KRIEG (War) Read online

  “What is the matter, Herr Leutnant?” asked Ernst.

  “The French are almost on our rear. Look over there!” On the road along which we had come, artillery bursts appeared. The march casualties fled into a field. We marched to the rear at an angle in a grassy valley.

  Sisch! Sisch! Two high explosive rounds whistled over us. To our left were two field kitchens. Suddenly, there in the meadow, stood a black cloud. Wham! The crash came immediately afterward. Then, suddenly another cloud appeared next to that one.

  “Those are shells,” said the lieutenant. “Have your platoon spread out. Where the French are, I don’t know either.”

  We spread out. I was with a group all the way to the left. The meadow climbed upward. Ahead of us lay blue sky. Rifle bullets whined sharply over us. “Double time!” ordered Ernst.

  I ran two steps, and then saw that my people couldn’t run any more and dropped back to a walk. To the left appeared a small, right-cornered fir forest. In there the shots sounded on the tree trunks. We continued creeping along.

  “There, they’re sitting in the trees!” yelled someone.

  Everyone raised their rifles and popped away meaninglessly at the tree tops. A couple of men were kneeling; others had flattened out on the ground.

  “There is nobody there!” I yelled. They continued to blast away.

  “Stop!” I roared.

  “Stop!” bellowed Lamm.

  They ceased fire.

  “Take a look!” I screamed infuriated, “whether anyone is sitting in the tree tops! You should be ashamed to lose your heads like that!—March!”

  They stood up and followed. Because of the delay the platoon had become scattered. I now had the whole left half. Ernst with the other half had disappeared.

  Zip! Zip! Zip! The rifle slugs came closer and closer.

  Sch—Bam! Artillery shells behind us. We had to get immediately on the heights and stooped as we climbed.

  To the right, on the heights, a howitzer stood. Cannoneers humped ammunition and fired. Boom! Boom! Black clouds all around. One man was thrown upright to the rear.

  Ahead of us someone yelled, “Don’t push in! We are already lying in three rows, one behind the other!”

  Sisch! Sisch!—Ping, zing! Wham! It crashed, zinged and whined. The French must be lying close behind the heights.

  “Take cover!” I roared. I dived to the ground. To the right and ahead the ground was full of people. I couldn’t see anything to the left. The rise seemed to fall off there. However, it seemed to me to be more peaceful over there.

  “Move over to the left!” I screamed over the bedlam. I got to a crouch and slipped to the left. Ziesche was ahead of me. The others were still on the ground.

  “To the left—march!” I commanded. A few more came with us. After just a few steps we were out of the worst of the fire. I took them a little ways farther to the left. Then we faced forward. There was an empty meadow and to the right, a village in which fires were visible. Maybe in this way we would flank the French. Ahead of us a creek snaked along through the grass.

  Zing! Zing! Suddenly from ahead. On the next rise were some people lying outlined like targets against the sky.

  “Into position! Over there on the rise, riflemen! Sight six hundred! The targets over there were sitting above the sights like seldom seen on the range.

  A shot ahead of me in the grass!

  I squeezed the trigger. That one must have hit home if the sight wasn’t off. Around me everyone was firing energetically.

  Something zipped by my right ear. I took aim again. Suddenly my opposite became larger. I fired.

  “They are retreating!” I yelled. We pumped the shots out where occasion arose. On the other side one after the other disappeared.

  “March!” I commanded. We had to follow them. We climbed over a pasture fence and came to a creek. There lay one in the water, the red seat of his pants facing up. On the other side sat or lay dead and wounded Frenchmen.

  I jumped over the creek. One of them behind me scooped water with his hand and slurped it.

  Rifle shots sounded behind us. The bugler, Kinder, walked beside me.

  “Blow,” I said to him “so that our people won’t shoot us in the back.”

  “What then?” he asked.

  “Whatever you wish!”

  He blew the “Zapfenstreich.” There was a shot to the right. There lay a cornfield and Frenchmen were going parallel to us toward the rear.

  “On the right!” I yelled. “Sight four hundred!” Individual fire. I threw myself down and fired like a madman. The French were maybe a hundred and fifty paces away. Beside me everyone was blasting away. One of them fell in the corn. One of them stood and raised his rifle and fired at us. They came out of the burning village. We had them in the flank.

  One after the other ducked into the corn. Certainly all of them weren’t hit. Gradually I became more relaxed and aimed more carefully.

  From the right an officer came walking upright out of the village. He sank into the corn. There was no one else to see.

  I stood up. Behind us at the creek I saw Germans standing and shooting at the wounded. I ran back. It was people from the fourth company.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed.

  “The dogs were shooting at our backs!” said one of them bitterly, “and in the village they stabbed our lieutenant Roehle to death as he lay wounded!”

  I went back to my people. There were only six men left, including two from other companies. Should we continue to advance?

  The captain of the fourth company came along. “Occupy the heights here to the front!”

  We crept up the heights. My legs suddenly became heavy and my right shoulder hurt from all the shooting.

  Up on the heights, from where the French had earlier been shooting at us, lay a black soldier with white, baggy pants.

  Cornfields stretched before us. There was a troop of Frenchmen standing around something.

