Storm of Steel Read online

  At one o’clock, lunch is brought up from the kitchens, which are in a basement in Monchy, in large containers that were once milk churns and jam boilers. The food is of martial monotonousness, but plentiful enough, provided the ration parties don’t ‘evaporate’ it on the way, and leave half of it on the ground. After lunch, we nap or read. Gradually the two hours approach that are set aside for the trench duty by day. They pass more quickly than their nocturnal counterparts. We observe the front line opposite through binoculars or periscopes, and often manage to get in a head shot or two through a sniper’s rifle. But careful, because the British also have sharp eyes and useful binoculars.

  A sentry collapses, streaming blood. Shot in the head. His comrades rip the bandage roll out of his tunic and get him bandaged up. ‘There’s no point, Bill.’ ‘Come on, he’s still breathing, isn’t he?’ Then the stretcher-bearers come along, to carry him to the dressing-station. The stretcher poles collide with the corners of the fire-bays. No sooner has the man disappeared than everything is back to the way it was before. Someone spreads a few shovelfuls of earth over the red puddle, and everyone goes back to whatever he was doing before. Only a new recruit maybe leans against the revetment, looking a little green about the gills. He is endeavouring to put it all together. Such an incredibly brutal assault, so sudden, with no warning given. It can’t be possible, can’t be real. Poor fellow, if only you knew what was in store for you.

  Or again, it’s perfectly pleasant. A few apply themselves with sportsmanlike enthusiasm. With connoisseurial expressions, they follow the bursts of our artillery in the enemy trench. ‘Bull’s-eye!’ ‘Wow, did you see the dirt go up after that one! Poor old Tommy! There’s mud in your eye!’ They like lobbing rifle-grenades and light mortar-bombs across, to the disapproval of more timorous souls. ‘Come on, stop that nonsense, we’re getting enough of a pounding as it is!’ But that doesn’t keep them from pondering incessantly about how best to propel grenades with handmade catapults or some other hellish contraptions to imperil the ground in front of the trench. Now, they might clear a small passage in the wire in front of their sentry post, so that the easy access might lure some unsuspecting scout in front of their sights; another time, they creep across and tie a bell to the wire on the other side, and pull on it with a long string to drive the British sentries crazy. They get kicks out of fighting.

  At teatime, things can get quite cosy. The ensign is often required to provide company for one or other of the senior officers. Things are done with formality and some style; a couple of china cups on a hessian tablecloth. Afterwards, the officer’s batman will leave a bottle and glasses out on the wobbly table. Conversation becomes more personal. It’s a curious thing that even here other people remain the most popular subject of conversation. Trench gossip flourishes in these afternoon sessions, almost as in a small town garrison. Superiors, comrades and inferiors may all be subjected to vigorous criticism, and a fresh rumour makes its way through all six commanders’ dugouts along the line in no time at all, it seems. The observation officers, spying on the regimental position with field glasses and sketch pad, are not without some of the responsibility. In any case, the position is not hermetically sealed; there’s a perpetual coming and going. During the quiet morning hours, staff officers come round and make work, much to the fury of the poor grunt, who has just lain down following his last watch, only to hear the call: ‘The divisional commander is present in the trench!’ and plunges out of his dugout looking fairly impeccable once more. Then, after that, there’s the pioneer and the trench-construction and the drainage officer – all of them carrying on as if the trench existed only for their particular specialism. The artillery observer gets a frosty reception a little later, as he seeks to hold a trial barrage, because no sooner has he gone, taking his periscope with him – having stuck it up out of the trench at various points, like an insect its antennae – than the British artillery will start up, and the infantry are always the ones who catch it. And then the commanders of the advance party and the entrenching detachments put in an appearance as well. They sit in the platoon commander’s dugout until it’s completely dark, drinking grog and smoking and playing Polish lotto, until they’ve cleaned up as thoroughly as a band of rats. Then, at some ungodly hour, a little chappie comes ghosting down the trench, creeps up behind the sentry, shouts ‘Gas attack!’ in his ear, and counts how many seconds it takes the fellow to get into his mask. He, obviously, is the gas-attack protection officer. In the middle of the night, there’s one more knock on the plank door of the dugout: ‘What’s going on here? You asleep already? Here, will you sign receipt of twenty knife-rests and half a dozen dugout frames?’ The carrying-party is there. So, on quiet days anyway, there’s a continual coming and going, enough finally to induce the poor inhabitant of the dugout to sigh: ‘Oh, if only there’d be a bit of bombardment so we could get some peace!’ It’s true too: a couple of heavy bombs only contribute to the overall feeling of cosiness: we’re left to ourselves, and the tedious pen-pushing stops.

  ‘Lieutenant, permission to take my leave, sir, I’m going on duty in half an hour!’ Outside, the clay walls of the parados are gleaming in the dying rays of the sun, and the trench itself is completely in shadow by now. Soon the first flares will go up, and the night sentries will begin their back and forth.

  The new day for the trench warrior begins.

