It was only thinking about it later that I understood our subsequent course. Without realizing it, we had turned into a third communication trench, and – well into the middle of our own barrage – were approaching the fourth line. From time to time, we ripped open one of the boxes built into the trench walls, and popped a hand-grenade into our pockets as a souvenir.
After running down a series of cross and parallel trenches, no one knew where we were, or where the German lines were. Gradually we were getting flustered. The needles of our luminous compasses danced in our unsteady hands, and as we scanned the heavens for the Pole Star, all our school lore suddenly left us. The sound of voices in a nearby trench indicated that the enemy had got over his initial surprise. Soon they would be on to us.
After turning back yet again, I found myself the last in line, and suddenly saw the mouth of a machine-gun swinging to and fro over a sandbag traverse. I leaped towards it, stumbling as I did so over a French corpse, and saw NCO Kloppmann and Ensign von Zglinitzky busying themselves with it, while Fusilier Haller was going through a blood-stained corpse for papers. We struggled with the gun, barely conscious of where we were, obsessed with the idea of bagging some booty. I tried to undo the screws; another man severed the loading belt with his wire-cutters; finally we plucked up the thing, tripod and all, and dragged it away with us entire. At that instant, from a parallel trench, in the direction where we thought our own lines were to be found, came an excited but threatening enemy voice: ‘Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?’ and a black ball, dimly visible against the still-dark sky, came flying towards us in a high arc. ‘Watch it!’ There was a flash between Mevius and me; a splinter drove into Mevius’s hand. We dispersed, getting further and further tangled up in the mesh of trenches. The only men
I still had with me at this stage were the pioneer NCO, blood pouring from his nose, and Mevius, with his damaged hand. The only thing that delayed our end was the confusion of the French, who still hadn’t dared to come out of their holes. Even so, it could only be a matter of minutes till we encountered some detachment of sufficient strength and resolve, who would happily put us out of our misery. Mercy wasn’t exactly in the air.
I had already given up hope of getting out of this hornets’ nest in one piece, when I suddenly gave a shout for joy. My eye had lit on the mess-tin with the spoon standing in it; now I got the picture. As it was already quite light, there wasn’t a second to lose.
We raced across the open field, the first rifle bullets whistling past us, towards our own lines. In the furthest French trench, we ran into Lieutenant von Kienitz’s patrol. As the cry of ‘Liittje Lage!’ came back, we knew we were over the worst. Unfortunately, I dropped on to a badly wounded man. Kienitz hurriedly told me he’d driven off French sappers in the first trench with hand-grenades, and, going on, had taken some losses, dead and wounded, from our own artillery fire.
After a longish wait, two more of my men appeared, NCO Dujesiefken and Fusilier Haller, who at least had some comforting news for me. As he’d wandered around, he had ended up in a remote sap, and had found three machine-guns, one of which he had taken off its mount and picked up with him. As it was getting lighter all the time, we raced over no man’s land back to our own front line.
Of the fourteen who had set out, only four returned, and Kienitz’s patrol had suffered heavy losses as well. My dejection was a little helped by the words of the stout Oldenburger Dujesiefken, who, while I was getting my hand bandaged up in the dugout, was outside telling his comrades what had befallen, finishing with the sentence:
‘I must say, though, that Lieutenant Junger is really something else: my word, the sight of him vaulting over those barricades!’
Then, almost all of us with bandaged heads or hands, we marched through the woods to the regimental headquarters. Colonel von Oppen welcomed us, and sat us down to coffee. He was disappointed at our lack of success, but still told us we’d done our best. We felt comforted. Then I was put in a car, and taken to divisional command, who wanted a full report. A few hours before, I had had enemy hand-grenades exploding in my ears; now I was enjoying sitting back in a powerful car, being whisked along the highway, eating up the miles.
The general staff officer received me in his office. He was pretty cut up, and I saw to my irritation that he was trying to leave the blame for the failure of our mission at my door. When he jabbed his finger at the map and asked questions like: ‘Don’t you think you should have turned right into this communication trench instead?’ I realized that the kind of confusion where notions like right and left just go out the window was quite outside his experience. For him the whole thing had been a plan; for us an intensely experienced reality.
The divisional commander greeted me kindly, and soon improved my mood. I sat next to him at lunch with my ragged tunic and bandaged hand, and tried, without false modesty, to make him see this morning’s action in the best way, in which I think I succeeded.
The next day, Colonel von Oppen summoned the members of the patrol once more, and gave out Iron Crosses and two weeks’ furlough apiece. In the afternoon, those of the fallen who were brought in were buried in the military cemetery at Thiaucourt. In among the fallen of this war, there were also fighters from 1870. One of those old graves was marked by a mossy stone with the inscription: ‘Distant to the eye, but to the heart forever nigh!’ A large stone slab was etched with the lines:
Heroes’ deeds and heroes’ graves, Old and new you here may see. How the Empire was created, How the Empire was preserved.
That evening I read in a French communique: ‘A German attack at Regnieville was foiled; prisoners were taken.’ Wolves had broken into the sheep-pen, but lost their bearings – nothing more. At any rate, the short item told me that among our lost comrades there were some who had survived.
Some months later, I got a letter from one of the missing men, Fusilier Meyer, who had lost a leg in the hand-grenade battle; after wandering around a long time he, with three companions, had been engaged in a fight, and, heavily wounded, had been taken prisoner, after the others, NCO Kloppmann among them, had died. Kloppmann was one of those men you couldn’t imagine being taken alive.
I experienced quite a few adventures in the course of the war, but none was quite as eerie as this. It still makes me feel a cold sweat when I think of us wandering around among those unfamiliar trenches by the cold early light. It was like the dream of a labyrinth.
A few days later, after some preliminary shrapnel fire, Lieutenants Domeyer and Zurn with several companions leaped into the enemy firing trench. Domeyer ran into a heavily bearded French reservist who, when called upon to ‘Rendez-vous!’ replied with an irascible ‘Ah non!’ and threw himself at him. In the course of a bitter tussle, Domeyer shot him through the throat with his pistol, and was forced to return, as I had done, sans captives. In our mission alone we had used enough munitions to have furnished forth a whole battle in 1870.
Flanders Again
The day I returned from my furlough, we were relieved by Bavarian troops, and billeted at first in the nearby village of Labry.