Storm of Steel

Langemarck

Cambrai is a sleepy little town in the Artois, with a name full of historical associations. Its narrow old streets wind their way round an imposing town hall, ancient town gates, and many churches where the great Archbishop Fenelon once preached his sermons. Hefty towers rise out of a mass of pointed gables. Wide avenues lead to the well-kept town park, which is graced by a memorial to the aviator Bleriot.

The inhabitants are quiet, friendly people, who lead comfortable lives in their large, plain but well-furnished houses. A lot of pensioners spend their declining years there. The little town is justifiably known as ‘La ville des millionnaires’, because shortly before the war it could boast no fewer than forty such.

The Great War pulled the place out of its enchanted sleep, and turned it into the focal point of enormous battles. Brisk new life went clattering over the cobbles, and jangled the little windows, behind which anxious faces peeped out to try and see what on earth was going on. Strangers drank lovingly maintained cellars dry, jumped into mighty mahogany beds, and in their continual succession disturbed the contemplative ease of the people, who now stood huddled together on corners and in doorways of their unrecognizable little town, telling each other – not too loudly -horror stories about the occupation, and the certain prospects for the ultimate victory of their own.

The men lived in barracks, the officers were accommodated along the Rue des Liniers. During our time there, that street came to resemble a street of student digs; wide-ranging conversations out of windows, bouts of nocturnal singing, and various scrapes and adventures were the things with which we largely concerned ourselves.

Every morning, we moved out to exercise on the large square by the subsequently renowned village of Fontaine. I had the sort of task that was congenial to me, as Colonel von Oppen had entrusted me with assembling and training a body of storm troops. I had plenty of volunteers for this body, but found I preferred to stick to the tried-and-tested associates from my various patrols and missions. And since this was a new unit, I devised the rules and training myself.

My billet was most agreeable; my hosts, a kindly jewellers’ couple by the name of Plancot-Bourlon, rarely let me eat my lunch without sending up some delicacy or other. And in the evenings we often sat up over a cup of tea, played cards and chatted. The perennial question came up a lot, of course: Why does mankind have wars?

In these hours together, Monsieur Plancot often related tricks and pranks played upon one another by the idle and witty folk of Cambrai, who in peacetime had caused the streets and bars and markets to ring with laughter, and reminded me of my dear ‘Uncle Benjamin’.

For example, one particular joker had sent a letter to all the hunchbacks of the area, summoning them to appear before a certain notary over an important matter of an inheritance. Then, hiding behind a curtain in a house across the way at the hour in question with a few friends, he enjoyed the spectacle of seventeen furious rowdy goblins, assailing the poor notary.

There was another good story about an old spinster who lived opposite, who had a strange long and skew neck. Twenty years before, she had been known as a girl who was in a rush to get married. Six young fellows presented themselves, and to each she gladly gave permission to speak to her father. The following Sunday, a substantial coach drew up with the six suitors inside, each one with a bouquet of flowers. In her alarm and confusion, the girl locked the door and hid herself, while the young fellows delighted the street with their larking about.

Or this one: one day at the market, a notorious young man of Cambrai goes up to a farmer’s wife and, pointing to a soft white cheese prettily sprinkled with herbs, asks her:

‘How much do you want for that cheese?’

‘Twenty sous, monsieur!’

He gives her the twenty sous.

‘So the cheese belongs to me now, is that right?’

‘Of course, monsieur!’

‘So I can do whatever I want with it?’

‘But of course!’

Splat! he throws the cheese in her face, and leaves her standing there.

On 25 July, we left our pleasant temporary home, and travelled north to Flanders. We had read in the newspapers that an artillery battle had been raging there for weeks already, outdoing the Battle of the Somme, if not in intensity then in range.

In Staden, we detrained to the distant roar of cannon, and marched through the unfamiliar landscape towards the camp at Ohndank. Either side of the dead-straight military road were green, fertile, elevated beet fields and juicy pastures surrounded by hedges. Tidy farmhouses lay scattered about, with low overhanging thatched or tiled roofs, and bunches of tobacco hung on the walls to dry in the sun. The country people we passed were Flemish, and spoke in that rough tongue that we almost thought we understood. We spent the afternoon in farm gardens, where the enemy aviators could not see us. Occasional ships’ ordnance would fly over our heads, with a gurgling sound we could hear from far off, and hit near by. One dived into one of the many little streams in the area, and killed several men of the 91st, who happened to be bathing in it.

As evening approached, I went up to the front line with an advance detachment, to prepare the relief. We passed through the forest of Houthulst and the village of Koekuit to the reserve battalion, and on the way were forced to break stride by a few heavy shells. In the dark I could hear the voice of one recruit who was still unversed in our ways: ‘That lieutenant never seems to take cover.’

