One day we paid a visit to the fortress of Montmédy high up on a hill. Several hundreds of prisoners were just being fed there. They were standing about in the yard of the fortress and were eating their soup. One of the prisoners came straight up to me. I had not noticed him particularly, and recognized him only when he stood before me. He was the man I had struggled with on January 5th, and we greeted each other cordially. He had brought along a prisoner who spoke German well and who interpreted for us all we had to say to each other. He had seen me standing about and had recognized me at once. Again and again he told me how glad he was to be a prisoner. Like myself he was a soldier because he had to be, and not from choice. At that time we had fought with each other in blind rage; for a moment we had been deadly enemies. I felt happy at having stayed my fury at that time, and again I became aware of the utter idiocy of that barbarous slaughter. We separated with a firm handshake.
A fortnight I remained at the hospital; then I had to return to the front. We had been treated well at the hospital, so we started on our return journey with mixed feelings. As soon as we arrived at Chatel, the terminus, we heard the incessant gun fire. It was no use kicking, we had to go into the forest again. When we reached our old camp, we found that different troops were occupying it. Our company had left, nobody knew for what destination. Wherever we asked, nobody could give us any information. So we had to go back to the command of our corps, the headquarters of which were at Corney at that time. We left Chatel again by a hospital train, and reached Corney after half an hour's journey. Corney harbored the General Staff of the 16th Army Corps, and we thought they surely ought to know where our company was. General von Mudra and his officers had taken up their quarters in a large villa. The house was guarded by three double sentries. We showed our pay books and hospital certificates, and an orderly led us to a spacious room. It was the telephone room. There the wires from all the divisional fronts ran together, and the apparatus were in constant use. A sergeant-major looked into the lists and upon the maps. In two minutes he had found our company. He showed us on the map where it was fighting and where its camp was. "The camp is at the northern end of Verennes," he said, "and the company belongs to the 34th division; formerly it was part of the 33rd. The position it is in is in the villages of Vauquois and Boureuilles." Then he explained to us on the map the direction we were to take, and we could trot off. We returned by rail to Chatel, and went on foot from there to Apremont. We spent the night in the half destroyed depot of Apremont. In order to get to Varennes we had to march to the south. On our way we saw French prisoners mending the roads. Most of them were black colonial troops in picturesque uniforms. On that road Austrian motor batteries were posted. Three of those 30.5-cm. howitzers were standing behind a rocky slope, but did not fire. When at noon we reached the height of Varennes we saw the whole wide plan in front of us. Varennes itself was immediately in front of us in the valley. A little farther up on the heights was Vauquois. No houses were to be seen; one could only notice a heap of rubbish through the field glasses. Shells kept exploding in that rubbish heap continually, and we felt a cold sweat run down our backs at the thought that the place up there was our destination. We had scarcely passed the ridge when some shells exploded behind us. At that place the French were shooting with artillery at individuals. As long as Vauquois had been in their power they had been able to survey the whole country, and we comprehended why that heap of rubbish was so bitterly fought for. We ran down the slope and found ourselves in Varennes. The southern portion of the village had been shelled to pieces and gutted. Only most of the chimneys which were built apart from the bottom upward, had remained standing, thin blackened forms rising out of the ruins into the air. Everywhere we saw groups of soldiers collecting the remaining more expensive metals which were sent to Germany. Among other things church-bells melted into shapeless lumps were also loaded on wagons and taken away. All the copper, brass, tin, and lead that could be got was collected.
XXI IN THE HELL OF VAUQUOIS
We soon found our company, and our comrades told us what hell they had gotten into. The next morning our turn came, too. We had to reach the position before day-break, for as soon as it got light the French kept all approaches under constant fire. There was no trace of trenches at Vauquois. All that could be seen were pieces of stones. Not a stone had literally remained on the other at Vauquois. That heap of ruins, once a village, had changed hands no less than fifteen times. When we arrived half of the place was in the possession of the Germans. But the French dominated the highest point, whence they could survey the whole country for many miles around. In the absence of a trench we sought cover behind stones, for it was absolutely impossible to construct trenches; the artillery was shooting everything to pieces.
