bean soup each. Some sappers of our company were still among that
section of the infantry. They had not been able to find us and had
joined the infantry. We thought they were dead or had been taken
prisoners, but they had only been scattered and had lost their way. We
had hopes to recover still many a one of our missing comrades in a
similar manner, but we found only a few more afterwards. In the evening
of the same day we saw another fellow of our company sitting on the
limber of the artillery. When he saw us he joined us immediately and
told us what had happened to him. The section he belonged to had its
retreat across the Marne cut off; nearly all had been made prisoners
already and the French were about to disarm them when he fled and was
lucky enough to reach the other side of the Marne by swimming across the
river. He, too, could not or did not want to find our company, and
joined the artillery so as not to be forced to walk, so he explained.
Our opinion was that he would have done better by remaining a prisoner,
for in that case the murdering business would have ended as far as he
was concerned. We told him so, and he agreed with us. "However," he
observed, "is it sure that the French would have spared us? I know how
we ourselves acted; and if they had cut us down remorselessly we should
now be dead. Who could have known it?" I knew him too well not to be
aware that he for one had every reason to expect from the enemy what he
had often done in his moments of bloodthirst; when he was the "victor"
he knew neither humanity nor pity.
It was not yet quite dark when we reached a large village. We were to
find quarters there and rest as long as was possible. But we knew well
enough that we should be able to rest only for as long as the rear-guard
could keep the enemy back. Our quarters were in the public school, and
on account of the lack of food we were allowed to consume our iron
rations. Of course, we had long ago lost or eaten that can of meat and
the little bag of biscuits. We therefore lay down with rumbling
stomachs.
Already at 11 o'clock in the night alarm was sounded. In the greatest
hurry we had to get ready to march off, and started at once. The night
was pitch-dark, and it was still raining steadily. The officers kept on
urging us to hurry up, and the firing of rifles told us that the enemy
was again close at our heels. At day-break we passed the town of St.
Menehould which was completely intact. Here we turned to the east, still
stubbornly pursued by the French, and reached Clermont-en-Argonne at
noon. Again we got some hours of rest, but in the evening we had to move
on again all night long in a veritable forced march. We felt more tired
from hour to hour, but there was no stopping.
The rain had stopped when we left the road at ten o'clock in the morning
and we were ordered to occupy positions. We breathed again freely, for
that exhausting retreat lasting for days had reduced us to a condition
that was no longer bearable. So we began to dig ourselves in. We had not
half finished digging our trenches when a hail of artillery projectiles
was poured on us. Fortunately we lost but few men, but it was impossible
to remain any longer, and we were immediately ordered to retreat. We
marched on over country roads, and it was dark when we began to dig in
again. We were in the neighborhood of Challerange quite near the village
of Cerney-en-Dormois. It was very dark and a thick mist surrounded us.
We soldiers had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the enemy. As
quickly as possible we tried to deepen our trench, avoiding every
unnecessary noise. Now and then we heard secret patrols of the enemy
approach, only to disappear again immediately.
It was there we got our first reinforcements. They came up in the dark
in long rows, all of them fresh troops and mostly men of the landwehr,
large numbers of whom were still in blue uniforms. By their uniforms and
equipment one could see that the men had been equipped and sent off in
great haste. They had not yet heard the whistle of a bullet, and were
anxiously inquiring whether the place was dangerous. They brought up
numerous machine-guns and in a jiffy we had prepared everything for the
defense.
We could not get to know where the French were supposed to be. The
officers only told us to keep in our places. Our trench was thickly
crowded with men, and provided with numerous machine-guns. We instructed
the new arrivals in the way they would have to behave if an attack
should be made, and told them to keep quite still and cool during the
attack and aim accurately.
They were mostly married men that had been dragged from their
occupations and had been landed right in our midst without understanding
clearly what was happening to them. They had no idea where, in what part
of the country they were, and they overwhelmed us with all sorts of
questions. They were not acquainted with the handling of the new
98-rifle. They were provided with a remodeled rifle of the 88 pattern
for which our ammunition could be used. Though no shots were fired the
"new ones" anxiously avoided putting their heads above the edge of the
trench. They provided us liberally with eatables and cigars.
It was getting light, and as yet we had not seen much of the enemy.
Slowly the mist began to disappear, and now we observed the French
occupying positions some hundred yards in front of us. They had made
themselves new positions during the night exactly as we had done.
Immediately firing became lively on both sides. Our opponent left his
trench and attempted an attack, but our great mass of machine-guns
literally mowed down his ranks. An infernal firing had set in, and the
attack was beaten off after only a few steps had been made by the
opposing troops. The French renewed their attack again and again, and
when at noon we had beaten back eight assaults of that kind hundreds
upon hundreds of dead Frenchmen were covering the ground between our
trenches and theirs. The enemy had come to the conclusion that it was
impossible to break down our iron wall and stopped his attacks.
