Now we had to heave aside the bicycles that were blocking the cellar exit, creep on all fours over the debris, and slip through a crack in the wall into the open. Without stopping to take in the unbelievable change that had come over the place, we headed out of the village as fast as we could. No sooner had the last man of us got past the front gate, than the house took one more huge hit, and that was the coup de grâce.
The terrain between the edge of the village and the dressing-station was receiving a total artillery barrage. Light and heavy shells with impact-, fire- and time-delay fuses, duds, empty cases and shrapnels all participated in a kind of madness that was too much for our eyes and ears. In amongst it all, going either side of the witches’ cauldron of the village, support troops were advancing.
Fresnoy was one towering fountain of earth after another. Each second seemed to want to outdo the last. As if by some magical power, one house after another subsided into the earth; walls broke, gables fell, and bare sets of beams and joists were sent flying through the air, cutting down the roofs of other houses. Clouds of splinters danced over whitish wraiths of steam. Eyes and ears were utterly compelled by this maelstrom of devastation.
We spent the next two days in the dressing-station dugout, in conditions of great overcrowding, because in addition to my men it housed the staffs of two battalions, two relief detachments, and the inevitable odds and sods. The coming and going around the entrances, where there was a continual buzz of activity as around a beehive, of course didn’t go unnoticed by our opponents. Soon wickedly aimed shells landed at one-minute intervals on the footpaths outside, and the calls for the ambulancemen were never-ending. To this unpleasant bit of target-practice I lost four bicycles, which I had left next to the entrance. They were comprehensively remodelled and cast to the four winds.
At the entrance, stiff and silent, rolled in a tarpaulin, his big hornrims still on his face, lay Lieutenant Lemière, the commander of the 8th Company, who had been brought here by his men. He had received a shot in the mouth. His younger brother was to fall only a few months later, hit in the same way.
On 30 April my successor took over from me with the relief regiment, the 25th, and we moved to Flers, the rendezvous for the 1st Battalion. Leaving the heavily shelled limekiln, ‘Chezbontemps’, on our left, we strolled blissfully across the fields to Beaumont in the balmy afternoon. Our eyes once more appreciated the beauty of the earth, relieved to have escaped the unbearable constriction of the shelter hole, and our lungs drew in the intoxicating spring air. With the rumble of guns behind us, we were able to say with the poet:
A day that God the maker of the world
Made for sweeter things than fighting.
In Flers, I found my designated quarters had been occupied by several staff sergeant-majors, who, claiming they had to guard the room on behalf of a certain Baron von X, refused to make room, but hadn’t reckoned on the short temper of an irritated and tired front-line officer. I had my men knock the door down, and, following a short scuffle in front of the peacetime occupants of the house, who had hurried along in their nightgowns to see what the matter was, the gentlemen, or gentleman’s gentlemen, were sent flying down the stairs. Knigge was sufficiently gracious to throw their boots out after them. After this successful attack, I climbed into my nicely warmed-up bed, offering half of it to my friend Kius, who was still wandering around looking for an abode. The sleep in this long-missed fixture did us so much good that the following morning we woke, as they say, fully refreshed.
Since the 1st Battalion had not lost many men during the recent fighting, the mood was pretty cheerful as we marched to the station at Douai. Our destination was the village of Serain, where we were to rest and recuperate for a few days. We had a friendly welcome and good accommodation from the villagers, and already on our first evening the happy sounds of reunited comrades could be heard from many of the dwellings.
Such libations after a successfully endured engagement are among the fondest memories an old warrior may have. Even if ten out of twelve men had fallen, the two survivors would surely meet over a glass on their first evening off, and drink a silent toast to their comrades, and jestingly talk over their shared experiences. There was in these men a quality that both emphasized the savagery of war and transfigured it at the same time: an objective relish for danger, the chevalieresque urge to prevail in battle. Over four years, the fire smelted an ever-purer, ever-bolder warriorhood.
