The French fought with marvellous valour, with reckless courage and nerve, climbing up and on over the bodies of their fallen comrades. They were excellent fighters, were these Frenchmen. But our men were better fighters, as the outcome of the battle taught us.
It was, however, not the attacks of their infantry which made this battle so hideous for us, nor was it the hand-to-hand struggle in the trenches, man against man, where the German, possessing greater physical strength, was easily the match of the individual Frenchman. What made the battle a living hell was the work of the French artillery, enormous in strength, with huge supplies of ammunition which was spent lavishly. Life in the trenches became a perpetual nightmare and stamped as unforgettable heroes the men who went through with it without flinching.
IV—"IT SEEMED IMPOSSIBLE ANY LIVING CREATURE COULD SURVIVE"
Onto a comparatively small area the French on one day threw a hundred thousand shells! We found a French document in which the commanding officer calculated that eighteen bombs must be the allowance per metre of German trench, these eighteen bombs to be used not in a day, but within one or two hours! The rapidity of the artillery fire was therefore as great as that of an ordinary machine gun, but the shells hurled against us were not infantry shells, but grenades of every calibre. "Drum-fire" is the name for this sort of artillery fire, and its effects were simply dreadful—unspeakable. The barbed wire was completely annihilated, was clean wiped out of existence; the trenches were flattened into mounds, their foundations crumbled away. No known sort of earthworks were able to withstand such fire for even a short time. But German discipline, loyalty and heroism held out.
When such "drum-fire" began, a huge wall of smoke and chalk particles rose over our trenches, cutting off the men from the rest of the world. The horror of the scene was augmented by the ceaseless rumbling, thundering and crashing which filled the air, and which, even miles away, sounded like a heavy thunderstorm. It seemed impossible that any living creature should survive such a hellish turmoil. When the firing ceased abruptly, or when its direction was changed to give the French infantry a chance to attack us, then our brave fusiliers, musketeers, grenadiers crawled out of the funnels and pockets into which the enemy's grenades had ploughed the earth, made their way from among broken foundations, crumbling cement, trickling sand bags, and, grabbing their guns and wiping the dirt from their eyes, they repulsed the French attack.
And this was done not once, but dozens of times.
Occasionally our men were ordered to abandon a trench which was suffering particularly from "drum-fire" in order to avoid unnecessary loss of life, and the crew from such an abandoned trench was then placed in our second line of intrenchments. It sometimes happened that French infantrymen, under protection of their artillery fire, reached and took such an empty trench, succeeding the more readily because they encountered no obstacles. Our soldiers then sprang forth from their cover and attacked the French with hand grenades and bayonets. Invariably we were successful in repulsing the enemy, causing them heavy loss of life.
If for some reason or other this counter-attack was not made at once, but was postponed for an hour or two, we were not so sure of success, and it was then never secured by us without heavy casualties, for the few hours that had elapsed had amply sufficed the French, who are exceedingly clever at every sort of intrenchment work, to change and remodel the trench for their purposes, to install machine guns, to place sandbag barriers along both sides and to make sundry other changes. This done, the "Frenchmen's nest" was complete.
The difficult task of ousting the French from their "nest" then devolved upon our regiments, and in some instances many weeks of hard, cruel fighting were required to accomplish this end. For this work we employed underground mines, artillery, bombs and hand grenades. When the time was ripe for attack, columns of volunteers were formed, which were led by officers, who, in turn, were preceded by groups of pioneers with hand grenades and intrenchment tools, to be used in demolishing the sandbag barriers. The assault was begun simultaneously from both sides. These attacks were usually conducted at night, and it will readily be seen what cool, unshakable courage was required for work of this kind. Immediately after the hand grenades were exploded our men advanced and a furious hand-to-hand fight ensued, in which not only bayonet and pick-axe, but shovel and booted foot were used to expel the enemy, to kill him or force him to surrender.