It was all the same now whether we stayed where we were, or went on or back. So I gave the command to follow me, and sprang out into the fire. After a few steps I was covered with earth and flung into a shell-hole by a shell which fortunately exploded straight upwards. I observed soon after, however, that the fire was not so heavy further on. When I had worked my way forward another two hundred metres, I looked about me. There was not a soul in sight.
Finally, two men emerged from the clouds of dust and smoke. Then one more. Then another two. With these five men I safely arrived at my goal.
I found Lieutenant Sandvoss, commander of the 3rd Company, and little Schultz seated in a half-smashed-up concrete pillbox with three heavy machine-guns. I was greeted with a loud “Hullo!” and a sip of cognac; and then the situation, by no means a pleasant one, was explained to me. The English were close in front of us, and both our flanks were in the air. We cordially agreed that this was a corner too tight for any but old veterans who had grown grey in the smoke of battle.
Without a word of warning Sandvoss asked me if I had heard anything of my brother. My feelings can be imagined when I heard that he had been in yesterday’s attack and was missing. A moment later a man came and told me that my brother was lying wounded in a shelter close by, and pointed out to me a desolate blockhouse covered with uprooted trees. I hurried across a clearing which was covered by rifle-fire, and went in. What a meeting! My brother lay among a crowd of groaning stretcher-cases in a place that stank of death. He was in a sad plight. He had been hit by two shrapnel bullets in the attack, one of which had pierced the lung and the other his right shoulder. Fever shone in his eyes; it was only with difficulty that he could move or speak or breathe. He returned the pressure of my hand, and we began to talk.
It was clear to me that I could not leave him there, for at any moment the English might attack, or a shell put an end to the already damaged concrete shelter. It was a brother’s duty to get him sent back at once. In spite of Sandvoss, who would not hear of any weakening of our strength, I ordered the five men who had come with me to get my brother back to the Kolumbusei dressing-station, and from there to bring back with them men to rescue the other wounded also. We tied him in a groundsheet, and stuck a long pole through it, which rested on two of the men’s shoulders. I squeezed his hand again, and the sad procession started on its way.
From the edge of the wood I watched the swaying load on its way through another wood, among towering shell-bursts. As each one struck, I caught myself together, though the place where I was was no safer. It is odd that another’s danger makes a stronger impression than one’s own. This may be explained partly by the confidence in his own luck that everyone has. The belief that nothing can happen to himself makes each man underestimate the danger. It is only in another’s case that one sees how overwhelming it is and how defenceless its victim.
After I had skirmished a little from the shell-holes on the forward edge of the wood with the English, who were coming on very slowly, I spent the night with my men and a machine-gun section among the ruins of the concrete pillbox. H.E. shells of quite extraordinary ferocity were going up all the time close by us. In the evening I was within an ace of being killed by one of them. The machine-gun began rattling off towards morning, when some figures approached in the darkness. It was a patrol of the 76th Regiment, come to get into touch with us. One of them was killed. There were many such mistakes during these days, but it was of no use to dwell on them.
At six in the morning we were relieved by a detachment from the 9th Company. They brought me orders to occupy the Rattenburg with my men. I had a casualty on the way, a Fahnenjunker wounded by a shrapnel bullet.
We found the Rattenburg to be a shell-shot house walled up with concrete slabs. It stood close by the marshy bed of the Steenbeek, which no doubt well deserved its name.
Somewhat done up, we entered into possession and flung ourselves down on the straw-covered bed boards. After a good feed and a pipe of tobacco we felt more ourselves again.
In the early hours of the afternoon we were heavily shelled with shells up to the heaviest calibres. Between six and eight one explosion overlapped another, and the building often trembled at the sickening thump of a dud and threatened to collapse. When the fire ebbed later on, I went cautiously over a hill that was covered in a close and whirring mesh of shrapnel to the Kolumbusei dressing-station, and asked for news of my brother. The doctor, who was examining the terribly mangled legs of a dying man, told me to my joy that he had been sent back in a fairly promising state.
Later in the night my ration-party turned up and brought the company, now reduced to twenty men, warm food, bully-beef, coffee, and bread, tobacco and schnapps. We ate