‘He knows what’s what,’ he was told by a member of the storm troop. ‘If there’s one on its way, then he’s the first to lie down.’

We only took cover now when it was necessary, but then we didn’t hang around. The degree of necessity is something that only an experienced man can determine, who can sense the course of the shell before the new soldier can hear the light fluttering of its approach. To hear better when things got hot, I would even exchange my steel helmet for a forage cap.

Our guides, who didn’t inspire complete confidence, advanced along endless box trenches. That’s the term for passages that are not dug into the ground, because they would instantly fill with water, but are built up between lines of sandbags and fascines. After that we brushed an amazingly dishevelled-looking wood, out of which, our guides told us, a regimental staff had been pushed back a few days ago by the small matter of a thousand ten-inch shells. ‘Such prodigality,’ I thought to myself.

After traipsing this way and that through the thick brush, we were finally left standing completely lost, and abandoned by our guides, on a rush-covered spot, surrounded by marshy pools of black water that gave back the moonlight. Shells plunged into the soft soil, sending up great sprays of mud that splattered down. At last our unhappy guide, with whom we were now pretty incensed, came back, claiming to have remembered the way. Then he proceeded to lead us astray again, as far as a dressing-station, over which, in short, regular intervals, shrapnels broke up, sending their balls and empty casings clattering through the boughs. The doctor on duty provided us with a better guide, who escorted us to the Mauseburg, the headquarters of the reserve line.

I straight away went on to the company of the 225th Regiment, which was to be relieved by our 2nd, and after a long search found a few houses in the cratered landscape that had been discreetly toughened on the inside with reinforced concrete. One of these had been smashed in the day before by a direct hit, and its inhabitants crushed as in a mousetrap by the collapsing roof plate.

For the rest of the night, I squeezed into the overcrowded concrete box of the company commander, a decent grunt, who whiled away the time with his servant over a bottle of schnapps and a large tin of salt pork, stopping often to shake his head and listen to the steadily increasing roar of the artillery. Then he would sigh for the good old days on the Russian front, and curse the way his regiment had been pumped out. In the end, my eyes simply fell shut.

My sleep was heavy and troubled; the high explosive shells falling all around the house in the impenetrable dark evoked extraordinary feelings of solitude and abandon in me. I pressed myself unconsciously against a man lying beside me on the pallet. Once, I was startled awake by a powerful impact. We lit the walls to check if the house had been breached. It turned out to have been a small shell that had exploded against the outer wall.

The following afternoon I spent with the battalion commander in the Mauseburg. In rapid sequence, the six-inch shells came down close to the command centre, while the captain, his adjutant and the orderly played unending rounds of skat, and handed round a soda bottle full of rotgut. Sometimes he would put down his cards to attend to a messenger, or, with concerned expression, wonder about the safety of our concrete blockhouse against the bombardment. In spite of his loyal conviction to the contrary, we finally convinced him that it wouldn’t stand up to a direct hit from above.

In the evening, the shelling waxed to a demented fury. Ahead of us, coloured flares went up in a continual stream. Dust-covered runners reported that the enemy was attacking. After weeks of drumming, the infantry battle was about to begin; we had come at the right time.

I returned to company headquarters, and waited for the company to arrive. They finally got in at four in the morning, during a vehement shelling session. I took charge of my platoon, and led it to its place, a concrete construction disguised by the ruins of a demolished house, in the middle of a huge cratered field of desperate horror.

At six in the morning, the dense Flanders fog lifted, and permitted us to view our situation in its full hideousness. Straight away, a swarm of enemy aeroplanes flew in low over our heads, surveying the battered terrain, and giving siren signals, while isolated infantrymen jumped for cover in shell-holes.

Half an hour later, the shelling commenced, washing over our little refuge like a typhoon. The forest of explosions gradually thickened into a solid whirling wall. We squatted together, every second expecting the annihilating hit that would blow us and our concrete blocks away, and leave our strongpoint level with the pitted desert all around.

And so the day passed, with mighty outbursts of shelling, and momentary quieter phases during which we sat and gritted our teeth.

In the evening, an exhausted runner turned up, and gave me an order from which I understood that the 1st, 3rd and 4th Companies would commence a counter-attack at ten to eleven in the morning, and the 2nd should wait to be relieved and then swarm into the front line. To gain strength for the hours ahead, I lay down, never guessing that my brother Fritz, whom I had supposed to be still in Hanover, was even now hurrying forward with a platoon from the 3rd Company, through the fire-storm close by our hut.

I was long kept from sleep by the cries of a wounded man whom a couple of Saxons had brought in. They had lost their way and had fallen asleep, completely exhausted. When they woke up the following morning, their comrade was dead. They carted him to the nearest shell-hole, scooped a couple of shovelfuls of earth over him, and mooched off, leaving behind them another of the countless unknown and unmarked graves of this war.

