A new cheer rent the air. From the right, where all afternoon they had been working with hand-grenades, a number of Germans now ran across the road in support, headed by a young officer in brown corduroy. It was Kius. He was lucky enough to have been sent flying by a trip-wire in the very instant that an English machine-gun was about to fire its last rounds. The spray of bullets flew past him – so close, admittedly, that a bullet ripped open a wallet he carried in his trouser pocket. The Scots were now dealt with in moments. The area around the road was covered with the dead, while the few survivors were pursued by bullets.
In the brief seconds of my unconsciousness, little Schultz had also met his fate. As I was to hear later on, in that raving of his with which he had infected me, he had leaped into the trench to carry on rampaging there. When a Scot, who had already taken off his belt to surrender, saw him charging towards him in that condition, he picked up a rifle off the ground, and brought him down with a mortal bullet.
I stood, talking to Kius, in the conquered stretch of trench, heavy with the fog of hand-grenades. We were talking about how we should take the field guns that must be very near by. Suddenly he interrupted me: ‘Are you wounded? There’s blood coming out under your tunic!’ Indeed, I could feel a curious lightness and a sensation of damp on my chest. We tore open my shirt, and saw that a bullet had passed through my chest directly under my Iron Cross, and diagonally over my heart. There was a little round entry wound on the right, and a slightly larger exit wound on the left. Since I had been leaping from left to right across the road, at a sharp angle, there was no doubt but that one of our troops had taken me for a Britisher, and shot at me from very close range. I strongly suspected it might be the man who had torn off my coat, and yet he had meant well by me, so to speak, and I had myself to blame.
Kius wrapped a bandage round me and with some difficulty prevailed upon me to leave the battlefield. We parted with a: ‘See you in Hanover!’
I chose a fellow to accompany me, and returned to the fire-swept road, to pick up my map case, which my unknown helper had pulled off me along with the English coat. It contained my diary. Then we walked back, through the trench we had fought so hard to take.
Our battle cries had been so loud that the enemy artillery had woken up. The area beyond the road and the trench itself was under an extraordinarily thick barrage. Since the wound I had was quite sufficient for me, I made my way back cautiously, dodging from traverse to traverse.
Suddenly there was a deafening crash on the edge of the trench. I got a blow on the skull, and fell forward unconscious. When I came round, I was dangling head down over the breech of a heavy machine-gun, staring down at a pool of blood that was growing alarmingly fast on the floor of the trench. The blood was running down so unstoppably that I lost all hope. As my escort assured me he could see no brains, I took courage, picked myself up, and trotted on. That was what I got for being so foolish as to go into battle without a steel helmet.
In spite of my twofold haemorrhage, I was terribly excited, and told everyone I passed in the trench that they should hurry to the line, and join the battle. Before long, we were out of range of the light artillery, and could slow down, as the isolated heavy shells would only strike you if your number was up.
In the sunken road leading from Noreuil, I passed the brigade headquarters, had myself announced to Major-General Hobel, reported to him on our triumph, and asked him to send reinforcements to help the storm troops. The general told me I’d been reported dead the day before. It wasn’t the first time that had happened in this war. Perhaps someone had seen me collapse in the assault on the first trench where the shrapnel wounded Haake.
I learned further that our progress had been slower than had been hoped. Evidently, we had been up against some elite troops of the British; our advance had gone through a series of strong-points. The railway embankment had barely been grazed by our heavy artillery; we had simply charged it, in defiance of all the rules of warfare. We had not managed to reach Mory. Perhaps we could have done, had our artillery not got in our way. The opposition had been reinforced overnight. Everything that could be achieved by will-power had been, and perhaps more; the general conceded that.
In Noreuil, we passed a great stack of grenade boxes well ablaze. We hurried past with very mixed feelings. Just after the village, a driver gave me a ride on his empty munitions lorry. I had a sharp difference of opinion with the officer in charge of the munitions column, who wanted to have two wounded Britishers who had supported me for the latter part of the journey thrown off the lorry.
The traffic on the Noreuil-Queant road was quite indescribable. No one who has not seen such a thing for himself can have any idea of the endless columns of vehicles and men that go towards making an offensive. Beyond Queant, the crush became mythical. I felt a momentary pang when passing little Jeanne’s house, which was reduced to its foundations.
I sought help from one of the traffic officers, distinguished by white armbands, who gave me a place in a private car to the field hospital at Sauchy-Cauchy. We were regularly made to wait for up to half an hour while wagons and lorries got disentangled on the road. Even though the doctors in the field hospital were feverishly busy, the surgeon found time to be surprised at the luck I’d had with my injuries. The wound to my head also had entry and exit wounds, and the skull had not been fractured. Far more painful than the wounds, which to me had felt like dull blows, was the treatment I received from a hospital assistant, once the doctor had stylishly pushed a probe through both wounds. That treatment consisted of scraping the edges of the wound to my head with a blunt blade and no soap.
After an excellent night’s sleep, I was driven the following morning to the casualty clearing-station at Cantin, where I was delighted to see Sprenger, whom I hadn’t seen since the beginning of the offensive. He had a bullet wound to the thigh. I also found my baggage waiting for me – further proof, if proof were needed, of Vinke’s dependability. He had, once we had lost sight of one another, been wounded in the attack on the railway embankment. Before taking himself to the field hospital, and thence back to his farm in Westphalia, he would not rest until he knew that the things of mine that were in his care were safely in my possession. That was him all over; not so much a servant as my older comrade. Often enough, when rations were meagre, I would find a piece of butter waiting at my place at table, ‘from a member of the company who wishes to remain nameless’, though it was never hard to guess who. He was no adventurer, like Haller, but he followed me into battle like the squires of yore, and he thought his responsibility lay in nothing less than the care of my person. Long after the war was over, he wrote to me for a photograph ‘so that I can tell the grandchildren about my lieutenant’. It is to him that I owe an insight into the stolidity and decency of the common people, of the character of the territorial soldier.
After a brief stay in the Bavarian field hospital at Montigny, I was put on a hospital train in Douai and taken to Berlin. There, this sixth double-wound of mine healed in a fortnight, just as well as all its predecessors had. The only unpleasant after-effect was an incessant ringing in my ears. As the weeks passed, it grew fainter and finally went away altogether.