Storm of Steel

Flanders Again

The day I returned from my furlough, we were relieved by Bavarian troops, and billeted at first in the nearby village of Labry.

On 17 October we were entrained, and after travelling for a day and a half found ourselves back on Flemish soil, having last left it barely two months previously. We spent the night in the small town of Izegem, and the following morning marched to Roulers, or, to give it its Flemish name, Roeselare. The town was in the early stages of destruction. There were still shops with goods in them, but the inhabitants were already living in their cellars, and the ties of bourgeois existence were being loosened by frequent bombardment. With the war raging on all sides, a shop window opposite my quarters containing, of all things, ladies’ hats, seemed the height of absurd irrelevance. At night, looters broke into the abandoned houses.

I was the only person in my billet on the Ooststraat to be living above ground. The building belonged to a draper, who had fled at the beginning of the war, leaving an old housekeeper and her daughter to look after it. The two of them were also minding a little orphan girl whom they had found wandering the streets as we were marching in, and of whom they knew nothing, not even her name or her age. They all were terrified of bombs, and begged me, practically on their knees, not to leave light on upstairs for the wicked aeroplanes. I have to say, I laughed on the other side of my face when I was standing in the window with my friend Reinhardt, watching an English plane flitting over the rooftops in the beam of a searchlight, a huge bomb came down nearby, and the air pressure wrapped the window-panes about our ears.

For the next round of fighting, I had been designated as an intelligence officer, and sent to regimental staff. To learn a little more, I looked up the 10th Bavarian Regiment, whom we were to relieve, ahead of time. I found their commander to be friendly enough, even though he chided me over the non-regulation ‘red ribbon’ on my cap, which ought really to have been covered over with grey, so as not to draw any gunfire to the spot.

Two orderlies took me to the clearing-station, which was said to have a very good view of the front. No sooner had we left headquarters than a shell stirred up the meadow.

My guides were quite adept at avoiding the shelling – which towards noon turned into an uninterrupted rumble – by taking byways through the poplar woods that were dotted about. They worked through the gold-gleaming autumnal landscape with the instinct of the experienced modern warrior, who, even in the densest bombardment, can hit on a path that offers at least reasonable odds of getting through.

On the doorstep of an isolated farmyard that appeared to have been freshly bombed, we saw a man lying face down on the ground. ‘He’s stopped one!’ said the stolid Bavarian. ‘Air’s got a high iron content,’ said his companion, looking around appraisingly, and strode quickly on. The clearing-station lay the other side of the heavily shelled Passchendaele-Westroosebeke road. It was rather like the one I had commanded in Fresnoy, having been installed next to a building that had been reduced to a pile of rubble, and having so little cover that the first half-accurate shell would knock it for six. I was briefed by three officers, who seemed to be leading a very companionable cave-life in the place and were pleased that they were to be relieved, about the enemy, the position and how to approach, and then went by way of Roodkruis-Oostnieuwkerke, back to Roulers, where I reported to the colonel.

As I passed through the streets of the little town, I kept an eye out for the cosy names of the numerous little pubs that are such an apt expression of whatever the Flemish equivalent for dolce vita is. Who wouldn’t feel tempted by a pub-sign called ‘De Zalm’ [Salmon], ‘De Reeper’ [Heron], ‘De Nieuwe Trompette’, ‘De drie Koningen’ or ‘Den Oliphant’? Even to be welcomed in the intimate ‘Du’ form in that pithy and guttural language puts one right at ease. May God permit this splendid country, which has so often in its history been the battlefield for warring armies, to rise again from this war with its old quality intact.

In the evening, the town was once again bombed. I went down into the cellar, where the women were huddled trembling in a corner, and switched on my torch to settle the nerves of the little girl, who had been screaming ever since an explosion had knocked out the light. Here was proof again of man’s need for home. In spite of the huge fear these women had in the face of such danger, yet they clung fast to the ground which at any moment might bury them.

On the morning of 22 October, with my reconnaissance group of four men, I started off for Kalve, where the regimental staff were to be relieved this morning. At the front, there was very heavy fire, whose lightnings tinged the mist blood red. At the entrance to Oostnieuwkerke a building was hit by a heavy shell and collapsed just as we were about to pass it. Lumps of debris trundled across the street. We tried to go around the place, but ended up having to go through it after all, as we weren’t sure of the direction to Kalve. As we hurried on, I called out for directions to an NCO who was standing in a doorway. Instead of giving me an answer, he thrust his hands deeper into his pockets, and shrugged his shoulders. As I couldn’t stand on ceremony in the midst of this bombardment, I sprang over to him, held my pistol under his nose, and got my information out of him that way.

