The Storm of Steel

to the nest on the right. The machine-gun was half concealed beneath a huge heap of empty drums. It was still nearly red-hot and smoking. The corpse of an athlete lay in front of it. A shot through the head had put out one eye, and I could claim the shot as mine. The enormous fellow with his great white eyeball and his smoke-blackened skull looked terrible. I was perishing of thirst and, unable to bear it any longer, I began to look for water. The entrance of a deep dugout seemed promising. I peered in and saw a man sitting at the bottom mending an ammunition belt on his knee. Instead of going for him at once, as in prudence I ought, I called out to him: “Come here! hands up!” He jumped up staring at me in amazement, and disappeared in the darkness. I threw a bomb after him. Presumably the dugout had a second entrance, for a man came from behind a traverse and said laconically: “We’ve just shot them. They’re done for.”

At last I came to a tin can full of cooling-water. I poured the oily fluid down in huge gulps, filled an English water-bottle, and gave some to the others who suddenly crowded into the trench.

Meanwhile, from the right-hand machine-gun nest and also from the sunken road, sixty metres in front of us, there was still a resolute resistance. The fellows put up a superb show. We tried to turn the English machine-gun on them, but we had no success with it. On the contrary, while I was busy with it a bullet flew by my head, grazed a Jäger lieutenant standing behind me, and wounded a man severely in the shoulder. A light machine-gun section had better luck. They got their gun mounted on the edge of our little crescent-shaped trench and raked the English from the flank.

There was a moment of surprise, and it was turned to good account by the assaulting troops on our right. They charged the sunken road from the front, with our 9th Company, still intact, led by Lieutenant Gipkens, at the head. And now from every shell-hole figures rose, and with a terrific hurrah, brandishing their rifles, rolling their eyes, foam on their lips, they rushed upon the enemy’s position, out of which the defenders advanced by hundreds with their hands held high.

No quarter was given. The English hastened with upstretched arms through the first wave of storm troops to the rear, where the fury of the battle had not reached boiling point. An orderly of Gipkens’ shot a good dozen or more of them with his .32 repeater.

I cannot blame our men for their bloodthirsty conduct. To kill a defenceless man is a baseness. Nothing in the war was more repulsive to me than those heroes of the mess tables who used to repeat with a fat laugh the familiar tale of the prisoners marched in: “Did you hear that about the massacre? Priceless!”

On the other hand, the defending force, after driving their bullets into the attacking one at five paces’ distance, must take the consequences. A man cannot change his feelings again during the last rush with a veil of blood before his eyes. He does not want to take prisoners but to kill. He has no scruples left; only the spell of primeval instinct remains. It is not till blood has flowed that the mist gives way in his soul. He looks round him as though waking from the bondage of a dream. It is only then that he becomes once more a soldier of today and capable of addressing himself to the next problem of tactics.

This was the state we found ourselves in after the capture of the sunken road. A large body of the men had collected and stood in a mob, shouting confusedly. Some officers pointed out to them the continuation of the hollow ground, and the great battle horde with astonishing coolness lumbered on.

The hollow ran up into higher ground, and from there enemy columns were coming into sight. We advanced, now and then standing still to shoot, till we were held up by heavy rifle-fire. It was extremely painful to hear the bullets striking the ground near your head. Kius, who had come up again, picked up a flattened one that had been stopped half a metre in front of his nose. Making use of a brief pause, we got to a shell-hole. They had already become rare. We found a number of officers of our battalion there. It was commanded now by Lieutenant Lindenburg; for Baron von Solemacher had unfortunately been mortally wounded during the assault on the embankment. On the right side of the hollow, Lieutenant Breyer, attached to us from the 10th Jägers, was strolling along through the machine-gun fire, to the delight of everyone, with a walking-stick in his hand and a long green huntsman’s pipe in his mouth, and his rifle hung on his shoulder as if he were out shooting hares.

We told each other briefly our adventures so far, and handed round water-bottles and chocolate, and then the general wish was to go on again. The machine-guns, threatened apparently on the flank, had disappeared. We might perhaps have won three or four kilometres. The hollow was seething with the attacking troops. As far as the eye could see behind us there were men coming on in open order, ranks and columns.

We were unfortunately much too thick on the ground, and it was just as well we did not know in the heat of the attack how many were left behind, either dead or wounded.

We reached the high ground without opposition. A few khaki figures jumped from a piece of trench on our right, and we shot them down out of hand as they ran. Most of them were accounted for. The top of the hill was held by a row of dugouts. From some of them smoke was rising, and of these we made