At seven-fifteen, I received very belated orders, from which I understood that at seven- thirty a strong bombardment would commence, and that at eight o’clock two sections of the storm company under Lieutenant Voigt were to break out across the barricade in the Hedge Trench. They were to roll up the trench as far as point A, and meet up with a shock troop that would proceed along a parallel line to the right of them. Two sections of my company were to follow on behind and occupy the trench.
I quickly issued the necessary commands – the artillery barrage was already beginning – picked out the two sections, and had a brief discussion with Voigt, who set out a few minutes afterwards, as per the instructions I’d received. As I thought of the whole business as a kind of glorified evening constitutional, with no further consequences, I strolled behind my two sections, in a cap, and with a stick-bomb under my arm. At the moment of the attack, announced by clouds of explosions, every rifle anywhere near was directed at the Hedge Trench. We darted forward from traverse to traverse, and made good headway. The British retreated to a line behind, leaving one casualty.
To explain what happened next, I must remind the reader that we were not following the line of a trench, but one of many communication lines, where the British, or rather the New Zealanders, had established a foothold. (We were fighting, as I learned after the war, from letters addressed to me from the Antipodes, against a contingent from New Zealand.) This communications line, the so-called Hedge Trench, led along a ridge; on the left and below was the Valley Trench. The Valley Trench, which I had rolled up with Voigt on 22 July, had been abandoned, as described, by the section we had left there; it was now once more occupied, or at least controlled, by the New Zealanders. The two lines were connected by various cross trenches; from the lower parts of the Hedge Trench, we were not able to see down into the Valley Trench.
I was following the section as it worked its way forward, feeling quite chipper, for as yet all I had seen of the enemy had been several figures fleeing over the top. Ahead of me, NCO Meier was bringing up the rear of the section, and, ahead of him, I could sometimes see, depending on the twists and turns of the trench, little Wilzek from my own company. And so we passed a narrow sap, which, climbing up out of the valley, connected with the Hedge Trench, like a kind of tributary. In between its two separate entrances, there was a sort of delta, a mound of earth perhaps five paces long, which had been left to stand. I had just passed the first juncture, Meier was approaching the second.
In trench-fighting, with forks of this kind, one usually posts two men as a sentry to guard the rear. This Voigt had either forgotten to do, or in his haste he had overlooked the sap altogether. In any case, I now heard the NCO ahead of me shout out in alarm, and saw him raise his rifle and fire just past my head into the second fork of the sap.
Since the block of earth meant I couldn’t see into it, I was mystified by this, but all it took was a step back for me to be able to look down the first fork. What I saw was enough to freeze my blood, for there was a strongly built New Zealander practically near enough to touch. At the same time I heard the shouts of still-unseen attackers running up from the valley to cut us off. The New Zealander who had, as if by magic, appeared at our rear, and whom I stood gawping at helplessly, was unhappily for him unaware of my being there. All his attention was on the NCO, to whose shot he replied with a hand-grenade. I watched him detach one of his lemon-shaped bombs to throw at Meier, who tried to escape his death by charging forward. At the same time, I took out the stick-bomb, which was the only weapon I had on me, and didn’t so much throw it as lob it at the feet of the New Zealander in a short arc. I wasn’t there to see him go up, because it was the last possible moment in which I had any chance of being able to make it back. So I dashed back, and just caught a glimpse of little Wilzek, who had been sharp and calm enough to duck under the New Zealander’s grenade, dash past Meier and follow me. One steel egg that was hurled in his direction ripped his belt and the seat of his trousers, but did no further damage. That was how tight the noose was that had been drawn around us, leaving Voigt and the other forty attackers surrounded and doomed. Without guessing anything of the strange event I had witnessed, they felt pressure behind them pushing them to their deaths. Shouts and numerous explosions suggested that they were selling their lives dearly.
To come to their aid, I led cadet Mohrmann’s section forward along Hedge Trench. We were forced to pause by a rain of Stokes bombs. One splinter struck me in the chest, but was stopped by the clasp of my braces.
A vehement artillery bombardment now began. All around geysers of earth spouted up out of various-coloured steam, and the dull thump of shells bursting deep in the earth mingled with a high-pitched metallic yowl that sounded like a circular saw. Blocks of iron burst with incredible vehemence, interspersed with the singing and flickering of clouds of splinters. As there was every prospect of facing an attack, I put on one of the steel helmets I saw lying around, and hurried back to the firing trench with a few companions.
Figures surfaced in front of us. We laid ourselves on the mangled trench walls and fired away. Next to me, a very young soldier was fumbling with the trigger of his machine-gun, and not getting off a single shot, so I tore the thing from him. I fired some shots, but then as in a nightmare the thing failed again; luckily, though, the attackers vanished into trenches and craters as the artillery heated up. As for our own – it seemed to be directed equally against both sides.
As I went into my bunker, followed by an orderly, something struck the trench wall between us, ripping the helmet from my head and hurling it away into the distance. I thought I had caught a whole load of shrapnel, and lay half numbed in my foxhole, whose rim a moment later was struck by a shell. The little space was filled with thick smoke and a long splinter shattered a jar of gherkins at my feet. So as not to be crushed to death, I crawled back out into the trench, and from below urged the two orderlies and my batman to be alert.
It was a grim half-hour; the already reduced company was further mangled. After the artillery fire had abated, I walked the line, inspected the damage, and established that we were down to fifteen men. The long sector could not be held by so few. Therefore I assigned Mohrmann and three men to defend the barricade, and with the rest formed a hedgehog in a deep crater behind the back wall. From there, we could take a hand in the fight for the barricade, or, if the enemy succeeded in breaking into our line, attack him with hand-grenades from above. In the event, further action was limited to a few light mortars and rifle-grenades.
On 27 July, we were relieved by a company of the 164th. We were utterly exhausted. The commander of the relieving company was badly wounded on the way out; a few days later, my bunker was hit, and his successor buried. We all sighed with relief when we finally turned our backs on Puisieux and the storm of steel of the finale.
Their advances showed how much the enemy’s strength was increasing, supplemented by drafts from every corner of the earth. We had fewer men to set against them, many were little more than boys, and we were short of equipment and training. It was all we could do to plug gaps with our bodies as the tide flooded in. There wasn’t the wherewithal for great counter-attacks like Cambrai any more.
Later on, when I thought of the way the New Zealanders triumphantly ran up and forced our sections into that deadly bottleneck, it struck me that that was exactly what had happened on 2 December 1917 at Cambrai, but with roles reversed. We had looked into a mirror.