along the trenches to get a little rest.

Apart from this the enemy’s fire had done no great harm. The trench was blown in here and there, a Priester mortar was smashed, and the “bantam’s perch” was disposed of by a direct hit. Its unfortunate owner had already bestowed himself in a deep dugout. Otherwise he would no doubt have seized the opportunity for a third fall downstairs.

The firing continued all afternoon without a break, and towards evening rose to the pitch of drumfire with innumerable cylinder bombs. Our fellows called these cylinder-shaped missiles “clothes-baskets,” and it often looked as though the sky was raining baskets. We sat in the deep dugout entrances in tense expectation, ready to receive all comers with rifle and bomb. However, after half an hour the fire slackened off again. During the night there were two more outbursts. The men on guard remained unmoved on the fire-steps. As soon as the fire ceased we made a brilliant display of light rockets, and every man hurried out of the deep dugouts to assure the enemy by a furious burst of rifle-fire that the spirit of the Hanover Fusiliers was not to be broken.

In spite of this crazy bombardment we lost only one man, Fusilier Diersman, whose skull was smashed by a mortar bomb that struck the parapet in front of him. Another man was wounded in the back.

The day following this disturbing night there were many bursts of firing to warn us of an approaching attack. The trench was shot all to bits during these days, and, owing to the broken timber of the revetment, was almost impassable. A number of dugouts were smashed in besides.

Brigade headquarters sent forward an intelligence report: “Intercepted English telephone message: The English give precise information of the gaps in our wire and are asking for steel helmets. Whether ‘steel helmets’ is a code word for trench heavies is not yet known. Be prepared!”

We decided to stand-to during the succeeding night. It was made known that everyone who did not answer with his name at the word “Hallo” would instantly be shot. Every officer had a red light in his pistol so that the artillery could have prompt warning.

The night was even crazier than its forerunners. In particular, a concentration of fire at 2:15 a.m. beat anything that preceded it. A perfect hail of heavies fell in a circle all round my dugout. We stood in fighting order on the steps of the deep dugouts. The light of a candle-end flickered on the moist and mildewed walls. A bluish vapour streamed in at the entrances. The earth flew from the edges of the trench. Wumm! “Damn the thing!” “Match, somebody!” “Be ready!” One’s heart beat in one’s throat, trembling fingers loosened the pins of the bombs. “That’s the last one!” “Outside!” As we crowded out, one more with a delay-action fuse went up and slung us backwards. Nevertheless, while the last of the iron fowl came dropping in, every fire-step was already manned. We opened rapid fire, and the ground in front, wreathed in swathes of smoke, was brightly lit up with light-rockets.

When the firing had ceased we had one more loss. Fusilier Nienhuser suddenly fell from the fire-step and rolled bumping down the dugout steps into the middle of a group of his fellows assembled at the bottom. When we examined him we found a small wound on the forehead and a puncture over the right nipple from which blood was flowing. It was impossible to say whether the wounds or the fall had killed him.

At the close of this night of alarms we were relieved by the 6th Company. We moved off down the communication trenches to Monchy in that peculiar brand of ill-humour that is produced on exhausted nerves and sleepless eyes by a bright morning sunshine. From there we proceeded to the reserve line, lying along the edge of Adinfer wood. A magnificent panorama of the battle of the Somme in its opening stages was spread before us. The front-line sectors were veiled in clouds of white and black smoke, and one upon another the shell-bursts towered up into the sky. Above them the brief flash of exploding shrapnel could be seen by the hundred.

When at last we were hoping for a little sleep that night, orders came to load heavy trench-mortar ammunition in Monchy, and we had to wait the whole night and to no purpose for a railway wagon that had got hung up somewhere, while the English made numerous attempts on our lives, fortunately without result, by high-angle machine-gun fire and shrapnel exploding right over our heads. I was particularly annoyed by one artist with the machine-gun who fired at such an angle that the bullets, from the mere force of gravity, came straight down on us. It was no good taking cover from them behind a wall.

During this night the enemy gave me an example of the closeness of his observation. In the second line, about 2,000 metres from him, a heap of white chalk was thrown up from a deep dugout that was being excavated for an ammunition dump. The English, unfortunately, were right in concluding that this heap would be removed the following night, and sent over a salvo of shrapnel, by which three men were severely wounded.

