At last we found the narrow mouth of the first line in the wall of the canal, and went on through overcrowded trenches to battalion headquarters. I went in and found a mob of officers and orderlies in an atmosphere that could be cut with a knife. I was told that the attack on the front had not achieved much and that it was to be renewed the next morning. The feeling in the air was not very hopeful. Two commanding officers began a long discussion with their adjutants. Now and then from the height of their bunks, that were as crowded as hen-roosts, the specialist officers threw a few crumbs into the debate. The cigar fumes were suffocating. Batmen endeavoured to cut bread for their officers in the throng. A wounded officer who burst in aroused a passing alarm with the news of an enemy bombing attack.
Finally I was able to take down my orders for the attack. At six a.m. I and my company were to roll up Dragon Alley and as much of the Siegfried line as possible. The two battalions of the regiment in the line were to attack on our right at seven.
This difference of time aroused my immediate and resolute dislike. I raised a number of objections to splitting up the attack in this way, and gained my point. We, too, were to attack at seven. We found out the importance of this alteration the next morning. Fighting experience in an officer commanding troops can often, in cases like this, spare much unnecessary bloodshed.
A company detached from its own unit is not likely to be pampered under alien command. As I had only the haziest notion of the whereabouts of Dragon Alley, I asked, as I was going, for a map. Unfortunately, not a single one could be spared. I made a silent comment and went out.
After I and the men with their heavy packs had wandered up and down the trenches for a long while, one of the men discovered a board with the scarcely legible inscription, “Dragon Alley.” It was at the entrance of a narrow trench branching off to the front and blocked with knife-rests. After entering it, and before I had gone many paces, I heard voices in a foreign tongue. I was very much astonished to find the enemy so close, and indeed almost in our own lines, without having come upon any measures of defence; and I at once posted a section to block the trench.
Close to Dragon Alley there was an enormous pit, apparently a tank-trap. There I collected the whole company and explained the plan of attack and assigned their respective parts to each platoon. My remarks were interrupted several times by light shells. Once, even, a dud hurtled against the rear wall of our pit. Standing on the edge above, I saw a deep and regular inclination of the moonlit helmets at every hit.
I took the precaution of sending the first and second platoons back into the trench, in case of an unlucky direct hit, and remained with the third in the pit. Some men of a party which had come to grief in Dragon Alley the day before put the wind up my men by telling them that fifty metres along there was an English machine-gun that made further advance impossible. In view of this tale, I made it understood with the platoon commanders that at the first resistance we should jump out on both sides of the trench and make a concerted bombing attack. It is more than ever important to keep up a regiment’s fighting prestige when attached to another unit. I spent the endless hours squeezed up against Lieutenant Hopf in a small hole. I got up at six and made the final arrangements, in a mood peculiar to the last hour before an attack. There’s a lonely, sinking feeling in the stomach as one speaks to the section leaders, tries to make jokes, and keeps running to and fro as if before an inspection by the divisional commander. In short, one tries to be as occupied as possible in order to escape the thoughts that drill into the brain. One of the men offered me a cup of coffee heated in a trench cooker. Its warmth cheered me to the marrow.
At seven sharp we advanced in single file in the prearranged order. We found Dragon Alley unoccupied; a number of empty drums behind a block showed that the machine-gun must have been withdrawn. Our fighting spirit kindled at this. We went along a narrow sunken way, after passing on our right a well-built trench, where I left a few men posted. The sunken road became shallower and shallower till at last we found ourselves in the open, just as dawn broke. We then turned back and entered the trench on the right. It was full of arms and equipment and English dead. It was the Siegfried line, and suddenly Lieutenant Hoppenrath, the leader of the storming section, snatched a rifle from one of the men and fired. He had come on an English post, which, after a few bombs had been thrown, took to flight. We went on, and a moment later a fresh stand was encountered. Bombs flew on both sides and burst with resounding din. Now the technique of the storm-troop came into play. A chain of bombs went from hand to hand along the trench. Snipers took up positions behind traverses ready to draw a bead on the enemy bombers; the platoon commanders kept an eye out over the top to see a counterattack in the nick of time; and the light machine-gun section mounted their guns where there was
