Chapter Three
The Battle of the Somme 1916
In October 1914 (the ‘Race to the Sea’), after brief but fierce fighting against the French Army, the Germans established themselves along the Somme. With the beginning of trench warfare from about mid-November 1914, a seventy-kilometre long front line came into existence, increasingly strongly fortified, which stretched on the north-south axis through the villages of Gommecourt, Beaumont-Hamel, Thiepval, Fricourt, Maricourt, Curlu (following a bend there in the Somme) to Dompierre, Fay, Chaulnes and Maucourt. For twenty-one months, 2. Army under General Fritz von Below expanded its infantry and communications trenches north and south of the river, ‘wired up’ woodlands and barricaded villages abandoned by their populations. In some places they created bunker-like refuges and soldiers’ accommodation (such as the ‘Swabian Fort’ at Thiepval) or dug underground galleries – often up to twelve metres deep.
Artillery fire was exchanged regularly, mines were used (Fricourt, Fay) and attacks made against enemy trenches, but the only major battle between Germans and French, in June 1915 at Serre in the north of the Somme region, made no significant change to the front. At the end of January 1916, 11.Bavarian Inf.Div. captured the small village of Frise at the entrance to the Somme bend. When the Allied offensive began in July 1916, the Germans had north of the Somme, under the command of General Hermann von Stein, commanding-general XVII Army Corps, five full strength divisions plus two-thirds of 10.Bavarian Inf.Div. South of the river under General von Pannewitz, commanding general XVII Army Corps, were four divisions, a Garde-Corps with subordinated Landwehr division and behind these. to the east, three reserve divisions and one-third 10. Bavarian Inf.Div.1 The total strength of the German force (including the technical units) on the Somme was initially 300,000 men. Opposing them in trenches on the eve of the offensive were 500,000 British and 200,000 French troops. Many participants and also entire units of these armies were colonial or from the British dominions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa.2
Prelude
The decision of the Entente to attempt the breakthrough in 1916 and put an end to trench warfare, and the war of attrition, was taken in December 1915 in a conference at Chantilly north of Paris. The Germans were to be attacked simultaneously in all theatres in order to give them no opportunity to transfer their reserves from one front to the other. The exact location and time of the General Offensive in the west was not agreed at Chantilly, and not until 14 February 1916 did the respective commanders-in-chief, Joffre and Haig, agree on eastern Picardy. Especially from the French point of view, the Somme region was chosen for its topography and the nature of the landscape. The hilly terrain and chalky ground promised a firmer subsoil than the heavy mires of Flanders – and the fact that there, at the seam between the Allied armies as it were, a close military cooperation between them would be possible from early on. Joffre and Haig agreed initially that the French would lead the main assault with the British playing only a supporting role. The strength of the French Army operating south of the Somme river was set at forty divisions with 1,700 heavy guns.
The German attack on Verdun on 21 February 1916 with bitter fighting and very heavy casualties north of the city and west of the Meuse put a stop to the Allied plan. The number of operational French divisions on the Somme was cut at once to twenty-two and for the attack itself the C-in-C French 6th Army, General Marie Émile Fayolle, was left with only twelve whole divisions for the fifteen kilometres of front under his control. The main weight of the military operations scheduled to begin around 1 July now lay with the BEF. Haig attempted in vain to postpone the start of the offensive to mid-August so as to bring up reinforcements and additional artillery, but Joffre insisted on Haig keeping the agreed date because of the dangerous situation in which the French Army found itself at Verdun. On 23 June, German forces 78,000-strong made their (final) major assault north-east of the city of Verdun.
The German military leaders had been expecting for some time a large Allied Entlastungsangriff (‘relieving attack’ to use the term coined by the Chief of the General Staff, Falkenhayn) in the Somme region. That the attack was actually ‘desired’, as Falkenhayn wrote in his memoirs, ‘is to be doubted having regard to the situation at Verdun and on the Russian front.’3 Whereas the German armies in 1916 at Verdun and Galicia (the Brussilow Offensive) had no lack of heavy guns and ammunition, and bomber and reconnaissance aircraft were used regularly in combat, ‘they were wished for on the Somme with a thousand curses’, the Great War chronicler Stegmann3 wrote bitterly in 1921. General von Below, facing the Allied offensive, had asked in vain for 2. Army to be strengthened, and made repeated requests ‘for reserves, artillery and aircraft.’4 Falkenhayn awarded absolute priority to the attack on Verdun, however, and more importantly underestimated the British resolve to make the great gamble in northern France in the summer of 1916.
The Battle
The British and French opened the Battle of the Somme on 24 June with a preparatory barrage. The opening phase began with British light field howitzers bombarding the German wire defences and surface trenches. Two days later an incesssant, massive barrage by the entire artillery began along the central front line north and south of the road from Albert to Bapaume. For over a week 1,537 guns fired more than 1.5 million shells at the German trenches. At some sectors (Fricourt) the British used small quantities of poison gas and phosphorous as an accelerant, 5 but the effect of the bombardment as a whole fell short of the expectations of the British and French Chiefs of Staff, and the fears of the Germans. The British in particular were short of heavy artillery – their 467 guns were distributed rather sparsely along the twenty kilometres of attack front. Heavy rain and poor visibility had an additional negative effect on gunnery accuracy and prevented complete destruction of the German infantry and communications trenches and above all the very solid, partially concrete-built or reinforced bunker dug-outs.
The poor ‘softening up’ effort by the artillery and unfavourable weather were not the only factors to bring the success of the Allied offensive on the Somme into question, for the operational and tactical ideas of the two British generals commanding the operation were incompatible. While Haig, C-in-C of the BEF, had planned a rapid push ‘to the third line’ of enemy trenches, and so roll up the system, allowing a general breakout northwards, General Henry Rawlinson, C-in-C 4th Army, which carried the main weight of the attack, had initially only very limited goals. Rawlinson, advocate of a tactic known as ‘bite and hold’, aimed to make the infantry advance dependent on the penetrative success of the artillery: he was thinking of concentrated attacks by ground troops with the artillery following later if necessary.6 The result was a fatal compromise because Haig lacked authority over Rawlinson, Allenby (3rd Army) and Gough (Reserve Army) subordinated to him on the Somme.
Convinced that the enemy positions and machine-gun posts had been adequately softened up by the week-long bombardment, on the morning of 1 July British and French infantry units stormed the German trenches. 1 July 1916, officially the first day of the 1916 Battle of the Somme, became the bloodiest day in British military history. The BEF lost 57,470 men, of whom 19,240 were killed, the remainder wounded, prisoner or missing.7 The losses were particularly high on the left flank where VIII Corps, in its attack on Serre and Beaumont-Hamel, ran into the forward German line. 36th Ulster Division, later famed for its bravery, took the heavily fortified ‘Swabian Fort’ at Thiepval but was forced to withdraw after losing contact with neighbouring divisions.
The attack on the right flank, where units of the 4th Army achieved all targets set for the day (Mametz, Montauban) was more successful. The older generation of British military historians blamed Haig for the catastrophe, principally for his untimely operational concept and his ‘Mass and Morale’ fixation (John M. Bourne). The British media retain this negative impression of Haig. In November 1998 the Daily Express branded him ‘the man who led millions to their deaths.’ Other historians prefer to find an explanation for the disaster of the first day in the huge numbers of often raw soldiers (Kitchener’s Army) being thrown into the fray direct from training. The popular BBC production of 1999 ‘The Great War’ considered that a contributory factor had been the manner in which the infantry divisions crossed No Man’s Land, marching upright and in closed ranks into the German machine-gun fire.
The Australian military historians Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson pointed out in a recent book involving very detailed research into the Battle of the Somme that probably only twelve (but possibly another five) of the eighty British battalions which ‘went over the top’ left their trenchs to converge on the enemy positions in a straight line and at a common tempo.8 The other battalions came up to the German front under cover of darkness, or the men had more or less spontaneously re-formed in No Man’s Land into small fighting groups practising various tactics of attack. Even that had served the British infantry poorly, however. Whenever German machine gunners had been able to fire directly into the attacking infantry the latter had been exposed to a lethal hail of bullets, and mortars, no matter how they advanced. The decisive error of the British and therefore the cause of the enormous losses on the Somme on 1 July was accordingly an inadequate preparatory artillery bombardment for the ground troops to follow, and the inaccurate and ineffective fire directed towards the German machine gun and gun emplacements, which were able to put up a barrier of preventive fire of unexpected scale when the time came.
That such an attack could be prepared and carried through successfully was proven on 1 July by the French south of the Somme. Supported by the 688 guns of their heavy artillery and attacking only along a sector fifteen kilometres in length, Fayolle’s 6th Army reached all its objectives (north of the Somme as far as Hardecourt and south to Fay). 1.Colonial Corps reached the main German defensive line and won ground temporarily. Over the next few days French troops consolidated their territorial gains and in some places even managed to push the front line five kilometres eastwards towards Péronne. Even the French were far from achieving the desired breakthrough on the Somme, however. On 12 July, General Fayolle, C-in-C 6th Army, noted in his diary: ‘This battle never had a goal. We cannot speak of a breakthrough. And if there is no breakthrough, what was the point of the battle?’9
Despite the disproportionately high losses and the comparatively minor gains in territory neither the French nor British High Commands considered calling off the offensive even though the two Chiefs of Staff, Joffre and Haig, were increasingly at odds regarding the future direction and objectives of the ongoing operation. Soon there could be no talk of coordinated proceedings: from now on British and French conducted their respective attacks without agreeing the operational and tactical details with each other beforehand. Instead of large-scale offensives and encirclements of the enemy, the French and British forces became increasingly committed to minor battles with high losses to win every elevation, every scrap of woodland and every village. After the introductory attacks of both armies on a broad front, this now converted into the second phase of the battle. It lasted from mid-July to mid-September 1916.
Later, military historians would describe the bloody fighting conducted by enormous masses of men and materials as ‘wastage battles’ (batailles d’usure).10 An example of this was the capture of Pozières and the ruins of a mill near the village by I.Anzac Corps between 23 July and 5 August. The ‘victory’ on the communications highway between Albert and Bapaume was bought for the price of a third (about 23,000 men) of the three Australian divisions in this sector. The advantage to the Allies was an important exit trench in the central battle area. The costly Anzac raid on Pozières – together with the disaster at Gallipoli – later became the foundations of the road to Australian independence from Great Britain.
The German defenders on the Somme were clearly inferior to the Allies in numbers and weaponry. By the end of August, the British had sixty-two, and the French forty-four divisions, a total of 106 infantry divisions against fifty-seven and a half German, and the head count in the latter was not only considerably less, but some German divisions in the field were counted several times over.11 The more than 1,500 guns of the Allied armies at the beginning of the battle were opposed by 598 light and 246 heavy artillery pieces. Still greater was the Allied superiority in aircraft at reconnaissance units (aircraft and balloons), and also in fighters and bombers. Reich archive historians calculated this initial disparity at 3:1 in favour of the British and French side.12
The German High Command reacted to the Allied offensive with a comprehensive rearrangement of their units on the Somme (19 July). From now on von Below commanded exclusively the new 1. Army operating north of the river, General Max von Gallwitz led 2. Army on the southern sector of the front with overall control of both armies. This was only a provisional measure, for on 28 July the Somme armies (together with 6.Army stationed between Lille and Arras and led by Generaloberst Freiherr von Falkenhausen) were placed under Army Group Kronprinz Rupprecht von Bayern. This was a desperately urgent solution to relieve the ‘worn out divisions’ by fresh units on a broader ground base. None of these ‘new’ infantry divisions – according to the declared targets – was henceforth to spend more than fourteen days’ fighting, while artillery units, of which as a rule lesser demands were made, would be exchanged after every four weeks.
The wide-reaching shuffling and re-groupings of the German armies in the west shortly before the dismissal of Falkenhayn and the setting up of 3.OHL under Hindenburg and Ludendorff (29 July) reflect the great extent of uncertainty in the German military High Command, and also the gradual realization of the true enormity of the battlefield in the Somme region.
On 15 September, tanks made their debut in warfare for the first time. The thirty-six (of forty-nine deployed) British Type Mark I tanks which attacked German positions north-east of Pozières were not very successful, but did cause considerable consternation amongst German infantry, which had nothing similar. In the offensive mid-month, and in a major attack on 25 September, units of the French 6th Army were again involved, and British and French forces penetrated the front at Thiepval, Martinpuich, Combles, Rancourt, Cléry-sur-Somme, Barleux and Chilly in the south to push the German front a few kilometres further eastwards, but the hoped-for major breach of the front eluded them.