Next morning I was roused from sleep once more, with orders to take my platoon as a working party to C sector. My sections were distributed among the 6th Company, and I then returned with a few men to Adinfer wood and set them to work felling timber. On the way back to the line again I went into my dugout for half an hour’s rest. All to no purpose, for I was not to have a moment’s peace these days. I had scarcely pulled off my boots when I heard our own artillery start a peculiarly lively fire from the edge of the wood. At the same moment my batman, Paulicke, appeared at the top of the dugout steps and shouted down, “Gas attack!”

I snatched up my gas-mask, pulled on my boots, buckled my belt, and, running outside, saw an immense gas-cloud hanging in heavy white swathes over Monchy, and rolling towards Point 124 in the low ground.

As most of my platoon were in the front line, and as an attack was very probable, there was only one thing to be done. I jumped over the entanglement in front of the reserve line and was soon in the middle of the gas-cloud. I put on the mask, but quickly tore it off again. I had run so fast that I could not get enough air through the intake. The eyepieces, too, were misted over in a second, so that I could see nothing. As I felt pains in the chest I tried at least to get through the cloud of gas as quickly as I could. On the edge of Monchy I had to pass through a barrage. The shells, interspersed with puff after puff of shrapnel, burst in an unbroken chain across the desolate country, which no one at the best of times ever traversed.

Artillery fire of that kind in the open country where there is freedom of movement has never, either actually or morally, the same effect as among buildings or in the trenches. In a moment I had the belt of fire behind me. But then I found myself in Monchy. A literal storm of shrapnel was breaking over it. Showers of bullets, splinters, and fuses whistled through the air, swept through the branches of the orchard trees in the garden wildernesses, and crashed against what remained of the ruined walls.

I found Sievers and Vogel, both officers of my company, sitting in a dugout in one of the gardens. They had made a blazing fire, and were bending over the flames to counteract the effects of the chlorine. I kept them company and did likewise until the bombardment slackened, and then went on to the front line by No. 6 communication trench.

As I walked along I saw numbers of small beasts lying dead on the bottom of the trench, killed by the chlorine, and I thought as I saw them, “Another barrage will come down any moment, and if you go fooling about like this you’ll find yourself caught without cover like a mouse in a trap.” Nevertheless, I went on with the utmost unconcern.

As it turned out, I was caught in a fresh and even wilder outburst just fifty metres from the company dugout. It seemed quite out of the question to pass even the short length of trench without being hit. By good luck I saw a little shelter that had been dug out in the side of the trench for despatch-riders. It was only the width of three dugout frames⁠—not much, but always something. So there I crouched and let the storm go over me.

It seemed to me that I had chosen the hottest corner. Light and heavy toffee-apples, Stokes bombs, shrapnel, “rattles,” shells of every description, till at last I could no longer distinguish one from another as they came droning, moaning, and crashing all round me. I had to think of my good corporal in the forest of Les Eparges and his cry of horror: “What do you think of these ones, eh?”

Now and then the ear was utterly dazed by a single, absolutely hellish crash accompanied by a sheet of flame. Then an unceasing and sharp swishing gave the impression again that hundreds of pound weights were flying after each other through the air with incredible velocity. Then came another dud, plunging with a short, heavy thump that shook the solid earth all round. Shrapnel exploded by the dozen, as prettily as crackers, scattering their little bullets in a heavy shower, with the empty cases whizzing after them. When a shell went up nearby, the soil rattled down in a torrent, and with it the jagged splinters as sharp as razors rent the air on all sides.

It is easier, nevertheless, to describe all this than to go through it, for the brain links every separate sound of whirring metal with the idea of death, and so the nerves are exposed without protection and without a pause to a sense of the utmost menace. Thus I crouched in my little hole with my hand in front of my eyes, while all the possibilities of being hit passed through my imagination. I believe I have found a comparison that exactly conveys what I, in common with all the rest who went through the war, experienced in situations such as this. It is as if one were tied tight to a post and threatened by a fellow swinging a sledgehammer. Now the hammer is swung back for the blow, now it whirls forward, till, just missing your skull, it sends the splinters flying from the post once more. That is exactly what it feels like to be exposed to heavy shelling without cover. Fortunately for me personally, I always have the confidence at the back of my head that things will soon be better. One has the same feeling, too, at games; and though it may have no justification, it has at least the merit of relieving the nerves. And so this bombardment as well came to an end, and I was able to set out again, this time at top speed.

Everyone in the front line, according to the regulations laid down for a gas attack and so often rehearsed, was busily greasing his rifle, which the gas had entirely blackened. A Fähnrich sorrowfully showed me his new sword-knot, whose brilliance had been turned to a blackish green.

