When the firing died down, I went back to my dugout in a bad temper, and there I was further ruffled by a telephone call from headquarters:
“What the hell is up? Why have you been all this time coming to the phone?”
Keeping in touch is no doubt most important, but fighting, after all, is action first and last.
After breakfast there was more of it. This time H.E.s were slowly but incessantly being “plonked down” in front of our noses. At last it became boring, so I paid little Hambrock a visit by an underground galley, and, after seeing what he had to drink, sat down with him to a game of “seven and four.” We were a little upset once by a giant crash. It sounded as though a drunken gang came tumbling over each other down the steps. Lumps of earth clattered through the door and down the stovepipe. The dugout shaft had got hit, and the timber revetment was shivered to matchwood. Sometimes a suffocating smell of bitter almonds blew down the shaft. Were they shooting prussic acid at us? Well, good luck to them. I had to leave the dugout once—indeed, I made four attempts in all, owing to constant interruption by the shells. Immediately after, the batman bounced in with the announcement that the latrine had disappeared beneath a direct hit. “Well,” said Hambrock, “you do have the devil’s own luck!”
The fire ceased towards evening. I went along the trench in the mood I always experienced after being heavily shelled, a mood like the relief one feels after a violent storm. The trench looked pretty bad; stretches of it were entirely filled in. Five dugout shafts were smashed up. Several men were wounded. I went to see them and found them all fairly comfortable. There was one man killed. His body lay in the trench covered with a groundsheet. A long splinter had torn his left hip away, though he was standing right at the bottom of the dugout steps.
In the morning we were relieved. On the 13th I was entrusted by Colonel von Oppen with the honourable task of holding the company front with a patrol of two sections until the whole regiment had crossed the Somme. Each of the four sectors of our front was to be held by a similar patrol under the command of an officer. The officers, starting from the right flank, were Reinhardt, Fischa, Lorek, and myself.
The villages we passed through as we marched to the front line had the appearance of lunatic asylums let loose. Whole companies were pushing walls down or sitting on the roofs of the houses throwing down the slates. Trees were felled, window-frames broken, and smoke and clouds of dust rose from heap after heap of rubbish. In short, an orgy of destruction was going on. The men were chasing round with incredible zeal, arrayed in the abandoned wardrobes of the population, in women’s dresses and with top hats on their heads. With positive genius they singled out the main beams of the houses and, tying ropes round them, tugged with all their might, shouting out in time with their pulls, till the whole house collapsed. Others swung hammers and smashed whatever came in their way, from flowerpots on the window ledges to the glasswork of conservatories.
Every village up to the Siegfried line was a rubbish-heap. Every tree felled, every road mined, every well fouled, every watercourse dammed, every cellar blown up or made into a deathtrap with concealed bombs, all supplies or metal sent back, all rails ripped up, all telephone wire rolled up, everything burnable burned. In short, the country over which the enemy were to advance had been turned into an utter desolation.
The moral justification of this has been much discussed. However, it seems to me that the gratified approval of armchair warriors and journalists is incomprehensible. When thousands of peaceful persons are robbed of their homes, the self-satisfaction of power may at least keep silence.
As for the necessity, I have of course, as a Prussian officer, no doubt whatever. War means the destruction of the enemy without scruple and by any means. War is the harshest of all trades, and the masters of it can only entertain humane feelings so long as they do no harm. It makes no difference that these operations which the situation demanded were not very pretty.
On the 13th I took over with my two sections the front that the 2nd Company now left to me. During the night a man with the ominous name of Kirchhof was killed by a shot through the head. This unlucky shot happened to be the only one fired by the enemy during several hours.
I did all I could to deceive the enemy as to our strength. A few shovelfuls of earth were thrown over the top, now at one point, now at another, and our machine-gun had to fire a few shots first from the left, then from the right. Nevertheless, our fire sounded extremely thin when a low-flying scout crossed the line or a working party traversed our front behind the enemy’s trenches. Consequently, patrols appeared every night at one point or another and set to work tampering with our wire.
On the last day but one I nearly met a sorrowful end. A dud shell from an antiaircraft gun came hurtling down and exploded on the traverse against which I was innocently leaning. The rush of air sent me flying into the entrance of a deep dugout exactly opposite, where I came to in a state of utter stupefaction.
On the 17th, in the early morning, we could tell that an attack was imminent. In the English front line, usually unoccupied owing to the mud, was to be heard the clatter of many feet. The laughter and shouting showed that they were a strong party and well fortified from within. Presently dark figures approached our wire. They dispersed under our fire, and one collapsed with a cry and