  “The troop of Frenchmen!”

  “Individual fire!”

  They scattered. I reached into my cartridge case in order to reload. It was empty; the other one also. And the two cartridge belts I had around my neck I had already thrown away because they were empty. Therefore I had fired two hundred and thirty cartridges today! Yeah, I guess the shoulder could be painful!

  The sun sank behind the heights on the right. It was still hot.

  A man came. “You should all return to the battalion bivouac area.”

  We slung our weapons. Wounded lay in the meadow. Ziesche had grasped one around the waist who was limping heavily.

  A French officer, small and fat, moaned in the grass. I wanted to see what was wrong with him, but he waved me away. Despite that I unbuttoned his blouse. Blood gushed from his right hip like from the head of a fountain. I pulled a dressing pack from my pocket and wrapped it around his body. In the process my right sleeve became bloody almost to the elbow. Maybe it was senseless to bandage him with that heavy loss of blood. Someone held a canteen for him. He pushed it away with his hand.

  “You think we want to poison you?” said the man and held the canteen to his mouth. The officer drank greedily.

  In the meantime the others had found more German wounded. I had to help carry a ground sheet in which one of them lay groaning.

  We came to the creek. The French sat there and begged with gestures for us to take them with us. One of them knocked on his bread container and spread his hands out to show that they had nothing to eat.

  “We don’t have any bread ourselves. And we can’t take you with us either. You have to comprehend that.”

  It became increasingly darker. In the village, flames flickered. We followed the path through the village. Dead lay everywhere, here a black Algerian on a German officer. Our wounded man in the ground sheet moaned with every step we took.

  We came to a meadowland. There stood our field kitchen and in front Fabian with Ernst and the Company Sergeant. They had aluminum plates in fr
ont of them and were blowing into the hot spoons.

  Ernst saw me. “How many are you bringing with you?”

  “Four from the company, Herr Feldwebel.”

  “A hundred men are missing,” said Fabian. “But that must include many who are march fatigued.”

  I went to the platoon. Counting the stacked rifles, there were only about thirty men.

  “Has anyone seen Perle?” I asked.

  “He’s dead. He caught a shot through the head up on the heights.”

  “And Lamm?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  I unstrapped my mess kit and went to the field kitchen.

  “The one-year man, Lamm, sends you greetings,” said the Sergeant.

  “Is he wounded?”

  “Yes and pretty bad too. He has shots through both arms and legs and also a butt stroke on the head. He looked terrible.”

  As I finished eating, Ernst called to me. He sat on a ground sheet in the grass and had a bottle in his hand. There were two squad leaders standing by him.

  “Have a seat here. We have to divide the platoon anew—Have you got a canteen cup?—Renn will keep the first squad.” He poured red wine in the cups.

  Fabian came with the Company Sergeant and joined us.

  “Today in the Regiment we lost over twenty officers,” said Fabian as if from afar.

  I sipped at the cup. The red wine was dry and cold.

  “Perle has also been killed,” said the company sergeant. “That was your friend, Renn,” said Fabian. The bottle was emptied.

  “Good night!” said the lieutenant and stood up. We all lay down to sleep.

  Amicourt

  Night. We waited on the street. On the right were houses; to the left a deep-lying meadow.

  The third battalion was supposed to surprise the French outposts.

  Fabian was speaking quietly with Ernst: “You have to unload so that no accidental shot goes off, and in a long line with fixed bayonets—-”

  Rifle shots!

  Ping! Ping! Shots land in the street.

  “To the left in the meadow and lay down!” called the lieutenant.

  From the rear a rider came galloping up the street. “Which company?”

  “Third company!”

  “Move forward in an extended line!”

  “Our whole battalion is ahead of us!”

  “Good God! Order of the division: form an extended line!” shouted the voice.

  “The entire company to the left, spread out!” bellowed Fabian. I ran a little to the front.

  Zing! Zing! Zing! Zing! Whined the bullets. It was pitch black. I saw nothing but black meadow before me.

  “Double time!” bellowed Ernst.

  What was the matter with the lieutenant that he wasn’t giving orders? We walked further into the invisible fire. To the right appeared a large tree crown against the sky. To the left I saw three men close together one after the other. It was Ernst with his scouts. The fire had let up somewhat.

  We fell into step.

  Ahead something appeared, a forest. People ran around in confusion, screams, orders, and curses!

  “If the company commanders aren’t here then I’ll undertake the leadership here at the front!” complained a tall, thin lieutenant.

  Fabian came along from the left. “What needs to be done here? I have come with the whole company.”

  “Nothing temporarily but keep order!—What an obscene mess here! We’re coming to the woods here; they’re sitting in the trees and blast away at us below! And we’re standing down here with unloaded rifles! Load if one shoots at you! This is the fault of the division commander and his love for hand-to-hand combat! If one could just get rid of these decrepit old people!

  “If one could just get rid of these decrepit people! And where are all the company commanders?” He continued to storm.

  At my feet lay someone with a death rattle.

  From the woods came a scream. “Help, comrades!”

  There someone was trying to help another to stand up. But it was unsuccessful.