The removal from the line of exhausted units, eventually practised on the grand scale, constant replenishment of the initially far too small supply of ammunition and the building up of previously weak air reconnaissance and bomber groups enabled the Germans to compensate gradually for their former inferiority. The formation of fighter-aircraft units (Jagdstaffeln) expressly for the purpose made it possible by mid-September to put an end to the air superiority of the Allies at the Somme. The twelve warplanes, single-seater fighters of Hauptmann Oswald Boelcke’s Jasta 2, won almost legendary fame. Boelcke alone shot down forty enemy aircraft, twenty of them over the Somme. He was decorated with the Pour le Mérite and died a hero’s death at the end of October 1916 near Bapaume.
The third and last phase of the Battle of the Somme began at the end of September 1916, breaking down into countless minor battles. Many of the local attacks by the Allies failed (especially the British attack on the Warlencourt height, and the French in the St Pierre-Vaast Wood), or had only limited success. From mid-October the autumn weather brought a change for the worse as persistent rain transformed the battlefield into ‘a landscape of primaeval mud’ (Ernst Jünger), a giant sewer in which men, horses and vehicles stuck fast and could hardly move forward. ‘Everywhere deep shell craters, most filled to the brim with water. At their rims one edges through the mud. The trunks of trees, fallen and ragged with shrapnel, over which one has to climb. A ghastly assortment of about six corpses, cut to pieces, covered in blood and mud, one with half its head missing: a little further on a blown-off leg, a couple of bodies so forced together that below the layer of mud the individual corpses cannot be distinguished,’ wrote regimental physician Hugo Natt in November 1916.13
In mid-November 1916, after a temporary improvement in the weather, the last major attack by the British 5th Army (until 1 November the Reserve Army) under General Gough along the Ancre river was considered a disappointment, despite the capture by 51st Scottish Highland Division of Beaumont-Hamel which had been so hard-fought previously on 1 July. The French, who in September had reached Bouchavesnes north of Péronne with heavy losses – their farthest penetration eastwards of the German line, were little able to consolidate their territorial gains in this locality, and made no breakthrough.
The towns of Bapaume and Péronne, the hard-fought objectives of the French and British attacks, remained securely in German hands. The Battle of the Somme ‘slowly burned out’, as a popular German military chronicler described it.14 Neither side achieved any noteworthy success: new military technology was tried out by both sides, new operational strategies and tactics were developed or rejected. Both sides claimed to emerge from the battle the victor – the price which they paid to do so was fearsome.
The Balance Sheet
The 1916 Battle of the Somme was far and away the bloodiest battle of the Great War. Between 24 June (commencement of the artillery bombardment) and 25 November (provisional end to the fighting), the British lost a total of 419,654 men dead, wounded, prisoner or missing, the French 204,353 and the Germans about 465,000.15 Thus the Allies’ losses were substantially higher than those of the German defenders. The British losses exceeded the worst estimates of their military leaders. The Somme destroyed, in the long term, the fighting ability of twenty-five British divisions;16 put another way, every second British soldier who fought on the Somme was either so seriously wounded as to be unfit for future military service or failed to return at all.
For the Germans, the Battle of the Somme represented an enormous ‘bloodletting’ from which the Western Army, already weakened in the offensive before Verdun, would not recover. The Reich archive military historians summarized the Somme losses later: ‘The existing old nucleus of German infantry trained in peacetime bled to death on this battlefield.’17 To replace these experienced soldiers, amongst whom were numerous senior NCOs, there now arrived fresh and often inadequately trained recruits, whose chances of survival were accordingly that much slimmer. Responsibility for the extremely high losses lay not least with the German High Command, which at the beginning of the Battle of the Somme had insisted that the forward trenches be held at all costs. The German front line, as a rule heavily manned, could only be vacated voluntarily with the express authority of High Command.18 This restricted to a major extent, if it did not actually render impossible, the mobility of the German infantry in the front line.
In view of the immense losses caused by the long artillery bombardment and the increasing refusal of many German soldiers to fight only ‘in line’, a new tactical concept, the so-called ‘Stormtroop tactic’ was introduced on the Somme. Developed by Ludendorff before he entered 3.OHL, and officially accepted by 2. Army at the end of August, the tactic involved small operational units set up ad hoc at regimental level and commanded by officers with good front experience. By this means did the German infantry on the Somme, despite the oppressive Allied superiority in artillery, increase its fighting prowess if only temporarily. The experience of service in small elite groups led by a proven front-line warrior created a new kind of soldier, converted by Ernst Jünger into an enduring monument in his memoir In Stahlgewittern based on his own experience of the Somme. Jünger sketched a mythically exaggerated, stoic warrior and ‘true hero’ of the Great War no longer susceptible to the horror and suffering of the battle. This anti-bourgeois, ultra-militaristic type of soldier was found in the 1920s literature and the ideology of the military nationalism of the Weimar Republic before ‘Steel-helmet Face’ (Gerd Krumeich) came to embrace the experience of ‘total battle.’ By extension the SS-man was its most radical and inhuman expression.
In a certain way the myth of the heroic ‘Somme Warrior’ of post-war Germany corresponds to the ‘heroic image of the warrior’ current even today in British military history writing, more precisely the British infantryman whose skill, courage and readiness to sacrifice himself were qualities evident on the Somme.19 Yet the ‘first day’ of the battle, 1 July 1916, showed that those soldierly virtues could not determine the outcome of an attack. The Great War was an industrialized civil war whose material battles in Flanders, at Verdun or on the Somme were fashioned and decided principally by mass-produced large-calibre guns and the new possibilities of technology such as warplanes. This fact was first recognized by those who fought there. At the beginning of October 1916, Vizefeldwebel Hugo Frick, attached to a reserve division on the Somme, wrote to his mother in Germany: ‘It is no longer a war, but mutual destruction by the power of technology. What hope has the soft human body against that?’20
Otto Maute (1896 – 1963), Driver, Machine-Gun Company, Inf.Regt 180/Reserve-Div.26.
In Civilian Life a Factory Worker.
Letters to His Family at Tailfingen/Balingen
23 June 1916 (Warlencourt)
Am writing to you again after having my baptism of fire so to speak. With three drivers we had to take two four-horse waggons at ten in the evening after 1. and 2. platoons riflemen arrived in trenches. From Warlencourt, as the village is called, we rode via Le Sers, Courcelette to the positions and stopped at the running trench of the third line to unload guns and ammunition. About then the British fired some rocket flares, after which the artillery of both sides opened up. For the first time I heard the whistle of the shells which hit nearby. We came under fire because we were in the vicinity of the German artillery position. Naturally it was impossible to quieten the horses. As soon as we had finished unloading the waggons I headed back. We got to Warlencourt at about 0330.
I will tell you some things about the railway journey. I have written to you every time we were at a new position.( . . . ) In Bapaume we de-trained, you can find the town on the map. From Bapaume it was a one-hour drive here. Once we settled in, everyone started to write. On Tuesday we were inspected at Miraumont by the divisional commander Generalleutnant Freiherr von Soden. On Wednesday we were inspected by the regimental commander. His name is Oberstleutnant Fischer. Yesterday we did not have much to do except look after our horses. Then at ten in the evening we went to the front. Today I prefer not to go out because the British are shelling like mad. Otherwise it is not so bad here, better than Müsingen. The food is adequate, in the field one gets a loaf of bread every second day. Write soon telling me what it is like at home. How is the farm, have you begun with the hay yet? Behind the front we are reaping everything. Arras is not far from here. Now you know where I am. Write soon and send something for my thirst.
25 June 1916 (Warlencourt)
Today is my first Sunday in enemy territory. One notices nothing strange about it. Just as we arrived they said the British are going to open an offensive and this seems to be starting. Since yesterday morning their guns are firing like I never heard before, it is a proper bombardment. Yesterday evening we had to go with three four-horse waggons to the trenches but got only as far as Pozières, where we were ordered to turn back because the approach road was under heavy fire. When we got back we could not unharness the teams, we had to stay at alarm-readiness. All the others had already harnessed up. We could not sleep for all the cannon fire going on. This morning we learned that the village of Miraumont is being evacuated. This is only half an hour between us and the front. Naturally we have packed everything so that if anything happens all we have to do is harness up and attach the team. This artillery barrage is hitting all the trenches. Naturally our guns reply, last evening one ammunition column after another went to the front positions. It is not impossible that the British will penetrate our front line and we will have to move out. Things with us are so different from yourselves at home, where everybody can take a Sunday stroll as if there were no war. Here nobody can leave the farm. Our Regt.180 is with Reserve-Regt.119, which has many Tailfinger people such as Scharr, Rieper, Eppler von Truchtelfingen ( . . . ) There are almost no civilians left in our village, on the farm where we are is only one woman whose husband is a soldier, and her fourteen-year-old son. ( . . . )
2 July 1916 Warlencourt
Yesterday was hot. The artillery fire which started on Saturday last week and especially at night was incessant. It stopped suddenly at midday yesterday. Then came the long-expected British attack. They attacked the front line of our division directly and broke through at Regt. 99. They got to our artillery positions. Then 10.Bavarian Inf.Div. was thrown in. In the counter-attack our people ejected the British from our trenches and then took the first British trench. While this was going on it remained quite quiet except that the ammunition columns drove like the furies. Then the wounded came in, the lightly wounded walked, the serious cases were on waggons or in ambulances. At midday we harnessed up our horses, then I had to go to Bapaume for ammunition. I drove like the wind. The British fired over us into Bapaume. They left the Bapaume-Albert road untouched, but we were showered by flying fragments the size of your fist, and it made us think because they landed only two to three metres away. What would it be like to receive a direct hit from a ship’s thirty-cm gun? The ammunition then had to be taken to the trenches, I did not have to go because I had fetched it.
According to the wounded, our regiment had heavy losses in the attack, but Regt.99 came off worse, they say fifty per cent. During the night the shelling resumed. We kept the horses harnessed up all night and had a good night’s sleep alongside them. This morning all the windows of the house facing the lower stall were shattered by splinters, there were a lot in the farmyard. Later when it quietened down we unharnessed and cleaned the horses, but harnessed them up again at midday, as they are now.
During the week, four of the villages ahead of us were evacuated. They were firing into them with phosphorous shells. The night before last Miraumont was burning brightly throughout the night when I had patrol. At home you simply have no idea of what war is like. This evening we have packed everything in case we have to leave as eight days ago. British prisoners brought in today are the first I have seen. Today an aircraft crashed in our neighbourhood. When you write to me you must not put the village name or I will be in hot water. I really should not have written this. I am not, as I wrote you last time, near Arras, but Albert. That is about ten kilometres from here. The local village commandant is also named Maute. He is a junior lieutenant and the son of a factory owner from Spaichingen. Father, if you know him, please let me know. Despite everything all is well with me, we have food so that I have never eaten so much meat, if this were Germany I would not want to go home( . . . ).
6 July 1916 Warlencourt
I also have to tell you not to put Northern France or Warlencourt on the envelope for it is forbidden to write where one is. You also have to advise the Post Office that it has to be left off. The service office told me that the village name is unnecessary and forbidden. I will receive everything, just write road and street number. Yesterday I ate in the forwardmost trenches. We took provisions to Courcelette, and then we had to take them to the running trench, two hours away. You have no idea what that means, the trench was so full of water it reached my trouser pockets. I had to drag my boots through it, it is a pure quagmire. A farm had been completely levelled by the shelling, the trench was obliterated. We received artillery fire along this 500-metre-long stretch. The air pressure of the shells as they exploded tossed us each time on our backs to the floor. One after another we jumped below and were sweating so much that it trickled down our legs. Suddenly a shell whistled over and we thought we had breathed our last, luckily it was a dud. It bored into the ground about five to six steps away. After that we went into a dug-out to rest. Afterwards we made our way through the trench. Where the trench had collapsed under the shelling we had to run because the British had the gaps under MG fire. Finally we reached the kitchen dug-out where we handed over the things. We stayed there thirty minutes and looked at the British trenches. Then we went back, and since the artillery was silent we left the trench, where you could easily drown, when we were half an hour from the front and we crossed open country. There I saw another corpse. We got back dog-tired at six. I had to change completely, my boots were full of mud. We had to wash trousers, socks, everything. You can see that it is often difficult but we also have nice days like today. Last eveing everybody on provisions transport duty had a piece of Swiss cheese and meat for supper. Although it is very dangerous, it is not so bad in the field. I am therefore still happy and remain healthy( . . . ). I do not need money, I have more than I ever had in civilian life.
