by Ludwig Renn
“Orderlies, get your stuff together!”
It was five minutes after twelve.
“Alert the platoons! Platoon leaders report to me!”
I walked through the dark passage into the tunnel and from there into the first door on the left. Lieutenant Eisoldt was sitting with two engineer officers playing Skat.
“Herr Leutnant! The platoons are being alerted! The platoon leaders are to report to the company commander!”
He looked at me with wide eyes: “What is the matter then?”
“The French are in the Turkish woods.”
He still had the cards in his left hand and reached with his right toward his gas mask: “What should we do?”
“For the time being just be on alert!” I walked on to Seidel.
He smoked his pipe and only said, “Now it begins.” He knocked out his pipe and stood up.
I walked back and found Fabian with the captain up in a concrete cannon emplacement.
At the edge of the Turkish woods I could see people moving around but couldn’t tell whether they were French or not. How was it possible that the French were already so close and we had not heard one rifle shot? There must be a messenger from up front! Maybe things weren’t as they appeared.
The captain also appeared in doubt: “It appears to me to be Germans. Send over a patrol!”
Or had the French broken through by our neighboring regiment and pushed between us and our forward line?
On the other side of the Turkish woods a yellow flare rose high and fell. Fabian showed it to the captain: “There must be some people holding out up there and shooting flares. Should we immediately go forward in a counterattack?”
“No, the regimental commander has kept that decision for himself. We have to wait for his order.”
In the meantime the platoon leaders arrived and whispered in a corner. There was a dead man on the ground from whom they had taken his shoes, socks, and also his pants because we all suffered from a shortage of clothes.
We stood and waited. Finally the leader of the patrol returned and reported that they had been fired on from the Turkish woods but he believed it was Germans. One member of the patrol was wounded in the leg.
“Did you not call to them?”
“Yes, Herr Kapitaen. But they didn’t answer.”
Fabian looked at the patrol leader peculiarly and dismissed him. No one believed him.
An orderly arrived from the company that lay at a half-right angle from us and reported, “The Turkish woods have been occupied by the French. There is no news of the companies in the forward line.”
A couple of artillerymen came from the right, dragging another man between them. Both his legs had been shot off above the knees. Blood flowed from the shreds of his pants.
In the meantime three hours had passed since the first news. Fabian sent me to the platoons to tell them they should draw canned meat, cooking fuel, and soda water from Eilitz because the kitchen probably wouldn’t be able to come forward today.
I went along the trench, in which guards had now been posted. One of them stood so stooped over that even his helmet did not stick out of the trench.
I stopped. “What are you afraid of, then?”
He didn’t look at me. He was one of the eighteen-year-olds from the second company.
“Take a look out!” I laughed. “There is nobody to be seen! And the sun is shining!”
He didn’t move. What should I do?
As I came back the man without any legs lay on the ground in our bunker and screamed. He appeared to be unconscious. Over him, Eilitz was passing out canned meat and other items.
I went back into the firing position. However, Fabian wasn’t there anymore. The red-haired Herschel was standing guard at the entrance to the concrete bunker. Next to him lay the man who had been the previous guard.
“Has there been firing?” I asked.
“Yes, a while ago a couple of artillery shells landed here.” During this he turned to me and I saw that he had absolutely no fear!—If he was to be killed today, I would be truly sorry, because he was such a nice guy.—I would not be killed. I was absolutely certain of it. But I had no peaceful feeling about it.
Someone came up the steps.
“Renn!” said Fabian calmly and smiled a little bit. “In three quarters of an hour.” Then he became formal. “I have already sent Ziesche to bring the platoons. Eilitz will stay here. We have to go now.”
We went along the trench a ways and waited for the company. The sunshine still lay yellow on the meadow in the open. But the woods were already gray.
It took over a half hour before the company was all together. Fabian gave orders in a whisper and then crept with us, out of the trench, into a completely shot-up battery position close by, in which we lay behind walls in a half-destroyed trench. He showed the platoon leaders a strip of bushes that led toward the Turkish woods and explained how the attack should be carried out.
We still had to wait for the fourth company, which was to attack on our left. Finally the people from this company came walking upright through the woods. They appeared to have no idea what was going on.
“If these guys would just like to lie down!” whispered Seidel to me. “Look there, a damned French flier is already coming! That we are going to make a counterattack in the twilight should be clear to every child! And that we are going to make it out of these bushes too! Now if we just don’t catch one beforehand!”
The captain came with his adjutant and lay down beside us. Ahead of us the moon began to gain in light while on the right the sky still appeared reddish yellow across the plain.
The fourth company still wasn’t complete in numbers. Finally the commander came with the rest of the people.
Fabian sent one man forward to remove the last of the wire with a wire cutter. He crawled on his stomach out of the higher-lying woods.
A round came roaring in. Wham! The ground flew up a few steps in front of the man with the wire cutters and threw mud balls all the way to us. The man sprang up and threw himself into a shell hole.
