As the spring of 1916 progressed it became increasingly obvious to Stein that a British attack was imminent. ‘The fire of their artillery was gradually being increased in strength,’ he wrote in his, at times selfaggrandising, autobiography. ‘We knew fairly accurately the strength of the force that was opposed to us, and we had to reckon with a four- or five-fold numerical superiority.’135 Soden noted the increasing activity opposite his division and concluded that an attack on XIV Reserve Corps’ positions was inevitable:136
The enemy attack preparations were seen mainly from aerial photographs. Numerous new approach roads, railways, assembly trenches, barracks huts were built. Many trees were felled. In many places the frontline trench had been brought forward. Gaps in the enemy wire [for attacking infantry to pass through] were identified. Behind enemy lines considerable traffic was noticeable. Enemy’s artillery activity was increasingly strong.137
FEW GERMAN SOLDIERS ever forgot being on the receiving end of shellfire. Unteroffizier Schmid, Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment 1, recalled the face-blanching fear experienced by just-arrived reinforcements during a period of hostile shellfire near Fricourt:
None believed that he would escape with his life. I tried to keep their courage up by telling jokes and stories, but I was not very successful. As a last resort I took out my faithful harmonica and began to blow a tune: ‘Muss i’ denn zum Städtele hinaus.’ [‘Must I Leave This Town’] Some of them started to take notice and began to whistle along with me for all they were worth. Finally everything calmed down.138
Leutnant-der-Reserve Ernst Hibschenberger, RIR110, wrote that ‘enemy mortar bombs and field artillery shells gave off a stink like phosphorous [sic], which irritated the mucous membranes and produced nausea.’139 On that occasion — a 10-hour period on 19 July 1915 — he reckoned about 26,000 artillery and trench-mortar shells fell on a 220-yard-long stretch of Hill 110, presaging a French attack that failed. ‘The whole position was a mass of craters and the trenches were completely flattened.’140 Elsewhere, Leutnant-der-Reserve Rudolf Greisinger, IR180, remembered his men sitting ‘shaken and agitated in their dark dugouts, trembling and wondering if the next moment they would be buried alive by a collapse.’141 Reservist Wirth, RIR119, said deep underground infantrymen listened to the thick wooden frames of their dugouts creaking and groaning as a flurry of shells blew above in January 1916. ‘No one spoke a word, but we were all aware of what was going on. Once again the English had tried and failed to collapse our dugouts and render us unable to fight.’142 Fahrer Otto Maute, IR180, said his baptism of fire was while transporting ammunition to Ovillers. ‘For the first time I heard the whistle of the shells which hit nearby. . . . Naturally it was impossible to quieten the horses.’143
Shell-proof dugouts were the solution to protecting soldiers. Stein insisted that the number of dugouts was to be increased ‘until there are sufficient to accommodate the infantry garrison that the Division considers necessary for the repulse of a prepared attack.’144 These engineered catacombs were to be at least seven yards underground and have two entrances so the garrison could quickly sortie from the dugouts in the event of an attack alarm.145 While much of the work involved in mining deep dugouts was the domain of pioneer units, infantrymen were also conscripted as labourers. Unteroffizier Wilhelm Munz explained: ‘Such a shelter is built in the following way. First of all come fairly stout planks for the shoring-up, above them are arranged tree trunks for the roof, then three to four yards of natural earth and finally an earth/straw mixture. The shelters are a maximum of one yard wide to reduce the danger from direct hits.’146 By the start of 1916, Soden’s 26th had about 1500 mined dugouts across its seven-mile-wide sector, with Hahn’s 28th having a similar number.147 In May 1916, for instance, the 26th’s Thiepval sector had sufficient dugouts to house 3900 men of the four-battalion Reserve Infantry Regiment 99 (RIR99), including 140 excavated under the front line itself, while at Ovillers there was enough subterranean accommodation for 2500 men of the three-battalion RIR109 in the first position.148 Fifty-second Infantry and 2nd Guards Reserve Divisions likely had equivalent dugout shelters. Only in 12th Infantry Division’s sector were there markedly fewer, and the unknown number of dugouts there were of lesser quality and prone to flooding due to the high water table resulting from the proximity of the Somme.149 XIV Reserve Corps’ dugouts, as with the quality of their infantry and artillery positions, became fewer and of poorer build south of Fricourt.