I didn’t wake from my deep sleep until eleven o’clock, washed myself in my steel helmet, and sent for further instructions to the company commander, who, to my consternation, had moved off without leaving word where. That’s war for you; things happen in a way you wouldn’t have thought possible on the exercise ground.

While I was still sitting on my pallet, cursing and wondering what to do, a runner arrived from Battalion HQ and told me to take over the 8th Company.

I learned that the 1st Battalion’s counter-attack last night had collapsed with heavy casualties, and that the survivors were defending themselves in a small wood ahead of us, the Dobschutz woods, and either side of it. The 8 th Company had been given the task of swarming forward to the wood to give support, but had been roughed up on open ground before even getting there by a heavy barrage, taking bad losses. Since their commander, First Lieutenant Budingen, was among those wounded, I should take them along myself.

After taking leave of my orphaned platoon, I set off with the orderly across the shrapnel-strewn wastes. A despairing voice stopped us on our stooping, scurrying progress. In the distance, a figure half out of his shell-hole was waving a bloodied stump at us. We pointed to the blockhouse we’d just left, and hastened on.

The 8 th, when I found them, were a despondent little bunch, clustered behind a row of blockhouses.

‘Platoon commanders! Three NCOs came forward and declared that a second advance in the direction of the Dobschutz woods could not be undertaken. True, heavy explosions reared up in front of us like a wall of fire. First, then, I had the platoons assemble behind three huts; each

one numbered fifteen or twenty men. Just then, the shelling turned to us. The confusion was indescribable. By the left blockhouse, a whole section went up in the air, then the right took a direct hit and buried Lieutenant Budingen, still lying there wounded, under several tonnes of rubble. It was like being pounded in a mortar and pestle. Deathly pale faces stared at each other, as the wounded wailed all round.

By now it probably didn’t matter whether we stayed put, took to our heels, or advanced. So I gave the order to follow me, and leaped into the midst of the shelling. After no more than a couple of bounds, a shell covered me with earth, and hurled me back into the last crater. I couldn’t think why I hadn’t been hit, because the shells were coming so thick and fast they practically brushed my head and shoulders, and they scoured open the ground under my feet like huge beasts. The fact that I ran through them without being touched could only be due to the way the ploughed earth gulped the shells down, before its resistance caused them to detonate. The plumes of the explosions didn’t travel laterally like bushes, but steeply up in a spear shape, like poplars. Others only brought up a little bell. Also, I began to notice that further forward the force of the shelling was lesser. After I had worked my way through the worst of it, I looked about me. The terrain was empty.

At last, two men emerged from clouds of dust and smoke, then another, then two more. With these five, I succeeded in reaching my objective.

In a half-exploded blockhouse sat the commander of the 3rd Company, Lieutenant Sandvoss, and little Schultz, with three heavy machine-guns. I was welcomed with loud hellos and a gulp of cognac, then they explained the situation to me, and a very disagreeable one it was too. The British were right up against us, and we had no contact with troops to the left or right. We could see that this corner was one fit only for warriors grizzled in powder fumes.

Out of the blue, Sandvoss asked me if I’d heard about my brother. The reader may imagine my consternation when I learned that he’d taken part in the night attack, and had been reported missing. He was the dearest to my heart; a feeling of appalling, irreplaceable loss opened up in front of me.

Then in walked a soldier, who told me that my brother was lying wounded in a nearby shelter. He pointed at a desolate-looking blockhouse, covered over by uprooted trees that had already been vacated by its defenders. I dashed through sniper fire, across a clearing, and walked in. What a reunion! My brother lay in a room full of the stink of death, surrounded by the groans of gravely wounded men. I found him in poor shape. As he’d advanced, he’d been hit by a couple of shrapnel balls, one of them had penetrated his lung, and the other shattered his right shoulder. There was a gleam of fever in his eyes; an opened-out gas mask was perched on his chest. It was only with great difficulty that he could move, speak, breathe. We squeezed each other’s hands, and said what had to be said.

It was clear to me that he couldn’t remain where he was, because at any moment the British might attack, or a shell might crush the already badly damaged hut. The best thing I could do for my brother was get him taken back right away. Even though Sandvoss was opposed to any further weakening of our numbers, I told the five men who had come with me to take Fritz to the medical shelter, ‘Columbus’s Egg’, and there pick up some men to collect the other casualties. We tied him up in a tarpaulin, slid a long pole through it, and two of the men shouldered it. One more handshake, and the sorry procession set off.

I watched the swaying burden being taken off through a forest of towering shell bursts. With each explosion I winced, till the little group had vanished into the haze of battle. I felt both that I was representing my mother, and that I would have to account to her for whatever happened to my brother.