1 August 1916 (Grévillers)
Written on first anniversary of my mobilization ( . . . ) Every second day everybody has to ride to the trenches. Each time we use two four-horse and one or two two-horse waggons. Then we have to make from here via Irles and Miraumont to Grandcourt where there is a field-railway station, and we have to go to that station to load up: hand grenades, wood for dug-outs and barbed wire. Then we go to the trenches and make the trip two or three times. The road there is naturally not even, just rough track made by lots of traffic and full of shell holes, and because we go by night we have to keep a sharp lookout. When we get to the destination we unload as quickly as possible because this location and the road beyond it are heavily bombarded. When I was there the last time at Grandcourt, two waggons ahead of me a shell hit an ammunition waggon which burnt out with the horses and drivers. Few splinters reached us. In that we had more luck than we can understand. We never get back until six in the morning, always covered in dust. It is damn hot. Yesterday and today aircraft bombed Grévillers, today four men were killed and thirty wounded by bombs. One of our drivers was wounded so that now we have lost three, two being struck by horses and this one. Otherwise I am still enjoying it. Tomorrow we go to the provisions yard, and at midday we will go with the horses to pasture and stay there.
7 August 1916 (Favreuil)
Scarcely had I written to you on the 3rd and handed it in, than a bomber squadron flew over our village Grévillers and dropped one after another ten bombs, killing five and wounding fifteen, also eight horses lay wounded in the street. Next day at the same time they came again and dropped bombs. This time one of our drivers was wounded in the hands and feet by splinters. The same day (4th) at 0730 eight shells came over one after the other and all hit in and around the church. The church clock stopped at the precise moment, and half the tower collapsed. Now there was a withdrawal. You cannot imagine it. The whole village was stuffed with the military. Ambulances were driving around as if demented. First we got the horses out of course. Quite a lot had been killed or injured, also from blocks of stones or beams. We received the order to harness up. We left at 0100 after everything was packed and loaded on the waggons. We went now to some villages further back and passed through Biefvillers, Favreuil to Beugnâtre. There we stayed on 5th and 6th. Then we came forward a little to Favreuil where we are now, but we are in barns. Naturally we have a longer journey to the front because it is much further, well beyond Bapaume. But it is good we left Grévillers because meanwhile the British shelled it to a ruin. Today we had the funeral of two fallen comrades from our company. We brought them from the front, and today they were buried in the local cemetery. Both were killed by a shell. Otherwise I have no news.( . . . )
10 August 1916 (Favreuil)
( . . . ) I have to tell you that I was nearly killed last night. As every evening we left here (Favreuil) with two four-horse waggons to collect materials from Grandcourt station for the trenches and had arrived, and were about 400 metres out of St Pierre-Divion where we had to go. We had loaded iron and steel, naturally it weighed a lot, suddenly shrapnel hit amongst us. At once all four horses went down, my lead-rider and I were hurled into the horses, I got tangled up and the shrapnel balls kept coming while I was trying to get clear. Then we two drivers and the guard who was with us slipped under the waggon, and then three or more pieces of shrapnel fell amongst our nags. My saddle-horse was dead immediately, the other three survived it but all had their hooves sheered off. I got off lightly with a minor wound when a stone hit me in the chest. My lead-rider had a gash in the forehead from shrapnel amd more gashes in a foot, the guard has his face and left arm peppered by shrapnel balls, the NCO with us applied a field dressing to the other driver, and then they shelled so abominably that we could not get away. We remained ninety minutes with the waggon, I went over to the horses several times, they were trying to stand up but had no hooves. Once it fell quieter I went into St.Pierre-Divion to fetch a rifle, when I came back the leading saddle-horse was also dead, and the NCO with us then shot the other two horses. Then we returned to Grandcourt where we reported to the Feldwebel at the pioneer park, who wrote out a report, our names, everything. We slept until about five in the accommodation room, then we two went to Miraumont where an ammunition waggon from our company brought us back. That happened about 1230. As I wrote before, the highway between Grandcourt and St Pierre-Divion is dangerous because the British trenches can observe it and they fire star shell to light it up bright as day.
You should have seen their faces when we got back and told them how the other four-horse waggon which we had was no longer with us, and about the baggage waggon. The Feldwebel had been told that all four horses were dead and the drivers (therefore we two) wounded, which was true. I got a stone or splinter in the chest, a mere trifle, my lead-driver is wounded in the head and feet. I have no more horses and those were good. I have been to the front often enough, and nothing happened before, but you cannot win them all. Ahead of our front it is always hot, the name Pozières, lying before us on the Bapaume-Albert road, is mentioned almost daily in the Daily Report. The British offensive has brought them well forward, and now they can destroy all the villages behind the front, that is why we are so far back. Warlencourt, where we were first, had been reduced to ruins, and we were forced to evacuate Grévillers on 5th because they were shelling it. Other than that all I know is that there are so many flies in France that when it is hot by day there is nothing one can do to stop them eating you. Since I have been in the field it has almost never rained, the roads are so dusty that horse, man and waggon are covered in dust ( . . . )
18 August 1916 (Favreuil)
( . . . ) Driver Renz who fell last night will be buried tomorrow. His whole body is covered in balls of shrapnel. You must therefore not be anxious, if one gets hit, then in God’s name.
27 August 1916 (Favreuil)
If you have a shirt which weighs less than one pound send me one. We all have lice and when we wash the old shirts they come apart. Occasionally we all get the shits which is bad. Otherwise I am well and in good spirits.
1 September 1916 (Favreuil)
The region where we are, all France, is very fruitful. Oats are abundant. One sees what it means to have the war on one’s doorstep, the civilian prisoners are now all farm labourers. ( . . . ) I enjoy it so much better than in the garrison, in the field it is not so regimented. It remains lively though, enemy aircraft drop bombs in our neighbourhood daily, or one or two are shot down in aerial fighting with a German. My comrade Gottlieb is now also in the district but further south, he wrote me that it is a different kind of artillery bombardment here on the Somme than at Ypres, where he was before.
15 September 1916 Favreuil
The day before yesterday I was at the trenches, this time it was windy again. On the way out between Miraumont and Grandcourt a shrapnel bomb exploded directly above a waggon, I was hit by two shrapnel balls in the chest, not hurt, naturally I galloped away from this dangerous place. When we were driving later from Grandcourt to the front, towards Thiepval, the British fired gas shells. Despite my gas mask I got a mouthful. On the way home I had a headache from the inhaled gas and spent a long time vomiting (one says here ‘threw up like a palace dog’). I soon got better and my appetite returned. Last Sunday 10th at 0130 we were awakened when an enemy aircraft used the fine moonlit night to bomb our village, and hit ammuniton waggons. Eight of these exploded with a terrible noise. Little damage was caused, two men were wounded, three horses and five cows killed.
Karl Eiser, Sergeant, Reserve Feld-Art.Regt 29/Reserve.Div.28
Source BA/MA Freiburg, PH 12 II/57
Report (Written in August 1916)
From my War Diary respecting the great fighting at the outbreak of the Battle of the Somme from 24 June to 4 July 1916, which I experienced as an artilleryman on the Staff of I Detachment, Reserve Field-Artillery Regiment 29!
The task is difficult, and I do not know if and to what extent I can do it: I will try to compose from my meagre notes what I remember of those days and what our battery, our I Abteilung, Reserve Field Artillery Regiment 29 achieved by almost superhuman effort and offering up the last reserves of nervous energy.
We are in the Champagne region near the ruined village of Fontaine/Dormoise where we first understood correctly the full horror of the past days and for the first time could sketch an outline of our many experiences. Although the battle has already raged longer than a full month with the greatest possible consumption and use of enormous quantities of war materials and battlefield gases and the British have succeeded in breaking through our lines, their great planned breakout failed due to the iron will – after seven days bombardment and destructive artillery fire – of small fighting groups, lacking any reinforcements worth mentioning, who held off the powerful masses of enemy infantry and brought them to a temporary standstill. The great British Breakthrough Offensive of the Somme Battle failed!
‘Battle of the Somme.’ What a sad ring this phrase has when spoken by a German tongue: of inexpressible suffering, of unlimited readiness for sacrifice. There in northern France, our comrades of 28th Reserve-Div. went to their graves in their thousands. Most of them sons of our Baden homeland, many hundreds of them torn apart by shells, ploughed deeply under on heights and in valleys, while others rest in many war cemeteries, and finally the least number who receive their death honours and rest in the military cemeteries of the German homeland. In respect we bow our heads at the scale of the sacrifice. The name Battle of the Somme is holy to all of the 28. Reserve.Div who survived.
It was the beginning of May 1916 when the British facing our sector became increasingly restless, and one operation followed another. In the earlier firing to unsettle us, our Staff MO at Pozières was killed, while Major Radeck and Oberleutnant Weissmann, previously active with our I.Abtg. were wounded. By then almost every battery had lost gunners and some spotters to enemy fire. The British became ever more active, but we had no idea what they were up to: nobody suspected what was in the wind. Hill 110 at Fricourt was often subjected to furious shelling, and the continuous trenches and long stretches of the main front were levelled.
Life at our Fricourt West observation post was often soured on excursions to collect food. For me today it remains an incomprehensible mystery what the purpose was of having our artillery spotters there, for it was certain that the main trench could not hold out against even a minor attack and we would all have to surrender or be wiped out. By mid-May nearly all communications trenches on Hill 110 had been bombarded and levelled. The forward part of the traverse trench leading to the Hill 110 trenches had been shelled beyond recognition. Usually around midday the British would fire large-calibre shells and heavy mortars at the trenches.
On 3 or 4 June we sent out patrols, and on 5 June the British did the same, with the objective of taking prisoners in order to assess the disposition of enemy forces. Increased alertness was required of our observers since, contrary to the usual practice, the enemy artillery fire did not diminish once his patrols returned, but often continued wildly for whole days and nights.
In mid-June it was quieter, the lull before the storm. From 20 May onwards there was great activity behind the British lines. From our observation point on the Contalmaison Tower we watched endless columns of lorries making the jouney between Bray-sur-Somme and Albert every day. These convoys often consisted of 100 lorries. We frequently saw great artillery convoys, so long that it would take three hours for each to pass a given point. A standard gauge railway track was laid by the British between Fricourt and Bécourt using German PoW labour. At the eighty-metre mark on the Bray-Albert road the British set up a large airfield. Their infantry activity was very noticeable by the number of patrols and armed reconnaissance sorties they made, and their many mortars. All our reports were fed by I.Abtg. to Division.
At 0300 on Friday 23 June a furious bombardment began, shells exploded along our entire divisional sector, on our trench lines, various lengths as well as the single ones, the whole defensive line at Fricourt, Lehmgruben (clay-mining) Hill to the Lehmsacke (clay bog) lay under heavy shellfire. Our landline to the Fricourt West observation post was cut, even though it had been buried one metre deep. At midday the heavy bombardment died away and quietened – Mars.
At 0130 on Saturday 24 June our whole line, in a semi-circle around us from the enemy side, was lit up as innumerable lightning flashes soared over, a hissing and howling, gasping, splintering and exploding – all this filled the air. I was on watch on the Contalmaison Tower, I shouted into the telephone, I could not hear myself, I had to assume they had understood in the mansion cellar. A few moments later Hauptmann Kipling, commander of 7.Howitzer Battery, stood beside me. It was a fine sight, this flashing and lightning of the enemy artillery. The British were pouring down heavy fire mainly on the territory to the rear, our artillery positions, so far as they knew them, and all known observation points, access roads and villages far enough back that until now they had been spared attention. The trenches received little fire. It was frightening, all that noise of exploding shells, an artillery bombardment involving all calibres and kinds of munitions, such as I had never known in two years of warfare, roared and hissed over and around us far and near. At sunrise at crossroads and on the access roads the little clouds of shrapnel balls came flying, in between the impact of heavy shells sprayed high into the air. The mansion received heavy fire from various calibres, several direct hits shook the building, a red cloud of disintegrating brickwork hindered visibility, the shells howled overhead, landing on the outskirts of Pozières village, hiding the whole locality in smoke and fumes. Almost at the same time huge explosions of heavy shells reduced to rubble the last standing ruins of the houses in our village.
The evening of 30 June brought no change: smoke, gas, foul fumes. The British continued shelling our village until late at night, also the outskirts where 911 platoon/1.Battalion was stationed, with shells armed with a delay fuse, in the dug-out one felt the tremendous jolt and tremor of the ‘moling’ shells with which they were showering the village. Heavy shells howled and wobbled high overhead into our Etappe right through the night. Over the entire rearward area, as we were now becoming used to it, the access roads were now being subjected to bombardment every night.
The morning of 1 July dawned. Towards 0330 I crawled out of our dug-out to orient the fall of enemy shelling. The depression between Contalmaison and Edinger village (position between Contalmaison and Fricourt) was shelled with a gas which smelled of bitter almonds, presumably prussic acid. A milky white, lazy wall drifted slowly towards our village. Inf. Res. Regt.111 reported from Fricourt that the British had filled their trenches, it smelt of prussic acid everywhere: we knew that our gas masks offered no potection against it. From Pozières to the Fricourt depression everything was hidden by a white veil of gas. At daybreak Res.Grenadier-Regt. 110 reported from La Boisselle that the enemy had filled the trenches there, and 109 reported the same from Mametz. We awaited events in high tension. What would the day bring? Perhaps we would not survive it – many thought this. As the first rays of the sun gleamed white, the vile gas rose up and soon we were immersed in it. Visibility was down to ten metres. The barking of the enemy guns increased every second, hell roared up: but only for a short time!