Thus the soldiers squatted behind piles of stones and fired as fast as their rifles would allow. Guns of all sizes were bombarding the village incessantly. There was an army of corpses, Frenchmen and Germans, all lying about pell-mell. At first we thought that that terrible state of things was only temporary, but after a few days we recognized that a slaughter worse than madness was a continuous state of things at that place. Day and night, ever the same. With Verdun as a base of operations the French continually brought up fresh masses of troops. They had carried along a field railroad the heavy pieces of the neighboring forts of Verdun, and in the spring of 1915 an offensive of a local, but murderous kind was begun. The artillery of both sides bombarded the place to such an extent that not a foot of ground could be found that was not torn up by shells. Thousands upon thousands of shells of all sizes were employed. The bombardment from both sides lasted three days and three nights, until at last not a soldier, neither French nor German, was left in the village. Both sides had been obliged to retreat before the infernal fire of the opponent, for not a man would have escaped alive out of that inferno. The whole slope and height were veiled in an impenetrable smoke. In the evening of the third day the enemy's bombardment died down a little, and we were ordered to go forward again into the shell torn ruins. It was not yet quite dark when the French advanced in close order.
We were in possession of almost the whole of the village, and had placed one machine-gun next to the other. We could see the projectiles of the artillery burst in great numbers among the reserves of the attackers. Our machine-guns literally mowed down the first ranks. Five times the French renewed their attack during that night, their artillery meanwhile making great gaps in our ranks. We soldiers calculated that the two sides had together some three or four thousand men killed in that one night. Next morning the French eased their attacks, and their guns treated us again to the accustomed drum fire. We stood it until 10 o'clock in the morning; then we retreated again without awaiting orders, leaving innumerable dead men behind. Again the French advanced in the face of a violent German artillery fire, and effected a lodgment at the northern edge of the village of Vauquois that used to be. A few piles of stones was all that still belonged to us. We managed to put a few stones before us as a protection. The guns of neither side could hurt us or them, for they, the enemy, were but ten paces away. But the country behind us was plowed by projectiles. In face of the machine gun fire it was found impossible to bring up ammunition.
The sappers undid the coils of rope worn round their bodies, and three men or more crept back with them. One of them was killed; the others arrived safely and attached the packets of cartridges to the rope. Thus we brought up the ammunition by means of a rope running in a circle, until we had enough or till the rope was shot through. At three o'clock in the afternoon we attacked again, but found it impossible to rise from the ground on account of the hail of bullets. Everybody was shouting, "Sappers to the front with hand grenades!" Not a sapper stirred. We are only human, after all.
A sergeant-major of the infantry came creeping up. He looked as if demented, his eyes were bloodshot. "You're a sapper?" "Yes," "Advance!" "Alone?" "We're coming along!" We had to roar at each other in order to make ourselves understood in the deafening, confounded row. Another sapper lay beside me. When the sergeant-major saw that he could do nothing with me he turned to the other fellow. That man motioned to him to desist, but the sergeant-major got ever more insistent, until the sapper showed him his dagger, and then our superior slung his hook. Some twenty hand grenades were lying in front of us. Ten of them I had attached to my belt for all emergencies. I said to myself that if all of them exploded there would not be much left of me. I had a lighted cigar in my mouth. I lit one bomb after the other and threw them over to some Frenchmen who were working a machine-gun in front of me, behind a heap of stones. All around me the bullets of the machine-guns were splitting the stones. I had already thrown four grenades, but all of them had overshot the mark. I took some stones and threw them to find out how far I would have to throw in order to hit the fire spitting machine in front. My aim got more accurate each time until I hit the barrel of the gun. "If it had only been a hand grenade," I thought. An infantryman close to me was shot through the shell of one ear, half of which was cut in pieces; the blood was streaming down his neck. I had no more material for bandaging except some wadding, which I attached to his wound. In my pocket I had a roll of insulating ribbon, rubber used to insulate wires; with that I bandaged him. He pointed to the machine-gun. Thereupon I gave him my cigar, telling him to keep it well alight so as to make the fuse which I desired to light by it burn well. In quick succession I threw six hand grenades. I don't know how many of them took effect, but the rags of uniforms flying about and a demolished machine-gun said enough. When we advanced later on I observed three dead men lying round the machine-gun.