Storm of Steel

Against Indian Opposition

The 6th of May 1917 already found us back on the march, heading once more for the familiar destination of Brancourt, and on the following day we moved, via Montbrehain, Ramicourt and Jon-court, to the Siegfried Line that we had left only a month before.

The first evening was stormy; heavy rain clattered down on the already flooded terrain. Soon, though, a succession of fine warm days reconciled us to our new place. I enjoyed the splendid landscape, untroubled by the white balls of shrapnel and the jumping cones of shells; in fact, barely noticing them. Each spring marked the beginning of a new year’s fighting; intimations of a big offensive were as much part of the season as primroses and pussy-willows.

Our sector was a semi-circular bulge in front of the St-Quentin Canal, at our rear we had the famous Siegfried Line. I confess I am at a loss to understand why we had to take our place in these tight, undeveloped limestone trenches, when we had that enormously strong bulwark just behind us.

The front line wound its way through meadowland shaded by little clumps of trees, wearing the fresh green of early spring. It was possible to walk safely in front of and behind the trenches, as many advance positions secured the line. These posts were a thorn in the enemy’s side, and some weeks not a night would pass without an attempt to remove the sentries, either by guile or by brute force.

But our first period in position passed pleasantly quietly; the weather was so beautiful that we spent the nights lying on the grass. On 14 May, we were relieved by the 8th Company, and moved, the fires of St-Quentin on our right, to our resting-place, Montbrehain, a large village that had as yet taken little harm from the war and afforded very agreeable accommodation. On the 20th, as the reserve company, we occupied the Siegfried Line. It was summer holidays; we spent the days sitting in little summer huts erected on the slopes, or swimming and rowing on the canal. I spent the time lying stretched out on the grass reading the whole of Ariosto to my great enjoyment.

These idyllic positions have the one drawback that one’s superior officers like to visit them, which is a great dampener to the cosiness of trench life. That said, my left flank, posted against the already ‘nibbled at’ village of Bellenglise, had no shortage of fire to complain of. On the very first day, one man was hit by a shrapnel in the right buttock. On hearing the news, I rushed to the scene of the misfortune, and there he was, happily sitting up on his left, waiting for the ambulancemen to arrive, drinking coffee and munching on a vast slice of bread and jam.

On 25 May, we relieved the 12th Company at Riqueval-Ferme. This farm, formerly a great landed estate, served each of the four companies in the position alternately as base. From there, units went out to man three machine-gun nests positioned in the hinterland. These diagonally positioned support-points, covering each other like chess pieces, represented the first attempts in this war at a more supple, variable form of defence.

The farm was a mile at the most behind the front line; even so, its various buildings, dotted about in a rather overgrown park, were still completely unscathed. It was also densely populated -dugouts had yet to be created. The blooming hawthorn avenues in the park and the attractive surroundings gave our existence here an intimation of the leisurely country idyll that the French are so expert at creating – and that, so close to the front. A pair of swallows had made their nest in my bedroom, and were busy from very early in the morning with the noisy feeding of their insatiable young.

In the evenings, I took a stick out of the corner and strolled along narrow footpaths that went winding through the hilly landscape. The neglected fields were full of flowers, and the smell grew headier and wilder by the day. Occasional trees stood beside the paths, under which a farmworker might have taken his ease in peacetime, bearing white or pink or deep-red blossoms, magical apparitions in the solitude. Nature seemed to be pleasantly intact, and yet the war had given it a suggestion of heroism and melancholy; its almost excessive blooming was even more radiant and narcotic than usual.

It’s easier to go into battle against such a setting than in a cold and wintry scene. The simple soul is convinced here that his life is deeply embedded in nature, and that his death is no end.

On 30 May, this idyll was over for me, because that was the day Lieutenant Vogeley was released from hospital, and resumed command of the 4th Company. I returned to my old 2nd, on the front line.