Since Thursday 29 June on Hill 110 we had seen only smoke, fire and exploding shells, on the eastern side a series of explosions. They must have hit the arsenal for our mortars. With deep sadness we think of our infantry comrades in the trench: how many of the company would still be alive? How many men would a battalion or infantry regiment still have who were fit to fight? We knew that on Hill 110, our artillery comrades, our own trench, were in the greatest danger: or were perhaps already dead? Hill 110 observation point, the stone quarry, the work platform and Fricourt West were on the forward trench line and short in numbers. I knew that the observation point here was in the hands of one of our best lieutenants, who was no coward and would rather die than surrender. He was Lt Mayer with two NCOs, Hittler and Viehoff, and two telephonists, Enderle and Baumann. A light wind began to disperse the swathes of gas a little. Observation point Hill 110 and Fricourt requested urgent covering fire: for this sector we had only two batteries, with only a few serviceable guns: these were 2. and 7.Battery with light field howitzers. They opened fire immediately. From Fricourt to Mametz, and as far as La Boisselle, urgent covering fire was being requested, 1. and 3. Batteries were under rapid fire. All heavy batteries in the wood at Mametz were out of action either from direct hits or the gas attack. II.Abtg. could not be contacted in the gully of shells! As all of our batteries were capable of being reached quickly, equipped partially with new guns but not all yet installed, the sector was under a barrage of fire. The hell that roared up is beyond my powers of description, the British artillery fire was a true hurricane, our own guns were inaudible. All our artillery fired for a full hour then gradually the iron mouths of the guns fell silent as hit after hit knocked them out. A wild slipping through of message runners began, coming and going to and from our Abtg. Platoon 911 at the village entrance also received a direct hit, my comrades, I knew them all, were seriously wounded: Schrempf, Kappenberger, little Noe dead. All at once the frenzy of enemy artillery fire ceased, although the heavy shells from the long distance batteries howled and twisted on their way to the Etappe villages. The decisive moment for attacker and defender had arrived.
The British had blown open a sector one company’s breadth from Reserve Inf.Regt. 111 between the brickworks road at Fricourt and Bahngruben Hill. British assault troops followed up at once and poured into our trenches. At almost the same time the enemy broke through small parts of the infantry line along our whole divisional sector. Luckily the morning breeze had by now dispersed the major cloud of gas and the observation points had improved visibility. Before us lay Edinger village, not really a village but a well-fortified ready infantry emplacement. The main kitchen galleries of our infantry regiment, and pioneers, and all kinds of materials were there. The field railway ran here from Martinpuich and the Ganter Works. Between here and the ridge is the Totenwäldchen wood, a little north-west the Ferme Fricourt. About 500 metres to the west of our village beside the small wood and the known path through the depression was our 3.Battery Hauptmann Fröhlich, whose reckless spirit and black humour was well know to everybody: 200 metres to the south of him was a small artillery refuge called the Völkerbereitschaft. Our 1.Battery was strung out in three parts along the road from Contalmaison to Fricourt, two guns: platoon 911 on the outskirts of Contalmaison, one gun in the depression on the road to Fricourt and the other on the ridge, this was listed as a dummy gun but, in true fulfilment of duty to the last, by almost superhuman effort took part in the defence.
The morning breeze gradually swept the great swathes of gas from the foregoing terrain and our field of sight improved. Our divisional sector became noticeably quieter, almost frighteningly so. The British long-range guns alone continued firing on our rearward positions, the local British artillery had fallen silent.
It was 0800 on 1 July. In the Totenwäldchen Wood two MGs were hammering, a long drawn out fire began, a burst of fire clattered into our village. Finally we saw the British assault troops, wearing white recognition patches on their backs, appear on the Totenwäldchen and Ferme Fricourt: therefore they had made major inroads into our infantry line. They stormed No.1 gun, the dummy gun of 1.Battery, when it did not fire they ran for No.2 gun at the officers’ dug-out in the depression on the road to Fricourt. The other two guns of 911 platoon were not ready to fire. Message runners and despatch riders circulated from our Abtg. to batteries in all directions with the order to fire. Our good comrade gunner Schölch had to run the order to 911 platoon but was hit by infantry fire and fell on the road from our village. I made my way to 3.Battery over the grim cratered field, leaping from one shell-hole to the next.
No 3.Battery was to fire immediately on the Totenwäldchen, the brickworks and Fricourt station, where the British were arriving in battalion strength on the Contalmaison highway. I met Hauptmann Fröhlich by his wrecked guns. He looked pale and bleary-eyed, gave me a message for Abtg. that he had no serviceable guns, all had been destroyed by direct hits. 3.Battery position looked awful. The British had come to within 200 metres of the battery. At that moment the Völkerbereitschaft came to life. The artillery refuge had the construction company composed of clothing store men and parts of Reserve-Grenadier Regt.110. This company was swiftly in action and opened a furious rapid fire from thirty to fifty metres range forcing the British back to the Totenwäldchen Wood.
Unteroffizier Kruger’s dummy gun of 1.Battery, recaptured from the British, now opened fire on the retreating enemy, firing first numerous dummies and then at 100 – 200 metres range detonators into the British ranks, causing heavy losses. Finally No.2 gun in the depression began to fire, and Platoon 911’s No.4 gun was repaired and readied. These three guns fired first on the Totenwäldchen, then the western end of Fricourt, the cemetery and station, where the British was present in large numbers. The two guns were fired over sights or by eye. Each round was a hit. Cornered like mice before the cat, the British left the Totenwäldchen and fell back on Fricourt. The detonators of No.1 Battery reaped an appalling harvest amongst the British infantry. Now they held only a small length of trench in the third infantry line. There was bitter fighting near Mametz where our Grenadier-Reserve 109 engaged in hand-to-hand fighting and fought for every inch of the trench line. We also saw all of Group Reserve 109 go into British captivity. Our infantry advanced along the road from Contalmaison to Fricourt, some companies even came up from the recruit depot. For us artillerists it was heart-breaking to have no guns or reinforcements worth mentioning, but at least our division had warded off the breakthrough for today. Our batteries in the shrapnel depression were lost, the enemy got to 7.Battery, the light howitzers on the edge of the wood at Mametz.
From La Boisselle on our right flank we heard unceasingly the explosions of many hand grenades, but on 1 July the enemy gained little ground. It was almost amazing, guns of various batteries kept up rapid fire for hours, firing mainly long-shell fuses without opposition. Fearfully we awaited a fresh attack almost all day, but the British did not risk the opportunity, preferring instead to consolidate and dig in along the sections of trench line they had taken. We did not receive enemy artillery fire because the enemy did not know the disposition of his own troops. In our battery positions the empty casings were stacked higher than a man, whole mountains of empty shell baskets lay scattered around, with a couple of smart companies the British could could have got right through to Bapaume in the Etappe.
This was the picture of 1 July: ‘No significant reinforcements, no orders from above! Mametz and Montauban lost, held by British. Hill 110 near Fricourt likely to fall. Fricourt village still in German hands but surrounded. We have lost our right flank at La Boisselle. Our observation trench reports: Lt Mayer fell in the cratered field. Gunner Baumann fatally wounded, Unteroffizier Hittler and gunner Viethoff, telephonist Enderle captured.’
One shuddered to hear the words ‘No reinforcements!’ We were deeply disappointed: why had we been abandoned with no reinforcements or relief? Was that our reward for what we had given up and sacrificed? We could still hold the line with a little artillery reinforcement and a couple of fresh infantry regiments. Before us we had as good as no more infantry. The British rifle fire had now abated – were they exhausted or could we expect a new attack? We left the hour unused. In the Etappe the Staff drove off in their cars, overnight they shifted HQ and its complicated telephone system to the rear, the gentlemen fearing the breakthrough. That we learned, we who for eight days lay below death raging a thousand times around us. They left us alone. And why? On the late evening of 1 July a company of Landwehr Battalion fifty-five occupied our village (Contalmaison). Their officers had no maps and were clueless as to what was going on.
The three serviceable guns of 1.Battery was found on the night of 1 July and put behind the mansion gardens ready to fire from a half-built structure. That night many wounded of Reserve Inf.Regts.110 and 111 still able to drag themselves along came through on their way to the rear. They recounted the most appalling crimes committed by the British against their prisoners. We had to listen to the most terrible stories although we had no head for it. The British resumed their usual barrage to prevent traffic using the roads and access tracks, especially with sudden great bursts of firing. Our three guns behind the mansion had hardly fired a round before the British spotted their position and put them under heavy fire. On 2 July the British opened with rabid fire at our sector, but their fire was ragged . . . .
August Dänzer, President of Prince’s Chamber, Freiburg im Breisgau
DIARY
5 July 1916
Reports by the French state that especially south of the Somme they have made further progress, taking Estrées and Belly, after earlier capturing Assevillers, Feuillères and Flaucourt, and the British La Boisselle. It seems we are involved in the greatest battle in the history of the world, in the most critical period of the whole war, and if God grants us victory this time, peace will dawn.
18 July 1916
In the afternoon, short walk with Sondger in the Sternwald. From a letter sent to him by his brother von Hanauer with Reserve.Inf.Regt.110, I infer that the regiment was involved in the fighting against the British at La Boisselle. These British are reported to have shot dead German prisoners with their hands raised. The Germans are then said to have retaliated and shot 1,200 British whom they had surrounded.
Whole companies of Reserve-Regt.110 were wiped out, and the regiment is now in the Champagne to reform and re-equip( . . . ).
Hans Gareis, Vizefeldwebel, Bavarian Inf.Regt 16/Bavarian Inf.Div.10
Source: Kriegsarchiv Munich HS 2106
Report (Undated)
Experiences of the Somme Battle, 1916: Diary Notes
6 July 1916
Today I returned from leave to rejoin I Battalion/Inf.Regt.16. My battalion was on a ridge opposite Montauban. Towards 2200 I went up with the field kitchen: they handed out the rations on the Flers-Longueval road in a depression to the south of the village. Before we reached the location we came under shrapnel-shell fire. One horse of Field-Kitchen Company 1 was killed, one man was wounded. The running trench which we passed had been terribly shelled, the position looked as if it had been ploughed over, in the trenches only emergency galleries. The same night I took over my 1.Platoon/4.Company.
7 July 1916
The weather is dreadful, therefore lively enemy aircraft activity while we have no airplanes up. I lost another three men from my platoon today.
8 July 1916
Up to my ankles in water. On the road from Mametz towards Montauban and to the Mametz Wood with binoculars we saw British columns marching, preceded by their artillery. Our artillery did not fire. Twelve barrage balloons hung over the enemy trenches nearly all day. Towards evening we received heavy shellfire. A direct hit collapsed the right-side, heavily manned gallery entrance of the Company Commander’s room housing the Battalion Staff. Lts Rosenthal and Auer, and Unteroffizier Bucher were wounded, nine men, some the best in the company, killed. My platoon is now twenty-five men and four group leaders. My people sat in the underground gallery and prayed. When darkness fell we started digging out the dead: the sight was ghastly, the most terrible thing I have seen since 1914.
9 July 1916
During the night terrible artillery fire. While fetching rations the company lost another five men, three dead, two wounded. In the morning the weather finally cleared and there was lively aerial activity. In the afternoon another terrible artillery barrage with heavy shells. Longueval burning fiercely.
10 July 1916
In the morning I had a group go to Longueval for ammunition, before they reached the depot it blew up. We have no mining frames for shoring up and no prospect of relief, one has to keep moving everything around in order not to become apathetic.
11 July 1916
In the morning fifty replacements came up with Lt Wagner, married men amongst them with no experience of fighting. At midday four men of my platoon were buried alive by a direct hit, two men of the morning’s replacement were killed, one the father of four children. At night thank God we got the shoring-up frames.
12 July 1916
In the morning artillery fire as every day. In the afternoon the rear wall of the trench received a direct hit which collapsed the galleries. We were up to our knees in earth and had to struggle free. At night I got digging with everybody available. To protect the dug-outs at night we filled in the shell-holes above the galleries.
13 July 1916
Last night violent artillery barrage which went on all day. By evening the trench was a long series of shell-holes. In the early evening we received a report that the British are massing in the depression at Bazentin. The company sent a patrol to reconnoitre and they confirmed this.
