The result was that I was so fast asleep the next morning that after a heavy bombardment had gone on for hours my men had to rouse me. They told me that men were coming back all the time, saying that the front line had been evacuated and that the enemy were coming on.
I first followed the old soldier’s maxim, “A good breakfast holds body and soul together,” and then, after lighting a pipe, went outside to see what was happening.
I could not see a great deal, as the surroundings were veiled in a thick haze. The artillery fire was increasing from moment to moment, and soon reached that pitch of intensity which the nerves, incapable of further shock, accept with an almost happy indifference. Showers of earth clattered incessantly on the roof, and the house itself was hit twice. Incendiary shells threw up heavy milk-white clouds, out of which fiery drops rained on the ground. A piece of this burning stuff came smack on a stone at my feet, and went on burning for a good minute. We were told later that men hit with it had rolled on the ground without being able to put it out. Shells with delay-action fuses burrowed into the ground, rumbling and pushing out flat disks of soil. Swathes of gas and mist crept over the battlefield, hugging the ground. Immediately in front we heard rifle and machine-gun fire, a sign that the enemy must have advanced already.
Below, beside the stream, I saw some men walking through a constantly changing scenery of mud fountains shooting high into the air. I recognized the commanding officer, Captain von Brixen, supported by two stretcher-bearers, and with an arm bound up. I hastened towards him; he called out that the enemy was advancing, and warned me not to delay in getting under cover.
Soon the first bullets smacked in the shell-holes near by or were shivered against the broken masonry. More and more fleeing figures disappeared to our rear, while in front a storm of rifle-fire testified to the embittered defence put up by those who were holding on.
It was time to act. I decided to defend the Rattenburg, and made it plain to the men, among whom at this there were some rueful faces, that I had not the remotest thought of retiring. I posted the men at loopholes, and our one machine-gun was mounted on a windowsill. A shell-hole was chosen and a stretcher-bearer, who soon had plenty to do, was installed there. I, too, took a rifle I found lying about, and hung a belt of cartridges round my neck.
As my crowd was very small I tried to get reinforcements from the numbers of men who were passing by in disorder. Most of them obeyed my call willingly, glad to join up, while others whose nerve had gone hurried past after a hasty pause to see that there was nothing to be got by staying with us. In such cases a tender consideration has no place.
“Fire!” I called to the men who stood in front of me in the cover of the house, and a few shots rang out. Overcome by the eloquence of the rifle-muzzle, the shirkers, of whom in every battle there must always be some, came slowly nearer, though it was plain from their faces how little eager they were to give us their company. A canteen orderly whom I knew well made all kinds of excuses to get away. But I would not let go of him.
“But I have no rifle!”
“Then wait till there’s a man shot.”
During a final crisis of artillery fire, in the course of which the ruins of the house were hit several times and the fragments of bricks pattered down on our helmets from high in the air, I was thrown down to the ground in the flash of a terrific burst. To the astonishment of the men, I got up again unhurt.
After this wild whirligig of shells it became calmer. The fire lifted over us and rested on the Langemarck-Bixschoote road. But we were none the better off in mind, for so far we had not seen the wood for trees; the danger had been so overwhelming that we had had no time or power to think of it. Now that the storm had swept on past us, everyone had time to get ready for what was inevitably coming nearer. And it came.
The rifles in front were silent. The opposition had been overcome. Out of the haze emerged a thick advancing line. My men fired crouching behind the wreckage. The machine-gun tacked out. As though they had been wiped away, the attacking line vanished into shell-holes and opened fire on us. Strong detachments went on to the left and right. We were soon surrounded by a ring of fire.
The position was pointless, and there was no object in sacrificing the men. I gave the order to retire. Now that they had started, it was difficult to make the men give up the fight.
Making use of a low-lying cloud of smoke, we got away unobserved, partly by wading above the hips along the stream. I was the last to leave the little fort. Lieutenant Höhlemann, whom I helped along, was bleeding from a severe head-wound, though he joked and made light of it as we went.
As we crossed the road we ran into the 2nd Company, who had been sent up in support. After a brief consultation we decided to stay where we were and await the enemy. Here, too, we had to compel troops of other units, who wished to carry out retirements on their own, to remain. Stern measures were necessary to persuade artillerymen, and signallers, and