Wilhelm Munz, who died on 1 July, described his mole-like existence in a letter to his girlfriend:
Steep steps lead down from the trench into the dug-outs. Just like the steps in your home from the glass doors down to the cellar, only our steps are steeper and so low that one has to go bent double. My dug-out is about as big as your verandah and five metres [5.5 yards] down. In the centre, like in a small garden outhouse, is a table with wooden trestles. We have fixed pictures on the panelled walls. Down there we sit and read and write by the light of a candle hung above the table by a wire. It is a shame that you cannot pay us a flying visit to see inside for yourself.150
The chief danger for dugout dwellers was artillery shells that collapsed their shelters, particularly man-sized beasts that burrowed deep into the soft earth before detonating. Occupants were often killed outright, or crushed, or trapped underground and asphyxiated. Oberstabsarzt Niedenthal, RIR110’s doctor, remembered an April 1915 blast that trapped 14 men underground. Attempts to dig them out failed. Leutnant-der-Landwehr Karl Weymann, a 39-year-old professor of medicine from Karlsruhe in RIR110, was found dead. ‘In his eyes, with their blank stare, could be read all the terror of death from asphyxiation.’151 When rescuers finally broke into the dugout chamber they found the rest dead, a dozen ‘sitting in a line along the wall, as though they were asleep.’152
If the fighting above ground was mired in stalemate, the high-stakes subterranean battle burrowed on. All along the battle front specialist gangs of sappers and infantrymen-cum-labourers toiled in shafts often 55–75 yards deep to blow the enemy skywards, enhance XIV Reserve Corps’ defensive scheme and construct listening posts to gather intelligence. This was the case at La Boisselle, Beaumont Hamel, Serre, Fricourt, Hill 110 and Mametz. Galleries numbered in the hundreds. It was unforgiving graft, carried out in often darkened corridors with spades, picks and bayonets used to quietly scrape sod out to be hauled away in sandbags. Toiling noisily with a spade or pick was to risk detection by British underground listening posts, as was speaking too loudly or clattering along a narrow corridor. Both sides used microphones to home in on the other’s mining activity, and at times it was plainly audible to the ear.153 As one anonymous Bavarian pioneer officer wrote in late-May 1916: ‘The chambering of Gallery 33b [on Hill 110] is being further accelerated as the behaviour of the enemy [miners] leads one to believe that he intends blowing in our working. . . . As a blow is to be expected at any moment, the work is extraordinarily dangerous and calls for great courage and extreme devotion to duty.’154 Leutnant-der-Reserve Gerster later described the detonation of a German mine near Beaumont Hamel:
The very earth quakes. The ground heaves up like a wave above the seat of the explosion and falls back once more. A light cloud of dust seems to be hovering over the site [of the mine blast]. Suddenly blue flames rush skywards out of the crater, dancing and flickering on the ground and roaring upwards into the sky. This lasts for several seconds! Over there in the enemy trench, two long blue flames like snakes’ tongues, lunge forwards seeking victims. No Man’s Land is lit up by this ghostly light. Shots crash out. A machine gun starts to chatter. Can we hear shrieks?155
The result was great white-jawed craters studding the ground between opposing trench lines. The scars from some of those mine blasts are still hidden among the trees on Hill 110 above Fricourt and at La Boisselle’s Glory Hole (Granathof).
