I didn’t wake from my deep sleep until eleven o’clock, washed myself in my steel helmet, and sent for further instructions to the company commander, who, to my consternation, had moved off without leaving word where. That’s war for you; things happen in a way you wouldn’t have thought possible on the exercise ground.
While I was still sitting on my pallet, cursing and wondering what to do, a runner arrived from Battalion HQ and told me to take over the 8th Company.
I learned that the 1st Battalion’s counter-attack last night had collapsed with heavy casualties, and that the survivors were defending themselves in a small wood ahead of us, the Dobschutz woods, and either side of it. The 8 th Company had been given the task of swarming forward to the wood to give support, but had been roughed up on open ground before even getting there by a heavy barrage, taking bad losses. Since their commander, First Lieutenant Budingen, was among those wounded, I should take them along myself.
After taking leave of my orphaned platoon, I set off with the orderly across the shrapnel-strewn wastes. A despairing voice stopped us on our stooping, scurrying progress. In the distance, a figure half out of his shell-hole was waving a bloodied stump at us. We pointed to the blockhouse we’d just left, and hastened on.
The 8 th, when I found them, were a despondent little bunch, clustered behind a row of blockhouses.
‘Platoon commanders! Three NCOs came forward and declared that a second advance in the direction of the Dobschutz woods could not be undertaken. True, heavy explosions reared up in front of us like a wall of fire. First, then, I had the platoons assemble behind three huts; each
one numbered fifteen or twenty men. Just then, the shelling turned to us. The confusion was indescribable. By the left blockhouse, a whole section went up in the air, then the right took a direct hit and buried Lieutenant Budingen, still lying there wounded, under several tonnes of rubble. It was like being pounded in a mortar and pestle. Deathly pale faces stared at each other, as the wounded wailed all round.
By now it probably didn’t matter whether we stayed put, took to our heels, or advanced. So I gave the order to follow me, and leaped into the midst of the shelling. After no more than a couple of bounds, a shell covered me with earth, and hurled me back into the last crater. I couldn’t think why I hadn’t been hit, because the shells were coming so thick and fast they practically brushed my head and shoulders, and they scoured open the ground under my feet like huge beasts. The fact that I ran through them without being touched could only be due to the way the ploughed earth gulped the shells down, before its resistance caused them to detonate. The plumes of the explosions didn’t travel laterally like bushes, but steeply up in a spear shape, like poplars. Others only brought up a little bell. Also, I began to notice that further forward the force of the shelling was lesser. After I had worked my way through the worst of it, I looked about me. The terrain was empty.
At last, two men emerged from clouds of dust and smoke, then another, then two more. With these five, I succeeded in reaching my objective.
In a half-exploded blockhouse sat the commander of the 3rd Company, Lieutenant Sandvoss, and little Schultz, with three heavy machine-guns. I was welcomed with loud hellos and a gulp of cognac, then they explained the situation to me, and a very disagreeable one it was too. The British were right up against us, and we had no contact with troops to the left or right. We could see that this corner was one fit only for warriors grizzled in powder fumes.
Out of the blue, Sandvoss asked me if I’d heard about my brother. The reader may imagine my consternation when I learned that he’d taken part in the night attack, and had been reported missing. He was the dearest to my heart; a feeling of appalling, irreplaceable loss opened up in front of me.
Then in walked a soldier, who told me that my brother was lying wounded in a nearby shelter. He pointed at a desolate-looking blockhouse, covered over by uprooted trees that had already been vacated by its defenders. I dashed through sniper fire, across a clearing, and walked in. What a reunion! My brother lay in a room full of the stink of death, surrounded by the groans of gravely wounded men. I found him in poor shape. As he’d advanced, he’d been hit by a couple of shrapnel balls, one of them had penetrated his lung, and the other shattered his right shoulder. There was a gleam of fever in his eyes; an opened-out gas mask was perched on his chest. It was only with great difficulty that he could move, speak, breathe. We squeezed each other’s hands, and said what had to be said.
It was clear to me that he couldn’t remain where he was, because at any moment the British might attack, or a shell might crush the already badly damaged hut. The best thing I could do for my brother was get him taken back right away. Even though Sandvoss was opposed to any further weakening of our numbers, I told the five men who had come with me to take Fritz to the medical shelter, ‘Columbus’s Egg’, and there pick up some men to collect the other casualties. We tied him up in a tarpaulin, slid a long pole through it, and two of the men shouldered it. One more handshake, and the sorry procession set off.
I watched the swaying burden being taken off through a forest of towering shell bursts. With each explosion I winced, till the little group had vanished into the haze of battle. I felt both that I was representing my mother, and that I would have to account to her for whatever happened to my brother.
After bandying a little with the slowly advancing British from the shell-holes at the front edge of the wood, I spent the night with my men, who had grown a little more numerous by now, and a machine-gun crew among the wreckage of the blockhouse. High-explosive shells of quite exceptional ferocity were coming down all the time, one of which just missed killing me that evening.
Towards morning, the machine-gun suddenly started rattling away, as some dark figures were approaching. It was a patrol from the 76th Regiment come to get in touch with us, and one of them was left dead. Mistakes like that happened quite frequently at that time, and one didn’t spend too much time anguishing over them.
At six in the morning, we were relieved by a detachment of the 9th, who gave me orders to occupy the Rattenburg with my men. On the way there, I had a cadet disabled by shrapnel.
The Rattenburg [Rats’ castle or fortress] turned out to be a shot-up shell of a building reinforced with concrete slabs, close to the swampy course of the Steenbach. The name fitted. We made our way in, feeling pretty shattered, and threw ourselves down on straw-covered pallets till a plentiful lunch and a revivifying pipe afterwards more or less restored us.
In the early afternoon, shelling with large and very large calibres began. Between six o’clock and eight, it was simply one explosion after the next; often the building was shaking and threatening to collapse from the horrible jolts of duds impacting near by. There were the usual conversations about the safety or otherwise of the structure. We though the concrete ceiling was fairly trustworthy; but as the ‘castle’ was close to the steep bank of the stream, we thought there was a chance that a shell with a low trajectory might undermine us, and send us, concrete and all, skittering down into the stream bed.
When the firing died down in the evening, I clambered over a slope, which was being buzzed around by a hornets’ nest of shrapnel, to the hospital shelter, ‘Columbus’s Egg’, to ask the doctor, who was just then examining the horribly mutilated leg of a man who was about to die, about my brother. I was overjoyed to learn that he had been shipped back in reasonably good shape.
Later on, the ration party appeared, bringing the company, now reduced to just twenty men, hot soup, canned beef, coffee, bread, tobacco and schnapps. We ate heartily, and handed the bottle of ‘98 proof round. Then we settled off to sleep, disturbed only by the swarming mosquitoes that bred along the stream, shelling, and occasional bombardments with gas.