After bandying a little with the slowly advancing British from the shell-holes at the front edge of the wood, I spent the night with my men, who had grown a little more numerous by now, and a machine-gun crew among the wreckage of the blockhouse. High-explosive shells of quite exceptional ferocity were coming down all the time, one of which just missed killing me that evening.

Towards morning, the machine-gun suddenly started rattling away, as some dark figures were approaching. It was a patrol from the 76th Regiment come to get in touch with us, and one of them was left dead. Mistakes like that happened quite frequently at that time, and one didn’t spend too much time anguishing over them.

At six in the morning, we were relieved by a detachment of the 9th, who gave me orders to occupy the Rattenburg with my men. On the way there, I had a cadet disabled by shrapnel.

The Rattenburg [Rats’ castle or fortress] turned out to be a shot-up shell of a building reinforced with concrete slabs, close to the swampy course of the Steenbach. The name fitted. We made our way in, feeling pretty shattered, and threw ourselves down on straw-covered pallets till a plentiful lunch and a revivifying pipe afterwards more or less restored us.

In the early afternoon, shelling with large and very large calibres began. Between six o’clock and eight, it was simply one explosion after the next; often the building was shaking and threatening to collapse from the horrible jolts of duds impacting near by. There were the usual conversations about the safety or otherwise of the structure. We though the concrete ceiling was fairly trustworthy; but as the ‘castle’ was close to the steep bank of the stream, we thought there was a chance that a shell with a low trajectory might undermine us, and send us, concrete and all, skittering down into the stream bed.

When the firing died down in the evening, I clambered over a slope, which was being buzzed around by a hornets’ nest of shrapnel, to the hospital shelter, ‘Columbus’s Egg’, to ask the doctor, who was just then examining the horribly mutilated leg of a man who was about to die, about my brother. I was overjoyed to learn that he had been shipped back in reasonably good shape.

Later on, the ration party appeared, bringing the company, now reduced to just twenty men, hot soup, canned beef, coffee, bread, tobacco and schnapps. We ate heartily, and handed the bottle of ‘98 proof round. Then we settled off to sleep, disturbed only by the swarming mosquitoes that bred along the stream, shelling, and occasional bombardments with gas.

At the end of that restless night, I was so fast asleep that my men had to wake me when the fire intensified to – in their eyes -an alarming degree. They reported that men were drifting back from the front line all the time, saying the line had been given up and the enemy was advancing.

Following the old soldier’s watchword that a good breakfast will hold body and soul together, I took some nourishment, lit a pipe, and then took a look around outside.

My view was somewhat restricted because we were swathed in thick smoke. The shelling grew more imposing by the minute, and soon reached that climactic stage that was so thrilling as to produce an almost amused indifference. The earth showered on to our roof incessantly; twice the building itself was hit. Incendiaries threw up heavy milk-white clouds, out of which fiery streaks dribbled to the ground. A piece of that phosphoric mass smacked down on to a stone at my feet, and I was able to watch it burn for minutes. Later on, we were told that men it had landed on had rolled around on the ground, without being able to quench the flames. Delay shells drilled themselves into the ground with a roar, throwing up flat casts of earth. Swathes of gas and fog crept slowly across the terrain. Rifle and machine-gun fire rang out from just ahead of us, a sign that the enemy must already be very near.

Down on the bed of the Steenbach, a group of men were wading through the constantly changing scenery of leaping geysers of mud. I saw among them the battalion commander, Captain von Brixen, with a bandaged arm, being supported by two ambulancemen, and I hurried down to him. He called to warn me that the enemy were pressing forward, and I should see that I found cover quickly.

Before long the first infantry bullets were smacking into the surrounding craters or bursting against masonry debris. More and more fleeing figures were disappearing into the haze behind us, while furious rifle fire spoke for the implacable defence of those holding on further forward.

The hour was at hand. We had to defend the Rattenburg, and I told the men, some of whom looked troubled, that we were not about to run away. They were allotted various loopholes, and our one and only machine-gun was set up in a window-opening. A crater was designated as a dressing-station, and a stretcher-bearer, who before long found himself with plenty of work on his hands, sat in it. I picked up a rifle off the floor, and hung a belt of cartridges round my neck.

As our band was very small, I tried to bolster it from the numbers of those who were drifting around leaderless. Most of them heard our appeal willingly enough, glad of the chance to join in somewhere, while others hurried on their way, having stopped in disbelief and seen what poor prospects we offered. It was no time for niceties. I ordered my men to aim at them.

Magnetically drawn by the barrels of the rifles, they slowly came nearer, even though one could see from their expressions that they were really most reluctant to keep us company. There were various excuses, prevarications, more or less compelling arguments.

‘But I don’t even have a gun!’

‘Then wait till someone gets shot, and use his!’

