Storm of Steel Read online

  Life in this secluded hamlet was a strange mixture of barracks drill and academic leisure, attributable to the fact that the bulk of the participants had, until a few months before, been attending various lecture halls and faculties all over Germany. By day, the young people were honed into soldiers by all the rules of the art, while in the evenings, they and their teachers assembled around vast barrels brought over from the stores at Montcornet to display much the same degree of discipline and commitment – to drinking. When the various units trickled back from their respective watering-holes in the early hours, the little chalk village houses were treated to the unfamiliar sight of student high jinks. The course director, a captain, had the pedagogical habit of expecting redoubled efforts in class the following morning.

  On one occasion, we were even kept going for forty-eight hours straight. It was for the following reason. We had the respectful custom, at the end of a night’s drinking, of giving our captain an escort home. One evening, an ungodly drunken fellow, who reminded me of Magister Laukhard,1 was entrusted with this important task. He was back in next to no time, grinning widely and reporting that he had dropped the ‘old man’ off, not in his billet but in the cowshed.

  Our comeuppance was not slow to follow. Just as we had got back to our own quarters for a good lie-down, the alarm was raised by the local watch. Swearing, we buckled on our gear and ran to our stations. We found the captain already there, in a towering temper, as might be imagined, and displaying an extraordinary zeal. He greeted us with the call: ‘Fire-practice, the watch-house is on fire!’

  Before the eyes of the astonished villagers, the fire-engine was trundled out of the fire station, the hose attached to it, and the guardroom was inundated with well-aimed sprays of water. The ‘old man’ stood on the stone steps with increasing ire, directing the exercise, and calling on us for unstinting efforts. Every so often, he bawled out some soldier or civilian who happened to provoke him especially, and gave orders for whoever it was to be led off. The unhappy fellow in question was quickly hauled off behind the building, safely out of sight. As dawn broke, we were still standing there, knees shaking, manning the pump. At last we were allowed to dismiss, though only to get ready for morning drill.

  When we reached the drill ground, the old man was already there, clean-shaven, fresh and alert, all ready to devote himself with particular zeal to our training.

  Relations between the men were very cordial. It was here that I made close friendships, which were to stand the test of many battlefields, with several outstanding fellows, among them Clement, who fell at Monchy, with the painter Tebbe (at Cambrai), and with the Steinforth brothers (at the Somme). Three or four of us roomed together, and shared a household. I particularly remember our regular scrambled egg and fried potato suppers. On Sundays, we ran to rabbit – a local speciality – or chicken. As I was the one in charge of making the purchases, our landlady once showed me a number of vouchers or promissory notes she had received from soldiers requisitioning food; a wonderful selection of earthy humour, generally to the effect that rifleman A. N. Other, having paid his homage to the charms of the daughter of the house, had needed a dozen eggs to help him recoup his strength.

  The villagers were quite astonished that we simple soldiers could all speak more or less fluent French. The circumstance gave rise to the occasional droll incident. Once, for instance, I was at the village barber’s with Clement, when one of the waiting Frenchmen called out in his thick Champagne accent to the barber, who was just shaving Clement: ‘Eh, coupe la gorge avec!’ complete with sawing motions at his throat.

  To his horror, Clement calmly replied: ‘Quant à moi, j’aimerais mieux la garder,’2 showing the kind of sang-froid that a warrior ought to have.

  In mid-February, we of the 73rd felt consternation to hear of heavy losses taken by the regiment at Perthes, and felt desperate to be so far from our comrades at the time. The fierce defence of our sector of the front in that ‘witches’ cauldron’ got us the sobriquet ‘The Lions of Perthes’ that was to accompany us wherever we went on the Western Front. Besides that, we were also known as ‘Les Gibraltars’, on account of the blue Gibraltar colours we wore in memory of the regiment from which we traced our descent, the Hanoverian Guards, who defended the island fortress against the French and Spanish from 1779 to 1783.

  The heavy news reached us in the middle of the night, as we were carousing as usual under the eye of Lieutenant Hoppe. One of the revellers, ‘Beanpole’ Behrens, the selfsame man who had dropped the captain off to bed in the cowshed, wanted to walk out the instant he heard, ‘because the beer had lost its taste’. Hoppe held him back, observing that to do so would be unsoldierly. And Hoppe was right too; he himself fell a few weeks later at Les Eparges, in front of his company’s extended line.