At that time we had no idea that this was to be the beginning of a
murderous exhausting war of position, the beginning of a slow,
systematic, and useless slaughter. For months and months we were to
fight on in the same trench, without gaining or losing ground, sent
forward again and again to murder like raving beasts and driven back
again. Perhaps it was well that we did not know at that time that
hundreds of thousands of men were to lose their lives in that senseless
slaughter.
The wounded men between the trenches had to perish miserably. Nobody
dared help them as the opposing side kept up their fire. They perished
slowly, quite slowly. Their cries died away after long hours, one after
the other. One man after the other had lain down to sleep, never to
awake again. Some we could hear for days; night and day they begged and
implored one to assist them, but nobody could help. Their cries became
softer and softer until at last they died away--all suffering had
ceased. There was no possibility of burying the dead. They remained
where they fell for weeks. The bodies began to decompose and spread
pestilential stenches, but nobody dared to come and bury the dead. If a
Frenchman showed himself to look for a friend or a brother among the
dead he was fired at from all directions. His life was dearer to him and
he never tried again. We had exactly the same experience. The French
tried the red cross flag. We laughed and shot it to pieces. The impulse
to shoot down the "enemy" suppressed every feeling of humanity, and the
"red cross" had lost its significance when raised by a Frenchman.
Suspicion was nourished artificially, so that we thought the "enemy" was
only abusing the flag; and that was why we wanted to shoot him and the
flag to bits.
But we ourselves took the French for barbarians because they paid us
back in kind and prevented us from removing our own wounded men to
safety. The dead remained where they were, and when ten weeks later we
were sent to another part of the front they were still there.
We had been fortunate in beating back all attacks and had inflicted
enormous losses upon the enemy without having ourselves lost many dead
or wounded men. Under those circumstances no further attack was to be
expected for the time being. So we employed all our strength to fortify
our position as strongly as possible. Half of the men remained in their
places, and the other half made the trenches wider and deeper. But both
sides maintained a continuous lively fire. The losses we suffered that
day were not especially large, but most of the men who were hit were
struck in the head, for the rest of the body was protected by the
trench.
When darkness began to descend the firing increased in violence. Though
we could not see anything we fired away blindly because we thought the
enemy would not attempt an attack in that case. We had no target and
fired always in the direction of the enemy's trench. Throughout the
night ammunition and materials were brought up, and new troops kept
arriving. Sand bags were brought in great quantities, filled and
utilized as cover, as a protection from the bullets. The sappers were
relieved towards morning. We had to assemble at a farm behind the firing
line. The farmhouse had been completely preserved, and all the animals
were still there; but that splendor was destined to disappear soon.
Gradually several hundreds of soldiers collected there, and then began a
wild chase after ducks, geese, pigeons, etc. The feathered tribe,
numbering more than 500 head, had been captured in a few hours, and
everywhere cooking operations were in full swing.
There were more than eighty cows and bullocks in a neighboring field.
All of them were shot by the soldiers and worked into food by the field
kitchens. In that place everything was taken. Stores of hay and grain
had been dragged away in a few hours. Even the straw sheds and
outbuildings were broken up, the wood being used as fuel. In a few hours
that splendid farm had become a wreck, and its proprietor had been
reduced to beggary. I had seen the owner that morning; but he had
suddenly disappeared with his wife and children, and nobody knew
whither. The farm was within reach of the artillery fire, and the farmer
sought safety somewhere else. Not a soul cared where he had gone.
Rifle bullets, aimed too high, were continually flying about us, but
nobody cared in the least though several soldiers had been hit. A man of
our company, named Mertens, was sitting on the ground cleaning his rifle
when he was shot through the neck; he died a few minutes after. We
buried him in the garden of the farm, placed his helmet on his grave,
and forgot all about him.
Near the farm a German howitzer battery was in position. The battery was
heavily shelled by the enemy. Just then a munition train consisting of
three wagons came up to carry ammunition to the battery. We had amongst
us a sergeant called Luwie, from Frankfort-on-the-Main. One of his
brothers, also a sergeant, was in the column that was passing by. That
had aroused our interest, and we watched the column to see whether it
should succeed in reaching the battery through the fire the enemy was
keeping up. Everything seemed to go along all right when suddenly the
sergeant, the brother of the sapper sergeant, was hit by a shell and
torn to pieces, together with his horse. All that his own brother was
watching. It was hard to tell what was passing through his mind. He was
seen to quiver. That was all; then he stood motionless. Presently he
went straight to the place of the catastrophe without heeding the shells
that were striking everywhere, fetched the body of his brother and laid
it down. Part of the left foot of the dead man was missing and nearly
the whole right leg; a piece of shell as big as a fist stuck in his
chest. He laid down his brother and hurried back to recover the missing
limbs. He brought back the leg, but could not find the foot that had
been torn off. When we had buried the mangled corpse the sergeant
borrowed a map of the general staff from an officer and marked the
exact spot of the grave so as to find it again after the war.