  Daily Life in the Trenches

  And so our days passed in strenuous monotony, interspersed with short rest periods in Douchy. But even in the front line, there were some good times to be had. Often I would sit with a feeling of cosy seclusion at the table in my little dugout, whose unplaned gun-hung plank walls had for me something of the Wild West about them, drinking a cup of tea, smoking and reading, while my orderly busied himself at the tiny stove, and the aroma of toasting bread gradually filled the air. What trench warrior has not experienced the sensation? Outside, along the fire-bays, came the heavy rhythmic tramp of feet, and a rough shout when sentry met sentry in the trench. My desensitized hearing no longer took in the incessant rifle fire, the smart impacts of bullets thudding into cover, or the flares expiring with a slow hiss beside the opening of my air-shaft outside. Then I would take my notebook out of my map pocket, and jot down the salient events of the day.

  And so there came about, as part of my diary, a conscientious account of life in C Sector, the small zigzag part of the long front where we were at home, where we knew every overgrown bit of trench and every ramshackle dugout. Round about us in the mounds of earth rested the bodies of dead comrades, every foot of ground had witnessed some sort of drama, behind every traverse lurked catastrophe, ready day and night to pluck its next chance victim. And yet we all felt a strong bond to our sector, as though we had grown together with it. We had seen it when it was a black ribbon winding through the snowy landscape, when the florid thickets round about flooded it with narcotic scents at noontide, and when pallid moonbeams wove webs round its dark corners, while squeaking clusters of rats went about their ghastly business. We sat on long summer evenings cheerfully on its clay ramparts, while the balmy air wafted the sounds of our busy hammering and banging and our native songs in the direction of the enemy; we plunged over beams and chopped wire while Death with his steel club assaulted our trenches and slothful smoke slunk out of our shattered clay ramparts. Many times, the colonel wanted to transfer us out to a quieter section of the regimental line, but each time the company begged him as one man to let us remain in C Sector. There now follows a selection from my diary entries taken down at the time, from those nights at Monchy.

  7 October 1915. Standing at dawn on the fire-step opposite our dugout next to the sentry when a rifle bullet ripped through his forage cap without harming a hair of his head. At the same time, two pioneers were wounded on the wires. One had a ricochet through both legs, the other a ball through his ear.

  In the morning, the sentry on our left flank was shot through both cheekbones. The blood spurted out of him
in thick gouts. And, to cap it all, when Lieutenant von Ewald, visiting our sector to take pictures of sap N barely fifty yards away, turned to climb down from the outlook, a bullet shattered the back of his skull and he died on the spot. Large fragments of skull were left littering the sentry platform. Also, a man was hit in the shoulder, but not badly.

  19 October. The middle platoon’s section of trench was attacked with six-inch shells. One man was hurled against a post by the blast so hard that he sustained serious internal injuries, and a splinter of wood punctured the artery in his arm.

  In the early morning fog, as we were repairing our wires on the right, we came upon a French corpse that must have been there for many months.

  That night, two men were wounded while unspooling wire. Gutschmidt was shot in both hands and one thigh, Schafer took a bullet in the knee.

  30 October. Following a torrential downpour in the night, all the traverses came down and formed a grey sludgy porridge with the rain, turning the trench into a deep swamp. Our only consolation was that the British were just as badly off as we were, because we could see them baling out for all they were worth. Since our position has a little more elevation than theirs, we even managed to pump our excess their way. Also, we used rifles with telescopic sights on them.

  The crumbled trench walls exposed a line of bodies left there from the previous autumn’s fighting.

  9 November. Was standing next to Territorial Wiegmann in front of Altenburg Redoubt when a long shot passed through his bayonet, which he was carrying over his shoulder, and gave him a bad wound in the groin. Those British bullets with their brittle points are dumdum1 by any other name.

  Staying in these little earthworks tucked into the landscape, where I am based with half a platoon, offers more freedom of movement than the front line. A gentle slope comes between us and the front; behind us there’s an ascent to the wooded hill of Adinfer. Fifty paces behind the fortifications, in a rather poorly selected location, is our latrine – a long beam supported on two trestles over a ditch. The men like to spend time there, either reading the paper, or for companionship, in the manner of canaries, say. This is the font of all the various sinister rumours that course around the front, and that go by the name of ‘bog talk’. In one instance, admittedly, the cosiness is shattered by the fact that the place, while not overlooked by the enemy, is still vulnerable to fire over the low rise. If they aim just over the ridge, the bullets pass through the dip at chest height, and a man has to lie flat on the floor to be safe. So it sometimes happens that in the same ‘session’, two or three times, more or less clothed, you have to measure your length, to allow a machine-gun burst, like a musical scale, to pass over your head. It’s the occasion for all sorts of ribaldry, of course.

  Among the more positive aspects of our situation is the availability of game, in particular pheasants, untold numbers of which inhabit the fallow fields. For want of shotguns, we have to try and sneak up on the rather dim ‘cookpot volunteers’ and blow their heads off, otherwise there’s not too much left to eat. You have to remember not to get too carried away in the heat of the chase, otherwise the huntsman risks becoming the quarry, if the trenches below get a sight of you.