The next morning, Knigge appeared and read out some orders, from which I understood that I was to take over the command of the 4th Company at around noon. This was the company in which the Lower Saxon poet Hermann Löns fell in the autumn of 1914 outside Rheims, a volunteer at the age of almost fifty.
Against Indian Opposition
The 6th of May 1917 already found us back on the march, heading once more for the familiar destination of Brancourt, and on the following day we moved, via Montbréhain, Ramicourt and Jon-court, to the Siegfried Line that we had left only a month before.
The first evening was stormy; heavy rain clattered down on the already flooded terrain. Soon, though, a succession of fine warm days reconciled us to our new place. I enjoyed the splendid landscape, untroubled by the white balls of shrapnel and the jumping cones of shells; in fact, barely noticing them. Each spring marked the beginning of a new year’s fighting; intimations of a big offensive were as much part of the season as primroses and pussy-willows.
Our sector was a semi-circular bulge in front of the St-Quentin Canal, at our rear we had the famous Siegfried Line. I confess I am at a loss to understand why we had to take our place in these tight, undeveloped limestone trenches, when we had that enormously strong bulwark just behind us.
The front line wound its way through meadowland shaded by little clumps of trees, wearing the fresh green of early spring. It was possible to walk safely in front of and behind the trenches, as many advance positions secured the line. These posts were a thorn in the enemy’s side, and some weeks not a night would pass without an attempt to remove the sentries, either by guile or by brute force.
But our first period in position passed pleasantly quietly; the weather was so beautiful that we spent the nights lying on the grass. On 14 May, we were relieved by the 8th Company, and moved, the fires of St-Quentin on our right, to our resting-place, Montbréhain, a large village that had as yet taken little harm from the war and afforded very agreeable accommodation. On the 20th, as the reserve company, we occupied the Siegfried Line. It was summer holidays; we spent the days sitting in little summer huts erected on the slopes, or swimming and rowing on the canal. I spent the time lying stretched out on the grass reading the whole of Ariosto to my great enjoyment.
These idyllic positions have the one drawback that one’s superior officers like to visit them, which is a great dampener to the cosiness of trench life. That said, my left flank, posted against the already ‘nibbled at’ village of Bellenglise, had no shortage of fire to complain of. On the very first day, one man was hit by a shrapnel in the right buttock. On hearing the news, I rushed to the scene of the misfortune, and there he was, happily sitting up on his left, waiting for the ambulancemen to arrive, drinking coffee and munching on a vast slice of bread and jam.
On 25 May, we relieved the 12th Company at Riqueval-Ferme. This farm, formerly a great landed estate, served each of the four companies in the position alternately as base. From there, units went out to man three machine-gun nests positioned in the hinterland. These diagonally positioned support-points, covering each other like chess pieces, represented the first attempts in this war at a more supple, variable form of defence.
The farm was a mile at the most behind the front line; even so, its various buildings, dotted about in a rather overgrown park, were still completely unscathed. It was also densely populated – dugouts had yet to be created. The blooming hawthorn avenues in the park and the attractive surroundings gave our existence here an intimation of the leisurely country idyll that the French are so e
xpert at creating – and that, so close to the front. A pair of swallows had made their nest in my bedroom, and were busy from very early in the morning with the noisy feeding of their insatiable young.
In the evenings, I took a stick out of the corner and strolled along narrow footpaths that went winding through the hilly landscape. The neglected fields were full of flowers, and the smell grew headier and wilder by the day. Occasional trees stood beside the paths, under which a farmworker might have taken his ease in peacetime, bearing white or pink or deep-red blossoms, magical apparitions in the solitude. Nature seemed to be pleasantly intact, and yet the war had given it a suggestion of heroism and melancholy; its almost excessive blooming was even more radiant and narcotic than usual.
It’s easier to go into battle against such a setting than in a cold and wintry scene. The simple soul is convinced here that his life is deeply embedded in nature, and that his death is no end.