The farmhouse had meanwhile been turned into a bandaging station. Our
losses increased very greatly judging from the wounded men who arrived
in large numbers. The farmhouse offered a good target to the enemy's
artillery. Though it was hidden by a hillock some very high poplars
towered above that elevation. We felled those trees. Towards evening we
had to go back to the trench, for the French were renewing their
attacks, but without any effect. The fresh troops were all very excited,
and it was hard for them to get accustomed to the continued rolling
rifle fire. Many of them had scarcely taken up their place when they
were killed. Their blue uniforms offered a good target when they
approached our positions from behind.
At night it was fairly quiet, and we conversed with the new arrivals.
Some of them had had the chance of remaining in garrison service, but
had volunteered for the front. Though they had had only one day in the
firing line they declared quite frankly that they repented of their
decision. They had had quite a different idea of what war was like, and
believed it an adventure, had believed in the fine French wine, had
dreamt of some splendid castle where one was quartered for weeks; they
had thought that one would get as much to eat and drink as one wished.
It was war, and in war one simply took what one wanted.
Such nonsense and similar stuff they had heard of veterans of the war of
1870-71, and they had believed that they went forward to a life of
adventure and ease. Bitterly disappointed they were now sitting in the
rain in a dirty trench, with a vast army of corpses before them. And
every minute they were in danger of losing their life! That was a war
quite different from the one they had pictured to themselves. They knew
nothing of our retreat and were therefore not a little surprised when we
related to them the events of the last few days.
XVI
THE BEGINNING OF TRENCH WARFARE
On the next morning, at daybreak, we quitted the trench again in order
to rest for two days. We went across the fields and took up quarters at
Cerney-en-Dormois. We lodged in one of the abandoned houses in the
center of the village. Our field kitchen had not yet arrived, so we were
obliged to find our own food. Members of the feathered tribe were no
longer to be discovered, but if by any chance a chicken showed its head
it was immediately chased by a score of men. No meat being found we
resolved to be vegetarians for the time being, and roamed through the
gardens in search of potatoes and vegetables. On that expedition we
discovered an officer's horse tied to a fence. We knew by experience
that the saddle bags of officers' horses always concealed something that
could be eaten. We were hungry enough, and quickly resolved to lead the
horse away. We searched him thoroughly under "cover," and found in the
saddle bags quite a larder of fine foodstuffs, butter and lard among
them. Then we turned the horse loose and used the captured treasure to
prepare a meal, the like of which we had not tasted for a long time.
It tasted fine in spite of our guilty conscience. One man made the fire,
another peeled the potatoes, etc. Pots and a stove we found in one of
the kitchens of the houses in the neighborhood.
Towards evening long trains with provisions and endless rows of fresh
troops arrived. In long columns they marched to the front and relieved
the exhausted men. Soon the whole place was crowded with soldiers. After
a two days' rest we had to take up again the regular night duties of the
sapper. Every night we had to visit the position to construct wire
entanglements. The noise caused by the ramming in of the posts mostly
drew the attention of the French upon us, and thus we suffered losses
almost every night. But our rest during the daytime was soon to be put
an end to, for the enemy's artillery began to shell the place regularly.
Curiously enough, the shelling took place always at definite hours.
Thus, at the beginning, every noon from 12 to 2 o'clock from fifty to
eighty shells used to fall in the place. At times the missiles were
shrapnel from the field artillery. One got accustomed to it, though
soldiers of other arms were killed or wounded daily. Once we were lying
at noon in our lodgings when a shrapnel shell exploded in our room,
happily without doing any damage. The whole room was filled with dust
and smoke, but not one troubled to leave his place. That sort of
shooting was repeated almost daily with increasing violence. The
remaining inhabitants of the village, mostly old people, were all lodged
in a barn for fear of espionage. There they were guarded by soldiers. As
the village was being bombarded always at certain hours the officer in
command of the place believed that somebody in the village communicated
with the enemy with a hidden telephone. They even went so far as to
remove the hands of the church clock, because somebody had seen quite
distinctly "that the hands of the clock (which was not going) had moved
and were pointing to 6 and immediately afterwards to 5." Of course, the
spy that had signaled to the enemy by means of the church clock could be
discovered as little as the man with the concealed telephone. But in
order to be quite sure to catch the "real" culprit all the civilians
were interned in the barn. Those civilian prisoners were provided with
food and drink like the soldiers, but like the soldiers they were also
exposed to the daily bombardment, which gradually devastated the whole
village. Two women and a child had already been killed in consequence
and yet the people were not removed. Almost daily a house burned down at
some spot or other in the village, and the shells now began falling at 8
o'clock in the evening. The shells were of a large size. We knew exactly
that the first shell arrived punctually at 8 o'clock, and we left the
place every night. The whole village became empty, and exactly at 8
o'clock the first shell came buzzing heavily over to our side. At short
intervals, fourteen or sixteen at the most, but never more, followed it.