14 July 1916
Towards 0300 we set up another mining frame in the gallery and I wanted to let my people rest, then came a rumour that ‘The British are attacking.’ In a trice the platoon was at the parapet, I distributed my people – not easy in the total darkness – the first flare rose and before us, barely 300 metres away, we saw the British advancing in large numbers towards our wire entanglements, steel helmet by steel helmet, an impressive sight. And now it started. A rage gripped us all, but also a feeling of joy to have the chance to avenge ourselves for what had gone before. I roared: Hurrah! and Fire! and knelt with the nearest people at the parapet to have a better field of fire. Others followed my example. So we received the enemy with rifle and MG fire interspersed with shouts of Hurrah! The British artillery fire rained down on our position, luckily on the empty support trenches, but showering us with splinters. That all remained unnoticed in our lust for battle. Even our young replacents left nothing to be desired. I detailed a few people as munitions runners and to gather up the rifles of the dead and wounded to exchange for our hot-barrelled ones. I had three rifles, one in use, two cooling. In the light of the starshells we watched as the British line began to thin down. Dawn was coming.
A British aircraft arrived and with admirable skill replied to our rifles with MG fire. Ahead of our line the attack had petered out, they lay in heaps in the wire. A few who showed signs of life were dragged into our trench. Some took refuge in shell craters, then turned and ran for the British line, and were shot down. A few hundred metres away they set up mortars and fired on the sectors of our No.1 and No.2 Companies. Our sector was spared. I shared my last pack of cigarettes amongst my brave people, they wanted to hug me, so great was the jubilation. We believed we had the right to be pleased.
When the first starshell burst we saw the rows and rows of British marching towards our position, weakly defended by tired troops: we feared the worst, but not one British soldier had come over the parapet, and now their front rank hung dead or wounded in the wire entanglements. That it might be different to our right and left did not occur to us as we celebrated our victory. After this short pause we all went back to the parapet except for a few people attending to the dead and wounded.
From the Company Commander, I learned that the Company had lost thirty men, No.2 and No.3 platoons had fared worse than mine. We covered the dead with tarpaulins as an emergency measure, there being no time to bury them: then, with my two most senior corporals, I turned to face No Man’s Land. We brought a British MG and numerous prisoners into the trench, including from No.2 platoon a wounded British colonel caught in the nearest barbed wire hedge, a smart man with a pleasant face. Soon it was completely light, and then I began to suspect the worst.
We could see without binoculars columns and columns of British marching along the highway to Longueval and nobody fired at them. This meant they must have broken through the line here. For us the range was too great and in any case we had no ammunition. I hurried to the Company Commander to report and found the Battalion Staff there as well. Major Wölfel, Oberleutnant Marschall, Lt Sässenberger and a couple of orderly officers met me in a shell-hole in front of the battalion post in the forward trench. I listened to the reports. The enemy had broken through on the left at No.3 Company and now held the outskirts of Longueval. No.2 Group to the right reported the enemy at Bazentin. The Regimental Staff, including the commander, Bedall, had been captured. We were therefore adrift: if we did not receive reinforcements from the rear, or they failed to pull us back, we were lost, for the battalion had been so weakened that it could not withstand an attack, and we were out of ammunition: in my entire platoon sector we did not have a single hand grenade between us. The depression to our rear lay under a furious artillery barrage, and a retreat by day with the remainder of the battalion was rejected by Major Wölfel and the other officers . . . .
Gustav Krauss, Unteroffizier, later Leutnant, Reserve.Inf.Regt.29/Inf.Brigade 80.
In Civilian Life a Bank Clerk at Heidelberg
Report (Undated)
Source: BAMA PH II/502: Photographs BfZ I AH52.
12 July 1916
In the evening we moved into Cartigny where we were billeted in a fine mansion. The rooms had none of their former elegance, only two-tier bunk beds or wood in which we slept on shavings.
13 July 1916
The place has a fine old church which I looked over. We counted eighteen French barrage balloons while we have only three (a French aircraft shot down five in flames). The railway station was plastered continuously with thirty-eight-cm shells. At night it is forbidden to show a light. There was a big artillery battle raging at the front which we watched from the roof of the mansion. It was a grandiose sight. Half left of the mansion was a twenty-one-cm mortar which the French were making efforts to wipe out. The firing continued throughout the night. We kept ourselves busy all the time and heard all kinds of rumours. We know we are not being invited to a party, but on the other hand we are hoping to be deployed soon so as to get away quicker. The worst is the waiting and uncertainty. In the evening we heard that it would begin during the night.
14 July 1916
Scarcely had we settled down for the night than we were awoken at 0100. Ahead we could hear the sounds of firing. We paraded, were issued with hand grenades and then marched down the wonderful highway towards Peronne, the night as black as pitch, only lit by the flares at the front. We turned off left to cross some fields. White strips of cloth on posts marked the route. On the way a comrade had a screaming fit. Soon we came to the banks of the Somme and crossed by means of a wooden bridge several hundred metres long erected by the pioneers and which is frequently fired upon – no casualties.
In a hamlet Chapelette we dug small holes for protection on a slope of the railway embankment near the station. The French had made a rapid advance to the river bank, driving the 25ers and 71ers back up the hill. The civilian population had had no time to evacuate in an orderly manner, everything was left intact, the same went for the controllers of the Etappe magazine of Inf.Div.121, who had abandoned the well-stocked dump at the station, and the rolling stock in the goods yard which could not be hauled out because the bridges had been blown. The tracks had been wrecked by numerous shell craters. In the magazine halls, which were under constant bombardment, we found enormous supplies of preserves: peas, beans, whole barrels of cauliflower, great stocks of bedding, and tents, lamps, stoves, sugar, tobacco, etc. Coffee stood ankle-high on the floor, we waded through it. Many drums of paraffin stood around. In one room there were lots of firemen’s brass helmets saved from a museum collection. We set up some tarpaulins to shelter from the rain and cooked a good meal behind and below the goods waggons while the halls were being shelled, which cost us two dead and some wounded. One of the dead had been on leave with me.
In the afternoon the shooting hotted up, and it was really unpleasant in our rabbit holes. There was a terrible noise when a shell exploded in the halls. Despite the ban, several men went into the magazine repeatedly, especially when it became known that there was beer stored there. The following evening, to our great joy some beer was served officially. Towards 2000 the firing abated, and at 2145 we went off to the trenches. There were some aircraft overhead which we took for German because they wore a cross on the wings; they bombed us. We went through the village in groups under fire on the road to Biaches, which we crossed. More heavy fire forced us into a trench where we spent a half hour, we received fire there and a shell landed close by me. They were also firing gas shells. My NCO did not want to get down at first because somebody was out in the open. Finally he had no choice, and the Company Commander helped. Later we went to the reserve trenches where we dug until 0300. Ahead the sky was lit brightly by burning houses.
15 July 1916
Then we went back to Chapelette. After fifteen minutes there we were put on notice to leave for Péronne. We were to cross the river using a narrow improvised bridge balanced on barrels and under constant fire from a heavy battery. We were to run for it between salvoes which came at set intervals. A salvo of three arrived, two of which were duds, and we scampered to the river, arriving without loss. On the other side we entered the abandoned town through a fortress gate and soon found our cellar. Meanwhile it was day and we had to get under cover quickly because the town was in the enemy’s sight and range. I gave a laggard a slap across the head to get him down the cellar, he did not take this the wrong way because he knew it was for his own good. The town had been evacuated suddenly by the population, and the houses had been left as though the owners would return shortly.
In the cellar in which the inhabitants had taken refuge when the shelling began, the food – with mould – was on the table, hats were hung on pegs etc. I had my breakfast drink out of a fine old decorated cup. We reviewed the house from roof to cellar. I moved into a bedroom with Imperial bed and quilt etc. which smelt wonderful. In an alcove were various perfumes etc. I washed using a large bottle of eau-de-cologne and then sprayed myself with perfume. In my filthy uniform and boots I then lay on the young maiden’s bed and slept to 1130. Then I went on a search of neighbouring houses where the other groups were billeted.
In the conservatory I saw from the floor impeccably set tables, each with two plates, serviettes and wine glasses etc. Assuming this was for Staff I was about to withdraw when I discovered a comrade in the kitchen. In response to my enquiry he advised me that ‘Gruppe Hussmann’ dined here. He had all kinds of provisions, mainly preserves and tinned, but also rabbit and smoked meats. There were some well-stocked shops which had ladies’ and children’s shoes. At midday a wine and champagne store was found.
We had preserved meat, potatoes and peas. From 1500 our artillery was to calibrate and was expected to be put out of action by the French guns before nightfall, after which we were to attack. In the afternoon therefore we had to stay in the cellars. When our artillery fire began, the French response was much heavier, and our stay in the town now looked short. The town hall was burning and Lt Hofsummer salvaged the collection of Roman gold coins in a sandbag which he handed over to division. Wehrmann-König and Vohn caused great hilarity dressing up as a bridal pair, he in morning coat and top hat, the bride in white dress with veil, and insisted on making house calls, even on the officers and despite the shelling. Under the influence of the discovered alcohol stocks, the mood became even more high-spirited during the afternoon. A couple of individuals were well over the limit. When we marched out at 1830 we found a rifleman reported AWOL sleeping in the entrance to a cellar and cuddling a large doll. We then quick-marched across the market place towards the Flamicourt district.
At 0200 we advanced. Our Company Commander Lt Mersmann requested Vizefeldwebel Trieschmann to remain with him in the difficult situation. We hastened through the communications trench, stumbling forward over dead and wounded. I still recall treading on something soft which whimpered and I saw that I was standing on the face of a wounded man. After a lot of manoeuvring hither and thither we found ourselves in a dreadful corner, men squashed against men in a two-metre deep trench unable to rest. Shells were flying overhead, the trench had no step-up for riflemen.
We lay here the whole day without food or water until late evening. There was no wire entanglement outside and the trench had no dug-outs. If an orderly officer wanted to pass through, two men had to lie down on their stomachs on top of one another so that passage was possible. Gradually we made scrape-holes in which we could at least shelter head and upper torso. The four men of my group to my left were wounded one after the other and disappeared. I sat in my little hole, abandoned to my fate, waiting for my turn to be wounded, but it never happened. Our Company Commander was mortally wounded by a shell splinter in the upper thigh. Reservist Kirchner and another wounded man making their way to the rear, carried the wounded Company Commander along in a tarpaulin. He was calling for his wife and children. A short while later all three took a direct hit. Mersmann had frequently had Kirchner on report for minor misdemeanours, but this did not prevent Kirchner from helping his officer as a comrade.
Towards 1800 the French started an attack which then faltered. I fired three rounds. At 2100 we were to storm the small wood opposite. The order was passed from hand to hand, the docket was signed, ‘Ordered by God, Siebe.’ When we were ready to go, the assault was called off. No.2 Company Commander Weller was informed by a reconnaissance patrol that our No.1 and No.4 Companies had retaken the wood from the French. So we were in luck. I had three rifles that day, two were damaged beyond repair, I narrowly escaped from being buried alive three times when the trench walls collapsed. When the Company count was made, of the 230 men who had come to the trench only 110 remained. During the night there was a downpour, I looked like a hippopotamus, yellow with mud, in the night we were relieved and returned as reserve to Chapelette where we were billeted in the cellars. When the kitchens arrived, our cook told me he had thought I would not survive out there.
17 July 1916
Our losses so far are nine dead and one hundred wounded. There are many black French troops lying around dead in the countryside. When we were fetching provisions towards 2300, we were put on alert and went forward. I had taken over 1.Platoon, 3.Platoon had three seriously wounded when moving up. We came to the left flank of the position directly facing the small wood at La Maisonette where the 21ers had fired too short. There were still some 10.Company dead lying around dreadfully mutilated, besides that flame-throwers and many armaments rooms.
18 July 1916
On the left flank was a trench with viewing slit. Through this slit one could see the French a few metres away through the viewing slit in their own trench. We had to keep awfully alert because they could almost jump across. During the day it was quieter and the artillery fire tolerable. Our twenty-one-cm shells roared into the French-held wood regularly. At dusk we gathered up the litter and found two cans of meat. We buried three corpses. Our people had just gone off to fetch the coffee and rations when their infantry began an intense fire, then the artillery joined in so that we had the same old story again. It lasted ninety minutes before dying down.
During the day there were numerous aircraft in the air and aerial fights in which three French machines were shot down. One of them hurtled to its fate nearby. Both wings had been shot off, and these twisted and turned in the air as the fuselage fell. The two occupants jumped out and thudded into the soft farmland not far from us. I will never forget the sound when they hit. It was as if somebody had tossed down two potato sacks.
19 July 1916
We had six men wounded. The little wood was peppered with twenty-one-cm shells. This evening we were supposed to be relieved. We were depressed when they failed to arrive, and that evening there was another long barrage which caused us more losses.