OBSERVERS THROUGHOUT XIV Reserve Corps’ lines noticed increasing activity behind the enemy trenches from as early as August 1915. Columns of ar
tillery and infantry were seen thick along the fretwork of roads feeding the British positions. Everything pointed to a largescale relief of the French soldiers that the Württembergers and Badeners had faced since late 1914. The first sign that the British now occupied the ground from Gommecourt south to almost the River Somme was artillery shell fuses made in England or America. To the experienced ear these fuses sparked shell bursts that sounded entirely different from their French equivalents. Rumours raced along the line, everyone speculating on who their new foes were. Reports filtered back that British infantry now held the trenches — their serge-coloured uniforms, pleated pockets, puttees and peaked forage caps giveaways to those who had seen them before. The ubiquitous rimmed steel helmet that marked Tommy from French soldiers, the latter more commonly known as poilus, had yet to be introduced. That, as Gerster wrote, meant hard proof was required to confirm the nationality of the enemy: ‘The [26th] divisional order to bring in a prisoner dead or alive was hardly necessary. Even without it, our patrols were as hell bent as the devil after some poor soul, on running to earth the slightest shred of evidence.’156 Soon a trickle of British prisoners and equipment captured by patrols or raiding parties confirmed the enemy’s identity. The British army had arrived on the Somme.
Sentries peering through steel trench loopholes were on the lookout for any hint of British activity. ‘In no circumstances may observation of the front suffer interruption. There will nevertheless be casualties among the sentries,’ wrote Stein.157 Just as importantly, the front-line garrison had to be ready to race up from its dugouts at the shout of a sentry to repulse an enemy attack.158 That assumed the ‘men reach the parapet in time.’159 Thus, said Stein, infantry had to be alert and practised in responding to a sentry’s alarm or listening for the instant the enemy’s shellfire lifted further back, a tell-tale sign of an imminent attack. ‘Above all, every group commander and every man must realise that the success or failure of an [enemy] assault depends on his timely appearance at the parapet.’160 Support and reserve troops were to be applied to battle as required, whether in specialist bombing teams to eject a break-in or as infantry reinforcements.161 Stein believed ground lost to or contested by the enemy was often easily recaptured or held if swift counterattacks were launched by infantry commanders on the spot.162 Stein demanded his infantry be constantly alert and well drilled in responding to an enemy attack, and the onus of responsibility fell squarely on the sentries.
Unteroffizier Wilhelm Munz described sentry work in more detail:
Between the two lines of trenches the British and Germans have huge wire obstructions. They are simple wire and iron frames strung with barbed wire. . . . Now you can see why simply coming across to us is not so easy? For with every step the wire twangs, and the sentries who hear it shoot at once, while flares are fired which light the terrain bright as day.’163
There were also false alarms, wrote Unteroffizier Schultz, Reserve Infantry Regiment 40: ‘A patrol of volunteers was sent forward in the direction of the sound and everyone waited, nerves strained, for its return. The “captured item” which they brought back was only an old umbrella, which . . . had been blown into the obstacle by a gust of wind!’164
Front-line regiments also undertook the often-vicious business of patrolling no-man’s-land and raiding enemy trenches. Their aims ranged from gathering intelligence and capturing, killing or wounding enemy soldiers, to destroying, damaging or seizing enemy equipment and securing mastery of no-man’s-land by night. Unteroffizier Peter Collet, IR66, noted the surge in British activity near Serre in April 1916 and said ‘it was quite natural that we wanted to know what was behind this.’165 Stein had endorsed aggressive action in no-man’s-land and issued a guide for raiding and patrolling in early 1916.166 Successful raids were usually supported by artillery and trench-mortar barrages of up to 10,000 shells that pared the enemy’s wire, isolated the portion of trench to be entered, covered the subsequent withdrawal, and suppressed hostile shellfire.167 Dozens of such night-time endeavours took place throughout 1915 and the first half of 1916. Most involved fewer than five men, but others comprised several dozen and some up to 200.168 Smaller operations were often ad hoc; bigger enterprises were planned and rehearsed behind the lines.169 Soldiers were armed with daggers, grenades, sharpened entrenching tools, pistols and rifles, and blackened their faces with boot polish before striking out. Vizefeldwebel Hermann Klotz, IR180, was part of a patrol in no-man’s-land at Ovillers when eight British soldiers stumbled out of the darkness:
On the first shot the [British] officer fell into the arms of another fellow who was immediately hit through the heart with a second shot. The others bolted. Three more shots at a range of 30 feet and two more Englishmen were dead. Two of the dead Englishmen were dragged back into our trench.170
Close-quarter fighting in enemy trenches often harked back to medieval times. Oberleutnant H. Reymann, IR62, recalled that his short-handled entrenching tool with its razor-sharp blade performed ‘wonderfully’ as a trench-fighting weapon.171 Soon every regiment had a cadre of patrol and raiding veterans whose risky business often won accolades in the form of promotion or Iron Cross medals.