On 30 May, this idyll was over for me, because that was the day Lieutenant Vogeley was released from hospital, and resumed command of the 4th Company. I returned to my old 2nd, on the front line.
Two platoons manned our sector from the Roman road to the so-called Artillery Trench; a third was at company headquarters, some two hundred yards back, behind a little slope. There Kius and I shared a tiny plank lean-to together, trusting to the incompetence of the British artillery. One side was built into the downhill slope – the direction the shells would be coming from – while the other three offered their flanks to the enemy. Every day as the morning greetings were wafted up to us, one might have heard a conversation between the occupants of the top and bottom bunks that went roughly like this:
‘I say, Ernst, are you awake?’
‘Hm?’
‘I think they’re shooting!’
‘Oh, I don’t want to get up yet; I’m sure they’ll be finished soon.’
A quarter of an hour later:
‘I say, Oskar!’
‘Hm?’
‘They seem to be going on for ever today; I thought I heard a shrapnel ball come flying through the wall just now. I think we’d better get up after all. The artillery observer next door seems to have scarpered ages ago!’
We were unwise enough always to take our boots off. By the time we were finished, the British usually were too, and we could sit down at the ridiculously small table, drink our sour, stewed coffee, and light a morning cigar. In the afternoons, we mocked the British gunners by lying out on a tarpaulin and doing some sunbathing.
In other respects, too, our shack was an entertaining place to be. As we lay idly on our wire-sprung beds, enormous earthworms would come nosing out of the earthen wall; if we interfered with them, they would show a surprising turn of speed, disappearing back into their holes. A gloomy mole occasionally came snuffling out of his warren; his appearances always greatly enlivened our siesta time.
On 12 June, I was told to take a troop of twenty men and invest an outpost on the company front. It was late when we left the trench and headed along a footpath winding through the hilly countryside, into the pleasant evening. Dusk was so far advanced that the poppies in the abandoned fields seemed to merge with the bright-green grass. In the declining light, I saw more and more of my favourite colour, that red which shades into black that is at once sombre and stimulating.
Whatever thoughts we might have had we kept to ourselves as we walked silently over the flowery slopes, with our rifles over our shoulders, and twenty minutes later we had reached our destination. In whispers the post was taken over, a guard was mounted, and then the men who had been relieved slipped off into the dark.
The outpost leaned against a steep little slope, with a line of hurriedly dug foxholes. Behind it, a hundred yards or so back, a small tangle of woodland merged with the night. In front and to the right rose two hills across which ran the British lines. One of them was crested by the ruins of the auspiciously named ‘Ascension Farm’. A little path led between the hills, in the general direction of the enemy.
That was where, while inspecting my sentries, I ran into Sergeant-Major Hackmann and a few men from the 7th; they were just about to go out on patrol. Even though I wasn’t supposed to leave the outpost, I decided to join them for the hell of it.
Adopting a type of movement of my own devising (of which more later), we had crossed two entanglements, and crested the hill, strangely without encountering any sentries, when we heard the sounds of the British digging to the right and left of us. Later on, I realized that the enemy must have withdrawn his sentries to have them out of the way for the ambush I will go on to describe.
The movement that I alluded to a moment ago consisted in letting members of a patrol go forward one at a time when there was a chance that we might encounter the enemy at any moment. So there was never more than one man in front, taking it in turn to risk being the one shot by a hidden sentry, while the others were all at his back ready to lend support at a moment’s notice. I took my turn with the rest, even though my presence with the rest of the patrol might have mattered more; but there is more to war than such tactical considerations.
We crawled around several digging parties, as there were unfortunately large wire obstacles between them and ourselves. After quickly rejecting the rather eccentric sergeant-major’s suggestion that he might pretend to be a deserter, and keep the enemy distracted until we had gone around the first enemy sentries, we crept back to the outpost.
There is something stimulating about such excursions; the heart beats a little faster, and one is bombarded by fresh ideas. I resolved to dream away the mild night, and rigged up a nest for myself in the tall grass on the slope, lining it with my coat. Then I lit my pipe as discreetly as I could, and drifted off on the wings of my imagination.