20 July 1916
The firing lasted all night, the whole front was up. We had worked on our trench and had protected it a bit against intrusion. In the paraffin-warmed hollows I had slept two hours when a violent canonade woke me. I got up, and we heard loud noises from the wood which we reported to the Company Commander. Meanwhile it had grown light and I quickly distributed the mail which had just arrived. Reservist Küpper with my platoon received his long-awaited letter and he handed it to me with a joyful smile. I had just started reading it when the barrage increased and the MGs began to rattle. I sprinted to my place at the centre of the platoon. I had just reached the gun rest when a shell blew up a tree and the whole works rebounded into the trench. My cleaner cried out loud, hit by splinters. When I looked back, reservist Küpper was dead in the trench. His skull had been ripped open and all his brains hung on the trench wall. The subsequent French attack did not reach the trench. Further right they were beaten off, three officers and forty-five men were captured. The weather was very fine. I took a nice photo of the moment when sentry Raaf gave the alarm.
21 July 1916
Towards 1800 it finally fell silent. We were all nervous wrecks. I was worried that the men could not hold out much longer. We had five dead and a lot of wounded, altogether ninety casualties. Yesterday (20th) evening we discovered we were being relieved, both a joy and a worry since we did not want a souvenir when leaving the position. We could not leave through the communications trench because the relief was coming that way, so we had to leave by the shell-cratered fields. A small fox terrier who had deserted the French during the night went with me.
21 July 1916
We sat in our emergency shelters in the road embankment and waited for our relief to arrive in the evening. The time passed very slowly. Concealed below a barrel I attempted to snap the great fountain of water thrown up by a twenty-eight-cm French shell as it hit the Somme river. The problem was to avoid the shell fragments while attempting to get the explosive column in the viewfinder. Finally I managed to get a photograph. Around our shelter were barrels, chairs, sofas, empty cartons etc. At midday a tremendous explosion shook the area like an earthquake. We heard it was a dynamite store at the brickworks. Many of the men in the trench were buried as the walls collapsed. A giant cloud of smoke lingered in the sky, the French began firing like crazy, obviously they suspected we were up to something. Some time later a house at Biaches was set ablaze by a shell. One thousand rounds were stored there. The dreadful chatter of the exploding munitions sounded just like an attack.
The waiting became ever more intolerable and nobody wanted to be transferred so close to being relieved. I still remember that moment when an officer’s aide from the 111ers announced, in the familiar accent of my Pforzheimn home town, that he was the relief-leader and gave me the order to leave the area. Seldom was the Company ready so quickly and we crossed the Somme bridge at a fast trot.
22 July 1916
I was given my third platoon (as Unteroffizier) and a Vizefeldwebel, who had been ill, as my aide. We marched through Bouvincourt and Estrées to Tertry where we had a long rest and put our packs on waggons. The small dog stayed by my side. During our rest 2.Battalion regimental band, led by Major Krüger, passed us. I wrote in a letter this day: ‘Tonight resting (1.Station) received fifteen parcels, my warmest thanks, we are on the march, suffocating atmosphere, heavy pack but heart light and mood happy, we cannot hear the firing any more! Hurrah! I am OK. Parcels everywhere properly stored, most still good.’
In the evening we reached Essigny-le-Grand via Vaux, and were billeted in barns.
23 July 1916
We had battalion parade and were addressed by Rittmeister Strahler. Our 1.Battalion was praised in regimental orders. For those who had held out at the front there was a reward of a bottle of wine and a bar of chocolate between every three men and a tin of sardines between every two. Personally I received a bottle of wine, a bar of chocolate and a tin of sardines which tasted good. I was even happier at the recognition expressed by the Company Commander Lt Geditz and the recommendation he gave about me to Lt Sturm, who was now taking over the Company. Next day we entrained and reached the quiet position near Osly.
Georg David Bantlin (1879.1961) Stabsarzt, Inf.Div.26.
DIARY
4 – 26 August 1916 (Rocquigny)
Main dressing station set up in the church and nearby ruined schoolhouse for stomach operations and chest wounds. Forward a hellish noise, at night like a permanent drum roll with muzzle flashes and starshells an emotional experience: our brave men persevere in this inferno! One would not think it possible. What they have to suffer we see from the injuries, mostly artillery wounds of the worst kind, arms peppered, and how ghastly these look! And how long they take to heal! Wound care has to be more comprehensive than used to be the case with infantry wounds in order to avoid the need for operations.
So, we have plenty to do night and day, no night passes in which we do not have to perform one or two stomach operations and in which the church does not fill with wounded who are sent to the military hospital the next morning insofar their condition somehow makes travel possible.
We have fitted out the church gradually with beds and straw mattresses – rather a luxurious main dressing station now!
Luckily we are not coming under fire so that we can work in peace: bombs dropped on the hamlet by enemy aircraft always miss, even those aimed at my little house!
Letters to His Wife Hildegard Bantlin, Wyk-Föhr
6 August 1916 (Rocquigny)
Dearest Sweetheart!
It is a glorious Sunday morning – as I write this you are all probably around the coffee table making your Sunday arrangements. In my mind I pass around the breakfast table and kiss everybody on the forehead. So, good morning, dear Leutchen! And then we go together into the garden where the roses smell so sweet, to the hedge entwined with the Spanish peas, then I take your delightful photos to the beach, and so I am and remain all day with you, until at night I say goodnight to our beautiful little star! My warmest thanks for your letter of 1 August. It seems that my letters have been held back recently, at least it appears that you did not receive them for some days.
We are nicely settled in, although everything here is more primitive than we gradually got set up at Becelaere, but it will do. Dressing station is the church, very good during the summer. We were under canvas for a spell but now have quarters, and I even have a little room of my own. Our losses in the last few days have not been small, but at least not so big as we had feared. I wrote to Hermann saying that I am in his vicinity, but letters sent along the front take as long as they do to home and back, so I don’t know if you will get to see him. He reported on 29th that he was well, that he writes to you little is understandable, it is not your turn until he has written to his new wife and us brothers.
A long leave for me is out of the question. On 1 August they recalled everyone in the Armeekorps who was on leave. When we will have leave again nobody knows, and as I mentioned there are two officers ahead of me for leave who have been waiting very long. The first of them made a journey with bride and parents at the begining of August and was called back. So do not cherish false hopes.
But perhaps peace will come soon. It is impossible to believe that this dreadful fighting can last much longer. In the end there will be nobody left. Yesterday I read the sad news about Robert Neumann, thus they fall one by one. How important is the work for peace when such gaps are drilled in the bloom of youth. The enemy should also consider that. May heaven protect you! Very affectionately.
A kiss.
Your D.
11 August 1916 (Rocquigny)
Dear Wife!
Today may I thank you for your Sunday letter of 6. and for the dear greetings of Erika which accompanied it. Our trip to Ostende was a nice ending to our Flemish experience. Here one has a lesser living standard, and villages are arranged much closer: the cleanliness in highly cultured France is more than questionable, but as the war goes on we are less demanding and have got used to filth so far as possible.
There is more firing here than previously, but the number of wounded has fallen over the last few days: unhappily because there is so much artillery there are many seriously wounded so that despite treatment many do not survive. Otherwise we are content, the situation is such that we have plentiful wine for those in our care. There are a large number of surgical operations to be performed but due to the long training period for the staff and our wide-ranging experience everything is going really well. I continue to be well, and I can achieve something. Yesterday we had refreshing rain, today it is fine again. Apparently it is warmer and more settled here than with you.
26 August 1916 (Rocquigny)
Dear Sweetheart!
My heartiest thanks for your short letter of 21st. In peacetime one begins to hardly dare think or hope for it. Hundreds, thousands fall daily, and we see no end to it. The first day of peace should be a national holiday and not a day to commemorate the fighting, nobody will give us back the people who have been taken. I am OK despite a lot of difficult work in the last few days.
Unfortunately I have not been able to see Hermann, apparently he could get no leave or our letters were delayed, mail in France is always rather uncertain. I would like to have shaken his hand and said something nice, for who knows if and when we will meet again: it is always bad for the infantry, at least where Hermann is it is relatively quiet, but that can change. I am very pleased that you are well.
My warmest greetings to the three of you.
Your D.
22 November 1916 (Avesnes-les-Aubert)
Dear Hilde!
A letter of 16th brought me yesterday your dearest greetings, my warmest thanks! Otherwise the post seems to be on strike for the moment. I am very glad to hear that Ischen’s father is on the mend: another heavy stone lifted from the heart. We are still in the R&R quarter.
The musician with whom I am billeted and whose sick wife I am treating gives us much pleasure. He is a small, grey-haired Frenchman, talkative at all hours, never lost for a joke and the best is the mime with which he punctuates his long conversations and raises his nonsense to a delightful brand of humour. Yesterday was St Cecilia’s Day, the Feast of the Musicians. Two of his small pupils – a girl as tall as Hilde and a Louis, brought presents and the boy read a wonderful speech of congratulation for the Day. After that choir-hour began in which the children sang the notes (do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do) wonderfully for their age: finally coffee was served, in which I naturally took part, they also give me a cup of cocoa every evening which has to be consumed at the family sickbed. So you see it is not so bad for me. Otherwise it is really tedious. At midday we frequently go hunting: Pfister shoots and the rest of us do the driving with great strategic cunning, this being very important because the probably numerous partridge are very astute and rarely give the gunners a shooting chance: we caught a small hare and killed it at home.
30 November 1916 (Avesnes-les-Aubert)
Dear Wife!
We are still in R&R: it is a very lazy life and you may comfort yourself that it is an existence without danger which we are living. Nothing happens here at all, one is always glad to have the tiniest excuse for a trip out. Yesterday three of us went near Valenciennes on duty and made another excursion. I was very pleased to have the opportunity to revisit the city we saw fleetingly in October 1914, and view again the fine Rubens and Watteaus in the Museum, and remember the couple of fine churches and the Watteau memorial. This was our first encounter with culture in wartime then and therefore impressive and held firm in memory: how many fine things since then we have seen and experienced in war and through war. For sure it has its good side and one must also tell oneself so in that connection – the effect of war on the people and the desire to do good deeds and to progress which are motivated by war will perhaps, so we hope, be valued by later generations more highly than the wounds it inflicts, if of course we also keep those in the foreground too.
It was difficult for me in Valenciennes to pass by the fine clothing shops: I should like to have bought you a fine morning jacket, but I remained resolute. For a few marks I had pleasure to buy you the enclosed butterfly brooch.
DIARY
3 – 12 December 1916 (Metz-en-Couture)
On 3 December with Stabsarzt Fritz as ‘advance party’ taken with twenty-four men of our Company and numerous ‘advance parties’ of other units by lorry to Villers-Plouich (between Cambrai and Gouzeaucourt): from there we marched in greasy dirt to Metz-en-Couture our new location.
Everything is confusion, the local kommandant has not got the business under control. We were put temporarily into a small house and enjoy the hospitality of the extremely beery and boozy medical company 235/222 Reserve-Div. whom we are relieving. As they have been shelling the place recently, a protective tunnel has been dug below the schoolhouse where the main dressing station is set up. Over the next few days we were active in visiting the outlying dressing stations of the medical company. That brought us to familiar terrain, which we found much changed: Rocquigny is a heap of rubble, church and everything collapsed, the roads ploughed up with craters from shells of every calibre, mud everywhere. This quagmire makes the road to the forward tunnels on the Le Transloy-Sailly highway, west of Rocquigny-Le Transloy road, which we often strolled in the evenings, no longer a pleasure, quite apart from the friendly greetings of the various calibres which come flying over.
The tunnel, hewn into the chalky subsoil, is a small relay post for a few-man medical company and a handful of wounded seeking protection here before being taken to the rear. Much larger is the chalk tunnel at Le Transloy, a large honeycomb in the limestone rock with numerous carved niches in which our own people and many soldiers have a place to rest. Further back in the Transloy ‘farm’ is the unloading bay, a cellar system protected as well as may be against artillery and to which in the morning hours the medical company’s horse-drawn ambulances make their way, with great effort on the part of man and horse, over the steep churned-up terrain.
Le Transloy itself is the potential of destruction: ghostly remnants jut out here and there, beams or the remains of a roof in the rubble, showing that there was once here a blossoming village. Crater after crater, some so large that a horse standing upright could drown in them if they were filled with water: duds of all calibres litter the roads.
Also in Rocquigny itself and in the heavily damaged Bus, the medical people live their mole-like existence below ground: in the first are the front doctors, I took over Bus for some days when on 7th our Company finally moved in to relieve. Later the front troops will take over Bus since at Metz-en-Couture we have plenty to arrange for hygiene, surgery and service at the main dressing station.
On 12th, announcement of Kaiser’s appeal for peace received by the men with interest but scepticism. The men at the front suffer very much, outside dreadful damp, no proper trenches so that they are always standing in water. When relieved they are half dead and covered in mud.
Letters to His Family at Wyk/Föhr
19 December 1916 (Metz-en-Couture)
Dear Wife and dear Ischen!
This will probably be the last letter from me to reach you before Christmas: it brings you warmest greetings and the certainty that I will be thinking of you daily: that is all I can do.