  Ernst reported: “My platoon has three lightly wounded. And the stretcher bearer, Weiss, is missing. I ordered him to follow along behind the platoon.”

  “Assemble the company here!” said Fabian. “And push one squad forward into the woods so that we can gather the wounded under their protection. The aid station is there to the rear at the large tree.”

  “Renn!” said Ernst. “Take over the defense forward along the path! How far forward you will need to go I can’t judge from here.”

  We went spread out, with rifles held ready, into the woods. Dark clumps lay on the ground. There someone moaned. Among the trees it snapped and popped; there were whispers and moans. A couple of men came along with another in the middle. Up ahead someone whimpered. We continued carefully on. One couldn’t know whether the French were still sitting in the woods.

  The one doing the whimpering must have been lying over to the left. I went a couple of steps off the path. He lay next to the trunk of a fir tree and just whimpered. I knelt down. He had blood on his right ear.

  “Hey!” I said.

  He just whimpered and appeared to be unconscious.

  During this I heard something forward again, but could not determine what kind of noise it was. It was like wood and then again like from a person.

  I waved my people to assemble. “We’ll sneak farther along to the left of the path. There’s something up ahead.”

  I continued along with careful steps. I saw a glow on the trees. Suddenly it shone right in my face. I continued along to the left in order not to go directly toward the fire. I saw almost nothing although the fire did not burn brightly. Ahead of me the trees stopped. Across the way lay another curtain of woods. Between lay a strip of meadow, to the right of which the fire burned. Someone was moving there. I kneeled behind a tree. It was about fifty paces or less to the fire. There sat a Frenchman laying logs on the fire. They crackled. That was the earlier noise. The whole situation appeared to me to be so uncanny and strange with this one man. No, there was still something lying on the ground.

  I crept back to Ziesche. “You stay here! I’m going to creep up to the fire from over there. If something happens, shoot into the fire so that in the meantime I can get away.”

  I moved toward the path. In the woods something lay diagonally. I crept from tree to tree. The one lying at the fire had on a French kaeppi.

  “OOOOOAAH!”

  I was startled. The man at the fire had only yawned.

  Now I moved behind the next tree. There! People on the ground and field packs. I stood motionless. Maybe it was an outpost and I had moved between the pickets and the fire. But then the guards must have long since noticed us, and those at the trigger would not be sitting so peacefully.

  I stepped behind the next tree. In doing so I stepped on something metal. I had no time to see what it was, because the Frenchman suddenly looked up.

  “Bonjour, monsieur!” he said and raised a cooking utensil in the air. It was unclear to me whether he was really seeing me, because the fire must be blinding him. Maybe he just wanted, in any case, to make a friendly contact. He let his cooking utensil sink and said something.

  “Where French?” I asked in broken French.

  He pointed behind him and waved as if they were far away.

  I went toward him to the edge of the woods and signaled to my people.

  They popped up so suddenly from the darkness that the Frenchman facing me was amused as he watched with big, round eyes.

  Now I could see more exactly: the path ran a little farther to the right. There lay dead Frenchmen, field packs, rifles. It appeared that they had been surprised while eating. The half eaten food in the pot made me shudder.

  “You, Hartmann,” I said. “You know a little bit of French. Question him.”

  Hartmann was a slim, dark guy with flashing eyes. He sat down with the man at the fire.

  I placed the others along the edge
of the woods.

  “They have bread here,” said Hartmann.

  I don’t know why, but at this moment he appeared weird to me. “What else have you found out?”

  “There were two companies lying here in the woods. The one captain is wounded, but they took him with them.”

  “Good. Look around for bread.”

  He laid his pack and rifle to the side and began going through the baggage lying around. Other than that it was still, only in the distance behind us a bird called.

  “That is the death bird,” said Ziesche.

  The comment startled me.

  Hartmann came along with two half loaves of bread and a number of cans of food.

  From behind, there were steps on the path. “You should all return to the rear.”

  As we came out of the woods it had become somewhat lighter. There was a small lantern burning under the large tree. A doctor was bandaging there. Around the area lay a number of men, one with ripped open breast, waxen and dead. Others moaned.

  I reported to the lieutenant. “We also have two loaves of bread.”

  “Keep them for yourselves. They won’t suffice for the company.”

  The doctor raised himself from his work. He had rolled up sleeves and bloody arms. “I’m finished,” he said quietly. “I have no more bandages and completely inadequate instruments.” He walked very close to the lieutenant: “By early morning two-thirds of the wounded here will be dead.”

  Above us in the tree came the cry, Cree! Cree!

  I went to the platoon. The lieutenant followed me. “My horse naturally didn’t come forward here with my sleeping bag and blanket. Moreover today I lost another orderly, that’s already the second one. We will have to share one blanket.” His words sounded uncertain. He must have been feeling pretty miserable.

  In the meadow stood haystacks. I gathered straw. Then I cut the lieutenant a slice of bread.

  “You need that, too,” he said.

  “Is the Herr Leutnant not feeling well?”

  “Something is going around inside my head.—There are things worse than people, who are lying here and will be dead in the morning.”

  I didn’t dare to ask about it. He clammed up too and looked at the stars by the dark tree top.