by Ernst Jünger
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 crème 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 Lécluse, 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.1
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.
The Great Battle
The battalion was quartered in the château of Brunemont. We heard that we were to move up on the night of 19 March, to be put in reserve in the dugouts in the line near Cagnicourt, and that the great push was to begin on the morning of 21 March 1918. The regiment had orders to punch through between the villages of Ecoust-St-Mein and Noreuil, and to reach Mory on the first day. We were well acquainted with the terrain; it had been our back area in the trench-fighting at Monchy.
I dispatched Lieutenant Schmidt, known universally as ‘Schmidtchen’ as he was such a lovely fellow, on ahead to secure quarters for the company. At the pre-arranged time, we marched out of Brunemont. At a crossroads, where we picked up our
guides, the companies fanned out. When we were level with the second line, where we were to be quartered, it turned out our guides had lost their way. We found ourselves roving around in the poorly lit, boggy, cratered landscape, and asking other, equally uninformed troops for directions. To avoid overtiring the men, I called a halt, and sent the guides out in different directions.
Sections piled arms and squeezed into a vast crater, while Lieutenant Sprenger and I perched on the rim of a smaller one, from which we could see into the big one, as from a box in the theatre. For some time now, shells had been landing a hundred paces or so in front of us. A shell landed quite close by; splinters splattered into the clay sides of the crater. A man yelled and claimed he’d been hurt in the foot. While I felt the man’s muddy boot, looking for a hole, I called to the men to disperse among the surrounding shell-holes.
There was another whistle high up in the air. Everyone had the choking feeling: this one’s heading our way! Then there was a huge, stunning explosion – the shell had hit in our midst.
Half stunned I stood up. From the big crater, burning machine-gun belts spilled a coarse pinkish light. It lit the smouldering smoke of the explosion, where a pile of charred bodies were writhing, and the shadows of those still living were fleeing in all directions. Simultaneously, a grisly chorus of pain and cries for help went up. The rolling motion of the dark mass in the bottom of the smoking and glowing cauldron, like a hellish vision, for an instant tore open the extreme abysm of terror.
After a moment of paralysis, of rigid shock, I leaped up, and like all the others, raced blindly into the night. I tumbled head-first into a shell-hole, and only there did I finally grasp what had happened. – Not to see or hear anything any more, out of this place, off into deep darkness! – But the men! I had to tend to them, they were my responsibility. – I forced myself to return to that terrible place. On the way, I saw Fusilier Haller, who had captured the machine-gun at Regniéville, and I took him with me.
The wounded men were still uttering their terrible cries. A few crawled up to me, and when they recognized my voice, wailed: ‘Lieutenant, sir, Lieutenant!’ One of my best-loved recruits, Jasinski, whose thigh had been crumpled by a splinter, grabbed hold of my legs. Cursing my inability to be of assistance, I patted him feebly on the back. Moments like that are not easily shaken off.
I had to leave the unlucky ones to the one surviving stretcher-bearer in order to lead the handful of unhurt men who had gathered around me from that dreadful place. Half an hour ago at the head of a full battle-strength company, I was now wandering around a labyrinth of trenches with a few, completely demoralized men. One baby-faced fellow, who was mocked a few days ago by his comrades, and on exercises had wept under the weight of the big munitions boxes, was now loyally carrying them on our heavy way, having picked them up unasked in the crater. Seeing that did for me. I threw myself to the ground, and sobbed hysterically, while my men stood grimly about.
After spending several hours, often menaced by shells, running hopelessly up and down trenches, where the mud and water were feet deep, we crept exhausted into a few cubby-holes meant for munitions that were set in the walls of a trench. Vinke covered me with his blanket; even so, I couldn’t close my eyes, and smoked cigars while I waited for the dawn, feeling completely apathetic.
First light showed the cratered scene full of unsuspected life. Troops were trying to find their units. Artillerymen were lugging crates of ammunition, trench-mortar men pulled their mortars along; telephonists and light-signallers were rigging up their lines. There were all kinds of chaotic activities going on, barely half a mile from the enemy, who, extraordinarily, seemed to have no idea.
At last, in Lieutenant Fallenstein, the commander of the machine-gun company, an old front officer, I met someone who was able to show me our quarters. He greeted me with: ‘Good Christ, man, you look frightful! You look like you’ve got jaundice.’ He pointed out a large dugout that we must have passed a dozen times that night, and there I saw Schmidtchen, who knew nothing of our calamity. The soldiers who had been supposed to guide us were also there. From that day forth, each time we moved into new quarters, I took care to choose the guides myself. In war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high.
After I had seen my men settled in, I returned to the site of last night’s horror. The place looked grisly. Scattered around the scorched site were over twenty blackened bodies, almost all of them burned and flayed beyond recognition. We had to enter some of the dead as ‘missing’ later, because there was simply nothing left of them.