My mood is grimmer than grim, it was the same just before last Christmas, but to spend a third Christmas far from those one loves strikes hard at one’s spirit: thus one becomes completely old and without energy in this war, while the years which should have been dedicated to consolidating pass us by. The misery of all people forces one under when one considers what is being destroyed with every day that the war goes on. What a wonderful Christmas gift it would have been if our Kaiser’s noble offer of peace had been favourably received: but it never had a chance from the beginning, and the newspaper reports confirm that we have judged our enemies aright.(Tr.Note) One shudders to think how long this destruction will go on. The most recent failure at Verdun, which is not significant in itself, is being used by the French as such. There one must pray for patience and courage in the sure hope that despite the cruel energy of our enemies our people must remain undefeated, as they have always done previously( . . . )
Paul Kessler (1883 – 1978) Feldpostsekretär, Garde-Inf. Div.2
DIARY
27 August 1916 (Liéramont)
1000 hrs. March to Liéramont fourteen kilometres west, arrival 1200. The fighting in this sector had increased enormously in recent days. The outgoing troops whom we met on the way were often from companies reduced to twenty to twenty-five men, which left a very grim impression. The continuous enemy
Translator’s Note:
In early December 1916 Kaiser Wilhelm II sent a note to the Vatican declaring his belief that the leaders of all Great European Powers secretly desired peace, but that each belligerent was reluctant to be the first to admit it openly. The German note stated that the war threatened to destroy the material and spiritual progress of the twentieth century. The Central Powers wished to call a halt to hostilities. If the Entente Powers would agree to immediate peace negotiations, the Central Powers would guarantee existence, honour and freedom of development, and would do everything possible to restore lasting peace for the nations then involved in the conflict. There was no reponse to this offer except that on 7 March 1917 Pope Benedict indicated that Britain and France would consider any attempt at mediation ‘ill conceived.’ Tr.
artillery barrage had demoralized them completely. This Liéramont is a dirty abandoned hamlet. Our service rooms in a farmhouse only meet our requirements to a limited extent.
The Obersekretär had taken over one room, in the neighbouring room Eichelbaum and I slept. Straw mattress filled with chaff! The worst thing is the swarms of flies even more than we had in Russia. As we are fairly close to the front – we are in range of the enemy artillery – the thunder of the guns is especially loud. Striking how many aerial battles we see. On 30 August two enemy aircraft were shot down overhead..
Letter to His Wife Elise Kessler at Lahr
29 August 1916 (Liéramont)
Now we are back in the filth, i.e. the same as last year, but at least this time one has a straw mattress and a room, if shared with one other. Worst of all are the swarms of flies almost as bad as in Russia. Even the High Staff are up to their ears in mud. We are fairly well forward on a windy corner [windy refers to enemy artillery.Tr], everybody billeted here has better things to do than make the quarters comfortable and leaves all the filth for the relief to clear up. When the fourteen days are up – usually it is never longer – everybody is glad to be out of it. How we would prefer a nice war like they have now in Rumania, more exciting and better than here under our rain of shells. It will not go well for the Rumanians, of that I am convinced, the fighting will be on their own soil, and what that means for a country they will soon find out: we know already. Rumania will be overrun. Strategically that may even mean an improvement for us. Down there Mackensen will have several hundred thousand men, he will soon show those vagabonds how Germans do things. As for the Italian declaration of war, it was merely symbolic and hardly changes anything. Yesterday evening we stood around in front of the house discussing whether the rumour about Rumania’s declaration of war was true when a French aircraft flew over dropping thousands of leaflets. It looked like silver rain. I enclose one. We thanked him at once for the prompt confirmation with a few rounds, but he was too quick for us and disappeared into the clouds.
4 September 1916 (Liéramont)
My dear heart!
For the moment I would ask you to be patient, mail has been a complicated affair recently. From morning to late evening one works until one drops. After dusk we sit around a carbide lamp eating, an hour of chat and then we hit the sack.
Yes, all hell is let loose here, the inferno could not be worse and we are happy for our brave young boys when they leave here. It is very unlikely that the postal situation will improve significantly – Hindenburg! – a few weeks stoppage of mail in the interests of military security is OK with him. Is also quite right, much too much ink is being scribbled.
The weather is not very favourable for taking the cure, great shame, i.e. I am thinking of our present conditions here.
What are the little ruffians up to, have they got used to the food yet? Here we have to supplement our rations by buying food, in the difficult circumstances we get only the bare necessities. Therefore I have only sent you 300 marks. Did you get the money I paid you?
For today, cordial greetings and kisses,
Your true Paul.
Maximilian Jackowski (1893 – August 1918) Volunteer, Motor-cycle Rider, Feldrekrutendepot 1/Staff IX Reserve-Corps
In Civilian Life Food Company Employee, Hanover
Letters to Student Kurt Böhning at
Dissen/Teutoburger Wald
6 September 1916
(Near Lens: Jockowski was on the Somme
until 25 August 1916)
( . . . ) At the moment I am smoking a Homann cigar, which I find economical, and think about what is coming in world history. How will everything end? Courage and deeds will not fail us, nor will I if I am soon called forward to the trenches. What must be must be. At the moment everything is going well for me. Our new area has many woods and hills which makes it rather tiring for the motor-cycle rider, but for that reason nature is also more revitalizing through change.
Lately I have had little mail, which is rather depressing seeing that there is little to talk about, therefore also today my torpi-tude in the letter.
The fighting here at the front is currently very cruel and murderous. People talk about treating prisoners well, but overcome by hate, cowardice and madness the captors kill or murder their prisoners: it often happens on our side too, but more sporadically. A prisoner is an unarmed person and he deserves mercy provided he is obedient and not devious. But where is humanity to be found today? Only greed, self-seeking, and destructiveness is to be found in society and not least amongst comrades. When peace breaks out there will be much unrest long afterwards. I ask: Where is God? And where do people seek God? Nowhere! Every person has almost become his own god, he loves only himself and whatever in the world makes him admired ( . . . )
26 September 1916 (Lille)
( . . . ) Somme, Somme! Yes, for us this word has in it something inexpressible. From here to Lille one hears this incessant activity, and if one reflects on it with somebody, he shakes his head, shrugs and says, ‘Yes’. There is nothing more to be said. Whoever does his duty at the front, he has achieved something superhuman according to that. We should not speak any more of it. I prefer the heroic kind of battle rather than one against weapons which cannot be seen and against which one cannot fight heroically. It is a battle for the masses, for the individuals in the mass unrewarding.
6 October 1916 (Neuville/Bourjonval)
( . . . ) We arrived here on 2nd, it was raining heavily. One had to exert oneself to the uttermost, and I know myself one keeps going even when one often thinks he cannot. The aerial activity here exceeds anything I have seen before. In the early hours one sees forty and more aircraft patrolling over the front according to orders. The artillery fire here is incessant, often heavy, often light, as we consider it. One cannot properly describe it, the reader only gets a third of the picture. Our battlefront is Sailly ( . . . )
12 November 1916
( . . . ) I will gladly accede to your request for a description of the Somme front ( . . . ) It is now midnight, quiet to some degree. I will limit my account here to what I have seen personally, then other things will occur to me. Our quarters were in Neuville, a small village of only one hundred inhabitants. The area had been used in the past by the French military for manouevres. It is bare and hilly – only isolated patches of woodland, named after the nearest village, are to be seen. The French soldiery hated the area pre-war because on manouevres the people gave them short shrift and the Somme district is short of water. When we arrived the population was ordered out of the forward villages including Neuville. Next day the artillery big guns bombarded it. It was a beautiful morning into which I awoke early next day – I had slept poorly in my blanket and I heard the initial drum-roll of firing, frequently interspersed with the impact of twenty-eight to thirty-eight cm shells which were aimed at a village 1,500 metres from our own. The endless lorry traffic, ammunition convoys, provisions carts and individual troop units clattering through etc. made a major contribution to our sleep being only half-slumber and also quite light. Anyway, at 0500 as I lay dozing, meditating and listening I heard a peculiar noise which frightened me – something like ss-s-ssscht-bwuhm. Two shells hissed by leaking gas, deafening, tearing apart, killing. Ha – it went past – if the enemy barrel had been a centimetre shorter the shell would certainly have hit our house and then what would have become of me? Yes, all these thoughts they come to you without fail. If asleep one awakes at the whistling overhead, and when he awakes he is afraid, and though he may deny his fear and pretend to be brave – I say that man is a liar.
Today’s war is more fearsome than when it started, when everybody was a romantic hero – today every man is a grave, strong man, almost one of the historic Germanen. What I describe here in excerpts, everybody experiences every day against a changing instrument of war, often ten, even one hundred times a day, torturing – until it has reached one and is not seldom welcome. Dear Curt, you will understand that to those, whom the horror has rattled their bones once or shall we say several times, to those no short rest is of use to win back quiet mastery of their nerves. Especially if one wants to unlock again experienced memories. At this time I feel unable to carry through my intention to fulfil your wish. Forgive me – another time perhaps when I am at home, I will be happy to tell you and then in more detail. We can then write it down for your memoirs.
Selmar Blass, Stabsarzt, Bavarian Inf.Regt.9/Bavarian Inf.Div.4
Bayrische Hauptstaatsarchiv/Kriegsarchiv Munich HS 2200
Report21
I was taken prisoner-of-war on 15 September 1916 by the New Zealanders at Flers. Shortly afterwards the lightly wounded and non-wounded were gesticulated to march in a certain direction. Although nobody disobeyed, the New Zealanders fired on individuals or groups of prisoners and wounded, either from confusion of some kind or the lust to murder, and killed many. Witnesses hereto were inter alia Hauptmann Biermer III Battalion/9.Inf Regt., Gefreiter Rügemeyer 9.Comp/9.Inf.Regt., both of whom were shot in the back, and Oberlt Golpert and Lt Wohlfahrt III/9 who barely escaped the same treatment.
My own wounded, medical teams and unwounded NCOs, and men who sought protection with me, were saved from the fate of their comrades by my successful intercession in which I insisted on an escort by a British squad.
Officers were frequently robbed after capture. Hauptmann Rubner from Bayreuth was deprived of his watch and money, Lt Bloch, 14.Inf.Regt. of his watch. A British officer did nothing and looked on while Feldunterarzt Wunsiedel was punched on the chin, causing him to pitch backwards into a shell crater. A stretcher bearer from 5.Inf.Regt, who after the fall of Flers emerged from the dressing station there with Stabsarzt Kliensberger to surrender was shot in the head despite the Red Cross armband he wore.
I did not witness the maltreatment of wounded prisoners, but most were relieved of their valuables under the pretext ‘souvenir’, a desire expressed as a command by officers and men alike.
British wounded were given priority in transportation from the battlefield. Despite the agreement of the British field-surgeon that German seriously wounded who needed an immediate operation would be allotted stretchers, and despite the fact that I had stretcher-bearers available, my people were forced to look after the British wounded first. This resulted in German wounded spending four days on the battlefield exposed to the weather and were then subjected to mutilating operations which would have been avoided by preventative treatment had they been brought in much sooner.
Each wounded man received a notebook similar to a cheque book, a sheet of paper without string with his name and type of wound was hung on a button of his uniform jacket. On the four cm broad block the surgeon made the same observations so that he had a simple and certain control without a patient’s book. He was pleasant and professional throughout. He was practically the only British surgeon whose professional attitude merited unreserved recognition.
The field hospital consisted of tents well stocked with instruments and dressings but had no wards. There were three surgeons including Sikhs. A senior surgeon directed the ambulances. Medical treatment was on the whole satisfactory except for the obsessive tendency for mutilating surgery. There were insufficient surgeons and German help was called upon frequently. The nursing teams included a large number of Indian stretcher bearers. Auxiliary stretcher-bearers had the initials SB sewn on the upper sleeve.
The First Division camp was an open square surrounded by numerous barbed wire hedges. It was a real Hottentot corral without any protection against the weather except two square metres of roof per officer, but no protection at the sides. Few had greatcoats, there were no blankets or straw. Sleep was impossible because of the cold. Whoever fell asleep with exhaustion was half frozen next morning. Rations were ship’s biscuit and tea on the first day, then two days of normal fare which was good and sufficient. No force was used during interrogations although the quest for ‘souvenirs’ was very lively. Stabsarzt Kliensberger was asked if he could not find ‘an Iron Cross’ for souvenir hunters. Incidentally the men were questioned cleverly by the use of a harmless conversational tone. The intelligence officer was anxious to know the effects on us of the new tanks used for the first time that day. When we told him that their existence did not come as a surprise he was scarcely able to hide his disappointment. The artillerymen, both officers and me, were treated less delicately, being subjected to heavy pressure, and every means possible being exerted to weaken their morale and so obtain details about artillery positions.