Those sixteen we nicknamed the "iron portion." Our opinion was that the
gun was sent forward by the French when it became dark, that it fired a
few shots, and was then taken to the rear again. When we returned from
our "walk," as we called that nightly excursion, we had to go to our
positions. There we had to perform all imaginable kinds of work. One
evening we had to fortify a small farm we had taken from the French the
day before. We were to construct machine-gun emplacements. The moon was
shining fairly brightly. In an adjoining garden there were some fruit
trees, an apple tree among them, with some apples still attached to it.
A Frenchman had hanged himself on that tree. Though the body must have
hung for some days--for it smelled considerably--some of our sappers
were eager to get the apples. The soldiers took the apples without
troubling in the least about the dead man.
Near that farm we used mine throwers for the first time. The instruments
we used there were of a very primitive kind. They consisted of a pipe
made of strong steel plate and resting on an iron stand. An unexploded
shell or shrapnel was filled with dynamite, provided with a fuse and
cap, and placed in the tube of the mine thrower. Behind it was placed a
driving charge of black powder of a size corresponding with the distance
of the target and the weight of the projectile. The driving charge, too,
was provided with a fuse that was of such a length that the explosion
was only produced after the man lighting the fuse had had time to return
to a place of safety. The fuse of the mine was lit at the same time as
the former, but was of a length commensurate with the time of flight of
the mine, so as to explode the latter when the mine struck the target,
or after a calculated period should the mark be missed. The driving
charge must be of such strength that it throws the projectile no farther
than is intended. The mine thrower is not fired horizontally but at a
steep angle. The tube from which the mine is fired is, for instance,
placed at an angle of 45 degrees, and receives a charge of fifteen
grammes of black powder when the distance is 400 yards.
It happens that the driving charge does not explode, and the projectile
remains in the tube. The fuse of the mine continues burning, and the
mine explodes in the tube and demolishes the stand and everything in its
neighborhood. When we used those mine throwers here for the first time
an accident of the kind described happened. Two volunteers and a sapper
who were in charge of the mine thrower in question thought the
explosion took too long a time. They believed it was a miss. When they
had approached to the distance of some five paces the mine exploded and
all three of them were wounded very severely. We had too little
experience in the management of mine throwers. They had been forgotten,
had long ago been thrown on the junk heap, giving way to more modern
technical appliances of war. Thus, when they suddenly cropped up again
during the war of position, we had to learn their management from the
beginning. The officers, who understood those implements still less than
we ourselves did, could not give us any hints, so it was no wonder that
accidents like the foregoing happened frequently.
Those mine throwers cannot be employed for long distances; at 600 yards
they reach the utmost limit of their effectiveness.
Besides handling the mine throwers we had to furnish secret patrols
every night. The chief purpose of those excursions was the destruction
of the enemy's defenses or to harry the enemy's sentries so as to
deprive them of sleep.
We carried hand grenades for attack and defense. When starting on such
an excursion we were always instructed to find out especially the number
of the army section that an opponent we might kill belonged to. The
French generally have their regimental number on the collars of their
coat or on their cap. So whenever we "spiflicated" one and succeeded in
getting near him we would cut that number out of his coat with a knife
or take away his coat or cap. In that way the German army command
identified the opposing army corps. They thus got to know exactly the
force our opponent was employing and whether his best troops were in
front of us. All of us greatly feared those night patrols, for the
hundreds of men killed months ago were still lying between the lines.
Those corpses were decomposed to a pulp. So when a man went on nocturnal
patrol duty and when he had to crawl in the utter darkness on hands and
knees over all those bodies he would now and then land in the decomposed
faces of the dead. If then a man happened to have a tiny wound in his
hands his life was greatly endangered by the septic virus. As a matter
of fact three sappers and two infantrymen of the landwehr regiment No.
17 died in consequence of poisoning by septic virus. Later on that kind
of patroling was given up or only resorted to in urgent cases, and only
such men were employed who were free of wounds. That led to nearly all
of us inflicting skin wounds to ourselves to escape patrol duty.