Those who survived for any length of time knew how to steal across fire-swept ground, make use of every scrap of cover and avoid detection. It was dangerous work. Mistakes and indecision could lead to death or injury. In early June 1916, Unteroffizier Walter Bönsel, RIR119, was caught unawares soon after his raiding party dropped into the British front line:
A shadowy [British] figure stormed forward. The man blinked at me in the pitch black of night, and suddenly two pistol shots flashed past my head, one grazing my cheek. I had the presence of mind to shine my flashlight in his face, but my pistol shots did not hurt him. He fled around a trench corner.172
Bönsel lived. Others did not. Vizefeldwebel Hermann Bocker, RIR119, was a pre-war singing teacher and opera singer, and master in the art of trench raiding and patrolling. The 39-year-old — whose life said much about man’s capacity to harbour both the sublime and the brutal — was mortally wounded when his patrol was ambushed in April 1916. On another occasion, Unteroffizier Matthias Dirr, RIR119’s teenage king of no-man’s-land, said a moment’s pause in diving to dirt in no-man’s-land cost two men their lives. One of the men’s ‘brain, his sinews and fibres were hanging out of his head,’ wrote the apprentice engineer, himself killed aged 18 in February 1916.173 The femoral artery of the second was cut: ‘Bright red blood shot out like a river, like a fountain.’174 Dirr and his surviving men snaked belly-to-ground to safety. ‘We used each tuft of grass, each thistle and each turnip stem as cover.’175
Leutnant-der-Reserve Roland Vulpius, RIR110, watched the luminous hands on his wristwatch hit 5.50 p.m. on a late-December night in 1915. ‘Go!’ A storm of artillery shells slammed onto the enemy trenches. Within seconds Vulpius’s men were inside the hostile ditch. Hand grenades were tossed down inky dugout entrances. Thirteen prisoners were nabbed and a torch pointed into their faces. Vulpius called out in English, ‘If anyone makes a wrong move he’s a dead man!’176 The captives were trotted back to German lines to be interrogated and then sent to prisoner-of-war camps.
Stein’s ever-evolving patrolling and raiding guide produced results. In the period 1 January–23 June 1916, no fewer than 207 British soldiers were caught by patrols and raiding parties across the whole of XIV Reserve Corps’ sector.177 Seventy-six were captured in January–March, with a further 131 taken in the remainder of the period. That the number of prisoners taken increased alongside the likelihood of a British attack was unsurprising given the demand for up-to-date intelligence from Stein. Prisoners were questioned by regimental, divisional and corps intelligence officers, sometimes in the trenches but mostly at headquarters behind the lines. Stein wanted information that could pinpoint the date, place and time of the British attack, and any snippet that fleshed out the details of enemy infantry and artillery units opposite. ‘Times were rough,’ wrote Unteroffizier Paul Sc
heytt, a trainee teacher serving in RIR109. ‘The revolver was the best interpreter.’178 Numerous sources, including Below and Stein, revealed that prisoners either directly or indirectly suggested a late-June attack date. Prisoners also disclosed that multiple British battalions were arriving on the Somme front and promptly undergoing tactical training for an offensive.
This and other information was evaluated by Below’s and Stein’s intelligence staffs. Reports from patrols, raiding parties and observation and listening posts were supplemented by aerial photographs and transcripts of British conversations picked up by underground telephone intercept stations. Aerial photographs, for instance, revealed enemy approach routes to the front line, recently dug assembly trenches, just-laid light-gauge railway tracks, and new buildings and huts, among myriad other developments in hostile territory. As Soden put it:
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