As there was no movement of the enemy, I withdrew with my platoon. In Monchy I saw a number of gas casualties sitting in front of the first-aid post. They were pressing their hands to their sides and groaning and choking, while water ran from their eyes. Their condition was no laughing matter, for some of them died a few days later in frightful agony. We had had a gas attack of pure chlorine to go through. It has a corrosive and burning action on the lungs. I resolved from that day onwards never to go out without my mask, as I had done over and over again up to now, leaving, with incredible folly, my mask behind, and taking the case like a botanizing box with a piece of bread-and-butter inside. On the way back I went to buy something at the 2nd Battalion canteen, and there I found the wretched canteen-keeper in the midst of a heap of goods all smashed to smithereens. A shell had come through the roof and exploded among his stores and turned them into a remarkable medley of jam and tinned foods and green soap. He had promptly drawn up a statement of losses incurred, amounting to eighty-two marks fifty-eight pfennigs, with true Prussian exactitude.

In the evening my platoon, that had hitherto been a detached party in the second line, was brought forward into the village on account of the uncertain state of the front. We were given the underground quarry as our quarters. We made ourselves comfortable in its numerous recesses, and heaped up an enormous fire. The shaft of the well served as chimney, as we could tell from the rage of certain company cooks who were nearly suffocated while drawing water. We had had a double ration of grog, and we sat on lumps of chalk round the fire and sang and drank and smoked.

At midnight the salient in front of Monchy became an inferno. Dozens of alarm-bells were ringing, hundreds of rifles were firing, and green and white rockets went up without ceasing. Immediately on this our barrage came down, and a trail of fiery sparks could be seen each time a heavy trench-mortar fulminated. Through it all, wherever a human soul inspired the tumult, there rang out the long-drawn cry, “Gas attack! Gas attack!”

A whitish wall of gas, fitfully illumined by the light of the rockets, was moving over Monchy. As a strong smell of chlorine was noticeable in our cavern, we lit fires of straw at the entrances. The acrid smoke nearly drove us out of our refuge, and we were forced to clear the air by waving coats and groundsheets.

Next morning we had the opportunity of marvelling at the effects of a gas attack. Nearly every green thing was withered, snails and moles lay dead on every side, and any despatch-riders’ horses that were in Monchy had water running from their mouths and eyes. The ammunition and the shell splinters that lay everywhere were covered with a beautiful green patina. Even Douchy, lying far to the rear, shared the effects of the gas-cloud. The civilians, who did not like it at all, assembled in front of Lieutenant-Colonel von Oppen’s quarters and asked for gas-masks. They were put on lorries and taken to places further in the rear.

We spent the next night in the quarry again. In the evening I got the message that we were to have coffee at 4:15, as an English deserter had declared that there was to be an attack at 5. And, in fact, I had scarcely been awakened by the return of the party sent for the coffee when the now familiar cry, “Gas attack!” rang out. There was a sickly smell of phosgene in the air, and the drumfire on the Monchy salient was terrific. It soon, however, died down.

A lively morning followed. Lieutenant Brecht emerged on the village street from communication trench No. 6 with a bloodstained bandage round one hand, accompanied by one of his men with fixed bayonet and an English prisoner. He was received in west headquarters, and told the following story:

The English had released gas- and smoke-screens at five, and at the same time smothered the trench with trench-mortar fire. The men as usual had left their cover before the firing stopped, and we had thirty killed. Then two strong raiding parties appeared out of the smoke. One of the two had forced their way into the trench and taken off a wounded N.C.O. The other was held up on the wire. The only one of them who got through was taken prisoner by Lieutenant Brecht, who had led a planter’s life in America before the war, and who seized him by the throat and shouted, “Come here, you son of a bitch!” This sole representative was now entertained with a glass of wine. With half-frightened, half-astonished eyes he looked up the village street that, deserted a moment ago, was now crowded with ration-parties, stretcher-bearers, despatch-carriers, and all whom curiosity could collect. The prisoner was a tall young fellow with yellow hair and the face of a child. “A pity,” thought I, as I looked at him, “to have to shoot such a fellow as that.”

Soon a long train of stretchers arrived at the dressing-station. From the South sector, too, there were many casualties, for in company sector E also a strong raiding party had got into the trench. About fifty stretchers on which lay groaning men with blood-soaked bandages were set down in front of some huts of corrugated iron. Inside, the doctor, with his sleeves rolled up, was busy at his job.

