‘My carriers took it in turn to carry me. Our little sedan-chair veered now right, now left, zigzagging to avoid the frequent shells. Forced on occasion to take cover abruptly, they dropped me a few times, sending me bashing into shell-holes.
‘At last we reached the tin- and concrete-cladded shelter that went by the odd name of “Columbus’s Egg”. I was dragged down the stairs and laid on a wooden pallet. With me in the room were a couple of officers I didn’t know, sitting and listening in silence to the hurricane concert of the artillery. One, I later heard, was Lieutenant Bartmer, the other a medical orderly by the name of Helms. Never have I enjoyed a drink more than the mixture of rainwater and red wine that he gave me to sip. I was burning up with fever. I struggled for breath, and felt oppressed by the notion that the concrete ceiling of the shelter was on my chest, and that with each breath I had to heave it up.
‘The assistant surgeon Koppen came in, himself quite out of breath. He had run across the battlefield, shells following him at every step. He recognized me, bent over me, and I saw his face contort to a soothingly smiling grimace. After him came my battalion commander, and when, strict man that he was, he patted me kindly on the back, I had to smile because I got the idea that the Kaiser himself would appear any moment, and ask how I was doing.
‘The four of them sat together, drinking out of tin cups and whispering among themselves. I realized that they must have been talking about me at one stage, and then I heard odd words like “brothers”, “lung” and “wound”, which I couldn’t quite make sense of. Then they went back to talking aloud, about the state of the battle.
‘Mortally tired as I was, a feeling of happiness now sneaked in that grew stronger and stronger, and which stayed with me throughout the ensuing weeks. I thought of death, and the thought did not disturb me. Everything within me and around me seemed stunningly simple, and, with the feeling “You’re all right,” I slid away into sleep.’
Regnieville
On 4 August, we left the train at the famous station of Mars-la-Tour. The 7th and 8th Companies were billeted at Doncourt, where we led a life of calm contemplation for a few days. The only thing that made difficulties for me were the short rations. It was strictly forbidden to go foraging; and, even so, every morning the military police brought me the names of men they’d caught lifting potatoes, and whom I had no option but to punish – ‘for being stupid enough to get yourselves caught’ was my own, unofficial, reason.
That it doesn’t do to steal was brought home to me as well in those days. Tebbe and I had snaffled a glass coach from an abandoned Flemish mansion and managed to get it on the transport, away from prying eyes. Now, we wanted to undertake a jaunt to Metz, to live life at the full once more. So we harnessed up one afternoon, and drove off. Unfortunately, the carriage, constructed for the plains of Flanders rather than the hills of Lorraine, had no brakes. We left the village already doing quite a lick, and before long we were on a wild ride that could only end badly. First to go was the coachman, then Tebbe, who made a hard landing on a pile of agricultural implements. I stayed behind on the silken upholstery, feeling rather unhappy. A door sprang open, and was knocked off by a passing telegraph mast. At last the carriage raced down a steep slope, and smashed against a wall at the bottom. Leaving the wrecked conveyance by a window, I was to my astonishment unhurt.
On 9 August, the company was inspected by the divisional commander, Major-General von Busse, who praised the men for the way they had comported themselves in the recent battle. The following afternoon, we were put on trains and taken up towards Thiaucourt. From there we marched straight to our new position, which was on the wooded hills of the Cote Lorraine, facing the much-shelled village of Regnieville, a name familiar from dispatches.
On the first morning, I took a look at my sector, which seemed rather long for one company, and consisted of a confused mass of half-collapsed trenches. The firing trench had been flattened in quite a few places by a type of heavy mortar-bomb much in favour in these parts. My dugout was a hundred yards back, down the so-called Commercial Trench, close to the main road out of Regnieville. It was the first time in quite a while that we were up against the French.
A geologist would have enjoyed the posting. The approach trenches cut through six distinct types of rock, from coral rag to the Gravelotte marl that the firing trench had been cut into. The yellow-brown rock was full of fossils, especially of a flattish, bun-shaped sea urchin, which one could see literally thousands of along the trench walls. Each time I walked along the sector, I returned to my dugout with my pockets full of shells, sea urchins and ammonites. It was a pleasant feature of the marl that it stood up to bad weather much better than the clay we were used to. In places the trench was even carefully bricked up, and the floor concreted, so that even quite large amounts of water drained away easily.
My dugout was deep and drippy. It did have one quality I didn’t much care for: instead of the lice we were used to, this area offered their more mobile cousins. The two sorts apparently stand in much the same adversarial relationship to one another as black rats and Rattus norvegicus. In this instance, even the usual complete change of undergarments didn’t help, as the thoughtful parasites would stay behind in the straw bedding. The sleeper on the brink of despair would be driven to unmake his bed, and have a thorough hunt.
The food also left quite a bit to be desired. Aside from a rather watery soup at lunchtime, there was just a third of a loaf of bread with an offensively small quantity of ‘spread’, which usually consisted of half-off jam. And half of my portion was invariably stolen by a fat rat, which I often vainly tried to catch.
The companies in reserve and on rest lived in curious villages of blockhouses hidden deep in the forest. I was particularly fond of my quarters in reserve, which were glued on to the steep slope of a wooded ravine, in a blind corner. There I lived in a tiny hut that was half bedded into the slope, surrounded by rampant hazel and cornel-cherry bushes. The window looked out on to a wooded facing slope, and a narrow strip of meadow at the bottom, which a stream flowed through. Here, I amused myself by feeding innumerable garden spiders, who had set up their huge webs across the bushes. A collection of bottles of all sorts against the back wall of the hut suggested that my eremitic predecessors must have spent some contemplative times here, and I endeavoured to keep up the proud tradition of the place. In the evening, when the mists rose off the stream bed, and mingled with the heavy white smoke of my wood fire, and I sat in the gloaming with the door open, between the chill autumnal air and the warmth of the fire, I thought I had come up with just the right peaceful sort of drink: a fifty-fifty mixture of red wine and advocaat in a big-bellied glass. I would sip the mixture, and read or keep my diary. These quiet soirees helped me to get over the fact that a gentleman from the depot who had seniority over me had popped up to claim command of my company from me, and that, as a platoon commander, I was relegated to boring trench duty. I tried to vary the endless sentry spells as before, with regular jaunts ‘up-country’.
On 24 August, the gallant Captain Bockelmann was wounded by a shell splinter – the third commanding officer the battalion had lost in a very short space of time.
In the course of trench duty, I struck up a friendship with Kloppmann, an NCO, an older, married man who distinguished himself by his great zest for battle. He was one of those men in whom, in respect of courage, there isn’t the slightest deficiency anywhere; a man among hundreds. We agreed we should like to visit the French in their trenches, and decided to make a date for our first call on 29 August.