In the middle of my ‘pipe dreams’, I was startled by a distinct rustling coming from the woods and the meadow. In the presence of the enemy, one’s senses are always on the qui vive, and it’s a strange thing that one can feel sure, even on the basis of rather ordinary sounds: This is it!
Straight away the nearest sentry came rushing up to me: ‘Lieutenant, sir, there are seventy British soldiers advancing on the edge of the wood!’
Though somewhat surprised at such a precise count, I hid in the tall grass on the slope, along with four riflemen, to wait and see what happened next. A few seconds later, I saw a group of men flitting across the meadow. As my men levelled their rifles at them, I called down a soft: ‘Who goes there?’ It was NCO Teilengerdes, an experienced warrior from the 2nd, collecting up his excited unit.
The other units quickly arrived. I had them form into a line stretching from the slope to the wood. A minute later, they were standing ready, with fixed bayonets. It couldn’t hurt to check the alignment; in such situations, you can’t be too pedantic. As I was upbraiding a man who was standing a little back, he replied: ‘I’m a stretcher-bearer, sir.’ He had his own rules to follow. Relieved, I ordered the men to advance.
As we strode across the strip of meadow, a hail of shrapnel flew over our heads. The enemy was laying down a dense fire in an attempt to disrupt our communications. Involuntarily, we slipped into a jogtrot, to reach the lee of the hill in front of us.
Suddenly, a dark form arose out of the grass. I tore off a hand-grenade and hurled it in the direction of the figure, with a shout. To my consternation, I saw by the flash of the explosion that it was Teilengerdes, who, unnoticed by me, had somehow run on ahead, and tripped over a wire. Fortunately, he was unhurt. Simultaneously, we heard the sharper reports of British grenades, and the shrapnel fire became unpleasantly concentrated.
Our line melted away, in the direction of the steep slope, which was experiencing heavy fire, while Teilengerdes and I and three men stayed put. Suddenly one of them jogged me: ‘Look, the British!’
Like a vision in a dream, the sight, lit only by falling sparks, of a double line of kneeling figures at the instant in which they rose to advance, etched itself into my eye. I could clearly make o
ut the figure of an officer on the right of the line, giving the command to advance. Friend and foe were paralysed by this sudden, unexpected meeting. Then we turned to flee – the only thing we could do – the enemy, it seemed, still too paralysed to fire at us.
We leaped up and ran towards the slope. Even though I tripped over a wire laid treacherously in the tall grass and flew head over heels, I made it safely, and ordered my excited troops into a compressed line.
Our situation was now such that we were sitting under the bowl of fire, as under a tightly woven basket. What appeared to have happened was that in our advance we had disturbed the enemy’s flanking manœuvre. We were at the foot of the slope, on a somewhat worn path. The wheel-ruts were enough to afford us some minimal protection against their rifles, because one’s instinctive response to danger is to press oneself as close as possible to mother earth. We kept our guns pointed at the wood, which meant that the British lines were behind us. This one circumstance unsettled me more than anything that might be going on in the wood, so, during the ensuing action, I took care to send occasional lookouts up the slope.
Suddenly the shelling ceased; we needed to steel ourselves for an attack. No sooner had our ears grown used to the surprising silence, than sounds of crackling and rustling were heard coming from the wood.
‘Halt! Who goes there? Password!’
We must have shouted for about five minutes, including the old 1st Battalion watchword ‘Lüttje Lage’ – an expression for beer and a short, familiar to all Hanoverians; but all we got back was a muddle of voices. Finally I decided to give the order to shoot, even though there were some of us who felt certain they had heard some words of German. My twenty rifles discharged their bullets into the wood, bolts rattled, and soon we heard the wailing of wounded from the brush. I had an uneasy feeling, because I thought it was within the bounds of possibility that we were firing at a detachment sent to help us.