A young fellow, whose blue lips on a face as white as a sheet looked very bad, was muttering, “It’s all up.⁠ ⁠… I shan’t ever again⁠ ⁠… I’ve got⁠ ⁠… to⁠ ⁠… die.” A fat Medical Corps sergeant looked at him with pity, and to comfort him kept murmuring, “Now now, my boy, now now!”

Although the English had prepared for this minor attack, of which the chief object was to divert some of our reserves from the front of the Somme offensive, by numerous trench-mortar bombardments and gas attacks, they succeeded in taking only one wounded man prisoner, and they left a number of dead in front of our wire. Certainly, our losses also were considerable. The regiment that morning had forty killed, including three officers.

At noon of the next day we went back at last to our beloved Douchy for a few days, and the same evening we celebrated the happy outcome of the little affair with a few well-earned bottles of wine.

On the first of July we had the sad duty of burying some of the dead in our burial-ground. Thirty-nine plain wooden coffins were lowered into the grave. The address by the Pastor Phillippi was so affecting that the men cried like children. The text was, “You have fought a good fight,” and he began with the words, “Gibraltar⁠—that is your motto; and truly you have stood like a rock in a raging sea!”

The great value of ceremonial observances was made clear to me on this affecting occasion. We have often, one time and another, left ten times the number of dead on the field and yet not been so deeply touched by the loss as we were that day beside the open graves.

I learned during these days to value at their true worth the men with whom I had still three more years of fighting to go through.

You will not find a man in the whole army who can be relied upon so implicitly to do his duty simply and without fuss as the man of Lower Saxony. When there was the need to prove, “Here stands a man, and if need be here he falls⁠ ⁠… ,” not one of them ever wavered. It showed great self-mastery to leave the security of the deep dugout and face the storm of fire during those days in the trenches when the trench-mortar bombs were exploding by the hundred and when the flanking battery swept us with shrapnel and when bits and splinters were hurtling all ways. In the open field there may be some pleasure in showing your courage, but it is another thing to clench your teeth and to go to your post alone in the night and under fire. It is just this quality of courage that I have always marvelled at in those quiet, fair-haired Saxons.

On the evening of the 3rd of July we went back to the line. It was comparatively quiet, though there were still signs of there being something in the wind. The machine never ceased to throb and hammer. We often intercepted suspicious telephone conversations about gas-containers and mines addressed to an English R.E. officer in the front line. From early morning to dusk enemy aeroplanes kept our trenches under fire. The average daily bombardments were much heavier than usual. In spite of this we were relieved on the 12th July without having had any unpleasant experiences, and went into reserve at Monchy.

On the evening of the 13th July our dugouts in the garden were under fire from a 24-centimetre naval gun. The heavy shells came whistling over and exploded with a really frightful noise. During the night we were awakened by lively firing and a gas attack. We sat in the dugout round the stove with our masks on. Vogel, who could not find his, ran to and fro in great distress, while some of his comrades, who bore him no love, took a malicious joy in declaring that the smell of gas was getting stronger every moment. At last I gave him my spare refill, and he hugged the smoking stove for an hour like an image of misery and coughed and held his nose with a piteous air and pulled away at the mouthpiece.

On the same day I had two casualties in my platoon⁠—Hasselmann with a rifle wound in the arm, and Maschmeier with a shrapnel bullet in the neck.

No attack followed that night. Nevertheless, it was a bad business and cost the regiment twenty-five dead and many wounded. On the 15th and 17th we had two more gas attacks to go through. On the 17th we were relieved, and were twice shelled in Douchy⁠—once while Major von Jarotzky was addressing the assembled officers in an orchard. It was irresistibly comic, in spite of the danger, to see how the company flew apart, nearly falling on their noses in their extreme haste to get through the fences and vanish like lightning wherever cover was to be found. In the garden of my billet a little girl of eight years old was killed by a shell while rummaging for rubbish in a pit.

On the 20th July we were back in the line. On the 28th I arranged with Wohlgemut and the volunteers, Bartels and Birkner, to go on patrol. We had no other object in view than to make a little tour on the other side of the wire and to see what No-man’s-land might bring forth: for trench life had begun by degrees to be monotonous again. In the afternoon Lieutenant Brauns of the 6th Company, who was relieving me, paid me a visit in the dugout and brought one or two bottles of good wine with him. It was half-past eleven when we broke up the meeting, and I then went into the trench, where I found my three comrades standing together in the dark comer of a traverse. After picking out a few dry bombs I climbed over the wire in the best of spirits, while Brauns shouted after me: “Give ’em hell!”

