At the end of the month, we marched back to our old quarters in Gouy. After several battalion and regimental drills, we twice rehearsed an entire divisional breakthrough, on a large site marked with white ribbons. Afterwards, the commander addressed us, giving us to understand that the storm would be let loose in the next few days.
I have happy memories of the last evening we sat round the table, heatedly discussing the impending war of movement. Even if, in our enthusiasm, we spent our last pennies on wine, what else did we need money for? Before long, we would either be through the enemy lines, or else in the hereafter. It was only by reminding us that the back area still wanted to live that the captain kept us from smashing all the glasses, bottles and plates against the wall. [In accordance with the German proverb ‘Scherben bringen Gluck’, shards or breakages are lucky.]
We had no doubt but that the great plan would succeed. Certainly, if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be through any fault of ours. The troops were in fine fettle. If you listened to them speak in their dry Lower Saxon tones of the forthcoming ‘Hindenburg Sprint’, you knew they would handle themselves as they always did: tough, reliable, and with a minimum of fuss.
On 17 March, after sundown, we left the quarters we had come to love, and marched to Brunemont. The roads were choked with columns of marching men, innumerable guns and an endless supply column. Even so, it was all orderly, following a carefully worked-out plan by the general staff. Woe to the outfit that failed to keep to its allotted time and route; it would find itself elbowed into the gutter and having to wait for hours till another slot fell vacant. On one occasion we did get in a little jam, in the course of which Captain von Brixen’s horse impaled itself on a metalled axle and had to be put down.
The Great Battle
The battalion was quartered in the chateau of Brunemont. We heard that we were to move up on the night of 19 March, to be put in reserve in the dugouts in the line near Cagnicourt, and that the great push was to begin on the morning of 21 March 1918. The regiment had orders to punch through between the villages of Ecoust-St-Mein and Noreuil, and to reach Mory on the first day. We were well acquainted with the terrain; it had been our back area in the trench-fighting at Monchy.
I dispatched Lieutenant Schmidt, known universally as ‘Schmidtchen’ as he was such a lovely fellow, on ahead to secure quarters for the company. At the pre-arranged time, we marched out of Brunemont. At a crossroads, where we picked up our guides, the companies fanned out. When we were level with the second line, where we were to be quartered, it turned out our guides had lost their way. We found ourselves roving around in the poorly lit, boggy, cratered landscape, and asking other, equally uninformed troops for directions. To avoid overtiring the men, I called a halt, and sent the guides out in different directions.
Sections piled arms and squeezed into a vast crater, while Lieutenant Sprenger and I perched on the rim of a smaller one, from which we could see into the big one, as from a box in the theatre. For some time now, shells had been landing a hundred paces or so in front of us. A shell landed quite close by; splinters splattered into the clay sides of the crater. A man yelled and claimed he’d been hurt in the foot. While I felt the man’s muddy boot, looking for a hole, I called to the men to disperse among the surrounding shell-holes.
There was another whistle high up in the air. Everyone had the choking feeling: this one’s heading our way! Then there was a huge, stunning explosion – the shell had hit in our midst.
Half stunned I stood up. From the big crater, burning machine-gun belts spilled a coarse pinkish light. It lit the smouldering smoke of the explosion, where a pile of charred bodies were writhing, and the shadows of those still living were fleeing in all directions. Simultaneously, a grisly chorus of pain and cries for help went up. The rolling motion of the dark mass in the bottom of the smoking and glowing cauldron, like a hellish vision, for an instant tore open the extreme abysm of terror.
After a moment of paralysis, of rigid shock, I leaped up, and like all the others, raced blindly into the night. I tumbled headfirst into a shell-hole, and only there did I finally grasp what had happened. – Not to see or hear anything any more, out of this place, off into deep darkness! – But the men! I had to tend to them, they were my responsibility. – I forced myself to return to that terrible place. On the way, I saw Fusilier Haller, who had captured the machine-gun at Regnieville, and I took him with me.
The wounded men were still uttering their terrible cries. A few crawled up to me, and when they recognized my voice, wailed: ‘Lieutenant, sir, Lieutenant!’ One of my best-loved recruits, Jasinski, whose thigh had been crumpled by a splinter, grabbed hold of my legs. Cursing my inability to be of assistance, I patted him feebly on the back. Moments like that are not easily shaken off.
I had to leave the unlucky ones to the one surviving stretcher-bearer in order to lead the handful of unhurt men who had gathered around me from that dreadful place. Half an hour ago at the head of a full battle-strength company, I was now wandering around a labyrinth of trenches with a few, completely demoralized men. One baby-faced fellow, who was mocked a few days ago by his comrades, and on exercises had wept under the weight of the big munitions boxes, was now loyally carrying them on our heavy way, having picked them up unasked in the crater. Seeing that did for me. I threw myself to the ground, and sobbed hysterically, while my men stood grimly about.
After spending several hours, often menaced by shells, running hopelessly up and down trenches, where the mud and water were feet deep, we crept exhausted into a few cubby-holes meant for munitions that were set in the walls of a trench. Vinke covered me with his blanket; even so, I couldn’t close my eyes, and smoked cigars while I waited for the dawn, feeling completely apathetic.
First light showed the cratered scene full of unsuspected life. Troops were trying to find their units. Artillerymen were lugging crates of ammunition, trench-mortar men pulled their mortars along; telephonists and light-signallers were rigging up their lines. There were all kinds of chaotic activities going on, barely half a mile from the enemy, who, extraordinarily, seemed to have no idea.
At last, in Lieutenant Fallenstein, the commander of the machine-gun company, an old front officer, I met someone who was able to show me our quarters. He greeted me with: ‘Good Christ, man, you look frightful! You look like you’ve got jaundice.’ He pointed out a large dugout that we must have passed a dozen times that night, and there I saw Schmidtchen, who knew nothing of our calamity. The soldiers who had been supposed to guide us were also there. From that day forth, each time we moved into new quarters, I took care to choose the guides myself. In war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high.
After I had seen my men settled in, I returned to the site of last night’s horror. The place looked grisly. Scattered around the scorched site were over twenty blackened bodies, almost all of them burned and flayed beyond recognition. We had to enter some of the dead as ‘missing’ later, because there was simply nothing left of them.
Soldiers from the adjacent parts of the line were busy pulling the bloodied effects of the dead out of the horrible tangle, and looking through them for booty. I chased them off, and instructed my orderly to take possession of the wallets and valuables to save them for the men’s families. As it turned out, we had to leave it all behind the next day, when we went over the top.