“Herr Kapitaen. Can we not go now?” asked Fabian impatiently.
“Yes, Go!
“Follow me!” whispered Fabian. We crawled out of the woods behind him. In the strip of bushes I stood up. Fabian moved fast. The tendrils on the blackberry bushes hindered one’s progress.
Wham! It was close behind me. I got mud on my neck and my gas mask came loose and fell. I picked it up and continued on. The strap was ripped in two. Suddenly I looked around for Ziesche. Only Seidel walked behind me. Fabian had gotten ahead of us and it was growing ever darker. Everything was a confused white in the twilight.
Fabian stopped and kneeled down. Five steps ahead of us the blackberry strip ended. It was less than a hundred meters to the dark, towering Turkish woods. The intervening space was level meadow.
Fabian whispered with Seidel and showed him how he should attack. “I will come behind you with the support and will help you where the French halt.”
Seidel’s platoon was now there, but nobody from the other platoons. Ziesche was missing.
On the left, entrenching tools rattled. That must be the fourth company. There were a couple of rifle shots.
Fabian leaned over to Seidel: “The fourth company has been noticed. Attack!”
Seidel gave the sign with his arm. Everyone stood up and walked out into the gray dusk.
Someone came running from the rear: “Fabian! The captain has been buried alive. You are leading the battalion!”
Whipping rifle reports were all around us and light flashing at the edge of the woods.
“The greater part of your company has also been buried. I managed to dig my way out and came running to you!”
It whistled around us. Fabian pointed with an excited movement ahead: “There they go! I can’t stop them!—They are walking too far to the right!”
My eyes bored ahead. That is terrible! They are walking almost along the French lines! One
of them falls, and then another!
Then I could see nobody anymore. Along the edge of the woods flamed red fire. It whipped around our ears. I felt the wind from one shot on my neck.
What happened to Seidel?—and Ziesche!
A blow on my left upper arm!
“I’m wounded,” I said.
“Where?” asked Fabian.
I showed it to him.
The upper arm muscle began to hurt as if it was swelled up.
“Do you have a knife?” asked the adjutant.
I had it in my left pants pocket and tried to reach across my body with my right hand to get hold of it.
He noticed and pulled it out.
It whistled and popped.
He cut off the sleeve, but there was nothing to see.
“A nice hole!” said the adjutant.” A bandage won’t cover it. But come into the shell crater!”
We crept into a wide crater in which we were protected.
“Where is the wound, Herr Leutnant?”
“Near the shoulder. The shot must have come from the left at an angle!”
“But I don’t see any blood at all.”
“It’s hardly bleeding.”
“My people!” moaned Fabian.
“So now we have to put your sleeve back on. Your arm shines so white in the moonlight that the French over there must see it.”
He replaced my shirt and coat sleeves and fastened them with a safety pin at an angle.
The rifle fire let up somewhat.
“You go over and see what the fourth company has accomplished!” said Fabian.
The man disappeared into the bushes.
I noticed how distraught Fabian was and attempting to distract him said, “Ziesche must be wounded too.”
“All the ranking people are wounded, all but me!” How will I ever be able to stand before my company again? I was up here at the front and didn’t even attack with them because I was waiting on the other platoons! Nobody will believe that!”
The adjutant came back. “The fourth didn’t even attack because they received such heavy fire.”
“And because of this rabble I pushed my people forward!”
“Well, they couldn’t help it. We can be happy that they only had three lightly wounded.—But shouldn’t we be going to the rear?”
There was no more firing. The red fires were extinguished. We went slowly back in the moonlight, only three remaining.
I began to tremble from the cold. The pain was almost gone.
As we came to the edge of the woods there was a group of people standing there.
“There you are!” called lieutenant Eisoldt to the adjutant. “We have been digging for you the whole time. The captain has been looking everywhere for you.”
“What? Is he here too? I have been looking for him.”
I asked someone: “Have you seen Ziesche?”
“He was wounded right behind you. It tore away one side of his face.”
“Is he still alive?”
“No, he didn’t know what hit him.”
In front of the battalion bunker Fabian turned to me. “Today my best people are gone—.” He couldn’t go on and only squeezed my hand.
“Goodbye, Herr Leutnant!” I said.
He nodded. “You go into the bunker. Eilitz will take you to the first aid station.—One is unsteady in walking with a shot-up arm.”
Some shrapnel shells burst in the woods and rattled among the branches. I went toward the tunnel.
In the bunker lay the legless man, now dead.
Eilitz sprang up: “Where is the lieutenant?”
“He is safe in the battalion bunker.” It made me happy that he was so worried.
“Have the woods been recaptured?”
“No. No one even reached the French trenches.”
“That’s not true!” said someone excitedly behind me. I spun around: Seidel! “I was in there!” he said, but it didn’t sound like him. “But as I looked around there was no one else there and the trench was empty of French too. I went carefully in the trench to the right and came on the first company. Where is the lieutenant?”
“In the battalion bunker.”
He walked out without another word.
