The Somme Retreat
On my return to the regiment, which had for some days been in the line near the ruins of Villers-Carbonnel, I was given temporary command of the 8th Company. Our rest-place was Devise.
On the march from there to the line one had to cross the plain of the Somme near the villages of Brie and St. Christ. The dreary devastation of these places in the midst of the melancholy marsh country used to put me in a peculiarly sorrowful mood as dark fragments of cloud chased across a moonlit sky, and the eerie interplay of light and shadow heightened the impression of chaos.
During the latter part of the time our front was exposed to numerous English attacks, connected with the great evacuation of the Somme area, for which we had made the most careful preparations. The enemy raided nearly every morning to ascertain whether we were still there. The following are a few of the experiences of those days.
1st March 1917. During the morning there was great artillery activity owing to the clear weather. In particular a heavy battery, with the help of balloon observation, pretty well flattened the section of trench occupied by No. 3 platoon of my company. In the afternoon, in order to mark up any alteration of the line on my map, I splashed along to No. 3 platoon through the utterly waterlogged “unnamed trench.” On the way I saw a giant yellow sun rush down to the ground trailing a black streamer behind it. An airman had attacked the unpleasant balloon and shot it down in flames. He got back in spite of a storm of fire.
In the evening Lance-corporal Schnau came to report that he had detected a sound of pickaxes, for four days past, underneath his section’s dugout. I forwarded the report, and was sent a pioneer detachment with a listening apparatus, but our suspicions were not confirmed. Later we heard that our whole position had been undermined.
On the 5th March a patrol approached our trench in the early morning and began to cut our wire. Lieutenant Eisen with a few men hurried off to warn the nearest post, and threw bombs. The enemy patrol then took to flight, leaving two men behind them. One, a young lieutenant, died immediately; the other, a sergeant, was severely wounded in the arm and leg. It appeared from papers found on the officer that he belonged to the Royal Munster Fusiliers. He was very well clothed, and his features, though distorted in death, were intelligent and energetic. It affected me to find the addresses of several London girls in his pocketbook. We buried him behind our trench, and put a simple cross at his head. I saw from this that all patrols need not end so fortunately as mine had done in days past.
Next morning the English, after a short artillery preparation, attacked the front of the next company, commanded by Lieutenant Reinhardt, with fifty men. The enemy crept up to the wire. Then one of them, who had a striker attached to his cuff, made a light-signal in order to silence the English machine-guns, and the whole party threw their last bombs and advanced on the trench. The men received them in such a masterly fashion that only one of them got into the trench. He ran straight through to the second line, and there, when he made no reply to the summons to give himself up, he was shot. Only a lieutenant and a sergeant got through the wire. The officer, though he wore a steel shirt under his uniform, was accounted for by a bullet point-blank from Reinhardt’s revolver that drove a whole steel plate into his body. The sergeant had both legs nearly torn off by a bomb; nevertheless, he clenched his short pipe between his teeth with stoical calm until he died. Here, as always, whenever we encountered the English we encountered brave men.
During the morning of this success I was strolling through the trench and saw Lieutenant Pfaffendorf, who was controlling the fire of his trench-mortar with a periscopic telescope from a fire-step. I had scarcely joined him when I saw an Englishman walking along over the top behind the third line of the enemy trenches. His khaki uniform showed up distinctly on the horizon. I seized the nearest rifle, sighted it at 600, got the man in the tip of the foresight, and then, aiming a bit in front of his head, I pulled the trigger. He went three steps, and then fell on his back as though his legs had been knocked from under him. After a few movements of his arms he rolled into a shell-hole, where, with the glass, we could see his brown sleeves showing up for a long while after.
On the 9th of March our front was properly plastered with shells. I was awakened in the early morning by the heavy firing, and, seizing my revolver, went, dazed with sleep, into the trench. When I pulled aside the groundsheet at the top of the dugout steps, it was still as black as pitch. The bright flashes of the guns and the showers of earth woke me up in no time. I ran through the trench, but not a soul did I see till I came to a deep dugout, where a group of men crowded on the steps like hens crowding together in the rain, with no one in command. On such occasions the Prussian way is the best. Pitch into the men, and so get yourself going too. I took them with me, and soon made the trench look lively. I was delighted to hear little Hambrock’s piping voice somewhere along the trench, occupied in the same way as