It was the first time in the war that I’d come across an example of a man acting up, not out of cowardice, but obviously out of complete indifference. Although such indifference was more commonly seen in the last years of the war, its display in action remained very unusual, as battle brings men together, whereas inactivity separates them. In a battle, you stand under external pressures. It was on the march, surrounded by columns of men moving out of the battle, that the erosion of the war ethos showed itself most nakedly.

In Roodkruis, a little farmstead at a fork in the road, things got really worrying. Limbers chased across the shelled road, troops of infantry wended along through the brush either side of the road, and innumerable wounded men dragged themselves back. We encountered one young artilleryman who had a long, jagged splinter sticking out of his shoulder, like a spear. He passed us, wandering like a somnambulist, never once looking up.

We turned right off the road, to the regimental headquarters, which stood in a ring of fire. Nearby, a couple of telephonists were laying their wires across a cabbage field. A shell landed right next to one of them; we saw him crumple, and thought he was done for. But then he picked himself up, and calmly continued laying his wire. As the headquarters consisted of a tiny concrete blockhouse that barely had room for the commander, an adjutant and an orderly, I looked for a place nearby. I moved in, with intelligence, gas-protection and trench-mortar officers, to a wooden shack that didn’t exactly strike me as the embodiment of a bomb-proof abode.

In the afternoon, I went up the line, seeing as news had come in that the enemy had that morning attacked our 5th Company. My route went via the clearing-station to the Nordhof, essentially a former farmhouse, in whose ruins the commander of the battalion in reserve was staying. From there, a path, not always recognizable as such, led to the commander of the fighting troops.

The heavy rains of the past few days had turned the crater field into a morass, deep enough, especially around the Paddelbach, to endanger life. On my wanderings, I would regularly pass solitary and abandoned corpses; often it was just a head or a hand that was left protruding from the dirty level of the crater. Thousands have come to rest in such a way, without a sign put up by a friendly hand to mark the grave.

After the extremely sapping crossing of the Paddelbach, which was only possible after improvising a bridge from fallen poplars, I came across Lieutenant Heins, the commander of the 5th Company, along with a handful of loyal men, in an enormous shell-crater. The crater position was on a hill, and as it wasn’t completely inundated, undemanding grunts might find it habitable. Heins told me that that morning a British line had appeared and then disappeared again, when it had come under fire. They in turn had shot a few men from the 164th, who had run off at their approach. Other than that, everything was tiptop; I returned to headquarters, and reported to the colonel.

The following day, our lunch was rudely interrupted by some shells landing hard by our wooden walls, sending up spurts of dirt that slowly spiralled down on to our tar-paper roof. Everyone streamed out of the hut; I fled to a nearby farmhouse, and, because it was raining, went inside. That evening, precisely the same chain of events, only this time I stayed in the open, as the rain had stopped. The next shell flew into the middle of the collapsing farmhouse. That’s the role of chance in war. More than elsewhere, small causes can have a vast effect.

On 25 October, we had already been driven out of our shacks by eight o’clock, one of them being nailed by only the second shell to be fired. Further shells flew into the damp pastures. They gave the impression of just expiring there, but they tore up considerable craters. Alerted by my experience of the day before, I sought out an isolated and confidence-inspiring crater in the large cabbage field behind headquarters, and didn’t leave it for quite some time afterwards. It was on that day that I got to hear the bad news of the death of Lieutenant Brecht, who had fallen in battle as a divisional observation officer in the crater field just right of the Nordhof farm. He was one of those few who, even in this war of materiel, always had a particular aura of calm about him, and whom we supposed to be invulnerable. It’s always easy to spot people like that in a crowd of others – they were the ones who laughed when there were orders to attack. Hearing of such a man’s death inexorably led to thoughts of my own mortality.

The morning hours of 26 October were filled by drumfire of unusual severity. Our artillery too redoubled its fury on seeing the signals for a barrage that were sent up from the front. Every little piece of wood and every hedge was home to a gun, whose half-deaf gunners did their business.

As wounded men going back were making exaggerated and unclear statements about a British advance, I was sent off to the front at eleven o’clock with four men, for more accurate information. Our way led through heated fire. We passed numerous wounded, among them Lieutenant Spitz, the commander of the 12th, with a shot in the chin. Even before we got to the command dugout we came under aimed machine-gun fire, a sure sign that the enemy must have forced our line back. My suspicion was confirmed by Major Dietlein, the commander of the 3rd Battalion. I found the old gentleman engaged in crawling out of the doorway of his three-parts inundated blockhouse, and fishing in the mud for his meerschaum cigar-holder.