  On 21 March, following a little exam, we were returned to our regiment, which was once more at Bazancourt. Then, following a big parade and a valedictory address from General von Emmich, we left the 10th Army Corps. On 24 March, we were put on trains and taken towards Brussels, where we were amalgamated with the 76th and 164th Regiments, to form the 111th Infantry Division, which is what we remained till the end of the war.

  Our battalion was billeted in the little town of Hérinnes, set in a cosy Flemish landscape. On 29 March, I celebrated my twentieth birthday.

  Although the Belgians had room enough in their houses, our company was installed in a large and draughty barn, which the cutting sea wind whistled through on the cold March nights. That apart, our stay in Hérinnes was quite restorative, with plenty of drill, but good victualling, and the food also very cheap to buy.

  The half-Flemish, half-Walloon population was very friendly. I had frequent conversations with the owner of one particular estaminet, a keen Socialist and freethinker of a distinctively Belgian type. On Easter Sunday, he invited me to lunch, and would take no money, even for what we drank. Before long, all of us had struck up our various friendships and relationships, and on our afternoons off we could be seen striding through the countryside, making for this or that farmstead, to take a seat in a sparkling clean kitchen round one of the low stoves, on whose round tops a big pot of coffee was kept going. We chatted away in a blend of Flemish and Lower Saxon.

  Towards the end of our stay, the weather improved, and we happily went for walks in the attractive, rather watery countryside. The landscape, in which yellow marsh marigolds seemed to have sprouted overnight, was set off by the sight of numbers of half-naked soldiers along the poplar-lined river banks, all with their shirts over their knees, busily hunting for lice. Fairly unscathed myself thus far by that scourge, I helped my comrade Priepke, an exporter from Hamburg, wrap his woollen waistcoat – as populous as once the garment of the adventurous Simplicissimus3 – round a heavy boulder, and for mass-extermination, dunk it in the river. Where, since we left Hérinnes very suddenly, it will have mouldered away quietly ever since.

  On 12 April 1915, we were put on trains at Hal, and, to mislead any possible spies, took a wide detour across the northern part of the front to the battlefield of Mars-la-Tour. In the village of Tronville, the company moved into its customary barn quarters, in a boring and squalid dump typical of the Lorraine, put together from flat-roofed, windowless stone crates. Because of the danger from aeroplanes, we were forced to stay in the crowded township most of the time; once or twice, though, we managed to get to the renowned nearby sites of Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte. Only a few hundred yards away from the village, the road from Gravelotte crossed the frontier, where a smashed French border marker lay on the ground. In the evenings, we sometimes took melancholy satisfaction from going on walks to Germany.

  Our barn was so ramshackle that you had to pick your way carefully over the joists if you weren’t to crash through the mouldy planking on to the threshing-floor beneath. One evening, as our unit, under our decent Corporal Kerkhoff, was busy doling out portions on a manger, a huge lump of oak detached itself from the rafters and came crashing down. It was pur
e chance that it stuck fast a little way over our heads in the crook of two walls. We were more frightened than hurt; only our precious meat portions lay covered in rubble and debris. Then, no sooner had we crawled into the straw after this ill omen, than there was a pounding on the gate, and the alarming voice of the sergeant-major got us out of our resting-places in no time. First off, as always with these surprises, there was a moment of silence, then total confusion and din: ‘My helmet!’ ‘Where’s my haversack?’ ‘I can’t get into my boots!’ ‘You stole my ammunition!’ ‘Shut up, August!’

  In the end, we were all ready, and we marched off towards the station at Chamblay, from where a train took us, minutes later, to Pagny-sur-Moselle. The next morning, we were climbing the hills of the Moselle, and stopped in Prény, a charming hill village, with the ruins of a château looming over it. Our barn this time turned out to be a stone construction filled with fragrant mountain hay. Through its window-slits we had a view out over the wine-grown slopes of the Moselle, on to the little valley town of Pagny, which was regularly targeted by shells and aerial bombardment. Several times, shells landing in the river brought up vast columns of water.

  The balmy spring weather was enlivening, and spurred us on to long walks in the wonderful hill country. So exuberant were we that we carried on larking about long into the evening, before finally settling to sleep. One much-loved prank was pouring water or coffee from a canteen into a snoring sleeper’s mouth.