It was not long before we had stalked the enemy wire. Close in front of it in high grass we discovered a stout and well-insulated wire. I thought the discovery might have some importance, and I told Wohlgemut to cut a piece off and take it back with him. While he was employed with a cigar-cutter in default of a better instrument, there was a clink of wire immediately in front of us, and a party of English appeared and began to work on the wire without observing us in the grass.

With the annoying experience of previous patrols in my mind I breathed an almost inaudible “Wohlgemut, bomb in the middle of them!”

“Better leave them to get to work, sir!”

“An order’s an order, Fähnrich!”

The spirit of the Prussian drill-yard did not fail to breathe its spell even in this wilderness. I heard the dry rasp of the fuse-pin as he pulled it out, and I had the doomed feelings of a man who has let himself in for a very uncertain adventure. I saw Wohlgemut lob the bomb along the ground in order to show himself as little as possible. It stopped in some weeds almost at the feet of the English, who clearly had noticed nothing. A few moments of intense expectation went by. Then a bang and a flash lit up the reeling figures. We sprang like tigers into the white cloud of smoke with the shout, “You are prisoners!”

In less than a second all was confusion. I held my pistol against a face that shone out like a white mask in the darkness. A shadow squeezed backwards into the wire and cried out. Close to me on my left Wohlgemut fired his revolver, while the volunteer, Bartels, in the excitement of the moment blindly slung a bomb into the midst of us.

At the first shot the magazine of my revolver dropped out, and I stood shouting at an Englishman who squeezed himself in horror closer and closer against the barbed wire. Again and again I pressed the trigger, but not a shot rang out. It was a nightmare. There was now a tumult in the trench. Shouts were followed by the rattle of a Lewis gun. We jumped back. I took cover in a shell-hole and turned my revolver on a shadow behind me. This time it was lucky I could not fire, for it was Birkner behind me, though I thought he had long since got back.

After this we made a dash for our own trench, but in front of our wire the bullets came so thick that I had to jump into a crater full of water and laced over with wire. Swinging on a barbed hammock over the face of the waters, I listened with mixed feelings to the dense hail of bullets sweeping past, while bits of wire and splinters plunged into the lip of the crater. After half an hour, when the firing had died down, I worked my way over our entanglements and jumped into the trench, where a joyful welcome was ready for me. Wohlgemut and Bartels were there already, and after another half-hour Birkner turned up too. There was general rejoicing over our lucky escape. The only regret was that a prisoner had again slipped through our fingers. When I lay down on the bed-boards in the dugout I realized that my nerves had been touched. My teeth were chattering, and, exhausted though I was, I could not sleep. Next morning I could scarcely walk. I had torn one knee on the wire, and the other had a splinter in it from the bomb Bartels had chucked at me.

These brief and sporting interludes were, all the same, a good tonic for the nerves and a relief from the monotony of trench life.

On the 11th of August a black horse was galloping to and fro behind the English lines in front of Berles-au-Bois. A Landwehrsman brought it down with three shots. The English officer from whom it had run away must have made a very sorry face at this sight. During the night the case of a rifle bullet hit Fusilier S⁠⸺ in the eye.

In the village, too, the casualties were more and more frequent. The walls were levelled by artillery fire, and there was less and less cover against the random bursts of machine-gun fire. We began to connect up the village with trenches and to build up the walls at the most dangerous spots.

The 12th of August was the long-desired day when I got my second leave. However, I had scarcely got home and made myself comfortable when a telegram came after me: “Return immediately. Further orders from the town-major, Cambrai.”

Three hours later I was sitting in the train. On the way to the station I met three girls in light summer dresses, with tennis-rackets in their hands, laughing as they went. It was a brilliant farewell life gave me, and one that I often thought of when I was back in the line.

On the 21st I was once more in the well-known neighbourhood. The roads, owing to the departure of the 111th Division and the arrival of the new one, were thronged with troops. The 1st Battalion lay in Ecoust-St.-Mein, which we stormed two years later. I spent the night in the attic of an empty house with eight other officers.

In the evening we sat up a long while drinking coffee that two Frenchwomen made for us in a neighbouring house. It was the strongest drink we could procure. We knew that we were on the verge this time of a battle such as the world had never seen. Soon our excited talk rose to a pitch that would have rejoiced the hearts of any freebooters, or of Frederick’s Grenadiers. A few days later there were very few of that party still alive.