In the course of one last, massive intensification of the shelling, during which the ruins of the house were struck several times, and the pieces of brick came hurtling down on to our helmets, I was thrown to the ground by a fearful blow. To the amazement of the men, I picked myself up, unhurt.

After that titanic final drumroll, things got quieter. The shelling now passed over our heads, on to the Langemarck-Bixschoote road. We weren’t even that happy to see it. So far we hadn’t seen the wood for the trees; danger had come down at us on such a massive scale and in so many guises that we couldn’t really begin to cope with it. After the storm had passed over our heads, everyone had time to prepare themselves for what inevitably must come.

And come it did. The guns ahead of us fell silent. The defenders had been finished off. Out of the haze, a dense line of men began to approach. My men shot, concealed behind the ruins, the machine-gun was clicking away. As though smeared away, the attackers disappeared into the craters, and tied us down by their return of fire. On either flank, strong detachments began to march forward. Before long, we were surrounded by rifles.

The situation was hopeless; there was no point in merely sacrificing the soldiers. I gave the order for withdrawal. Now it was difficult to get the committed and tenacious soldiers to stop.

Taking advantage of a long cloud of smoke that hung down near the water, we made good our escape, partly wading through streams whose water went up to our hips. Although the noose around us was all but drawn tight, we still squirmed our way out. I was the last man out of our little strongpoint, supporting Lieutenant Hohlemann, who was bleeding badly from a wound to the head, but was still making jokes at his own expense.

As we crossed the road, we ran into the 2nd Company. Kius had heard of our situation, from wounded men going back, and had come, not at his own prompting, but in response to the urging of his men, to get us out.

It was a spontaneous initiative. We were moved, and it created in us a kind of happy euphoria, the sort of mood in which you want to pull up trees by the roots.

After a short discussion, we decided to stop and allow the enemy to catch us up. Here, too, there were artillerymen present, signallers, telephonists, and various stray bits and bobs, who could only be persuaded by force that, given the particular circumstances, they too were required to lie down with a rifle in the front line. By means of cajoling, ordering and rifle butts, we established a new defensive line.

Then we sat down in a trench that was more imagination than reality, and breakfasted. Kius pulled out his inevitable camera and took pictures. On our left there was a sudden commotion, coming from the outskirts of Langemarck. Our men fired at various figures who were running around, until I called a halt. Unhappily, an NCO came up and reported that a company of Fusilier Guards had dug in by the road, and had suffered casualties from our fire.

Thereupon I ordered us to advance, through dense rifle fire, to join them. We lost a few men, and Lieutenant Bartmer of the 2nd Company was gravely wounded. Kius stayed at my side, munching what was left of his bread and butter as he advanced. When we had occupied the road from where the terrain fell away down into the Steenbach, we saw that the British had purposed exactly the same thing. The nearest khaki-clad figures were only twenty yards away. The field was full of lines of men and marching columns, as far as the eye could see. Even the Rattenburg was already being swarmed all over.

They were completely unconcerned, so engrossed were they in what they were doing. One man had a roll of wire on his back, which he was slowly unspooling. Obviously they had seen hardly any fire, and were just cheerfully advancing. Even though they were in vastly superior numbers, we thought we would put a spoke in their wheel. There was a good deal of shooting, but aimed shooting. I saw a stout corporal from the 8th Company calmly rest his rifle on a splintered tree trunk; with every shot an attacker fell. The enemy were bewildered, and started hopping about this way and that, like rabbits, while clouds of dust were whirled up between them. Some were hit, the rest crept into shell-craters, to lie low until it got dark. The wheels had come off their advance; they had paid for it dearly.

At around eleven o’clock, rosette-decorated aircraft circled down towards us, and were driven away by fierce fire. In the middle of that crazy banging away, I had to laugh at one soldier who came up to me and wanted me to confirm that it was he with his rifle who had brought down one plane in flames.

Right after I’d occupied the roadway, I’d reported to regimental headquarters and called in support. In the afternoon, infantry columns, engineers and machine-gunners came to reinforce us. Taking a leaf from Old Fritz’s [Frederick the Great] tactical handbook, they were all stuffed into our already over-full front line. From time to time, the British snipers managed to kill one or two men who crossed the road without looking.

Almost four, and a very nasty bout of shrapnel ensued. The loads were flung right at the road. There was no doubt about it, the flyers had identified our new position, and it looked as if we were going to be in for some rough times.

And soon a violent bombardment followed, with light and heavy shells. We lay pressed together in the overcrowded, dead-straight roadside ditch. The fire danced before our eyes, twigs and clumps of clay whistled down upon us. To the left of me, a bolt of lightning flared up, leaving white, acrid steam. I crept over to my neighbour on all fours. He was motionless. Blood trickled from little jagged splinter wounds too numerous to count. Further right there were more heavy losses.

