Storm of Steel

At the Cojeul River

Even before my furlough, on 9 December 1917, we were called upon to relieve the 10th Company in the front line after not many days of rest. The position was, as already mentioned, in front of the village of Vis-en-Artois. My sector was bordered on the right by the Arras-Cambrai road, and on the left by the boggy course of the Cojeul river, across which we stayed in touch with the neighbouring company by means of nocturnal patrols. The enemy lines were obscured from sight by a little rise in the ground between our two positions. Apart from occasional patrols who fiddled with our wires at night, and the hum of an electricity generator at Hubertus-Ferme not far off, the enemy infantry gave few signs of life. Distinctly unpleasant, though, were frequent attacks by gas shells, which caused quite a few casualties. These were delivered by several hundred iron pipes fitted into the ground, torched electrically in a flaming salvo.

As soon as it lit, the cry of gas went up, and whoever didn’t have his mask in front of his face by the time the things landed was in a bad way. In some places, the gas had such density that even the mask didn’t help, because there was simply no oxygen left in the air to breathe. And so we incurred losses.

My shelter was dug back into the vertical wall of a gravel pit that gaped behind the line, and was shelled almost every day. Behind it rose the blackened iron skeleton of a destroyed sugar factory.

That gravel pit was an eerie place indeed. In amongst the shell-holes where used weaponry and materials were dumped were the crooked crosses marking graves. At night, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and had to wait from the expiry of one flare to the going up of another if you weren’t to leave the duckboard path and come to a watery end in the Cojeul.

If I wasn’t busy with the construction of the trench, I spent my days in the icy shelter, reading and drumming my feet against the dugout frames to keep them warm. A bottle of creme de menthe in a niche in the limestone served the same purpose, and my orderlies and I swore by it.

We were freezing; but if the least little plume of smoke had gone up into the murky December sky from the gravel pit, the place would soon have been rendered uninhabitable, because the enemy seemed to take the sugar factory for our headquarters, and expended most of their powder on that old iron shell. So it was only really after dark that the life came back into our frozen bones. The little stove was lit, and spread a cosy warmth, as well as thick smoke. Before long the ration parties were back from Vis, and came clattering down the steps with their canteens, which were much awaited. And then, if the endless succession of Swedes, barley and dried vegetables happened to be interrupted for once by beans or noodles, why then, there was no limit to our contentment. Sometimes, sitting at my little table, I would listen happily to the earthy conversations of the orderlies, as they hunkered, wreathed in tobacco smoke, round the stove, where a pot of grog was steaming headily. War and peace, fighting and home-life, rest-billet and leaves were discussed in great detail, and there were a good few pithy sayings besides. For instance, the orderly went away on leave with the words: ‘There’s nothing like being in your own bed at home, and your old woman nuzzling you all over.’

On 19 January, we were relieved at four in the morning, and marched off through thick snow to Gouy, where we were to spend some time training for the imminent offensive. From the instructions issued by Ludendorff as far along the chain as company commanders, we concluded that there was a mighty do-or-die offensive in the offing.

We practised the almost-forgotten forms of skirmishing in line and open warfare, also there was a lot of target-practice with rifle and machine-gun. Since every village behind the line was full up to the last attic, every roadside was used for a target, and the bullets sometimes went whizzing around all over the shop, as if in a real battle. A machine- gunner from my company shot the commander of another regiment out of the saddle while he was reviewing some troops. Luckily, it was nothing more than a flesh wound in the leg.

Several times I had the company practise attacks on complicated trench networks, using live hand-grenades, to turn to account the lessons of the Cambrai battle. Here, too, there were casualties.

On 24 January, Colonel von Oppen left to take command of a battalion in Palestine. He had led the regiment, whose history is inextricably bound up with his name, from the autumn of 1914 without interruption. Colonel von Oppen was living proof that there is such a thing as a born leader. He was always surrounded by a nimbus of confidence and authority. The regiment is the largest unit whose members know one another; it’s the largest military family, and the stamp of a man like von Oppen shows clearly in thousands of common soldiers. Sad to say, his parting words: ‘See you back in Hanover!’ were never to come about; he died shortly afterwards of Asiatic cholera. Even after I’d heard the news of his death, I received a letter from him. I owe him a very great deal.

On 6 February, we returned to Lecluse, and on the 22nd, we were accommodated for four days in the cratered field left of the Dury-Hendecourt road, to do digging work in the front line. Viewing the position, which faced the ruined village of Bullecourt, I realized that part of the huge push which was expected up and down the whole Western Front would take place here.

Everywhere there was feverish building, dugouts were constructed, and new roads laid. The cratered field was plastered with little signs stuck in the middle of nowhere, with ciphered letters and numbers, presumably for the disposition of artillery and command posts. Our aeroplanes were up all the time, to keep the enemy from getting a look. To keep everyone synchronized, on the dot of noon every day a black ball was lowered from the observation balloons, which disappeared at ten past twelve.

At the end of the month, we marched back to our old quarters in Gouy. After several battalion and regimental drills, we twice rehearsed an entire divisional breakthrough, on a large site marked with white ribbons. Afterwards, the commander addressed us, giving us to understand that the storm would be let loose in the next few days.

I have happy memories of the last evening we sat round the table, heatedly discussing the impending war of movement. Even if, in our enthusiasm, we spent our last pennies on wine, what else did we need money for? Before long, we would either be through the enemy lines, or else in the hereafter. It was only by reminding us that the back area still wanted to live that the captain kept us from smashing all the glasses, bottles and plates against the wall. [In accordance with the German proverb ‘Scherben bringen Gluck’, shards or breakages are lucky.]

We had no doubt but that the great plan would succeed. Certainly, if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be through any fault of ours. The troops were in fine fettle. If you listened to them speak in their dry Lower Saxon tones of the forthcoming ‘Hindenburg Sprint’, you knew they would handle themselves as they always did: tough, reliable, and with a minimum of fuss.

On 17 March, after sundown, we left the quarters we had come to love, and marched to Brunemont. The roads were choked with columns of marching men, innumerable guns and an endless supply column. Even so, it was all orderly, following a carefully worked-out plan by the general staff. Woe to the outfit that failed to keep to its allotted time and route; it would find itself elbowed into the gutter and having to wait for hours till another slot fell vacant. On one occasion we did get in a little jam, in the course of which Captain von Brixen’s horse impaled itself on a metalled axle and had to be put down.