All over the empty expanse there were hidden eyes fixed on the little wood, round whose shuddering oak tops fountains of brown earth danced in ever-changing figures. All round, distributed in trenches, shell-holes, caverns, and ruins, were men and guns, awaiting their turn in the battle for a piece of ground covered with splintered trunks.
Far behind, at opposite poles, two generals are seated at tables spread with maps. There is a report, a brief exposition, a few words to a staff officer, a conversation on the telephone. An hour later a fresh bombardment tears up the old shell-holes and a fresh hecatomb of men bleeds in the suffocating fumes. …
Towards evening I was summoned to the headquarters of the troops in reserve, and there learned that the enemy had got a footing on the left flank of our trench system. In order to make a little room in front of us again, the order was that Lieutenant Petersen with the storm company was to clear the hedge trench that ran along the side of the wood, and I with my fellows the communication trench running parallel to it in a hollow of the ground. We moved off at dawn, but before we left our jumping-off place the rifle-fire became so violent that we abandoned the enterprise for the time. I gave orders to occupy the Elbinger Alley, and made up for my broken night’s sleep in an immense cavern of a dugout. At eleven in the morning I was awakened by the noise of bombs from the left flank, where we held a block. I hurried to the spot and found the usual scene in this description of fighting. White clouds of bomb-smoke hanging over the trench and a few traverses back, a machine-gun rattling from either side, while in between there were men bending forward and jumping now forward, now back. The little coup de main was already beaten off, but it had cost one man, who lay behind the block, torn by bomb-splinters.
Towards evening I had orders to lead the company back to Puisieux, and then, on arrival, I was ordered to take two sections and join in rolling up the trench in the hollow. At 3:40 we—that is to say, Lieutenant Voigt of the storm company with a storm troop, and I with my two sections—set off for the starting-point. Our instructions were to roll up the trench from the red point K to red point Z after a five minutes’ artillery and trench-mortar preparation.
I cannot deny that both of us considered the artillery preparation, and in fact the taking and occupying of the trench, as unnecessary and ill-judged. The trench lay in the bottom of the hollow and was overlooked from all sides. The decisive point was the hedge trench: if an attack was to be made, it was essential to take it, and it automatically gave possession of the hollow. I cherished the firm suspicion that this operation had been ordered from the rear and by the map, for it could not have occurred to anyone who had seen the lie of the land to give such orders as these.
After the artillery preparation—which cost us one man wounded—we advanced and rolled up the trench. Shortly before two we encountered opposition and bombed our way through it. As we had gained our objective and were not disposed for further fighting, we made a block and posted a section with a machine-gun behind it.
The only pleasure I had in the affair was the behaviour of the men of the storm troop, who reminded me forcibly of Grimmelhausen’s Simplicissimus. These young warriors with great shocks of hair and puttees fell into a hot dispute twenty metres from the enemy because one of them had called the other a rabbit. They cursed like troopers and vaunted themselves with mighty boasts. “Look here, we are not all such funks as you!” one of them shouted at last, and rolled up fifty metres of trench by himself.
By midday the section holding the block came back. They had had casualties and could hold out no longer. I had already given them up for lost, and was surprised that anyone at all had been able to pass along this trench and still be alive. That is what comes of war on paper.
In spite of our counterattacks, the enemy still had a firm footing on the left flank of our front line and in the strongly barricaded communication trenches, and so threatened our support line.
On the 24th of July I went to the new C sector of the support line to find my way about, as I was to take it over on the next day. I got Lieutenant Gipkens, commanding the company, to show me the block at the hedge trench, and sat down beside him on a fire-step. Suddenly Gipkens seized hold of me and pulled me to one side. Next moment a shot flew into splinters on the very place where I had been sitting. By a lucky chance he had seen a rifle barrel slowly pushed forward out of a loophole in the block only forty metres from us. The keen eye of an artist had saved my life, for any fool could have hit me at that range. I was told later that three men of the 9th Company had already been shot through the head at this apparently harmless spot. In the afternoon I was tempted from my coal-hole by some not particularly violent artillery fire, though I was at the moment comfortably reading, over a cup of coffee. On the front there were signals for the barrage going up incessantly. Wounded men, limping back, told that the English had penetrated sectors B and C in the support line and occupied the ground in front of sector A. Immediately after came the bad news that Lieutenants Vorbeck and Grieshaber had fallen while defending their sectors, and that Lieutenant Kastner was badly wounded. At