Eilitz led me unnecessarily careful by the right arm and helped me out of the trench.
Suddenly it occurred to me that my letters and the other things I had written were still lying in the bunker. I had not carried them forward with me in case I happened to be captured because there were comments about troop movements in them.
“You wait here; I have to go back and get something!” I climbed back into the trench and went clumsily through the dark passages.
There was still a light burning in the bunker. I climbed over the dead man, stuck the papers in my coat pocket, and felt my way back.
“When I didn’t meet Eilitz at the place where I had left him I called softly, “Eilitz!—Paul!”—Fear came over me. I climbed with difficulty out of the trench.—I didn’t see anyone. I stumbled over branches and broken trees. There! He lay stretched out in the jumble of branches. The moon was shining on his face. He had a little bit of blood over one eye. I shivered, and I continued on.
Wounded
I went through the dead forest. The trees and limbs stood out silvery and bare in the moonlight.
I came to an embankment and then to a wasted place with stretchers and ground sheets covering them. They were the dead.
A red glow came from an opening on the ground.
Above me a piece of shrapnel whined.
I climbed down the steps. To the right were two doctors with bright white carbide lamps working on a thigh. The torso and head lay in shadow.
To the left on a stool moaned Vice Sergeant Hornung, apparently unwounded but maybe having been buried.
I didn’t know what to do and remained standing in front of him.
He looked up, said unnaturally, “Good evening!” and began moving again. He was clothed well although muddy. I did not like him; he was always sarcastic. “Oh, this feeling in my head! Everything is spinning around inside me!”
I heard that as if from afar. I felt something coming over me. A shudder crept over me.
“Should I go back to the company? No, I don’t think so; I should go forward; I was forward.” I wondered if he was only speaking to me. Anyway, I wasn’t able to listen to him. “As the small board lay on my back I wanted to advance to the attack. Ah, no! Naturally, I know what I mean!” That all sounded so malicious and contemptible to me. “My thoughts kept running away from me.” He made a circling movement with his head. That only made my wandering feeling worse.
The doctor went to Hornung. “I have given you something. Now pull yourself together!—And you?” He turned to me. “Weren’t you a runner for Fabian?—Come on now!”
They sat me on a stool. Someone opened the safety pin on my shoulder and removed my sleeve and coat. My shirt was pulled down. I shivered.
“A nice flesh wound! Talk about luck! The splinter has ripped things up nicely—or was it a piece of shrapnel?”
“No, a rifle bullet.”
“That must have come from very close by.”
“About eighty meters, doctor.”
“Ah, you took part in the attack?”
“Not actually. I was waiting with the lieutenant for the rest of the company.” There was a gray fog around me.
“How did the people carry out the attack?”
“Excellently, doctor! They made a complete turnaround from the last time.”
“So? There are terrible wounds among them.”
Behind me Hornung mumbled something but it was lost in the black fog. I held myself completely upright so that it wouldn’t come any closer.
“And now a tetanus shot! Wash his skin here!”
On the right side of my chest the medical orderly washed a small spot with something cold. The doctor puckered the skin and stuck in the needle. I saw nothing more because of the darkness and hel
d myself very stiff.
——————————
I awoke. A feeling of happiness trickled through me. I heard moaning. Hornung was sitting over me. I was lying on a stretcher. My chest was moving quickly from breathing. I felt a wide bandage.
“Was I unconscious for very long?” I asked Hornung.
“I don’t know anything. The time is so stretched out—”
I looked inside the bandage. The wool bandage was terribly uncomfortable. What is that?—There were cool blisters on my chest. My fingers tapped stiffly on them. That came close to scaring me!—Now—
Waking up was laughable. Oh if everything would just be over!
Hornung moaned, “If I could just surrender to it! The worm in my head!”
Both carbide lamps were burning on the operating table. The chief doctor came and moved me under the light. “So, how are you?”
“Good, doctor!”
“Tell me some more of the attack! Was it not terrible?”
“No, it was wonderful the way they all stormed forward—they who had complained in the tunnel! One of them said—I heard it in passing—it didn’t matter to him if he was captured. And then he ran forward and attacked. He is probably dead.”
“But that can’t be wonderful!”
“Yes it is, doctor, the way they all suddenly lost all fear! The way it seized them and they attacked, that was incomparably beautiful!”
The fear came again but was enlightened by the thought of the wonderful attack. It wasn’t able to gain the upper hand.
“And how was it when you became unconscious?”
“It came upon me and I could only see the light. And then it seized me and I made myself completely stiff in order to keep it away. Then I knew nothing more. But waking up was very beautiful.”
“And other than that you don’t feel anything?”
“My whole body is covered with blisters and my mouth is swollen. My fingers are also stiff.”
He mumbled something, which I didn’t hear in the encroaching horror. It grew and was so dreadful, so like a terrible wall. I had to pull myself together in my mind, everything was very gray. Above, there was a reflection; other than that, just clumps of cloth. The lips. Yeech! It was horrible. It came horribly closer and grew leaden.