When I was walking to my crib, followed by an orderly, something struck the trench wall between us and, whipping my helmet off my head with enormous force, threw it far away. I thought I had got the whole charge of a shrapnel shell, and lay half-stunned in my foxhole. A moment later a shell struck the verge of it and filled the small space with thick smoke. A long splinter smashed a box of gherkins at my feet. To prevent myself being buried I crept out into the trench again, and was able at least to rouse the two orderlies and my batman and put them on the lookout.
It was a really unpleasant half-hour, and the company had many losses. When the worst of it was over I went through the trench to take stock of the damage and ascertain what men I had left. As the count of fifteen men was not enough for holding the trench, I left the defence of the block to Mohrmann and three men, and withdrew the remainder to a giant shell-hole behind our line and had all the available bombs collected there. My plan was to let the enemy, if they attacked, enter our trench unopposed and then at a signal blow them to bits from above. However, the battle confined itself to an incessant uproar of light trench-mortars, rifle-grenades, and bombs.
On the 27th of July we were relieved by a company of the 164th Infantry Regiment. We were indeed utterly exhausted. The officer commanding the company was seriously wounded while marching into the line; and a few days later my crib got a hit and buried his successor. We all breathed more freely when we had left Puisieux behind us and the rising storm of the final offensive that growled around it.
111 Inf. Div.
Divisional Headquarters,
12/8/18.Divisional Orders of the Day
The 73rd Fusilier Regiment has added in the most brilliant fashion to its high reputation as a brave and war-tried unit in the severe fighting which was renewed against an enemy much superior in numbers. I am all the more glad to recognize this as I well know what high demands in endurance and loyalty to duty in our country’s cause must have been made on the troops of the division during this long spell in the line on a difficult front.
In particular, Lieutenant Jünger earned fresh recognition. Already six times wounded, he was on this occasion, as always, a shining example to both officers and men.
My Last Storm
On the 30th July 1918 we went into rest at Sauchy Lestrée, a delightful spot in Artois surrounded by water. A few days later we marched still further back to Escaudœuvres, a small, smug workingmen’s suburb of Cambrai.
I occupied the typical best bedroom of an artisan’s house in northern France. The huge double bed as its ominous pièce de résistance; a fireplace with hideous red and blue glass vases on the mantelpiece; a round table, chairs; on the walls some of those frightful colour-prints of the Familistère, Vive la classe, souvenir de première communion, postcards, and other rubbish. I did what I could to give the right note to my arrival by throwing a pack of cards on the table and my riding-boots on the double bed.
The clear moonlight nights favoured the visits of enemy bombers, who gave us a notion of the overwhelming superiority of matériel possessed by the other side. Night after night several formations came over and dropped their bombs of alarmingly high explosives over Cambrai and its suburbs. I was not agitated so much by the fine mosquito-like hum of the engines and the series of reverberating detonations as I was by the dash of my host for the cellar. It is true that, one day before my arrival, a bomb had landed in front of the windows and flung the gentleman of the house half-stunned out of the bed in which I slept, broken a bedpost, and bored the walls of the house with splinters. It was precisely this accident that lulled me into the belief that a repetition of it would be unlikely.
After one day’s rest the detested but indispensable round of training set in once more. Drill, instruction, roll-calls, lectures, and inspections filled a great part of the day. One entire morning was spent in pronouncing a verdict in a court of honour.
Here, too, we were miserably fed. For a long while there was nothing for supper but gherkins, which the men very drily and aptly named “gardener’s sausage.”
It was by no means easy to weld my decimated company into a unit again. It often went against the grain to be always insisting on the details of drill in my relations with the men, convinced though I was of the necessity. Drill as the means to an end is indispensable to every army. It cannot be replaced entirely by individual training nor by sporting instinct. A man, unless his inherent worth is beyond all doubt, must have obedience drilled into him, so that his natural instincts can be curbed by the spiritual compulsion of his commander even in the most awful moments.
Above all, I devoted my efforts to the training of a shock troop, as it had become more and more clear to me in the course of the war that all success springs from individual action, while the mass of the troops give impetus and weight of fire. Better command a resolute section than a wavering company.
I spent my leisure time reading, bathing, shooting, and riding. On my rides I found vast quantities of literature thrown down from aeroplanes. It was designed to hasten