Two platoons manned our sector from the Roman road to the so-called Artillery Trench; a third was at company headquarters, some two hundred yards back, behind a little slope. There Kius and I shared a tiny plank lean-to together, trusting to the incompetence of the British artillery. One side was built into the downhill slope – the direction the shells would be coming from – while the other three offered their flanks to the enemy. Every day as the morning greetings were wafted up to us, one might have heard a conversation between the occupants of the top and bottom bunks that went roughly like this:

‘I say, Ernst, are you awake?’

‘Hm?’

‘I think they’re shooting!’

‘Oh, I don’t want to get up yet; I’m sure they’ll be finished soon.’ A quarter of an hour later:

‘I say, Oskar!’

‘Hm?’

‘They seem to be going on for ever today; I thought I heard a shrapnel ball come flying through the wall just now. I think we’d better get up after all. The artillery observer next door seems to have scarpered ages ago!’

We were unwise enough always to take our boots off. By the time we were finished, the British usually were too, and we could sit down at the ridiculously small table, drink our sour, stewed coffee, and light a morning cigar. In the afternoons, we mocked the British gunners by lying out on a tarpaulin and doing some sunbathing. In other respects, too, our shack was an entertaining place to be. As we lay idly on our wire-sprung beds, enormous earthworms would come nosing out of the earthen wall; if we interfered with them, they would show a surprising turn of speed, disappearing back into their holes. A gloomy mole occasionally came snuffling out of his warren; his appearances always greatly enlivened our siesta time.

On 12 June, I was told to take a troop of twenty men and invest an outpost on the company front. It was late when we left the trench and headed along a footpath winding through the hilly countryside, into the pleasant evening. Dusk was so far advanced that the poppies in the abandoned fields seemed to merge with the bright-green grass. In the declining light, I saw more and more of my favourite colour, that red which shades into black that is at once sombre and stimulating.

Whatever thoughts we might have had we kept to ourselves as we walked silently over the flowery slopes, with our rifles over our shoulders, and twenty minutes later we had reached our destination. In whispers the post was taken over, a guard was mounted and then the men who had been relieved slipped off into the dark.

The outpost leaned against a steep little slope, with a line of hurriedly dug foxholes. Behind it, a hundred yards or so back, a small tangle of woodland merged with the night. In front and to the right rose two hills across which ran the British lines. One of them was crested by the ruins of the auspiciously named ‘Ascension Farm’. A little path led between the hills, in the general direction of the enemy.

That was where, while inspecting my sentries, I ran into Sergeant-Major Hackmann and a few men from the 7th; they were just about to go out on patrol. Even though I wasn’t supposed to leave the outpost, I decided to join them for the hell of it.

Adopting a type of movement of my own devising (of which more later), we had crossed two entanglements, and crested the hill, strangely without encountering any sentries, when we heard the sounds of the British digging to the right and left of us. Later on, I realized that the enemy must have withdrawn his sentries to have them out of the way for the ambush I will go on to describe.

The movement that I alluded to a moment ago consisted in letting members of a patrol go forward one at a time when there was a chance that we might encounter the enemy at any moment. So there was never more than one man in front, taking it in turn to risk being the one shot by a hidden sentry, while the others were all at his back ready to lend support at a moment’s notice. I took my turn with the rest, even though my presence with the rest of the patrol might have mattered more; but there is more to war than such tactical considerations.

We crawled around several digging parties, as there were unfortunately large wire obstacles between them and ourselves. After quickly rejecting the rather eccentric sergeant-major’s suggestion that he might pretend to be a deserter, and keep the enemy distracted until we had gone around the first enemy sentries, we crept back to the outpost.

There is something stimulating about such excursions; the heart beats a little faster, and one is bombarded by fresh ideas. I resolved to dream away the mild night, and rigged up a nest for myself in the tall grass on the slope, lining it with my coat. Then I lit my pipe as discreetly as I could, and drifted off on the wings of my imagination.