  On the evening of 22 April, we marched out of Prény and covered over twenty miles to the village of Hattonchâtel, without registering any footsoreness, in spite of our heavy packs. We pitched camp in the woods on the right of the famous Grande Tranchée. All the indications were that we would be fighting in the morning. Bandage packs were issued, extra tins of beef, and signalling flags for the gunners.

  I sat up for a long time that night, in the foreboding eve of battle mood of which soldiers at all times have left report, on a tree stump clustered round with blue anemones, before I crept over the ranks of my comrades to my tent. I had tangled dreams, in which a principal role was played by a skull.

  In the morning, when I told Priepke about it, he said he hoped it was a French skull.

  Les Eparges

  The tender green of young leaves shimmered in the flat light. We followed hidden, twisting paths towards a narrow gorge behind the front line. We had been told that the 76th was to attack after a bombardment of only twenty minutes, and that we were to be held in reserve. On the dot of noon, our artillery launched into a furious bombardment that echoed and re-echoed through the wooded hollows. For the first time, we heard what was meant by the expression ‘drumfire’. We sat perched on our haversacks, idle and excited. A runner plunged through to the company commander. Brisk exchange. ‘The three nearest trenches have fallen to us, and six field guns have been captured!’ Loud cheers rang out. A feeling of up-and-at-’em.

  At last, the longed-for order. In a long line, we moved forward, towards the pattering of heavy rifle fire. It was getting serious. To the side of the forest path, dull thumps came down in a clump of firs, bringing down a rain of branches and soil. One nervous soldier threw himself to the ground, while his comrades laughed uneasily. Then Death’s call slipped through the ranks: ‘Ambulancemen to the Front!’

  A little later, we passed the spot that had been hit. The casualties had already been removed. Bloody scraps of cloth and flesh had been left on bushes around the crater – a strange and dreadful sight that put me in mind of the butcher-bird that spikes its prey on thorn bushes.

  Troops were advancing at the double along the Grande Tranchée. Casualties huddled by the roadside, whimpering for water, prisoners carrying stretchers came panting back, limbers clattered through fire at a gallop. On either side, shells spattered the soft ground, heavy boughs came crashing down. A dead horse lay across the middle of the path, with giant wounds, its steaming entrails beside it. In among the great, bloody scenes there was a wild, unsuspected hilarity. A bearded reservist leaned against a tree: ‘On you go now, boys, Frenchie’s on the run!’

  We entered the battle-tramped realm of the infantryman. The area round the jumping-off position had been deforested by shells. In the ripped-up no man’s land lay the victims of the attack, still facing the enemy; their grey tunics barely stood out from the ground. A giant form with red, blood-spattered beard stared fixedly at the sky, his fingers clutching the spongy ground. A young man tossed in a shell-crater, his features already yellow with his impending death. He seemed not to want to be looked at; he gave us a cross shrug and pulled his coat over his head, and lay still.

  Our marching column broke up. Shells came continually hissing towards us in long, flat arcs, lightnings whirled up the forest floor. The shrill toot of field artillery shells I had heard quite often even before Orainville; it didn’t strike me as being particularly dangerous. The loose order in which our company now advanced over the broken field had something oddly calming about it; I thought privately that this baptism of fire business was actually far less dangerous than I’d expected. In a curious failure of comprehension, I looked alertly about me for possible targets for all this artillery fire, not, apparently, realizing that it was actually ourselves that the enemy gunners were trying for all they were worth to hit.

  ‘Ambulancemen!’ We had our first fatality. A shrapnel ball had ripped through rifleman Stolter’s carotid artery. Three packets of lint were sodden with blood in no time. In a matter of seconds he had bled to death. Next to us, a couple of ordnance pieces loosed off shells, drawing more fire down on us from the enemy. An artillery lieutenant, who was in the vanguard, looking for wounded, was thrown to the ground by a column of steam that spurted in front of him. He got to his feet and made his way back with notable calm. We took him in with gleaming eyes.

