I jumped into the first trench. Stumbling round the first traverse I collided with an English officer with an open tunic and his tie hanging loose. I did without my revolver, and seizing him by the throat flung him against the sandbags, where he collapsed. Behind me the head of an old major appeared. He was shouting to me, “Shoot the hound dead.”
I left this to those behind me and turned to the lower trench. It seethed with English. I fired off my cartridges so fiercely that I pressed the trigger ten times at least after the last shot. A man next me threw bombs among them as they scrambled to get away. A dish-shaped helmet was sent spinning high in the air.
A minute saw the battle ended. The English jumped out of their trenches and fled by battalions across the open. They stumbled over each other as they fled, and in a few seconds the ground was strewn with dead. Only a few got away.
A N.C.O. was standing near me gaping at this spectacle with mouth agog. I snatched the rifle from his hands in an uncontrollable need to shoot. My first victim was an Englishman whom I shot between two Germans at 150 metres. He snapped together like the blade of a knife and lay still.
After quite a time had been spent thus, we went on. The spirit of the attack had been kindled by success to a white heat of recklessness in every single man. There was no question of leading the several units. Nevertheless, one cry was on everybody’s lips: “On!” Every man went straight ahead.
As my objective I chose a little hill where the ruins of a cottage, the cross on a grave, and the wreckage of an aeroplane were to be seen. I went forward so blindly that I got into the zone of our own fire, and had to throw myself into a shell-hole for cover while waiting for the guns to lengthen their range. I found a young officer of another regiment close to me who, quite alone like myself, was rejoicing over the success of our first assault. The common enthusiasm brought us as close in those few moments as if we had known each other for years. The next spring forward parted us, never to meet again.
Even during these frightful moments something ludicrous occurred. A man near me whipped his rifle to his shoulder as though he were out shooting, to shoot at a hare that suddenly jumped up and ran through our lines. The episode was so bewildering that I had to laugh. There can indeed be nothing so horrible that some crazy fellow cannot cap it.
Near the ruins of the house lay a small length of trench which was being raked by machine-gun fire from the far side. I jumped in at one bound and found it unoccupied. Immediately after Kius and Wedelstädt appeared. An orderly of Wedelstädt’s, who came last, collapsed in mid-jump and lay dead, shot through the eye. When Wedelstädt saw this last man of his company fall headlong he leant his head on the edge of the trench and wept. And neither was he destined to survive this day.
Below us lay a strongly-held position in a sunken road. In front of it were two machine-gun nests, one on each edge of a hollow. The turmoil of our gunfire had rolled on over this strong-point and the enemy seemed to have recovered. At any rate he was pouring out lead as fast as it would leave the barrels. We were separated by a strip of ground five hundred metres wide, and across it the sheaves of fire buzzed like swarms of bees.
After a pause for breath we went on over the top at the enemy with a handful of men. It was a fight to the death. After one or two springs forward I lay opposite the left-hand machine-gun position, alone but for one man. I could clearly distinguish a flat helmet behind a low mound of earth, and close beside it a thin spiral of steam. I approached in quite short springs so as to allow no chance for aim. Each time that I lay down the man threw me a clip of cartridges and I fired a few carefully-aimed shots. “Cartridges … cartridges!” I turned round and saw him lying twitching on one side.
When I look back now to that blind dash across the open against a choice and well-furnished position, I see that we must have been inspired by a quite improbable degree of recklessness. And yet, where would be the success of war if it were not for individuals whom the thrill of action intoxicates and hurls forward with an impetus not to be resisted? It seemed often as though death itself feared to cross our path. From the left, where the resistance was weaker, there appeared a few men who were almost in a position to bomb the post. I set out on my last spring forward and stumbled over a barbed-wire entanglement into the trench. The English left their guns and ran, fired on from all sides, and made their escape