In the middle of my ‘pipe dreams’, I was startled by a distinct rustling coming from the woods and the meadow. In the presence of the enemy, one’s senses are always on the qui vive, and it’s a strange thing that one can feel sure, even on the basis of rather ordinary sounds: This is it!

Straight away the nearest sentry came rushing up to me: ‘Lieutenant, sir, there are seventy British soldiers advancing on the edge of the wood!’

Though somewhat surprised at such a precise count, I hid in the tall grass on the slope, along with four riflemen, to wait and see what happened next. A few seconds later, I saw a group of men flitting across the meadow. As my men levelled their rifles at them, I called down a soft: ‘Who goes there?’ It was NCO Teilengerdes, an experienced warrior from the 2nd, collecting up his excited unit.

The other units quickly arrived. I had them form into a line stretching from the slope to the wood. A minute later, they were standing ready, with fixed bayonets. It couldn’t hurt to check the alignment; in such situations, you can’t be too pedantic. As I was upbraiding a man who was standing a little back, he replied: ‘I’m a stretcher-bearer, sir.’ He had his own rules to follow. Relieved, I ordered the men to advance.

As we strode across the strip of meadow, a hail of shrapnel flew over our heads. The enemy was laying down a dense fire in an attempt to disrupt our communications. Involuntarily, we slipped into a jogtrot, to reach the lee of the hill in front of us.

Suddenly, a dark form arose out of the grass. I tore off a hand-grenade and hurled it in the direction of the figure, with a shout. To my consternation, I saw by the flash of the explosion that it was Teilengerdes, who, unnoticed by me, had somehow run on ahead, and tripped over a wire. Fortunately, he was unhurt. Simultaneously, we heard the sharper reports of British grenades, and the shrapnel fire became unpleasantly concentrated.

Our line melted away, in the direction of the steep slope, which was experiencing heavy fire, while Teilengerdes and I and three men stayed put. Suddenly one of them jogged me: ‘Look, the British!’

Like a vision in a dream, the sight, lit only by falling sparks, of a double line of kneeling figures at the instant in which they rose to advance, etched itself into my eye. I could clearly make out the figure of an officer on the right of the line, giving the command to advance. Friend and foe were paralysed by this sudden, unexpected meeting. Then we turned to flee – the only thing we could do – the enemy, it seemed, still too paralysed to fire at us.

We leaped up and ran towards the slope. Even though I tripped over a wire laid treacherously in the tall grass and flew head over heels, I made it safely, and ordered my excited troops into a compressed line.

Our situation was now such that we were sitting under the bowl of fire, as under a tightly woven basket. What appeared to have happened was that in our advance we had disturbed the enemy’s flanking manoeuvre. We were at the foot of the slope, on a somewhat worn path. The wheel-ruts were enough to afford us some minimal protection against their rifles, because one’s instinctive response to danger is to press oneself as close as possible to mother earth. We kept our guns pointed at the wood, which meant that the British lines were behind us. This one circumstance unsettled me more than anything that might be going on in the wood, so, during the ensuing action, I took care to send occasional lookouts up the slope.

Suddenly the shelling ceased; we needed to steel ourselves for an attack. No sooner had our ears grown used to the surprising silence, than sounds of crackling and rustling were heard coming from the wood.

‘Halt! Who goes there? Password!’

We must have shouted for about five minutes, including the old 1st Battalion watchword ‘Luttje Lage’ – an expression for beer and a short, familiar to all Hanoverians; but all we got back was a muddle of voices. Finally I decided to give the order to shoot, even though there were some of us who felt certain they had heard some words of German. My twenty rifles discharged their bullets into the wood, bolts rattled, and soon we heard the wailing of wounded from the brush. I had an uneasy feeling, because I thought it was within the bounds of possibility that we were firing at a detachment sent to help us.

I was relieved, therefore, to see little yellow tongues of flame flash back, although they soon stopped. One man was hit in the shoulder, and the stretcher-bearer tended to him.

