The firing continued all afternoon without a break, and towards evening rose to the pitch of drumfire with innumerable cylinder bombs. Our fellows called these cylinder-shaped missiles “clothes-baskets,” and it often looked as though the sky was raining baskets. We sat in the deep dugout entrances in tense expectation, ready to receive all comers with rifle and bomb. However, after half an hour the fire slackened off again. During the night there were two more outbursts. The men on guard remained unmoved on the fire-steps. As soon as the fire ceased we made a brilliant display of light rockets, and every man hurried out of the deep dugouts to assure the enemy by a furious burst of rifle-fire that the spirit of the Hanover Fusiliers was not to be broken.
In spite of this crazy bombardment we lost only one man, Fusilier Diersman, whose skull was smashed by a mortar bomb that struck the parapet in front of him. Another man was wounded in the back.
The day following this disturbing night there were many bursts of firing to warn us of an approaching attack. The trench was shot all to bits during these days, and, owing to the broken timber of the revetment, was almost impassable. A number of dugouts were smashed in besides.
Brigade headquarters sent forward an intelligence report: “Intercepted English telephone message: The English give precise information of the gaps in our wire and are asking for steel helmets. Whether ‘steel helmets’ is a code word for trench heavies is not yet known. Be prepared!”
We decided to stand-to during the succeeding night. It was made known that everyone who did not answer with his name at the word “Hallo” would instantly be shot. Every officer had a red light in his pistol so that the artillery could have prompt warning.
The night was even crazier than its forerunners. In particular, a concentration of fire at 2:15 a.m. beat anything that preceded it. A perfect hail of heavies fell in a circle all round my dugout. We stood in fighting order on the steps of the deep dugouts. The light of a candle-end flickered on the moist and mildewed walls. A bluish vapour streamed in at the entrances. The earth flew from the edges of the trench. Wumm! “Damn the thing!” “Match, somebody!” “Be ready!” One’s heart beat in one’s throat, trembling fingers loosened the pins of the bombs. “That’s the last one!” “Outside!” As we crowded out, one more with a delay-action fuse went up and slung us backwards. Nevertheless, while the last of the iron fowl came dropping in, every fire-step was already manned. We opened rapid fire, and the ground in front, wreathed in swathes of smoke, was brightly lit up with light-rockets.
When the firing had ceased we had one more loss. Fusilier Nienhuser suddenly fell from the fire-step and rolled bumping down the dugout steps into the middle of a group of his fellows assembled at the bottom. When we examined him we found a small wound on the forehead and a puncture over the right nipple from which blood was flowing. It was impossible to say whether the wounds or the fall had killed him.
At the close of this night of alarms we were relieved by the 6th Company. We moved off down the communication trenches to Monchy in that peculiar brand of ill-humour that is produced on exhausted nerves and sleepless eyes by a bright morning sunshine. From there we proceeded to the reserve line, lying along the edge of Adinfer wood. A magnificent panorama of the battle of the Somme in its opening stages was spread before us. The front-line sectors were veiled in clouds of white and black smoke, and one upon another the shell-bursts towered up into the sky. Above them the brief flash of exploding shrapnel could be seen by the hundred.
When at last we were hoping for a little sleep that night, orders came to load heavy trench-mortar ammunition in Monchy, and we had to wait the whole night and to no purpose for a railway wagon that had got hung up somewhere, while the English made numerous attempts on our lives, fortunately without result, by high-angle machine-gun fire and shrapnel exploding right over our heads. I was particularly annoyed by one artist with the machine-gun who fired at such an angle that the bullets, from the mere force of gravity, came straight down on us. It was no good taking cover from them behind a wall.
During this night the enemy gave me an example of the closeness of his observation. In the second line, about 2,000 metres from him, a heap of white chalk was thrown up from a deep dugout that was being excavated for an ammunition dump. The English, unfortunately, were right in concluding that this heap would be removed the following night, and sent over a salvo of shrapnel, by which three men were severely wounded.
Next morning I was roused from sleep once more, with orders to take my platoon as a working party to C sector. My sections were distributed among the 6th Company, and I then returned with a few men to Adinfer wood and set them to work felling timber. On the way back to the line again I went into my dugout for half an hour’s rest. All to no purpose, for I was not to have a moment’s peace these days. I had scarcely pulled off my boots when I heard our own artillery start a peculiarly lively fire from the edge of the wood. At the same moment my batman, Paulicke, appeared at the top of the dugout steps and shouted down, “Gas attack!”
I snatched up my gas-mask,