The British had forced a way through our front line, and had occupied a ridge from where they commanded the Paddelbach basin and our battalion headquarters. I entered the change in the position with a couple of red strokes on my map, and then geed the men up for their next sapping run through the mud. We bounded across the terrain overlooked by the British, got behind the crest of the next elevation, and from there, more slowly, advanced to the Nordhof. To the right and left of us shells splashed down in the swamp and sent up vast mud mushrooms ringed with innumerable lesser splatters. The Nordhof also needed to be got through in a hurry, as it was under fire from high-explosive shells. Those things went off with a peculiarly nasty and stunning bang. They were fired over, a few at a time, with only short intervals between them. Each time, we had to make some rapid ground and then wait for the next round in a shell-hole. In the time between the first distant whine and the very close explosion, one’s will to live was painfully challenged, with the body helpless and motionless left to its fate.

Shrapnels were also present in the compound, and one threw its freight of balls in our midst, with a multiple clatter. One of my companions was struck on the back of the helmet, and thrown to the ground. After lying there stunned for some time, he struggled to his feet and ran on. The terrain around the Nordhof was covered with a lot of bodies in frightful condition.

Since we went about our work with some diligence, we often got to see places that until very recently had been strictly no go. It gave us an insight into all the other things that went on in out-of-the-way places. Everywhere we saw traces of death; it was almost as though there wasn’t a living soul anywhere in this wasteland. Here, behind a dishevelled hedge, lay a group of men, their bodies covered with the fresh soil that the explosion had dropped on them after killing them; there were two runners lying by a crater, from which the acrid fumes of explosive were still bubbling up. In another place, we found many bodies in a small area: either a group of stretcher-bearers or an errant platoon of reservists that had been found by the centre of a ball of fire, and met their end. We would surface in these deadly places, take in their secrets at a glance, and disappear again into the smoke.

After hurrying unscathed across the heavily bombarded stretch the other side of the Passchendaele-Westroosebeke road, I was able to report to Colonel von Oppen.

The next morning, I was sent to the front at six o’clock with instructions to establish whether, and if so where, the regiment was in touch with the units on its flanks. On my way, I ran into Sergeant-Major Ferchland, who was taking the 8th Company orders to advance to Goudberg, and, in the event of there being a gap between us and the regiment on the left, to close it. In the speedy performance of my duty, I could do nothing better than fall in with him. After searching for some time, we finally found the commander of the 8th, my friend Tebbe, in a rather inhospitable part of the crater landscape close to the clearing-station. He was not pleased with the order to perform such a visible movement in broad daylight. During our laconic conversation, further oppressed by the indescribable dreariness of the craters in the early light, we lit cigars, and waited for the company to collect itself.

After no more than a few paces, we came under carefully aimed infantry fire from the opposing heights, and had to go on alone, each man dodging from crater to crater. Crossing the next ridge, the fire became so intense that Tebbe gave orders to occupy a crater position until nightfall. Puffing on his cigar, he reviewed his line.

I made up my mind to go forward and check on the size of the gap myself, and rested awhile in Tebbe’s crater. The enemy’s artillery was soon finding its range, to punish the company for its bold advance. A projectile smashing down on the rim of our little refuge and leaving both my face and my map spattered with mud, told me it was time to go. I bade goodbye to Tebbe, and wished him all the best for the hours ahead. He called after me: God, just let it be night, the morning will come by itself!’

We picked our way across the Paddelbach basin, where we were within view of the enemy, ducking behind the foliage of shot-over poplars, and using their trunks to balance along. From time to time one of us would disappear up to the hips in mire, and would certainly have drowned but for the presence of his comrades and their helpfully extended rifle butts. I aimed for a blockhouse that had a group of soldiers standing around it. In front of us, a stretcher carried by four bearers was heading in the same direction as we were. Puzzled to see a wounded man being carried towards the front, I took a look through my binoculars, and saw a line of khaki-clad figures with flat steel helmets. At the same instant, the first shots rang out. As there was nowhere to take cover, we had no option but to run back, with the bullets plugging into the mud all round us. The chase through the morass was very fatiguing; but the minute we stopped, completely out of breath, and offered the British a still target, a clutch of high-explosive shells gave us our second wind. The shells had the virtue, moreover, of obscuring us from view with their smoke. The least pleasant aspect of this chase was the prospect that almost any sort of wound was enough to see you to a watery grave. We hurried along the crater rims, as along the narrow walls of a honeycomb. Trickles of blood here and there indicated that some unlucky men must have gone there before us.

Dog tired, we reached the regimental headquarters, where I handed in my sketches, and gave a report on the situation. We had investigated the gap. Tebbe would advance under cover of night to fill it.