After a half-hour of this, there was quiet. Quickly we dug deep holes in the flat sides of the ditch, so as to have at least some protection against splinters in the event of a second attack. As we dug, our shovels encountered guns, ammunition belts and cartridges from 1914 – proof that this wasn’t the first time this ground had drunk blood. Our predecessors here had been the volunteers of Langemarck.

As dusk was falling, we were treated to a second helping. I squatted next to Kius in a little sitz-shelter that had cost us a fair few digging blisters. The ground was being tossed around like a ship’s plank under the close and very close explosions. We thought this might well be it.

My steel helmet pulled down over my brow, staring at the road, whose stones shot sparks when iron fragments flew off them, I chewed my pipe and tried to talk myself into feeling brave. Curious thoughts flashed through my brain. For instance, I thought hard about a French popular novel called he vautour de la Sierra that had fallen into my hands in Cambrai. Several times I murmured a phrase of Ariosto’s: ‘A great heart feels no dread of approaching death, whenever it may come, so long as it be honourable.’ That produced a pleasant kind of intoxication, of the sort that one experiences, maybe, on a rollercoaster. When the shells briefly abated, I heard fragments of the lovely song of ‘The Black Whale at Askalon’ coming from the man next to me, and I thought my friend Kius must have gone mad. But everyone has his own particular idiosyncratic method.

At the end of the shelling, a large splinter hit me in the hand. Kius flashed his torch at it, and saw it was only a flesh wound.

After midnight, it started to rain gently; patrols from a supporting regiment that had advanced as far as the Steenbach found only craters full of mud. The British had retreated behind the stream.

Exhausted by the strains of this momentous day, we settled down in our holes, except for the sentries. I pulled the ragged coat of my dead neighbour up over my head, and fell into an unquiet slumber. Towards dawn, I woke up shivering, and discovered my situation was sorry indeed. It was bucketing down, and the little rivulets on the road were all emptying themselves into my foxhole. I rigged up a dam, and baled out my resting-place with the lid of my mess-tin. As the rivulets deepened, I put up successive parapets on my earthworks, until in the end the weak construction gave way to the growing pressure, and, with a grateful gurgle, a dirty rush of water filled my foxhole up to the top. While I was busy fishing my pistol and helmet out of the mire, I watched my bread and tobacco go bobbing along the ditch, whose other denizens had suffered similar misfortunes to mine. Shivering and trembling, without a dry stitch on our bodies, we stood there knowing the next bombardment would find us utterly helpless, on the muddy road. It was a wretched morning. Once again, I learned that no artillery bombardment is as capable of breaking resistance in the same measure as the elemental forces of wet and cold.

In the wider scheme of the battle, however, that downpour was a real godsend for us, because it doomed the English push to bog down in its first, crucial days. The enemy had to get his artillery through the swampy cratered landscape, while we could trundle our ammunition along intact roads.

At eleven in the morning, as we were in the pit of despair, a saving angel appeared to us in the guise of a dispatch-rider who brought the order for the regiment to assemble in Koekuit.

On our march back, we saw just how difficult forward communications and supply must have been on the day of the attack. The roads were thick with soldiers and horses. Alongside a few limbers sieved with holes, twelve gruesomely shot-up horses blocked the road.

On a rain-slicked pasture, over which the milk-white balls of a few shrapnels hung like clouds, the rest of the regiment came together. It was a little band of men, of about company strength, and a couple of officers in the middle. The losses! Almost the entire complement of two battalions in officers and men. Grimly the survivors stood in the teeming rain, and waited to be assigned quarters. Then we got dried in a wooden hut, huddled round a burning stove, and, over a hearty breakfast, we once more felt courage flow back into our limbs.

In the early evening, the first shells hit the village. One of the huts was hit, and several men from the 3rd Company killed. In spite of the bombardment, we lay down betimes with the desperate hope that we wouldn’t be called upon to counter-attack or reinforce or otherwise be thrown out into the rain.

At three in the morning, the order came to move out. We marched down the corpse- and wreckage-strewn road to Staden. The shelling had come this far; we came upon an isolated crater ringed by twelve bodies. Staden, which at our arrival had seemed such a lively place, already had quite a few bombed houses to show. The bleak market-place was littered with domestic rubble. A family left the little town at the same time as us, driving ahead of them their only possession: a cow. They were simple people; the man had a wooden leg, the woman was leading the crying children by the hand. The wild sounds behind us cast a further pall over the sad scene.

The remnants of the 2nd Battalion were housed in an isolated farmyard, in the midst of juicy high pastures, behind tall hedges. There I was put in command of the 7th Company, with whom I was to share sorrow and joy until the end of the war.

In the evening, we sat in front of the old tiled stove, sipping a stiff grog, and listening to the renewed thunder of the battle.

