I sat with another man on a bench fixed into the wall of the trench. Once there was a report on the boarded loophole through which we were looking, and a rifle bullet passed between our heads and plunged into the soil.
We were having casualties all the time. I could not tell what went on in the other parts of the trench, but the constant call for stretchers showed that the shelling was beginning to take effect. Now and then someone hurried by with a fresh white bandage that shone out on head or neck or hand, and disappeared to the rear. According to the superstition of the trenches, there was no time to be lost in getting safely out of it with a light wound, as it was often the forerunner of a serious one.
My comrade, a volunteer named Kohl, displayed that North German cold-bloodedness which seems peculiarly designed for such situations. He bit and squeezed at a cigar that never after all would burn, and he looked very sleepy. His composure was not disturbed when suddenly there were reports as of a thousand rifles behind us. The shellfire had ignited the forest, and huge flames climbed crackling up the trees.
At this moment a man appeared at the corner of our fire-bay and told us to follow on to the left. We did so, through clouds of smoke. It was the ration party, just got back, and hundreds of abandoned pots and pans were cooking on the parapet.
Who could eat now? A crowd of wounded with blood-soaked bandages pressed on past us, showing the state of their nerves in their white faces. Above, all along the edge of the trench, stretcher after stretcher passed along quickly to the rear. The feeling that we were in a tight corner began to take hold of us. “Look out for my arm!” “Look alive, man; keep touch!”
The trench ended in a wood. We stood aimlessly under giant beeches. Our company commander, a lieutenant, came up through the undergrowth and called for the senior N.C.O. “Swarm out and take up a line facing west. Then report to me in the dugout in the clearing.” With a curse the N.C.O. took over.
The impression made on the men by this occurrence was a standing lesson to me during the whole time I was in command myself. Later I got to know this officer, who distinguished himself on many occasions, and I learned that matters of importance had detained him. All the same, an officer should never be parted from his men in the moment of danger on any account whatever. Danger is the supreme moment of his career, his chance to show his manhood at its best. Honour and gallantry make him the master of the hour. What is more sublime than to face death at the head of a hundred men? Such a one will never find obedience fail him, for courage runs through the ranks like wine.
We deployed and, wondering what to expect, took cover in a row of flat pockets hollowed out by some predecessor or other. We were calling out to each other and joking, when we were cut short by a noise that shook us to the marrow. Twenty metres behind us clods of earth were whirled through a cloud of white smoke and rattled through the tree tops. Time after time the explosions rolled through the forest. With glazed eyes we stared at one another, and our bodies clove to the earth in utter impotence and prostration. Shell followed shell. Suffocating gases hung in the undergrowth, dense vapour wrapped the tree tops, trees and branches came crashing to the ground, loud cries rang out. We jumped up and ran wildly, hunted by lightnings and stunned by rushes of air. We ran from tree to tree seeking cover and chasing round the great trunks like hunted game. A dugout into which many ran got a direct hit that sent the heavy timber sky-high.
With the N.C.O. I ran panting to a mighty beech, like a squirrel pursued with stones. Automatically, and starting back at one shell-burst after another, I ran on after him, while he turned round now and again and stared at me with wild eyes and shouted: “What about these ones, eh? what about these?”
Suddenly there was a flash among the interlacing roots, and a blow against my left thigh threw me to the ground. I thought I had been hit by a lump of earth. Then I saw from the stream of blood that I was wounded. Later I discovered that a splinter as fine as a hair had given me a flesh wound after expending its force on my purse. The shaving cut from the thick leather was as thin as a sheet of paper.
I threw down my pack and ran to the trench we had left. From all sides the wounded converged upon it out of the shell-swept wood. The trench was frightful. It was blocked with severely wounded and dying men. One, stripped to the waist and with torn sides, leant against the trench wall. Another, from the back of whose head a triangular rent hung down, uttered piercing, agonizing cries without ceasing. … And still shell upon shell.
My nerve broke down utterly. Without regard for anyone I ran anyhow through the throng, and at last, falling back once or twice in my haste, climbed up out of the hellish tumult of the trench so as to have free passage
