I made an inventory of their personal belongings. It was a ghastly job. The candles flickered reddishly in the dusty air, while the men handed me wallets and rings and watches, as if we were a bunch of gangsters. Fine yellow brick-dust had settled on the dead men’s faces, and gave them the rigid appearance of waxen effigies. We draped blankets over them, and hurried out of the basement, having first wrapped the wounded man in a tarpaulin. With the stoical advice ‘Better grit your teeth, comrade!’ we dragged him through wild shrapnel fire to the dressing-station.
Once back in my lodging, I first of all took some cherry brandy to recover. Before long, the firing got worse again, and we hurriedly gathered in the shelter, having just been given a vivid demonstration of the effects of artillery on cellars.
At precisely fourteen minutes past five, the bombardment, in the space of a few seconds, reached an extraordinary pitch. Our intelligence service had been dead right. The shelter was shaking and trembling like a ship in a storm, while all around came the sounds of crashing walls and the splintering of the houses near by collapsing.
At seven o’clock I received a light signal addressed to the 2nd Battalion: ‘Brigade requires immediate report on the situation.’ An hour later, a deathly tired runner came back with the news: ‘Enemy occupying Arleux and Arleux Park. 8th Company ordered to counter-attack. No news as yet. Rocholl, Captain.’
That was the single, albeit crucial, item of news that I was able to pass on with my big staff in the course of my three-week stay in Fresnoy. Now, when my being there was of the utmost value, the artillery had put almost all my means of communication out of commission. I myself was caught like a rat in a trap. The setting up of this intelligence post had proved mistaken; it was a case of over-centralization.
This surprising bit of news now explained to me why rifle bullets had been rattling against the walls for some time and from fairly close.
No sooner had we grasped the extent of the regiment’s losses, than the bombardment recommenced with full power. Knigge was the last man standing on the shelter stairs when a thunderous crash told us that the British had at last managed to score a direct hit on our cellar. The stolid Knigge caught a lump of rock on the back, but was otherwise unhurt. Above, everything was in pieces. Daylight reached us through a couple of bicycles that had been crushed into the shelter entrance. We retreated to the bottom step, while the continuing thud and rattle of masonry reminded us of the uncertainty even of this refuge of ours.
As if by a miracle, the telephone was still working; I informed the divisional chief of intelligence of our situation, and was given orders to withdraw with my men to the nearby dressing-station dugout.
So we packed up our few essentials, and set off towards the shelter’s alternative exit, which was at least still intact. Even though I didn’t stint with threats and orders, the rather un-battle-hardened telephonists took such a long time to leave the relative protection of the shelter and expose themselves to direct fire that that entrance was hit by a heavy shell and collapsed with a great crash. It was fortunate that no one was hit, only our little dog set up a howl, and was never seen again.
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 grace.
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 Lemiere, 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:
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.