After this glimpse into the enemy’s domestic circumstances we left the dugout and went into the gun-pit, where we found that two brand-new guns had been abandoned. I took a lump of chalk and chalked up the number of my company. I may observe that the right of capture was very little respected by the troops that followed after. Each unit obliterated the mark of its predecessor and put its own, till that of some labour battalion survived. This shows how very rudimentary the sporting instinct is among the people.
We returned to the others, as our own guns were throwing metal about our ears all the time. Our front line, dug in the meanwhile by the troops behind us, was two hundred metres in our rear. I posted two men in front of the dugout and gave orders for the others of the guard to keep hold of their rifles. After I had arranged the reliefs, had a little more to eat, and made a note of the events of the day, I went to sleep.
At one we were awakened by shouts and lively rifle-fire on our right. We seized our rifles and, rushing outside, posted ourselves in a large shell-hole. A few scattered Germans came back from in front of us and were fired on from our own lines. Two of them fell. Put on our guard by this, we waited till the excitement subsided behind us and, calling out to show who we were, we retired to our own lines. There we found the commander of the 2nd Company, speechless with a cold and wounded in the arm, with about sixty men of our regiment. As he had to go back to a dressing-station, I took command of his detachment, among which were three officers. Besides this there were the two companies of Gipkens and Vorbeck, jumbled up like the rest.
The commanding officer of the battalion was Captain Baron von Ledebur; and of the regiment, Major Dietlein, as Major von Bardeleben had been wounded early in the day.
I spent the rest of the night with some N.C.O.s of the 2nd Company in a little hole in the ground, where we were stiff with cold. I breakfasted in the morning from the plundered provisions, and sent a party to Quéant to fetch coffee and rations. Our own artillery began again with its cursed shelling, and, as a morning greeting, sent us a direct hit in a shell-hole which accommodated four men of the machine-gun company.
At dawn a platoon commander of my company, Vice-sergeant-major Kumpart, turned up with a few men. I had scarcely got my circulation going again after the cold of the night when I had orders to storm the Vraucourt line further to the right, taking with me what there was of the 76th Regiment as well. This line on our front was already partly in our hands. There was a thick morning mist as we moved off to the jumping-off position, a hill to the south of Ecoust, where many dead of the day before were lying. As is usual when the orders for an attack are somewhat vague, there was a tremendous palaver among the officers of the storm troops, which nothing but the play of an enemy machine-gun was able to bring to an end. Everybody jumped for the nearest shell-hole with the exception of the sergeant-major, Kumpart, who lay groaning. I hurried to him with a stretcher-bearer and bound him up. He was badly wounded in the knee. We extracted several pieces of bone from the wound with a forceps. He died a few days later. I felt it particularly, as he had been my drill-instructor three years before in Recouvrence.
I exposed the folly of a frontal attack in a discussion with Captain von Ledebur, since it was clear that the Vraucourt line, already partly in our hands, could with far less loss be rolled up from the left. We decided not to carry out the attack, and events proved us right.
Such episodes prove the futility of the system of higher command with its headquarters far in the rear, though of course I do not question the necessity. At the same time such orders show clearly a lack of experience of front-line fighting. The time for frontal attacks without preparation has forever gone by. The common soldier who has been taught his lesson by the enemy’s rifles could not fall into such a blunder. It succeeded only where the enemy was weak. The strong parts of the line then fell of themselves.
For the time being we established ourselves in the shell-holes on the high ground. The sun came through by degrees and English aeroplanes appeared, which sprayed our refuges with machine-guns, but were soon driven off. Below Ecoust we saw a battery drive up, an unusual sight for old trench-soldiers. It, too, was soon shelled. One horse only tore itself free and galloped over the field. It was an uncanny sight—this panic-stricken beast against the wide and deserted stretches of country hung with the drifting smoke of the bursting shells. The enemy fliers had not been long gone before we began to be shelled. At first a few shrapnel broke over us, then light and heavy shells in plenty. We lay as though on a silver salver. Several unquiet spirits drew worse fire by losing their heads and running to and fro instead of lying low in their shell-holes and letting the stuff sweep over their heads. In such situations one must