‘Hold your fire!’

Slowly the order took effect, and the shooting stopped. The tension in any case had been broken by our taking some action. Further calls for the password. I scraped together what little English I had, and shouted a few (I hoped, persuasive) words of encouragement: ‘Come here, you are prisoners, hands up!’

Thereupon, more confused shouting, which sounded to us like the German word

‘Rache, Rache!’ [‘Revenge, revenge!’]. A single man emerged from the edge of the wood and came towards us. One of the men made the mistake of shouting ‘Password!’ to him, causing him to stop irresolutely and turn back. Obviously a scout.

‘Shoot him down!’

A volley of a dozen shots; the figure subsided into the tall grass.

The little episode filled us with satisfaction. From the edge of the wood, once more there was the strange jabbering; it sounded as though the attackers were encouraging one another to advance against the mysterious defenders.

We stared intently at the dark line of wood. It began to get light, and a thin morning fog rose off the meadow.

Then we saw something that was a rarity in this war of long-range weapons. Out of the dark brush, a line of figures emerged and stepped on to the open meadow. Five, ten, fifteen, a whole line. Trembling fingers took off safety-catches. A distance of fifty yards, thirty, fifteen… Fire! The rifles barked for several minutes. Sparks flew as spurts of lead struck weapons and steel helmets.

Suddenly a shout: ‘Watch out, left!’ A mob of attackers was running towards us from the left, headed by an enormous figure with an outstretched revolver, and swinging a white club.

‘Left section! Left front!’

The men spun round, and welcomed the new arrivals in a standing posture. A few of the enemy, among them their leader, collapsed under the hurriedly fired-off shots, the others vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

Now was our moment to charge. With fixed bayonets and loud hurrahs, we surged into the little wood. Hand-grenades flew into the tangled undergrowth, and in no time at all we were back in control of our outpost, although admittedly without having come to grips with our elusive foe.

We assembled in an adjacent cornfield and gazed at each other’s pale and exhausted faces. The sun had risen radiantly. A lark was ascending, getting on our wicks with its trilling. It was all unreal after that feverishly intent night. While we handed round our canteens and lit cigarettes, we heard the enemy leaving along the path, with a few loudly lamenting wounded in tow. We even caught a glimpse of them, but not long enough to chase after and finish them off.

I went off to survey the battlefield. From the meadow arose exotic calls and cries for help. The voices were like the noise that frogs make in the grass after a rainstorm. In the tall grass we discovered a line of dead and three wounded who threw themselves at our feet and begged us for mercy. They seemed to be convinced that we would massacre them.

In answer to my question ‘Quelle nation?’ one replied: ‘Pauvre Rajput!’

So these were Indians we had confronted, who had travelled thousands of miles across the sea, only to give themselves a bloody nose on this god-forsaken piece of earth against the Hanoverian Rifles.

They were delicate, and in a bad way. At such short range, an infantry bullet has an explosive effect. Some of them had been hit a second time as they lay there, and in such a way that the bullets had passed longitudinally, down the length of their bodies. All of them had been hit twice, and a few more than that. We picked them up, and dragged them towards our lines. Since they were screaming like banshees, my men tried to hold their mouths shut and brandished their fists at them, which terrified them still more. One died on the way, but he was still taken along, because there was a reward for every prisoner taken, whether alive or dead. The other two tried to ingratiate themselves with us by calling out repeatedly: ‘Anglais pas bon!’ Why these people spoke French I couldn’t quite understand. The whole scene – the mixture of the prisoners’ laments and our jubilation – had something primordial about it. This wasn’t war; it was ancient history.

