After a short fight we heard agitated voices from the other side, and before we understood what was happening the first Englishmen came towards us with their hands up. One after another turned the corner of the traverse and unbuckled his belt while our rifles and revolvers were threateningly levelled. They were all young, well-set-up fellows in new uniforms. I let them pass with the command “Hands down!” and detailed a squad to take them to the rear. Most of them showed by their confiding smiles that they trusted in us as human beings. Others held out cigarettes and chocolates in order to conciliate us. My enthusiasm and delight when I saw what a bag we had made were unbounded. The procession had no end. We had counted 150 already, and still they came with their hands above their heads. I went up to an officer and asked him how far their position extended and how many men they had. He answered very politely, but impaired the good impression he made by being so very stiff about it. He then conducted me to the commander of the company, a captain, who was lying wounded in a deep dugout near by. He was about twenty-eight years old, with a clear-cut face. I found him leaning against the timbers at the foot of the shaft with a wound through the calf. I introduced myself, and he raised his hand to his cap, showing as he did so a gold chain. He told me his name and gave up his revolver. His first words showed that I had a man to deal with. “We were surrounded.” He could not rest till he had told his enemy why he had allowed his company to be taken prisoners so quickly.
We had a talk on various matters, in French. He told me there were a number of German wounded in a neighbouring dugout, whom his men had bound up and looked after. When I asked him how strongly held the Siegfried line was further on, he declined to reply. I promised to get him and the other casualties sent back, and we parted with a shake of the hand.
Outside, the men reported that we had taken 200 prisoners, a fine achievement for a company of eighty strong. I had guards mounted, and we then looked round the captured trench. It was bristling with arms and equipment. On the fire-steps were machine-guns, mortars, bombs, and rifle-grenades, water-bottles, sheepskin waistcoats, mackintosh capes, groundsheets, cases of bully beef, jam, tea, coffee, cocoa, and tobacco, bottles of rum, tools, revolvers, Verey-light pistols, clothing, gloves; in short, everything imaginable. Like an old soldier of fortune I allowed an interval for plunder, nor could I resist the temptation myself of having a small breakfast prepared for me by my batman in a dugout entrance and lighting a pipe of the “Navy Cut” I had so long been without, while I scribbled a report to the commanding officer of the troops in the line. Like a wise man, I sent a duplicate to our own C.O.
After half an hour we proceeded, in an exalted mood, to which the English rum may have contributed, and stalked from traverse to traverse along the Siegfried line.
We were fired on from a pillbox built into the trench, and got on to the next fire-step to study the lie of the land. While we were exchanging a shot or two with the inmates, a man was struck to the ground as though by an invisible hand. A shot had pierced the crown of his helmet and torn a long groove in his skull. His brain could be seen throbbing with each beat of his heart, and yet he was able to make his way back alone.
I called for volunteers to carry the place by assault over the top. The men looked at each other in hesitation. Only an ungainly Pole, whom I had always thought weak in the head, clambered out of the trench and stumped off heavily to assault the pillbox alone. But now Fähnrich Neupert sprang over the top with his section, while we at the same time advanced along the trench. The English fired a few shots and ran for it, abandoning the pillbox to us. One of the Fähnrich’s men was shot dead halfway over, and lay with his face to the earth a few steps from the goal.
Going further we met with a resolute resistance from some unseen bomb-throwers, and after considerable butchery we were driven back to the pillbox. There we made a block. We, as well as the English, left a number of dead in the disputed length of trench. Among them, unhappily, was the N.C.O. Mevius, whom, in the night of Regniéville, I had learned to value as a daring fighter. He lay with his face in a pool of blood. When I turned him over I saw a big hole in his forehead and knew that nothing could help him.
After the enemy also had retired a little, an obstinate shooting match began. In the course of it a Lewis gun, posted fifty metres from us, forced us to duck our heads. A light machine-gun on our side took the duel on. For half a minute the two murderous weapons rattled on at each other, with the bullets spurting round them. Then our gunner, the volunteer Motullo, was killed by a shot through the head. Though his brain fell over his face to his chin, his mind was still clear when we took him to the nearest dugout. By degrees things calmed down, as the English too were busy making a block.
At twelve, Captain von Brixen, Tebbe, and Vogt appeared and congratulated me on the company’s success. We sat down in the pillbox and lunched off the English provisions and discussed the situation. Meanwhile I held a conversation in shouts with about twenty-five English, whose heads emerged out of the trench about a
