After we had hastened on for hours and to no purpose, and often menaced by shells, along the trench ankle-deep in mud and water, we crept, dead tired, into some ammunition bays in the side of the trench. My batman spread his groundsheet over me, but the state of my nerves kept my eyes wide open, and thus, smoking cigars, I waited for daybreak.
The first light of dawn revealed an utterly incredible sight. Countless troops, all over the shelled area, were still in search of their appointed shelter. Artillerymen were humping ammunition; trench-mortar men were pulling their mortars along; signallers were laying wires. There was a regular fair a thousand metres in front of the enemy, who, incomprehensibly, appeared to observe nothing.
By good luck I ran across the commander of the 2nd Machine-gun Company, Lieutenant Fallenstein, an old front-line soldier, who was able to show me the way to our shelter. The first thing he said was: “What makes you look like that, man?” I led my men to a large, deep dugout that we had passed a dozen times during the night. There I found little Schmidt, who knew nothing of our disaster. The guides, also, were there. After that day, whenever we moved into a new position I always chose the guides myself and with the greatest care. The lessons of the war are thorough but costly.
After settling-in the men who had come with me, I went back to the horrible scene of the night before. It was a ghastly sight. In a ring round the burst were lying over twenty charred corpses, nearly all of them unrecognizably mutilated. Some, indeed, we had to report as missing, as nothing of them was to be found.
I came on some soldiers of another unit busied in extracting the bloodstained possessions of the dead from out of the hideous mess, in the hope of booty. I chased the hyenas off, and told my orderly to collect the pocketbooks and valuables, as far as could be done, so that we could send them to their people. We had, in any case, to leave them behind when next morning we went over the top.
I was delighted to see Lieutenant Sprenger come out of a dugout near by with a number of men who had spent the night there. I told the section leaders to report, and ascertained that I still disposed of sixty-three men. I had set out the night before in the best of spirits with a hundred and fifty! I succeeded in accounting for over twenty dead and over sixty wounded, some of whom died later from their injuries.
The only grain of comfort was that it might have been worse. Fusilier Rust, for example, was standing so close to the burst that the carrying strap of his box began to burn. The N.C.O. Peggau, who, it is true, was killed the next day, was standing between two men, both of whom were torn to bits, while he had not a scratch.
We spent the day in poor spirits, sleeping mostly. I had to go again and again to the C.O., as there was always something to do with the attack to arrange. Apart from this I lay on a bunk talking to my two officers about trifling matters, in order to escape the torture of our thoughts. The constant refrain was: “Thank God, we can only die once.” I said a few words to the men, who crouched together in silence on the steps, with a view to cheering them up; but it seemed to have little effect. Nor was I myself in an encouraging mood.
At ten o’clock in the evening a runner brought orders to move into the first line. A wild beast dragged from its lair, or a sailor who sees the last plank swept from his grasp, may, perhaps, have feelings comperable to ours when we were compelled to leave the warmth and safety of the dugout. Yet not one of them was tempted to stay behind unobserved.
We hurried along the Felix trench under sharp shrapnel fire and got through without a casualty. While we passed along the trench below, guns crossed by bridges over our heads to take up forward positions. The section of the trench allotted to the battalion was quite narrow. Every dugout was filled with troops in a moment. The rest had to dig themselves holes in the sides of the trench so as to have some shelter at least during the bombardment preceding the attack. At last after much scrambling to and fro everyone had found his hole. Once more Captain von Brixen assembled the company commanders for his last remarks. When we had synchronized watches for the last time we shook hands and separated.
I sat down on the steps of a dugout with my two officers to wait for 5:05 a.m., the moment when the artillery preparation was to begin. The atmosphere was slightly more cheerful, as the rain had left off and the clear, starry sky promised a fine morning. We passed the time eating and talking. Everyone smoked hard, and the water-bottles went the round. In the early hours the enemy artillery was so lively that we were afraid the English had smelt a rat.
Just before zero the following flash signal was given us: “H.M. the Kaiser and Hindenburg are on the scene of operations.” It was greeted with enthusiasm.
The hands crept on. We counted the last minutes as they marked them off. At last they stood at 5:05. At once the hurricane broke loose. A curtain of flames was let down, followed by a sudden impetuous tumult such as was never heard, a raging thunder that swallowed up the reports even of the heaviest guns in its tremendous reverberations and made the earth tremble. This gigantic roar of annihilation from countless guns behind us was so terrific that, compared