  Rats we go after with steel traps. Admittedly, the beasts are so strong that they try and take the traps with them; their noisy efforts bring us charging out of our dugouts to finish them off with clubs. We’ve even devised a type of hunt for the mice who nibble our bread; we all but empty a cartridge, and, using a paper pellet for a bullet, we try to shoot them with that.

  Last but not least, with a fellow NCO, I’ve thought up another type of shooting sport, quite exciting though again not without its perils. In conditions of fog, we go out collecting up unexploded shells, little ones and big ones, some weighing a hundredweight or more, all usually in plentiful supply. We set these up at some distance away, and then, hidden behind shooting-slits, we bang away at them. We don’t need anyone to examine the targets to tell us how we’ve done, because a hit – a shot on the fuse – announces itself right away with a hideous blast, which is greatly increased if it’s a case of ‘all nine’; in other words, if the explosion carries through a whole row of these unexploded duds.

  14 November. Last night I dreamed I was shot in the hand. As a result I’m more than usually careful all day.

  21 November. I was leading an entrenchment party from Altenburg Redoubt to C Sector. Then Territorial Diener climbed up on a mound behind the trench to shovel some soil over the defences. No sooner had he got up there than a bullet fired from the sap went right through his head, and dropped him dead in the trench. He was a married man with four children. His comrades stayed a long time at their shooting-slits afterwards, hoping to exact revenge. They were weeping with frustration. They seemed to feel personal enmity for the Britisher who had fired the mortal shot.

  24 November. A machine-gunner was gravely wounded in the head in our sector. Half an hour later, another man in our company had his cheek laid open by infantry fire.

  On 29 November our battalion moved back for a fortnight to the little town of Quéant, in the back area of the division, which later was to achieve such bloody renown, to drill and indulge in some of the blessings afforded by the hinterland. During our stay there, my commission as lieutenant came through, and I was posted to the 2nd Company.

  In Quéant and its environs, we were often invited to drinking sessions by the local commandants, and I was given an insight into the near-absolute authority these local bosses exercised over their subordinates and the local populations. One Captain of Horse dubbed himself the King of Quéant, and made his appearance every night at our round table, where he was greeted by upraised right hands and a thunderous ‘Long Live the King!’ He held sway over us till daybreak, a moody monarch, punishing every breach of etiquette and every violation of his infinitely subtle conduct regulations with the imposition of a round of drinks. We grunts, as new arrivals, had a predictably hard time of it. The following day, we would see him after lunch, a little the worse for wear, touring his estates in a dogcart, and paying his respects to neighbouring monarchs (with many libations to Bacchus), in readiness for the evening ahead. These visits he referred to as ‘ambuscades’. On one occasion, he got into a tiff with the King of Inchy, and had a mounted MP call out an official feud between them. After several engagements, in the course of which rival detachments of squires bombarded each other with clods of earth from their respective fortified trenches, the King of Inchy was incautious enough to regale himself with Bavarian beer at the mess in Quéant, and was apprehended while visiting a lonely place. He was forced to purchase a vast tun of beer by way of ransom. And so ended the epic war between the two monarchs.

  On 11 December, I went over the top to the front line, to report to Lieutenant Wetje, the commander of my new company, which occupied C Sector in turn about with my former company, the 6th. As I was about to leap into the trench, I was shocked at the change to the position in just a fortnight. It had collapsed into a huge, mud-filled pit in which the occupants sloshed around miserably. Already up to my hip in it, I thought ruefully back to the round table of the King of Quéant. We poor grunts! Almost all the dugouts had collapsed, and the shelters were inundated. We had to spend the next weeks working incessantly, merely to get something resembling terra firma underfoot. For the time being, I stayed with Lieutenants Wetje and Boje in a shelter, whose ceiling – in spite of tarpaulins suspended beneath it – leaked like a sieve, so that the servants had to carry the water out in buckets every half-hour.

  When I left the shelter completely sodden the following morning, I couldn’t believe the sight that met my eyes. The battlefield that previously had borne the stamp of deathly emptiness upon it was now as animated as a fairground. The occupants of both trenches had emerged from the morass of their trenches on to the top, and already a lively exchange of schnapps, cigarettes, uniform buttons and other items had commenced between the two barbed-wire lines. The throng of khaki-clad figures emer
ging from the hitherto so apparently deserted English lines seemed as eerie as the appearance of a ghost in daylight.

  Suddenly a shot rang out that laid one of our men dead in the mire, whereupon both sides quickly scuttled back into their trenches. I went to that part of our line which fronted on to the British sap, and called out that I wanted to speak to an officer. And lo, I saw several British soldiers going back, and returning with a young man from their firing trench who had on, as I was able to see through my field glasses, a somewhat more ornate cap than they did. We negotiated first in English, and then a little more fluently in French, with all the men listening. I reproached him for the fact that one of our men had been killed by a treacherous shot, to which he replied that that hadn’t been his company, but the one adjacent. ‘Il y a des cochons aussi chez vous!’2 he remarked when a few shots from the sector next to ours plugged into the ground not far from his head, causing me to get ready to take cover. We did, though, say much to one another that betokened an almost sportsmanlike admiration for the other, and I’m sure we should have liked to exchange mementoes.