Returned to the line, we were received in triumph by the company, who had heard the sounds of fighting, and had been pegged back by a heavy artillery barrage, and our captives were much gawped at. Here I was able to set the minds of our captives at rest – they seemed to have been told the direst things about us. They thawed a little, and told me their names; one of them was Amar Singh. Their outfit was the First Hariana Lancers, a good regiment, I’m told. Then I retired with Kius, who took half a dozen photographs, to our hut, and had him treat me to celebratory fried eggs.

Our little skirmish was mentioned in the divisional orders for the day. With only twenty men we had seen off a detachment several times larger, and attacking us from more than one side, and in spite of the fact that we had orders to withdraw if we were outnumbered. It was precisely an engagement like this that I’d been dreaming of during the longueurs of positional warfare.

It turned out, by the way, that we lost a man in addition to the one who was wounded and that in mysterious circumstances. The fellow in question was barely fit for active service any longer, because an earlier wound had left him morbidly fearful. We only noticed he was missing the next day; I assumed that in a fit of panic he ran off into one of the cornfields, and there met his end.

The following evening, I received orders to occupy the outpost again. As the enemy might have dug himself in there by now, I took the wood in a pincer movement; I led one detachment, Kius the other. Here, for the first time, I adopted a particular mode of approaching a dangerous site, which consisted of having one man after another going around it. If the place was in fact occupied, a simple left- or rightward movement created a possibility for flanking fire. After the war, I included this manoeuvre in the Infantry Engagement Manual, under the name of ‘flanking file’.

The two detachments met up without incident at the slope -aside from the fact that Kius barely missed shooting me as he cocked his pistol.

There was no sign of the enemy, it was only on the path between the two hills that I had reconnoitred with Sergeant-Major Hackmann that a sentry challenged us, fired a flare and some live rounds. We made a note of the noisy young man for another time.

In the place where the night before we had beaten back the flank attack we found three bodies. They were two Indians and a white officer with two gold stars on his shoulder- straps – a first lieutenant. He had been shot in the eye. The bullet had exited through his temple and shattered the rim of his steel helmet, which I kept as a souvenir. In his right hand he still held the club – reddened with his own blood – and in his left a heavy Colt revolver, whose magazine had only two bullets left in it. He had evidently had serious intentions towards us.

In the course of the following days, more bodies were discovered in the undergrowth – evidence of the attackers’ heavy losses, which added to the gloomy atmosphere that prevailed there. As I was making my way through a thicket once, on my own, I was dismayed by a quiet hissing and burbling sound. I stepped closer and encountered two bodies, which the heat had awakened to a ghostly type of life. The night was silent and humid; I stopped a long time before the eerie scene.

On 18 June, the outpost was again attacked; on this occasion, things didn’t go so well for us. Panic developed; the men fled in all directions, and couldn’t be brought together again. In the confusion, one of them, Corporal Erdelt, ran straight towards the slope, tumbled down it, and found himself in the midst of a group of lurking Indians. He flung hand-grenades around, but was seized by the collar by an Indian officer, and hit in the face with a wire whip. Then his watch was taken off him. He was kicked and punched to make him march; but he successfully escaped when the Indians once lay down to avoid some machine-gun fire. After wandering around for a long time behind the enemy lines, he came back with nothing worse than a few bloody welts across his face.

On the evening of 19 June, I set off with little Schultz, ten men and a light machine-gun on a patrol from the now distinctly morbid-feeling place, to pay a call on the sentry on the path who had reacted so noisily to our presence there a few days ago. Schultz and his men went right, and I went left, to meet at the path, promising to come to one another’s aid if there was any trouble. We worked our way forward on our bellies through the grass and furze, stopping to listen every so often.

Suddenly, we heard the sharp rattle of a rifle bolt. We lay completely riveted to the ground. Anyone who’s been on a patrol will be familiar with the rapid succession of disagreeable feelings that flooded us in the next few seconds. You’ve at least temporarily lost the freedom of action, and you have to wait and see what the enemy will do.

