No Man's Land (7 page)

While we were still standing in the cornfield we heard the English at the edge of the wood again, loud cries as well, as if the wounded were being picked up. We went round the wood and once again advanced along the break through the trees. The English had disappeared. From the meadow, where we had shot down the advancing line, we heard unfamiliar cries and moaning. We went over and saw several dead and wounded lying in the grass, who begged us for mercy. We took three of the figures hidden in the grass and dragged them with us. Now we also had living witnesses to our almost two-hour skirmish, one, however, died immediately, a bullet fired at close range had torn his skull apart. To my question: ‘Quelle nation?' (They spoke French) one answered ‘Rajput.' Aha so Indians! Something very special. None had been hit less than twice. One quickly shouted ‘Anglais pas bon.' I quickly gave myself an English carbine with bayonet and then we made our way with the screaming prisoners to our trench, which we reached as dawn broke, welcomed by those who had remained behind, who stared in astonishment at our men. I right away drank a coffee with Kius and ate scrambled eggs, then I slept until 2 o'clock. So with 20 men we successfully fought over a hundred men, although we had orders to withdraw if approached by superior force. I must say, without wishing to praise myself, that I only achieved it through mastery of the situation, iron command of the men and through advancing with a charge against the enemy.

My losses were two wounded and one missing, but I'm certain at least 30 men were knocked out.

14. VI.17

Our action naturally caused a sensation at all the more senior levels. From the regiment I received the order to occupy the position again at night, and if the enemy were still in it to throw him out. I put together 2 patrols, one under my command, the other under Kius. We went round the wood from both sides with 45 men and met up at the slope. There was no enemy to be seen, only from the route I had taken with Hackmann's patrol did a sentry call out to us and fire a couple of shots. So I took up occupation of the place again and searched the ground, since I was naturally interested in yesterday's outcome. In the area where the section had come from the left, there were still 3 corpses in the grass, 2 Indians and a White officer with two golden stars on his epaulettes. The officer had got a bullet in the eye that had come out at the other temple. He had a massive six-barrel revolver in his left hand, while his right gripped a long wooden club that was spattered with his own blood. His helmet had been shot through. I had his epaulettes taken off, I kept one as a souvenir, likewise his cigarette case, which was not very valuable, and the shot-through helmet and the club. In his breast pocket he had a metal flask with cognac. He was lying approximately 20 yards in front of where we were standing yesterday, I had really not thought that they had come so close, at any rate these people had made a dashing attack. That he had seen us is proven by the fact that he had fired four bullets from his revolver.

My men took the things off the dead. I have always found the undressing and robbing of corpses an unpleasant business, I didn't forbid it, since it was better the men had the things than that they rot, and in war moral considerations should not be allowed to determine any action. Apart from which this feeling was not a moral but an aesthetic one. Even when one fellow wanted to pull the rings from the officer's fingers, I didn't say anything, although the repulsive laughter of this man goaded me to do so. Besides his comrades had the tact to stop him doing it. In a very small shell hole lay three helmets, a sign that our opponents would have preferred to withdraw into holes in the ground under our fire.

Also lying at the edge of the wood were gas masks, hand grenades, helmets, digging tools, ammunition pouches and other pieces of equipment that betrayed there must be corpses lying there, too. But because of the jungle-like undergrowth we were unable to search. Towards morning I withdrew to the trench and slept in my wooden shack, twice there was shellfire close by without me being able to rouse myself to get up.

18. VI.17

Yesterday evening the outpost was attacked again, this time the business didn't take such a glorious course. The commander, a Sergeant Blüm, arrived at the trench alone with a group, having left the two other groups in the lurch, but these defended themselves anyway, one man being wounded. NCO Erdelt fell down the steep slope right into a bunch of lurking Indians. He threw some hand grenades around, but was quickly held down and first of all an Indian officer struck him in the face with a wire whip. Then the Indian took his watch from him. Shoved and poked he had to march off with them and escaped again when the Indians scattered under our machine gun fire. After wandering about behind the English lines for some time he got back to our area. This time, too, the Indians must again have suffered losses, because he saw some being carried back. There were English cars waiting at the road, apparently to drive the wounded away.

There has been a truly tropical heat for the last 12 days. The overgrown fields shimmer in the brightest colours. I have been struck by one colour effect in particular, which seems as if made for the war. A green field, thick with red poppy, when darkness falls the red appears almost black and almost runs together with the darkest shades of the green.

19. VI.17

Last night I went out on patrol. I wanted to have a go at the English double outpost at the slope, if it wasn't there, push further forward and take prisoners. Without a request on my part Lieutenant Schulz and a light machine gun were assigned to me. I split up the patrol so that Schulz with the machine gun and six men went down the sunken track, I with Sergeant Teilengertes and Knigge about 40 yards to the left of it and Corporal Braun in the middle as liaison man. If a part of the patrol came under fire, the others should wheel round to attack. We went forward, bent double, expectant.

In the sunken track we suddenly heard the sound of a rifle being cocked. We lay as if rooted to the spot. Then a shot was fired. I lay behind a gorse bush and waited. Hand grenades exploded to the right. Then a general furious firing in front of us, the horrible, familiar sharp report showed that the shots were passing very close to us. I gave the order to withdraw. In mad haste we ran back. To our right infantry fire and a machine gun opened up. The bullets swarmed around us in the most unpleasant manner, that is, we heard only the sharp, brief shots, one doesn't hear a bullet fired at such close range. I didn't think I would get back in one piece. Death had come hunting. My subconscious was all the time expecting me to be hit.

