Dog tired, we reached the regimental headquarters, where I handed in my sketches, and gave a report on the situation. We had investigated the gap. Tebbe would advance under cover of night to fill it.
On 28 October, we were relieved in turn by the 10th Bavarian reserves, and, prepared to step in if needed, were put up in villages in the back area. The general staff withdrew as far as Most.
At night we sat in the bar of an abandoned public house, and celebrated the promotion and engagement of Lieutenant Zurn, who had just got back from leave. For such behaviour we were duly punished the following morning by being woken at six by a gigantic drumfire, which, though far away, still shattered my windows. The alarm went off immediately. Obviously, the closing of the gap had not gone completely according to plan. The rumour was going around that the British had broken through. I spent the day waiting for orders at the observation point, in an area lying under sparse fire. A light shell drove through the window of one building, sending three wounded artillerymen staggering out, covered in brick dust. Three more lay dead under the rubble.
The next morning, I received the following orders from the Bavarian commander: ‘By repeated enemy pressure, the position of the regiment to the left of us has been further pushed back, and the gap between the two regiments greatly widened. In view of the danger that the regiment might be outflanked on the left, yesterday evening the 1st Battalion of the 73 rd Fusiliers moved forward to counter-attack, but was apparently dispersed by the barrage, and never reached the enemy. This morning, the 2nd Battalion was sent forward into the gap. We have at present no news of either. Information is required on the position of the 1st and 2nd Battalions.’
I set off on my way, and had only got as far as Nordhof when I met Captain von Brixen, the commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, who had the position sketched in his pocket. I copied it, and had thereby effectively carried out my task, but I went on anyway to the headquarters of the troops in the line, to effect a personal reconnaissance. The way was littered with dead, their pale faces staring up out of water-filled craters, or already so covered with mud that their human identity was almost completely masked. Many of the sleeves had the blue Gibraltar brassard.
The commanding officer was a Bavarian, Captain Radlmaier. This extremely diligent officer told me in some detail what Captain von Brixen had already told me in hasty outline. Our 2nd Battalion had suffered heavy casualties; among many others, the adjutant and the commander of the brave 7th. The adjutant, Lemiere, was the brother of the Lemiere who had commanded the 8th Company, and had fallen at Fresnoy. Both were from Liechtenstein, and both had volunteered to fight on the German side. Both died, shot in the mouth.
The captain pointed to a blockhouse a couple of hundred yards away that had been particularly doggedly defended yesterday. Shortly after the attack had begun, the man in command of it, a sergeant-major, saw a British soldier leading back three German prisoners. He picked him off, and acquired three more men for the defence. When they had used up all their ammunition, they tied a British captive to the door, in order to put a temporary stop to the firing, and were able to retire unobserved after nightfall.
Another blockhouse, this one under a lieutenant, was called upon to surrender; by way of reply, the German leaped out, grabbed the Englishman, and pulled him inside, to the astonishment of his watching troops.
That day, I saw little troops of stretcher-bearers going around the battlefield with raised flags, and not coming under fire. The only time the warrior got to see such scenes in this often subterranean war, was when the need for them had become too dire.
My return was impeded by a nasty irritant gas that smelled of rotten apples from the British shells that had saturated the ground. It made breathing difficult, and caused the eyes to tear up. After I’d made my report to headquarters, I met two officer friends of mine on stretchers outside the dressing-station, both gravely wounded. One was Lieutenant Ziirn, in whose honour we had celebrated only two nights before. Now he was lying on a door, half stripped, with the waxy colour that is a sure sign of imminent death, staring up at me with sightless eyes as I stepped out to squeeze his hand. The other, Lieutenant Haverkamp, had had an arm and a leg so badly smashed by shell splinters that a double amputation seemed probable. He lay, deathly pale, on his stretcher, smoking cigarettes which his bearers lit for him and put in his mouth.
Once again, our losses were appalling, especially of young officers. This second Battle of Flanders was a monotonous affair; it was fought on sticky, muddy ground, and it caused immense casualties.
On 3 November, we were put on trains at the station in Gits, still fresh in our memory from the first Flanders Campaign. We saw our two Flemish waitresses again, but they weren’t what they had been either. They too seemed to have been through some heavy action.
We were taken to Tourcoing, a pleasant sister town of Lille, for a few days. For the first and last time in the entire war, every man of the 7th Company slept on a feather bed. I was put up in a magnificent room in the house of a rich manufacturer on the Rue de Lille. I greatly enjoyed my first evening on a leather armchair in front of an open fire in a marble fireplace.
Those few days were used by all of us to enjoy the life that we’d had to fight so hard to cling on to. We still couldn’t quite grasp that for the time being we’d given death the slip, and we wanted to feel the possession of this new lease of life, by enjoying it in every way possible.
The Double Battle of Cambrai
The delightful days at Tourcoing were soon over. For a short while we were at Villers- au-Tertre, where we were brought up to strength by new drafts, and on 15 November we were put on trains for Lecluse, the resting-place of the battalion in reserve on the new front now assigned to us. Lecluse was a fairly large village in the lake country of the Artois. Extensive reed beds were home to ducks and water-fowl, and the waters were full of fish. Fishing was strictly forbidden, yet even so there were mysterious noises coming from the water at night. One day I was sent the pay-books of men in my company who had been caught by the town commandant fishing with bombs. I refused to make an issue of it, because the good spirits of the men mattered far more to me than the protection of French fishing-rights or the dinner-tables of the military bigwigs.
From then on, I found, almost every night, a giant pike anonymously left outside my door. The day after I treated my two company officers to lunch with ‘Pike a la Lohengrin’ as the piece de resistance.
On 19 November, I took my platoon commanders to see the part of the line where we would be going in a day or two. It was in front of the village of Vis-en-Artois. But then we didn’t enter the line as soon as we’d thought, because there was an alarm nearly every night and we were variously sent off to the Wotan Line, the reserve gun positions, or the village of Dury to be in readiness for an expected British attack. Experienced warriors knew that nothing good could come of this.
And indeed we heard on 29 November from Captain von Brixen that we were to take part in a sweeping counter-offensive against the bulge that the tank battle at Cambrai had made in our front. Even though we were pleased to play the part of the hammer, having so long been the anvil, we wondered whether the troops, still exhausted from Flanders, would be up to the job. That said, I had every confidence in my company; they had never let anyone down yet.