A shot rang out through the oppressive silence. I was lying behind a clump of furze; the man on my right was dropping hand-grenades down on to the path. Then a line of bullets spurted in front of our faces. The sharp sound of the reports told us the marksmen were only a few feet away. I saw that we had fallen into a trap, and ordered retreat. We leaped up and ran back like crazy, while I saw that rifle fire had engaged my left-hand troop as well. In the middle of all this clatter, I gave up all hope of a safe return. Every moment I was expecting to be hit. Death was at our heels.

From the left, we were attacked with shrill hurrahs. Little Schultz admitted to me later he’d had a vision of a long tall Indian behind him with a knife, reaching out to grab him by the scruff of the neck.

Once, I fell and brought down Corporal Teilengerdes in the process. I lost steel helmet, pistol and hand-grenades. On, on! At last we reached the protective slope, and charged down it. Little Schultz and his people came round the corner at about the same time.

He reported to me breathlessly that at least he’d given the cheeky sentry a stiff rebuke in the form of a few hand-grenades. A man was dragged in who had been shot in both legs. All the others were unhurt. The worst thing was that the man who’d been carrying the machine-gun, a recruit, had fallen over the wounded man, and had left the machine-gun behind.

While we were still arguing the toss, and planning a follow-up expedition, an artillery bombardment began that reminded me of the one we’d had on the 12th, down to the hopeless confusion it started. I found myself with no weapon, alone on the slope with the wounded man, who dragged himself forward on both hands, creeping up to me, and wailed: ‘Please, Lieutenant, sir, don’t leave me!’

I had to, though, to go and organize our defences. The wounded man was at least taken in later the same night.

We occupied a row of shallow firing positions on the edge of the wood, feeling heartily relieved to see day break without further incident.

The following evening found us in the same place, with the aim of getting our machine-gun back, but suspicious noises we heard as we approached suggested there was once again a welcoming committee waiting for us, and we turned back.

We were therefore ordered to get the gun back by main force. At twelve o’clock the next night, following three minutes’ preliminary bombardment, we were to attack the enemy sentries and look for our gun. I had privately feared that its loss would make difficulties for us, but I put on a brave face and fired some ranging shots with some of the batteries myself in the afternoon.

At eleven o’clock, therefore, my companion in misfortune, Schultz, and I found ourselves back at that eerie spot where we had already had so many adventures and scrapes. The smell of decomposition in the humid air was too much. We had brought a few sacks of quicklime with us, and now sprinkled that on the bodies. The white stains loomed like shrouds out of the blackness.

Tonight’s other ‘undertaking’ began with our own machine-gun bullets whistling round our legs, and smacking into the slope. I had a furious argument with Schultz, who had given the machine-gunners their range. We made it up again, though, when Schultz discovered me behind a bush with a bottle of Burgundy, which I had brought along to strengthen me for the dubious venture.

At the agreed time, the first shell went up. It landed fully fifty yards behind us. Before we could wonder at this peculiar gunnery, a second had come down right next to us on the slope, and dusted us with earth. This time, I wasn’t even allowed to curse, as the artillery had been my responsibility.

After this somewhat discouraging overture, we went ahead, more for the sake of honour and duty than with any particular hope of success. We were lucky the sentries seemed to have quit their posts, otherwise we should have been accorded a rough welcome this time too. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to find the machine-gun; admittedly, we didn’t spend that much time looking for it either. It was probably long since safe in British hands.

On the way back, Schultz and I gave each other a piece of our minds: I over his instructions to the machine-gunners, he over the artillery targeting. And yet I had done my work so scrupulously I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. It wasn’t till later that I learned that guns always shoot short at night, and that I should therefore have added another hundred yards to the range. Then we discussed the most important aspect of the affair: the report. We wrote it in such a way that we were both satisfied.

As we were relieved the next day by troops from another division, there was no more argy-bargy. We were returned for the time being to Montbrehain, and marched from there to Cambrai, where we spent almost the entire month of July.

The outpost was finally lost the night after our departure.