  It was getting dark when we received orders to advance further. The way now led through dense undergrowth shot through by shells, into an endless communication trench along which the French had dropped their packs as they ran. Approaching the village of Les Eparges, without having any troops in front of us, we were forced to hew defensive positions in solid rock. Finally, I slumped into a bush and fell asleep. At moments, half asleep, I was aware of artillery shells, ours or theirs, describing their ellipses in a trail of sparks.

  ‘Come on, man, get up! We’re moving out!’ I woke up in dew-sodden grass. Through a stuttering swathe of machine-gun fire, we plunged back into our communication trench, and moved to a position on the edge of the wood previously held by the French. A sweetish smell and a bundle hanging in the wire caught my attention. In the rising mist, I leaped out of the trench and found a shrunken French corpse. Flesh like mouldering fish gleamed greenishly through splits in the shredded uniform. Turning round, I took a step back in horror: next to me a figure was crouched against a tree. It still had gleaming French leather harness, and on its back was a fully packed haversack, topped by a round mess-tin. Empty eye-sockets and a few strands of hair on the bluish-black skull indicated that the man was not among the living. There was another sitting down, slumped forward towards his feet, as though he had just collapsed. All around were dozens more, rotted, dried, stiffened to mummies, frozen in an eerie dance of death. The French must have spent months in the proximity of their fallen comrades, without burying them.

  During the morning, the sun gradually pierced the fog, and spread a pleasant warmth. After I’d slept on the bottom of the trench for a while, curiosity impelled me to inspect the unoccupied trench we’d captured the day before. It was littered with great piles of provisions, ammunition, equipment, weapons, letters and newspapers. The dugouts were like looted junk-shops. In amongst it all were the bodies of the brave defenders, their guns still poking out through the shooting-slits. A headless torso was jammed in some shot-up beams. Head and neck were gone, white cartilage gleamed out of reddish-black flesh. I found it difficult to fathom. Next to it a very young man lay on his back with glassy eyes and fists still aiming. A peculi
ar feeling, looking into dead, questioning eyes – a shudder that I never quite lost in the course of the war. His pockets had been turned inside out, and his emptied wallet lay beside him.

  Unmolested by any fire, I strolled along the ravaged trench. It was the short mid-morning lull that was often to be my only moment of respite on the battlefield. I used it to take a good look at everything. The unfamiliar weapons, the darkness of the dugouts, the colourful contents of the haversacks, it was all new and strange to me. I pocketed some French ammunition, undid a silky-soft tarpaulin and picked up a canteen wrapped in blue cloth, only to chuck it all away again a few steps further along. The sight of a beautiful striped shirt, lying next to a ripped-open officer’s valise, seduced me to strip off my uniform and get into some fresh linen. I relished the pleasant tickle of clean cloth against my skin.

  Thus kitted out, I looked for a sunny spot in the trench, sat down on a beam-end, and with my bayonet opened a round can of meat for my breakfast. Then I lit my pipe, and browsed through some of the many French magazines that lay scattered about, some of them, as I saw from the dates, only sent to the trenches on the eve of Verdun.

  Not without a certain shudder, I remember that during my breakfast I tried to unscrew a curious little contraption that I found lying at my feet in the trench, which for some reason I took to be a ‘storm lantern’. It wasn’t until a lot later that it dawned on me that the thing I’d been fiddling around with was a live hand-grenade.

  As conditions grew brighter, a German battery opened up from a stretch of woods just behind the trench. It didn’t take long for the enemy to reply. Suddenly I was struck by a mighty crash behind me, and saw a steep pillar of smoke rising. Still unfamiliar with the sounds of war, I was not able to distinguish the hisses and whistles and bangs of our own gunnery from the ripping crash of enemy shells, and hence, to get a sense of the lines of engagement. Above all, I could not account for the way I seemed to be under fire from all sides, so that the trajectories of the various shells were criss-crossing apparently aimlessly over the little warren of trenches where a few of us were holed up. This effect, for which I could see no cause, disquieted me and made me think. I still viewed the machinery of conflict with the eyes of an inexperienced recruit – the expressions of bellicosity seemed as distant and peculiar to me as events on another planet. This meant I was unafraid; feeling myself to be invisible, I couldn’t believe I was a target to anyone, much less that I might be hit. So, returned to my unit, I surveyed the terrain in front of me with great indifference. In my pocket-diary I wrote down – a habit of mine later on as well – the times and the intensity of the bombardment.