7 October 1915. Standing at dawn on the fire-step opposite our dugout next to the sentry when a rifle bullet ripped through his forage cap without harming a hair of his head. At the same time, two pioneers were wounded on the wires. One had a ricochet through both legs, the other a ball through his ear.
In the morning, the sentry on our left flank was shot through both cheekbones. The blood spurted out of him in thick gouts. And, to cap it all, when Lieutenant von Ewald, visiting our sector to take pictures of sap N barely fifty yards away, turned to climb down from the outlook, a bullet shattered the back of his skull and he died on the spot. Large fragments of skull were left littering the sentry platform. Also, a man was hit in the shoulder, but not badly.
19 October. The middle platoon’s section of trench was attacked with six-inch shells. One man was hurled against a post by the blast so hard that he sustained serious internal injuries, and a splinter of wood punctured the artery in his arm.
In the early morning fog, as we were repairing our wires on the right, we came upon a French corpse that must have been there for many months.
That night, two men were wounded while unspooling wire. Gutschmidt was shot in both hands and one thigh, Schafer took a bullet in the knee.
30 October. Following a torrential downpour in the night, all the traverses came down and formed a grey sludgy porridge with the rain, turning the trench into a deep swamp. Our only consolation was that the British were just as badly off as we were, because we could see them baling out for all they were worth. Since our position has a little more elevation than theirs, we even managed to pump our excess their way. Also, we used rifles with telescopic sights on them.
The crumbled trench walls exposed a line of bodies left there from the previous autumn’s fighting.
9 November. Was standing next to Territorial Wiegmann in front of Altenburg Redoubt when a long shot passed through his bayonet, which he was carrying over his shoulder, and gave him a bad wound in the groin. Those British bullets with their brittle points are dumdum by any other name. [‘A soft-nosed bullet (1897); f. Dum Dun, name of a military station and arsenal near Calcutta, India’ (Oxford Dictionary of Etymology). They have been, at different times, disapproved of and declared illegal.]
Staying in these little earthworks tucked into the landscape, where I am based with half a platoon, offers more freedom of movement than the front line. A gentle slope comes between us and the front; behind us there’s an ascent to the wooded hill of Adinfer. Fifty paces behind the fortifications, in a rather poorly selected location, is our latrine – a long beam supported on two trestles over a ditch. The men like to spend time there, either reading the paper, or for companionship, in the manner of canaries, say. This is the font of all the various sinister rumours that course around the front, and that go by the name of ‘bog talk’. In one instance, admittedly, the cosiness is shattered by the fact that the place, while not overlooked by the enemy, is still vulnerable to fire over the low rise. If they aim just over the ridge, the bullets pass through the dip at chest height, and a man has to lie flat on the floor to be safe. So it sometimes happens that in the same ‘session’, two or three times, more or less clothed, you have to measure your length, to allow a machine-gun burst, like a musical scale, to pass over your head. It’s the occasion for all sorts of ribaldry, of course.
Among the more positive aspects of our situation is the availability of game, in particular pheasants, untold numbers of which inhabit the fallow fields. For want of shotguns, we have to try and sneak up on the rather dim ‘cookpot volunteers’ and blow their heads off, otherwise there’s not too much left to eat. You have to remember not to get too carried away in the heat of the chase, otherwise the huntsman risks becoming the quarry, if the trenches below get a sight of you.
Rats we go after with steel traps. Admittedly, the beasts are so strong that they try and take the traps with them; their noisy efforts bring us charging out of our dugouts to finish them off with clubs. We’ve even devised a type of hunt for the mice who nibble our bread; we all but empty a cartridge, and, using a paper pellet for a bullet, we try to shoot them with that.
Last but not least, with a fellow NCO, I’ve thought up another type of shooting sport, quite exciting though again not without its perils. In conditions of fog, we go out collecting up unexploded shells, little ones and big ones, some weighing a hundredweight or more, all usually in plentiful supply. We set these up at some distance away, and then, hidden behind shooting-slits, we bang away at them. We don’t need anyone to examine the targets to tell us how we’ve done, because a hit – a shot on the fuse -announces itself right away with a hideous blast, which is greatly increased if it’s a case of ‘all nine’; in other words, if the explosion carries through a whole row of these unexploded duds.
14 November. Last night I dreamed I was shot in the hand. As a result I’m more than usually careful all day.
21 November. I was leading an entrenchment party from Altenburg Redoubt to C Sector. Then Territorial Diener climbed up on a mound behind the trench to shovel some soil over the defences. No sooner had he got up there than a bullet fired from the sap went right through his head, and dropped him dead in the trench. He was a married man with four children. His comrades stayed a long time at their shooting-slits afterwards, hoping to exact revenge. They were weeping with frustration. They seemed to feel personal enmity for the Britisher who had fired the mortal shot.
24 November. A machine-gunner was gravely wounded in the head in our sector. Half an hour later, another man in our company had his cheek laid open by infantry fire.
On 29 November our battalion moved back for a fortnight to the little town of Queant, in the back area of the division, which later was to achieve such bloody renown, to drill and indulge in some of the blessings afforded by the hinterland. During our stay there, my commission as lieutenant came through, and I was posted to the 2nd Company.
In Queant and its environs, we were often invited to drinking sessions by the local commandants, and I was given an insight into the near-absolute authority these local bosses exercised over their subordinates and the local populations. One Captain of Horse dubbed himself the King of Queant, and made his appearance every night at our round table, where he was greeted by upraised right hands and a thunderous ‘Long Live the King!’ He held sway over us till daybreak, a moody monarch, punishing every breach of etiquette and every violation of his infinitely subtle conduct regulations with the imposition of a round of drinks. We grunts, as new arrivals, had a predictably hard time of it. The following day, we would see him after lunch, a little the worse for wear, touring his estates in a dogcart, and paying his respects to neighbouring monarchs (with many libations to Bacchus), in readiness for the evening ahead. These visits he referred to as ‘ambuscades’. On one occasion, he got into a tiff with the King of Inchy, and had a mounted MP call out an official feud between them. After several engagements, in the course of which rival detachments of squires bombarded each other with clods of earth from their respective fortified trenches, the King of Inchy was incautious enough to regale himself with Bavarian beer at the mess in Queant, and was apprehended while visiting a lonely place. He was forced to purchase a vast tun of beer by way of ransom. And so ended the epic war between the two monarchs.