A sentence caught my eye from a military communique in a newspaper: ‘The enemy was held along the line of the Steenbach.’

It was an odd thing that our apparently confused actions in the depths of the night had had such pronounced and public consequences. We had done our part towards bringing the attack, which had begun with such mighty force, to a halt. However colossal the quantities of men and materiel, the work at decisive points had been done by no more than a few handfuls of men.

Before long, we went up to the hayloft to lie down. In spite of our nightcaps, most of the sleepers still had vivid dreams, and tossed and rolled, as though the Battle of Flanders had to be fought all over again.

On 3 August, weighed down with the meat and fruits of this deserted province, we marched off to the station of the nearby town of Gits. In the station canteen, the reduced battalion, once more in fine fettle, drank coffee together, spiced by the earthy language of a couple of heavy Flemish beauties as waitresses. What especially tickled the men was the way that, following the regional custom, they addressed everyone, officers included, as ‘Du’.

After a few days, I got a letter from my brother Fritz, by now in hospital in Gelsenkirchen. He wrote that he would probably have a stiff arm and a rattling lung till the day he died.

From his account I excerpted the following passage, to complement my own narrative. It gives a vivid sense of how it felt to be an inexperienced soldier, dropped into the hurricane of the materiel battle.

‘“Fall in for the attack!” My platoon commander’s face peered down into our little foxhole. The three men with me ended their conversation and, cursing, got to their feet. I stood up, tightened my steel helmet, and stepped out into the gloaming.

‘The scene had changed; it had grown foggy now, and cool. The bombardment had moved off and its dull thunder was now assailing other parts of the vast battlefield. Planes were droning through the air, calming the anxiously raised eye by displaying large Maltese crosses painted on the undersides of their wings.

‘I went one more time to the spring, which still looked remarkably clean and pure amidst all the rubble and debris, and filled my water-bottle.

‘The company formed up by platoons. Quickly I clipped four hand-grenades on to my belt, and went to my section, from which two men were missing. There was barely time to take down their names before the whole thing was set in motion. The platoons proceeded in single file through the cratered landscape, skirted around bits of timber, pressed against hedges, and jangling and thumping made their way towards the enemy.

‘The attack was to be carried out by two battalions; ours and one battalion from the regiment next to ours. Our orders were short and sharp. British units who had got across the canal were to be repulsed. My role in this undertaking was to remain with my section far forward, to be in position for a British counter-attack.

‘We reached the ruins of a village. Out of the hideously scarred soil of Flanders rose black, splintered trunks of trees, all that was left of what had once been a large forest. Vast swathes of smoke hung around, and dimmed the evening with their heavy, gloomy clouds. Over the naked earth, which had been so pitilessly and repeatedly ripped open, hovered choking yellow or brown gases that drifted sluggishly about.

‘We were ordered to prepare for a gas attack. At that moment, a huge bombardment set in – the British must have been made aware of our advance. The earth leaped up in hissing fountains, and a hail of splinters swept over the land like a shower of rain. For an instant, each man froze motionless, then they started running in all directions. I heard the voice of our battalion commander, Captain Bockelmann, shouting some command at the top of his voice, but I was unable to understand.

‘My men had vanished. I found myself with some other platoon, and together we pressed towards the ruins of a village that the implacable shells had levelled. We broke out our gas masks.

‘Everyone threw themselves to the ground. Next to me on the left knelt Lieutenant Ehlert, an officer whom I’d come across first at the Somme. Next to him was an NCO, lying down, peering into the distance. The force of the barrage was terrific; I confess it exceeded my wildest notions. It was a wall of yellow flame flickering in front of us; a hail of clods of earth, bricks and iron splinters that battered down on our heads, striking sparks from our steel helmets. I had the sensation that it had become harder to breathe, and that whatever air was left in this iron-charged atmosphere was no longer quite sufficient for my lungs.

‘For a long time I stared into that glowing witches’ cauldron, the furthest point of which was the jabbing fire from the mouth of a British machine-gun. The thousandfold bee-swarm of these shells that flowed over us was past hearing. I realized that our attack, which had been prepared by a mere half-hour’s drumfire, was already smashed before it could properly begin by this immense defensive shelling. Twice in quick succession, an incredible din seemed to swallow up all the other noise. Shells of the very largest calibre exploded. Whole fields of rubble took off, revolved in the air and smashed to the ground with an infernal racket.

‘In response to a yell from Ehlert, I looked right. He raised his left hand, gestured to people behind him, and leaped up. I got to my feet cumbersomely, and took off after him. My feet still felt as if they were burning, but the stabbing pain had relented somewhat.