Soldiers from the adjacent parts of the line were busy pulling the bloodied effects of the dead out of the horrible tangle, and looking through them for booty. I chased them off, and instructed my orderly to take possession of the wallets and valuables to save them for the men’s families. As it turned out, we had to leave it all behind the next day, when we went over the top.
To my delight, Sprenger emerged from a nearby dugout with a whole lot of men who had spent the night there. I had the section leaders report to me, and found out that we had sixty-three men. And the previous night, I’d set out in high spirits with a hundred and fifty! I was able to identify over twenty dead and sixty wounded, many of whom later died of their injuries. My inquiries involved a lot of looking around in trenches and craters, but it had the effect of distracting me from the horror.
My one, feeble consolation was that it might have been even worse. Fusilier Rust, for instance, was standing so close to the bomb blast that the straps on his munitions box caught fire. NCO Pregau, who, admittedly, went on to lose his life the next day, was not even scratched as he stood between two comrades who were torn to ribbons.
We spent the rest of the day in pretty low humour, much of it sleeping. I was frequently called away to see the battalion commander, as there were many details of the attack to be settled. Otherwise, lying on a bunk, I conversed with my two officers on all kinds of trivial subjects, all to escape our tormenting thoughts. The refrain was: ‘Well, thanks be to God, all that can happen is we get shot.’ A few remarks that I addressed to the men gathered on the dugout steps, to try to cheer them up, seemed to have little effect. I was hardly in a cheer-bringing mood.
At ten, a messenger arrived with instructions to go to the front line. A wild animal dragged from its lair, or a sailor feeling the deck sinking under his feet, must have felt like us as we took our leave of the warm, secure dugout and headed out into the inhospitable darkness.
There was already some activity. We dashed down Felix Lane under sharp shrapnel fire, and reached the front line without casualties. While we were wending our way along the trenches, over our heads the artillery was being trundled across bridges into forward positions. The regiment, whose most-advanced battalion we were to be, had been given a very narrow sector of the front. Every dugout was immediately jammed. Those left in the cold dug themselves holes in the trench walls, so as to have at least minimal protection against the artillery barrage that was to be expected before the attack. After a lot of toing and froing, it seemed everyone had some kind of foxhole. Once more Captain von Brixen assembled the company commanders to talk through the plan. For the last time, watches were synchronized, and then we all shook hands and went our separate ways.
I sat down with my two officers on the dugout steps, to wait for five past five, when the preliminary shelling was due to start. The mood had lifted somewhat, as the rain had stopped, and the starry night gave promise of a dry morning. We chatted and smoked. At three o’clock there was breakfast, and a flask went the rounds. During the early morning hours, the enemy artillery was so lively we feared the British might have caught a whiff of something. A few of the numerous munitions dumps dotted around blew up.
Shortly before the show, the following flash signal was circulated: ‘His Majesty the Kaiser and Hindenburg are on the scene of operations.’ It was greeted with applause.
The watch-hands moved round; we counted off the la
st few minutes. At last, it was five past five. The tempest was unleashed.
A flaming curtain went up, followed by unprecedentedly brutal roaring. A wild thunder, capable of submerging even the loudest detonations in its rolling, made the earth shake. The gigantic roaring of the innumerable guns behind us was so atrocious that even the greatest of the battles we had experienced seemed like a tea party by comparison. What we hadn’t dared hope for happened: the enemy artillery was silenced; a prodigious blow had laid it out. We felt too restless to stay in the dugout. Standing out on top, we gasped at the colossal wall of flame over the English lines, gradually obscuring itself behind crimson, surging clouds.
The only thing that took the edge off our enjoyment of this spectacle were our watering eyes and inflamed mucous membranes. The clouds of our gas shells, beaten back by a headwind, wrapped us in a powerful aroma of bitter almonds. I looked on in concern as some of the men started coughing and choking, and finally tore the masks off their faces. I was therefore at pains myself to suppress any cough, and breathe slowly and carefully. Finally, the cloud dispersed, and after an hour it was safe to take off our gas masks.
It had become light. At our rear, the massive roaring and surging was still waxing, even though any intensification of the noise had seemed impossible. In front of us an impenetrable wall of smoke, dust and gas had formed. Men ran past, shouting cheerily in our ears. Infantrymen and artillerymen, pioneers and telephonists, Prussians and Bavarians, officers and men, all were overwhelmed by the elemental force of the fire-storm, and all were impatient to go over the top at nine-forty. At twenty-five past eight our heavy mortars, which were standing massed behind our front lines, entered the fray. We watched the daunting two-hundredweight bombs loop high up into the air, and come crashing down with the force of volcanic eruptions on the enemy lines. Their impacts were like a row of spurting craters.
