During the morning we shifted our quarters into the new cellar. On the way we were nearly hit by the church tower, which the engineers were unobtrusively blowing up in order to deprive the enemy of an easy mark. In a neighbouring village they had forgotten to warn a post of two men who were keeping a lookout from the top of the tower there. By a miracle they were retrieved uninjured from the debris.
We furnished our roomy cellar very passably, for we collected what we required from mansion or cottage, and what we had no use for we burned in the stove.
During the first day there was a succession of duels to the death in the air. They ended nearly every time in the defeat of the English, as Richthofen’s battle formation was circling over the neighbourhood. Often five or six machines were driven down or shot down in flames. Once we saw the pilot thrown from his machine and fall to the earth as a separate black speck. There were dangers, too, in staring up into the sky. A man of the 4th Company was killed by a falling splinter that hit him in the neck.
On the 18th April I paid a visit to the 2nd Company in the line. It held a salient in front of the village of Arleux. Lieutenant Boje told me that he had only had a single casualty for a long while, as the English shelling was so methodical that it allowed them to sidestep and avoid it every time.
After I had wished him all the best, I had to leave the village at the gallop, on account of the continuous shooting by the enemy’s heavy guns. I stopped 300 metres behind Arleux to watch the clouds that rose from each hit. They were red or black according to whether brick walls had been pounded or garden soil flung up; and among them was the delicate white of exploding shrapnel. When a few “whizzbangs” began falling on the footpaths that connected Arleux with Fresnoy, I abandoned the pursuit of further impressions and decamped at full speed, in case I might be “slain,” as the stock phrase then was in the 2nd Company.
I was often making expeditions of this kind, sometimes as far as the little town of Hénin-Liétard, for during the first fourteen days, in spite of my large staff, there was not a single report to communicate.
From the 20th April Fresnoy was shelled by a 30.5 centimetre gun. The shells came over with a perfectly infernal hiss. After each hit the village was veiled in a huge reddish-brown cloud of picric-acid gas. Even the duds caused a small earthquake. A man of the 9th Company, who was surprised by one of them in the courtyard of the château, was flung over the trees in the park and broke most of his bones in the fall.
In the afternoon the village was shelled with all calibres. In spite of the danger I could not tear myself from the attic windows of my house. It was a breathless sight to see how small parties and despatch-carriers chased over the shelled area, often throwing themselves flat, while the ground was flung up on every side of them.
When I went into the village after this, one more cellar had been hit and set on fire. The salvage operations recovered only three bodies. Near the cellar lay one on its face, with the uniform in shreds. The head was torn off and the blood flowed into a puddle of water. When the stretcher-bearer turned the body over to remove any valuables I could not help seeing that on the stump of the arm there was only a thumb.
The enemy artillery became more active every day and left no doubt of an early attack. On the 27th April at midnight I had the following telephone message: “67 from five a.m.,” which meant in our code, “Utmost readiness for an alarm from five a.m.”
So I lay down again, hoping to be all the better prepared for the expected exertions. However, as I was just falling asleep a shell hit the house and blew in the wall of the cellar stairs and threw the masonry into the cellar. We jumped up and hurried into the dugout.
As we crouched on the steps in the light of a candle, disconcerted and weary, the sergeant of my light-signalling section, whose post, together with two valuable signalling lamps, had been smashed up in the afternoon, came rushing in. “Sir, the cellar of No. 11 has had a direct hit and some of the men are still buried in the ruins.” As I had two cyclists and three telephonists in No. 11, I took some men and hurried to their help.
I found a lance-corporal and a wounded man in the dugout, and was given the following account. When the shells began to fall suspiciously near, four of the five occupants of the cellar decided to go down into the dugout shaft. One of them went straight away, one stayed where he was in bed, while the remaining three delayed to pull on their boots. The most prudent and the least, as so often in war, came off the best: the first had not a scratch, and the second had a splinter in the thigh. The three others were caught by the shell, which came through the cellar wall and exploded in the opposite corner.
After this narration I lit a cigar and went into the smoke-filled cellar. In the middle of it there was a heap of wreckage—bedsteads, straw mattresses, and various pieces