On 28 October, we were relieved in turn by the 10th Bavarian reserves, and, prepared to step in if needed, were put up in villages in the back area. The general staff withdrew as far as Most.

At night we sat in the bar of an abandoned public house, and celebrated the promotion and engagement of Lieutenant Zurn, who had just got back from leave. For such behaviour we were duly punished the following morning by being woken at six by a gigantic drumfire, which, though far away, still shattered my windows. The alarm went off immediately. Obviously, the closing of the gap had not gone completely according to plan. The rumour was going around that the British had broken through. I spent the day waiting for orders at the observation point, in an area lying under sparse fire. A light shell drove through the window of one building, sending three wounded artillerymen staggering out, covered in brick dust. Three more lay dead under the rubble.

The next morning, I received the following orders from the Bavarian commander: ‘By repeated enemy pressure, the position of the regiment to the left of us has been further pushed back, and the gap between the two regiments greatly widened. In view of the danger that the regiment might be outflanked on the left, yesterday evening the 1st Battalion of the 73 rd Fusiliers moved forward to counter-attack, but was apparently dispersed by the barrage, and never reached the enemy. This morning, the 2nd Battalion was sent forward into the gap. We have at present no news of either. Information is required on the position of the 1st and 2nd Battalions.’

I set off on my way, and had only got as far as Nordhof when I met Captain von Brixen, the commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, who had the position sketched in his pocket. I copied it, and had thereby effectively carried out my task, but I went on anyway to the headquarters of the troops in the line, to effect a personal reconnaissance. The way was littered with dead, their pale faces staring up out of water-filled craters, or already so covered with mud that their human identity was almost completely masked. Many of the sleeves had the blue Gibraltar brassard.

The commanding officer was a Bavarian, Captain Radlmaier. This extremely diligent officer told me in some detail what Captain von Brixen had already told me in hasty outline. Our 2nd Battalion had suffered heavy casualties; among many others, the adjutant and the commander of the brave 7th. The adjutant, Lemiere, was the brother of the Lemiere who had commanded the 8th Company, and had fallen at Fresnoy. Both were from Liechtenstein, and both had volunteered to fight on the German side. Both died, shot in the mouth.

The captain pointed to a blockhouse a couple of hundred yards away that had been particularly doggedly defended yesterday. Shortly after the attack had begun, the man in command of it, a sergeant-major, saw a British soldier leading back three German prisoners. He picked him off, and acquired three more men for the defence. When they had used up all their ammunition, they tied a British captive to the door, in order to put a temporary stop to the firing, and were able to retire unobserved after nightfall.

Another blockhouse, this one under a lieutenant, was called upon to surrender; by way of reply, the German leaped out, grabbed the Englishman, and pulled him inside, to the astonishment of his watching troops.

That day, I saw little troops of stretcher-bearers going around the battlefield with raised flags, and not coming under fire. The only time the warrior got to see such scenes in this often subterranean war, was when the need for them had become too dire.

My return was impeded by a nasty irritant gas that smelled of rotten apples from the British shells that had saturated the ground. It made breathing difficult, and caused the eyes to tear up. After I’d made my report to headquarters, I met two officer friends of mine on stretchers outside the dressing-station, both gravely wounded. One was Lieutenant Ziirn, in whose honour we had celebrated only two nights before. Now he was lying on a door, half stripped, with the waxy colour that is a sure sign of imminent death, staring up at me with sightless eyes as I stepped out to squeeze his hand. The other, Lieutenant Haverkamp, had had an arm and a leg so badly smashed by shell splinters that a double amputation seemed probable. He lay, deathly pale, on his stretcher, smoking cigarettes which his bearers lit for him and put in his mouth.

Once again, our losses were appalling, especially of young officers. This second Battle of Flanders was a monotonous affair; it was fought on sticky, muddy ground, and it caused immense casualties.

On 3 November, we were put on trains at the station in Gits, still fresh in our memory from the first Flanders Campaign. We saw our two Flemish waitresses again, but they weren’t what they had been either. They too seemed to have been through some heavy action.

We were taken to Tourcoing, a pleasant sister town of Lille, for a few days. For the first and last time in the entire war, every man of the 7th Company slept on a feather bed. I was put up in a magnificent room in the house of a rich manufacturer on the Rue de Lille. I greatly enjoyed my first evening on a leather armchair in front of an open fire in a marble fireplace.

Those few days were used by all of us to enjoy the life that we’d had to fight so hard to cling on to. We still couldn’t quite grasp that for the time being we’d given death the slip, and we wanted to feel the possession of this new lease of life, by enjoying it in every way possible.