As far back as the Siegfried Line, every village was reduced to rubble, every tree chopped down, every road undermined, every well poisoned, every basement blown up or booby-trapped, every rail unscrewed, every telephone wire rolled up, everything burnable burned; in a word, we were turning the country that our advancing opponents would occupy into a wasteland.
As I say, the scenes were reminiscent of a madhouse, and the effect of them was similar: half funny, half repellent. They were also, we could see right away, bad for the men’s morale and honour. Here, for the first time, I witnessed wanton destruction that I was later in life to see to excess; this is something that is unhealthily bound up with the economic thinking of our age, but it does more harm than good to the destroyer, and dishonours the soldier.
Among the surprises we’d prepared for our successors were some truly malicious inventions. Very fine wires, almost invisible, were stretched across the entrances of buildings and shelters, which set off explosive charges at the faintest touch. In some places, narrow ditches were dug across roads, and shells hidden in them; they were covered over by an oak plank, and had earth strewn over them. A nail had been driven into the plank, only just above the shell-fuse. The space was measured so that marching troops could pass over the spot safely, but the moment the first lorry or field gun rumbled up, the board would give, and the nail would touch off the shell. Or there were spiteful time bombs that were buried in the basements of undamaged buildings. They consisted of two sections, with a metal partition going down the middle. In one part was explosive, in the other acid. After these devil’s eggs had been primed and hidden, the acid slowly, over weeks, eroded the metal partition, and then set off the bomb. One such device blew up the town hall of Bapaume just as the authorities had assembled to celebrate victory.
On 13 March, then, the 2nd Company left the position, and I took it over with my two platoons. That night, a man by the name of Kirchhof was killed by a shot in the head. Oddly, that one fatal shot was the only one fired by our enemy in the space of several hours.
I arranged all sorts of things to deceive the enemy about our strength. Shovelfuls of earth were flung over the ramparts up and down the trench, and our solitary machine-gun was to fire off bursts now from one flank, now from the other. Even so, our fire-power couldn’t help sounding rather thin when low-flying aeroplanes buzzed the position, or a digging party was seen crossing the enemy hinterland. It was inevitable that patrols were sent out every night to different points, to attack our wire entanglements.
On our second-to-last day, I had a close shave. A dud shell from an anti-balloon gun came plummeting down from the sky, and exploded on the traverse where I happened to be leaning. The air pressure picked me up and hurled me across the trench, fortunately into the mouth of a shelter, where I picked myself up, feeling rather confused.
On the morning of the 17th, we sensed that an attack was imminent. From the advanced English trench, which was very muddy and usually unoccupied, we heard the splashing of many boots. The sounds of laughter and shouts from a strong detachment of men suggested they were nicely lubricated inside and out. Dark forms approached our wires, and were driven back by rifle fire; one of them collapsed wailing, and lay there. I withdrew my groups in hedgehog formation to the mouth of one communication trench, and tried to keep the field ahead lit up by flares, as artillery and mortar fire suddenly commenced. We soon ran out of white lights, and moved on to coloured; it was a veritable firework display that we put on. As the designated hour of five o’clock rolled round, we quickly blew up our foxholes with bombs, those of them at any rate that hadn’t already been fitted with fiendish contraptions of one sort or another, on which we expended the last of our munitions. It was several hours now since I’d last laid hands on a chest, a door or a water-bucket, for fear of blowing myself up.
At the appointed time, the patrols, some of them already involved in hand-grenade battles with the enemy, withdrew towards the Somme. We were the last to cross the river, before the bridges were blown up by a sapper detachment. Our position was still coming in for drumfire. It wasn’t for another few hours that the first enemy outposts reached the Somme. We withdrew behind the Siegfried Line, then still in the process of construction; the battalion took up quarters in the village of Lehaucourt, on the St-Quentin Canal. With my batman, I moved into a cosy little house, whose cupboards and chests were still well supplied. My faithful Knigge would not be persuaded by anything to set up his bed in the warm living room, insisting, as ever, on the chilly kitchen – typical of the restraint of our Lower Saxons.
Our first evening off, I invited my friends round for mulled wine, using all the spices left behind by the previous occupants of the house, because, in addition to praise from our superiors, our patrol had won us all a fortnight’s furlough.
In the Village of Fresnoy
On this occasion, the furlough, which I took up a few days later, was to remain uninterrupted. In my journal, I find the brief but eloquent sentence: ‘Spent my furlough very well, in the event of my death I shall have no complaints.’ On 9 April 1917, I was back with the 2nd Company, who were quartered in the village of Merignies, not far from Douai. What took the edge off my pleasure at the reunion was consternation at being required to accompany the baggage train to Beaumont. Through showers of rain and driving snow, I rode at the head of a crawling column of vehicles, till we finally reached our destination at one in the morning.
After men and horses had variously been found shelter, I went looking for quarters for myself, but could find nowhere that wasn’t already taken. Finally, a commissariat orderly had the clever idea of offering me his own bed, seeing as he was manning the telephone exchange anyway. Even as I flopped on to it, still booted and spurred, he told me that the British had taken Vimy Ridge from the Bavarians, and quite a bit of land around. Kindly as he was to me, I could tell he was secretly resentful of the Way his quiet village in the back area was being adapted to a meeting-point for front-line forces.
The following morning, the battalion marched off into the direction of heavy firing, to the village of Fresnoy. There I received orders to establish an observation post. With a few men, I found a little house on the western edge of the village, and we knocked through the roof to make a viewing-place. We set up residence in the cellar of the same building. As we were clearing it, we made the welcome discovery of a sack of potatoes, to supplement our extremely meagre supplies. Thereafter, I had Knigge make me boiled potatoes with salt every evening. Also, Gornick, now occupying the deserted village of Villerwal with his platoon, sent me a few bottles of claret and a large tin of liver sausage – a comradely gift raised from the suddenly abandoned supplies in a foodstore. A booty expedition thereupon immediately dispatched by me, with baby carriages and similar conveyances to recover further treasures, was forced to return empty-handed, as the British lines had already reached the edge of the village. Gornick told me later that following the discovery of the cache of wine a spontaneous drinking session had ensued, even as the village was being bombarded, and that it had been difficult to reimpose control. In similar situations later, we were simply to shoot holes in barrels and carboys and other containers of alcohol.
On 14 April, I was given instructions to set up an intelligence-clearing station in the village. To that end, I had dispatch-riders, bicyclists, telephone- and light-signal stations and underground telegraph wires, carrier pigeons and a chain of flare positions all put at my disposal. In the evening, I looked out a suitable basement with annexes, and then returned for the last time to my old lodgings on the west of the village. There had been a lot to do that day, and I was pretty tired.