On 1 March, as I was standing by Territorial Ikmann, who was to fall not long afterwards, a shell landed the other side of a tarpaulin next to us. The splinters fizzed past us without hurting either of us. When we examined them later, we found hideously long and sharp steel needles that had sliced through the cloth. We called these things ‘whizz-bangs’ or ‘grapeshot’, because we could never hear them coming; it was like suddenly being in the middle of a whirring cloud of splinters.
On 14 March, the sector on our right took a direct hit from a six-inch shell, and three men were killed, three others badly wounded. One simply vanished off the face of the earth, another was burned black. On the 18th, the sentry in front of my dugout was struck by a shell fragment that cut open his cheek and took off the tip of his ear. On the 19th, on our left flank, Fusilier Schmidt II was shot in the head. On the 23rd, to the right of my dugout, Fusilier Lohmann fell, shot in the head. That same evening, a sentry reported that an enemy patrol were stuck in our wire. I led a party to look see, but we found no one.
On 7 April, on the right flank, Fusilier Kramer received head wounds from some bullet fragments. This type of wounding was very common, because the English munitions were so soft as to fragment on contact. In the afternoon, the area immediately around my dugout came in for some heavy and sustained bombardment. The skylight was smashed, and, on every new impact, a hail of dried clay came sprinkling through the opening, though we made a point of finishing our coffee together.
Afterwards, we fought a duel with a daredevil Englishman, whose head peeped out over the rim of a trench that couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards away, and who sent a stream of extremely well-aimed shots pinging round our shooting-slits. I returned fire with a few of the men, but immediately a shrewdly aimed ball on the edge of our plate kicked sand in our faces, and gave me a scratch on the neck. We weren’t to be put off, though, popping up suddenly, taking swift aim, and disappearing again. Then a bullet smashed the rifle of Fusilier Storch, the splinters bloodying his face in at least a dozen places. The next shot nicked a piece out of our armour plating; and another shattered the mirror we were using for observation, but we had the satisfaction of having our opponent disappearing for good after a series of shots had struck the clay ramparts directly in front of his face. For good measure, with three rounds of hard munitions, I made a mess of the armour behind which this fellow had done his mischievous worst.
On 9 April, two British planes flew repeatedly low over our position. All the men raced out of their dugouts and started banging away into the sky like crazy. I was just remarking to Lieutenant Sievers: ‘I hope to God the flanking battery don’t get any ideas!’ and already the steel shreds were flying about our ears, and we had to leap into the nearest shelter. Sievers was standing by the entrance; I urged him to go further in, and smack! an inch-thick splinter dug itself into the damp clay in front of his feet, still smoking. For afters, we were sent shrapnel mortars, whose black balls exploded over our heads with great violence. One man was hit in the armpit by a piece of one, no bigger than the head of a pin, but extremely painful. In return, I planted a few ‘pineapples’ in the British trenches, as we called those five-pound mortars that resembled tropical fruit. There was a tacit agreement between the infantry on both sides to restrict themselves to rifle fire; all recourse to explosives was punished by a double load back. Unfortunately, our opponents tended to have more munitions than ourselves, and so could play the game for longer.
To get over the shock, we downed several bottles of red wine in Sievers’s dugout, which got my dander up to such a degree that I took the high road back to my cubby-hole, in spite of the bright moon. Before long, I lost my way, wound up in a vast shell-hole, and heard the British working in their trench hard by. After causing a breach of the peace with a couple of hand-grenades, I hurriedly withdrew into our trench, in the process catching my hand on the prong of one of our lovely mantraps. These consist of four sharp iron spears assembled in such a way that one of them is always vertical. We left them out on scouting paths.
There was a lot of activity in the field altogether in those days, some of it not without its funny – or bloody funny – side. For instance, a soldier on one of our patrols was shot at because he had a stammer and couldn’t get the password out in time. Another time, a man who had been celebrating in the kitchens in Monchy till past midnight, clambered over the wire, and started blazing away at his own lines. After he’d shot off all his ammunition, he was taken in and given a sound beating.
The Beginning of the Battle of the Somme
In mid-April 1916, I was detailed to attend an officer-training course under the overall direction of the divisional commander, Major-General Sontag, at Croisilles, a little town behind the divisional lines. There, we received instruction in a variety of practical and theoretical military subjects. Particularly fascinating were the tactical excursions on horseback, under Major von Jarotzky, a fat little staffer, who would get terribly excited about things. We called him the ‘Pressure-cooker’. A series of excursions and inspection visits to the very often improvised units in the hinterland gave us, who were in the habit of viewing slightly askance everything that happened there, an insight into the incredible work that goes on behind a line of fighting men. And so we visited the abattoir, the commissariat and gunnery repair workshop in Boyelles, the sawmill and pioneer park in the woods of Bourlon, the dairy, pig farm and rendering plant in Inchy, the aviation park and bakery in Queant. On Sundays we went to the nearby towns of Cambrai, Douai and Valenciennes, to remind ourselves of what ‘ladies in hats’ looked like.
It would be rather mean of me, in this book that has so much blood in it, if I were to withhold from you an account of a scrape in which my part was a somewhat comical one. Back in winter, when our battalion was a guest of the King of Queant, I had, as a young officer, been called upon to inspect the guard for the first time. On the edge of town, I had promptly lost my way, and, meaning to ask for directions to the little station guard post, I had walked into a tiny cottage that stood there all by itself. Living there, I found, all alone, as her father had lately died, was a seventeen-year-old girl by the name of Jeanne. When she gave me directions, she laughed, and when I asked what was so funny, she said: ‘Vous etes bien jeune, je voudrais avoir votre devenir.’* – Because of the spiritedness of her remark, I had dubbed her Jeanne d’Arc, and in the subsequent trench-fighting, I had occasionally thought of that isolated little house. [‘You’re so young, I wish I could have your future.’]
One evening in Croisilles, I suddenly felt an urge to go over there. I had a horse saddled up, and before long had left the town behind me. It was a May evening, perfect time for a ride. The clover lay like heavy burgundy cushions on the fields stitched with hawthorn, and outside the village gates the huge candles of flowering chestnuts flickered in the gloaming. I rode through Bullecourt and Ecoust, never guessing that in two years’ time I would find myself making ready to attack the hideous ruins of thes villages, now nestling so peaceably among ponds and hills at eventide. At the little station I had inspected in the winter, civilians were still busy unloading cylinders of propane. I greeted them, and watched them for a while. Before long, the house appeared in front of me, with its reddish-brown, bemossed roof. I rapped on the shutters, which were already bolted shut.
‘Qui est la?’
‘Bonsoir, Jeanne d’Arc!’
‘Ah, bonsoir, mon petit officier Gibraltar!’
I was made as pleasantly welcome as I’d hoped I would be. After tying up my horse, I went inside and was asked to share her supper of eggs, white bread and butter, all nicely laid out on a large cabbage leaf. Seeing such things, one really doesn’t need a second invitation.