To the right somewhere on the terrain a section of Indians charged with a shrill Hooray!

Once I fell and Teilengertes fell over me. In the collision I lost helmet, pistol, hand grenades. Just keep going! At last we came to the steep slope and dashed down. I came upon Schulz who told me that the impudent marksman had been chastised with hand grenades. Immediately after that two men appeared dragging along Infantryman Feldmann who had been shot twice through the legs. The others were all there. The biggest misfortune was that the fellow who was carrying the machine gun had fallen over the wounded man and left the thing lying. Notwithstanding that Schulz had ordered him to open fire, he had taken to his heels without carrying out the order.

While we were still engaged in lively debate we came under very unpleasant fire, which damned well reminded me of the night of the 12th/13th. Again there was utter confusion. I found myself quite alone on the slope with one man. Pulling himself forward with his hands the wounded man crawled up to me and moaned: ‘Lieutenant, lieutenant, sir, don't leave me alone.' It was a pitiful sight, but I couldn't have the man brought back without weakening my fighting strength. So I laid the wounded man in a sentry hole, placed Infantryman Sasse beside him and made Sasse responsible. I myself gathered together the outpost squad by the wood, since the duty sergeant, being in a spot, turned to me. I positioned the men in the gun pits and wanted to run over to the wounded man again. Against my order he had been carried back by Sergeant Schnelle and his half squad. Immediately on my return I had a report handed in against the man.

I was heartily relieved when the Indians didn't come. In the wood that was behind us, we could hear shouting, it was sappers coming from the rear area who were supposed to clear a break through the wood. They abandoned their equipment and weapons and then strayed around in the forefield all night.

Only the veterans were sitting at the edge of the wood again, rifle in hand, and waiting. A tremendous stench tempted me to go into the wood. Some Indians we had killed on the first night were still lying there. I ordered the men to keep on searching and they found quite a few more. We had really messed the fellows up. The sounds of decomposition, familiar to me from Guillemont, were coming from the bodies, a wan head, resting on its hands looked ghost-like at me in the darkness. I took the gas mask from one, it was still quite warm from the warmth of the decomposition, but it didn't matter, since it was one of the older carbolic-soaked English masks.

After the shooting had completely died down, I went back with Sergeant Teilengertes.

Ernst Jünger
(1895–1998) remains one of the most controversial writers of modern literature. Although he was admired on the left as well as the right, the stigma of appearing to prepare the way for Nazism still, for many, makes him unacceptable as an author of significance. If he is difficult to categorise as a conventional nationalist, he was certainly not only anti-bourgeois, in a particular dandified way, but also anti-democratic and hierarchical in his thinking. He first made his name as a writer at the age of 25 with his memoir of the Western Front,
Storm of Steel
.
War Diary 1914–1918
from which the extracts in the present volume are taken formed the basis of that memoir, but were not published in German until 2010. In them we find Jünger both discovering his voice as a writer and doing so by taking an attitude of dispassion and indifference. Yet there's also a touch of youthful immaturity to the elevation of battle as supreme human test. This nihilism, in which hatred or contempt for the enemy is absent, would not remain Jünger's attitude: it gave way in his diaries of the Second World War to something like cynical melancholy. Nevertheless the combination of boyishness and a reaching for precision and clarity of description make the
Diary
at once unique and representative of how a generation coped with the horrors of trench warfare. The extract, an encounter with Indian troops, is dated 13th and 14th June 1917 and 18th and 19th June of the same year.

D. H. LAWRENCE

THE NIGHTMARE

from
Kangaroo

I
N SEPTEMBER, ON HIS BIRTHDAY
, came the third summons: On His Majesty's Service. – His Majesty's Service, God help us! Somers was bidden present himself at Derby on a certain date, to join the colours.

He replied: ‘If I am turned out of my home, and forbidden to enter the area of Cornwall: if I am forced to report myself to the police wherever I go, and am treated like a criminal, you surely cannot wish me to present myself to join the colours.'

There was an interval: much correspondence with Bodmin, where they seemed to have forgotten him again. Then he received a notice that he was to present himself as ordered.

What else was there to do? – But he was growing devilish inside himself. However, he went: and Harriett accompanied him to the town. The recruiting-place was a big Sunday School – you went down a little flight of steps from the road. In a smallish ante-room like a basement he sat on a form and waited while all his papers were filed. Beside him sat a big collier, about as old as himself. And the man's face was a study of anger and devilishness growing under humiliation. After an hour's waiting, Somers was called. He stripped as usual – but this time was told to put on his jacket over his complete nakedness.

And so – he was shown into a high, long schoolroom, with various sections down one side – bits of screens where various doctor-fellows were performing – and opposite, a long writing table where clerks and old military buffers in uniform sat in power: the clerks dutifully scribbling, glad to be in a safe job, no doubt, the old military buffers staring about. Near this Judgment-Day table a fire was burning, and there was a bench where two naked men sat ignominiously waiting, trying to cover their nakedness a little with their jackets, but too much upset to care really.