‘I had covered barely twenty yards before, cresting a shell-crater, I was dazzled by a flaring shrapnel that exploded less than ten paces away from me, and about ten feet off the ground. I felt two blows against my chest and shoulder. I let go of my rifle, and staggered backwards, before rolling back into the crater. I could dimly hear Ehlert calling out as he rushed past: “He’s hit!”

‘He was not to see another day. The attack failed, and on his way back, he and all his surviving comrades were killed. A shot through the back of the head ended the life of this brave officer.

‘When I woke up after being unconscious for I don’t know how long, things had quietened down. I tried to pull myself up, as I was lying head down in the crater, but felt violent pain in my shoulder with every move. My breathing was shallow and sporadic, my lungs couldn’t take in enough air for me. Hit in lung and shoulder, I thought, remembering the two buffets I’d received (they hadn’t hurt at all) earlier. I abandoned my pack and belt and, in an access of utter indifference, even my gas mask. I kept my steel helmet on, and hung my water-bottle off a loop on my tunic.

‘I managed to get out of the crater. After no more than about five steps of a laborious crawl, I broke down in another crater. After another hour, I made another attempt, since the battlefield was once more being shaken by light drumfire. That attempt also got me nowhere. I lost my precious water-bottle, and sank into a state of total exhaustion, from which I was woken, much later, by a burning thirst.

‘It started raining gently. I managed to collect some dirty water in my helmet. I was utterly disorientated, with no notion of where the German lines were running. It was one crater next to another, one wider and deeper than the one before, and from the bottom of these deep pits all you could see were clay walls and a grey sky. A storm drew up, its thunders rather stolen by the onset of a new drumfire. I pressed myself tight against the wall of my crater. A lump of clay struck my shoulder; heavy splinters passed over my head. Gradually, I lost all sense of time as well; I didn’t know if it was morning or evening.

‘Two men appeared, crossing the field in great bounds. I shouted out to them in German and English; they vanished into the mist like shadows, without appearing to have heard me. At last, three other men came towards me. I recognized one of them as the NCO who had lain next to me the previous day. They took me with them to a little hut nearby – it was full of wounded men, who were being tended by a couple of medical orderlies. I had lain thirteen hours in the crater.

‘The huge bombardment of the battle was working away like a monstrous hammering and rolling mill. Shell after shell smacked down next to us, often drenching the roof with sand and earth. I was bandaged up, and given a fresh gas mask, a piece of bread and red jam, and a little water. The orderly looked after me as though I’d been his own son.

‘The British were beginning to press forward. They approached with little leaps and bounds, then ducked away in the craters. Shouts and calls were heard from outside.

‘Suddenly, bespattered with mud from his boots to his helmet, a young officer burst in. It was my brother Ernst, who at regimental HQ the day before had been feared dead. We greeted one another and smiled, a little stiffly, with the emotion. He looked about him and then looked at me with concern. His eyes filled with tears. We might both be members of the same regiment, true, but even then this reunion on the battlefield had something rare and wonderful about it, and the recollection of it has remained precious to me. After just a few minutes, he left me, and brought in the last five members of his company. I was laid on a tarpaulin, they stuck a sapling through the straps, and shouldered me off the battlefield.

‘My carriers took it in turn to carry me. Our little sedan-chair veered now right, now left, zigzagging to avoid the frequent shells. Forced on occasion to take cover abruptly, they dropped me a few times, sending me bashing into shell-holes.

‘At last we reached the tin- and concrete-cladded shelter that went by the odd name of “Columbus’s Egg”. I was dragged down the stairs and laid on a wooden pallet. With me in the room were a couple of officers I didn’t know, sitting and listening in silence to the hurricane concert of the artillery. One, I later heard, was Lieutenant Bartmer, the other a medical orderly by the name of Helms. Never have I enjoyed a drink more than the mixture of rainwater and red wine that he gave me to sip. I was burning up with fever. I struggled for breath, and felt oppressed by the notion that the concrete ceiling of the shelter was on my chest, and that with each breath I had to heave it up.

‘The assistant surgeon Koppen came in, himself quite out of breath. He had run across the battlefield, shells following him at every step. He recognized me, bent over me, and I saw his face contort to a soothingly smiling grimace. After him came my battalion commander, and when, strict man that he was, he patted me kindly on the back, I had to smile because I got the idea that the Kaiser himself would appear any moment, and ask how I was doing.

‘The four of them sat together, drinking out of tin cups and whispering among themselves. I realized that they must have been talking about me at one stage, and then I heard odd words like “brothers”, “lung” and “wound”, which I couldn’t quite make sense of. Then they went back to talking aloud, about the state of the battle.

‘Mortally tired as I was, a feeling of happiness now sneaked in that grew stronger and stronger, and which stayed with me throughout the ensuing weeks. I thought of death, and the thought did not disturb me. Everything within me and around me seemed stunningly simple, and, with the feeling “You’re all right,” I slid away into sleep.’