At Albert Camp we eleven officers were accommodated in a small round tent on white earth without blankets or straw. A persistent rainfall over two days soon had the improperly erected tent under water, and sleep was not possible in the cold and damp. Everybody gave Justinus who was sick whatever they could spare. The camp doctor, who allowed himself to be approached once, shrugged when we asked that Justinus be taken to the military hospital: ‘The British wounded are no better off, they have to lie in the open all day waiting for the hospital train.’ A memorable confirmation of the heavy British losses and pitiful standard of care available for the wounded.
A man whose bloodied stools undoubtedly indicated dysentry was forced to remain in the PoW camp even though he was very weak and should have been hospitalized. The inadequate medical care reflected the confusion behind the military front, so crass we had to smile at it. Our impression of the organization we knew was such that on the first day the exact work plan of the assault troops, tanks, the lorry park (over 50,000 vehicles was not unusual), the Indian cavalry at readiness (its horses near the guns presumably to accustom them to the firing): numerous light and heavy guns not dug-in but only surrounded by sandbags, their location being known to my precise recall: and finally the enormous stocks of ammunition.
Everywhere an uncoordinated nervous activity reigned and created nothing. Despite the surplus of labour, which included many blacks, the harvest was rotting in the field. The only people doing something useful were German PoWs formed up in work parties for road building. These highways, mostly three-lane, were very well constructed and led almost right up to the front line. Rails had been laid to the river Ancre. The Amiens-Rouen track had been widened by two new tracks but even so the transport difficulties caused them a tremendous headache. Between Mametz and Méaulte tent villages had been created for troops because the former towns at these localities had been demolished. These tent villages were disguised with trees against aerial reconnaissance, but at night showed lights without a thought to German aircraft.
The morale of the front-line troops was not good because of the terrible losses, but they put a brave face on it with their military bands. We were the object of much abuse: ‘Hallo Fritz kaputt?’; once somebody shouted ‘Captain Cöpernick.’ Worse was prevented by our guards while the British officers tended to ignore it and looked on with a certain pleasure at our discomfiture. Discipline seemed very loose. Decorations worn very occasionally. A Prussian officer told me that the British officers did not dare to intervene to prevent wholesale looting by the Canadians. On the other hand morale amongst rearward troops was very high. This was noticed especially near Albert, where British troops exchanged insults with the French population . . . .
Inf.Regt.
Prinz Friedrich der Niederlande
(2.Westphalian) No.15.
I-No 4904 I/16 (Source BA/MA Freiburg PH 10 II/49)
Report:
26 September 1916
EXPERIENCES FIGHTING ON THE SOMME
A.General
The position taken over by the regiment, though badly damaged by shelling, conformed to basic trench warfare principles with running trenches, wire obstructions and fixed defences. 12 September brought a change in the tactical situation and objectives. The enemy breakthrough of the line at Marrière Wood-Inf.Regt.55 transformed the fighting if only briefly into open-field battle. Determination and decisiveness, less necessary in trench warfare, was suddenly in demand, especially of the junior commanders. The commanders were equal to what was demanded of them. ( . . . ) The fact that on 12 September the enemy did not build on this penetration was a significant contributory factor to the success of the junior commanders. After the situation was restored and the line repaired, the objectives of trench warfare resumed.
B. Especially
I
The enemy artillery preparation for the attacks used almost exclusively heavy and the heaviest calibres. The ordnance and fire direction were first-class. The shell craters were laid in an accurate line successively in the immediate vicinity of the trenches. Only rarely in this ‘preparatory artillery fire’ was a so-called ‘rogue’ observed. Artillery spotting was apparently done from aircraft and barrage balloons. Apart from this cooperation with the artillery, the aircraft also engaged our infantry. At low level they machine-gunned the trenches and quarters causing casualties.
The effect here was greater against trenches than the cratered areas (or ‘nests’9). The trenches could be simply blanketed by artillery while targeting the nests was much more difficult. Reserves and support troops moving up were repeatedly machine-gunned by aircraft.
Under the enormous expenditure of ammunition by the enemy to soften up the position, the trenches available were very soon collapsed and the subterranean rooms caved in. The remnants of the duty men and reinforcements used shell craters for accommodation and protection, and here their losses were far lower than in the trenches. The enemy lost the possibility of accurate fire, and the explosive effect of the shelling was diminshed.
The enemy forces deployed for heavy artillery purposes and in aircraft was enormous and in the opinion of the regiment it no way corresponds to our own. Little plunging shellfire was observed. The following conclusions were drawn:
- 1.) During the softening up process before an attack, not too many people forward. Distribute the support troops (greater part of company) behind the position to be defended, so arranged that when enemy artillery fire ebbs can be pushed quickly into the forward line for possible counter-attack. The support troops can be accommodated in short lengths of trench or shell craters. Underground galleries are dangerous under heavy calibre shelling. There is no way they can be built to prevent their caving in. The galleries in this regiment’s sector were almost all caved in. This caused the regiment heavy losses. The troops are safer in shell craters or open trenches.
- 2.) Set out the position so that as wherever possible it cannot be viewed from above, ahead or at the sides. Especially important for the support troops. The continuous line, very desirable for quiet circumstances and trench warfare, is not absolutely essential! Sudden fire from nests once the enemy believes he has exterminated the oppostion in the trenches will often disconcert him and ruin his attack. Small gaps in occupied trenches do not seem dangerous so long as they are defended to the sides and rear by machine-gun fire. On the contrary they invite the enemy to concentrate his fire on vacant areas of trench and so spare lives!
Camouflage all trenches and military nests against aircraft with tarpaulins and brushwood/vegetation. Avoid all unnecessary movement! Essential with widespread positioning of the men are energetic leaders who can control their people under all circumstances.
- 3.) Enemy aircraft have too little opposition to their activities. It is obvious that with the great expansion of our front and the large number of war theatres for which aircraft are needed, we are not able to provide the same amount of aerial forces at a particular place as can the British and French. Nevertheless we observed that only rarely were enemy machines shot down by our flak. Flak was therefore only available in very small numbers or was too far back. Especially important however is the use of flak and bombers during the attack while support troops are moving into the front line and reserves are being brought up. These will, even if they cannot paralyze enemy air reconnaissance because of lack of numbers, at least seriously hamper its activity. The enemy aircraft flew in an exemplary manner. Almost no movement of our support troops and reserves escaped their attention. Besides directing artillery fire they made low level machine-gun attacks on troops moving in rearwards terrain.
II
As with his softening-up process, the enemy’s barrier fire was well organized. To coincide with his infantry attacks he laid a triple belt. Besides this the reserve trenches, so far as they were known to the enemy, the regimental command posts, the assumed transit channel for reserves, the roads and depressions to the rear were subjected to lively fire with shells of all calibres, shrapnel-shells and poison gas shells.
III
The enemy used few gas shells. Only seldom amongst the otherwise fierce artillery fire on depressions to the rear and the transit channel for troops did gas shells fall. The gas used was the same as at Verdun. Our gas masks provided excellent protection. As the regimental command posts were gassed several times, gas masks were worn there. In strong winds and where passage was possible the gas thinned and dispersed very rapidly. Health problems were only experienced by men who had not worn their gas mask or had removed it prematurely. They suffered sickness and dizzy spells quickly cured by fresh air.
IV
The enemy’s infantry attacks proved enthusiastic leadership. The build-up of strong forces and movement of reserves forward was smart. Less smart and enthusiastic was the execution of the attack itself, where the morale of the individual infantryman was important. A large number of these were under the influence of alcohol. If the enemy infantry found our defences alert, or faced an MG, any initial enthusiasm soon waned and the waves of attackers flowed back. Prisoners were happy to be in captivity and to have survived the danger. It was noted however that all prisoners expressed certainty of their victory. They still believed that a decisive success on the Somme would eventually be theirs – on se battra jusqu’au bout! (We shall fight to the end!) one often heard. To the question what this aim or end was, they had no answer. The outward impression of officers and men was, according to the circumstances, not a bad one. There were some very old men amongst them.
VII Command Posts
Whereas it is desirable that senior commanders are close to their men, especially in such intensive fighting as on the Somme, where they can oversee the occasionally fast-changing situation and, depending on circumstances, become personally involved, never the less the location of the command post very close to the front line undoubtedly has its major drawbacks. This very often made itself felt with disruption to the secure distribution of orders and transmission of reports. Telephone communications both ahead and to the rear were almost permanently cut, especially since the regimental command post was in the second belt of artillery barrier fire, but several inter-post runners, a light-signal post crew, several despatch runners, linemen and two morse-lamp operators were also killed or wounded in performance of their duties. Additionally the barrier fire, which made personal observation at the critical moment almost impossible, was very disruptive. The lively traffic which could be seen by enemy air reconnaissance, receiving and distributing reports and orders in the open drew fire, especially on these posts.
VIII Signalling
- 1.) Morse traffic by lamp from the regimental post to a station near 26.Inf.Brigade performed excellently. Only once was it out of service, due to heavy fog. There can be no doubt, however, that the enemy was reading our telegrams retransmitted by the receiving station and that the use of cover words did not satisfactorily prevent this happening. The despatches had to be fully encoded.
- 2.) This required too much time when under pressure. A repeat of the message from the receiving station was necessary to confirm it had been taken down accurately.
- 3.) Morse lamp usage forwards was not possible because of the terrain. The connections had to be maintained by inter-post runners. These men carried out their duties with great bravery and ensured that contact was maintained even under the heaviest fire. One must be careful not to use for this task men unfit for front duty. They must be especially intelligent and physically able.
- 4.) [ . . . ]
- 5.) The regiment used carrier pigeons on only one occasion, to fly out two messages. It is not known if the birds arrived.
- 6.) A radio station would certainly have been useful.
- 7.) [ . . . ]
- 8.) Barrier and covering fire were requested from the front line by means of red and green tracer. One man was on constant watch for these light signals. They would then be repeated to the regimental command post. This method of signalling has never failed. A great deal of tracer ammunition is necessary in the front line. Keeping a reserve at the regimental post proved valuable. The urgent request from ahead could then be fulfilled quickly.
IX
The greatest demands were made of the medical teams in view of the high casualty rate. Several times every night stretcher-bearers had to make the run from the front to the medical post (1,800 metres) with wounded. This resulted in major losses in dead and wounded which could not immediately be made good. It is suggested for such emergencies to have a reserve of stretcher-bearers on standby behind the front to replace the losses. The medical company was fully engaged transporting the wounded from the medical post to the rear.
The measure proved the need to have at readiness at the medical post an energetic Front NCO to direct lightly wounded, sick and stragglers immediately to the front line. It is also rewarding to have energetic patrols frequently scour the rear area for stragglers.
The main cause of casualties was artillery fire. This resulted in 198 dead, 817 wounded, of whom 170 remained at their post, and 198 missing of whom most were buried alive and could not be dug free. Amongst the casualties are eight officers dead, twenty-two wounded, three missing.
The health situation was satisfactory even during days of fighting. There were some minor cases of neurosis due to days of high tension or as a result of cave-ins.
X Provisions
Food was plentiful and good. Coffee, tea, mineral water and alcohol were supplied to the front. Large quantities of tobacco goods were also available. The placing of a provisions warehouse at Allaines, continuously replenished by lorries from the rear, proved good. Corresponding to the circumstances only mainly cold fare, preserves, ham, bread, could generally be brought forward. It was occasionally possible however to provide hot coffee. The men liked mineral water.
The psychic impression of battle naturally rather thrust the need for food into the background, while thirst and the craving for tobacco were noticeable. Therefore sufficient liquids and tobacco must be made available. The availability of provisions was exemplary on the Somme.
XI
Rifles, MGs and ammunition were good. No major irregularities were reported. Equipping far more men with MGs to replace immediately men wounded by artillery fire or buried alive is required urgently. Little use was made of hand grenades under the present battle conditions.
XII
The front line made frequent bitter complaints against our own artillery which is alleged to have fired too short. Reports to the artillery and their command posts were unsuccessful. The difficulty for our artillery, which probably had insufficient information about the position of our front line following changes during fighting phases should be explained. It may also be that some flanking artillery fire came from La Maisonnette Ferme and that precise fire from these guns, often targeted by the enemy, was not possible.
That German artillery fired on German trenches is probably confirmed based on the direction from which fire came and by the observation that a particular battery fired initially on the enemy trenches correctly, but then suddenly one or both guns began to fire scattered rounds into our own trenches. The impression this made on the front line, which had already had enough to put up with from the heaviest enemy calibres, can naturally be imagined. Once during an enemy attack a request was made not to provide barrier fire and the decision was taken to defend with infantry only because front-line troops feared being fired on by German artillery. The men said after the attacks: ‘Provided our own artillery does not fire we can handle the enemy infantry.’ In any case it seems urgent to rectify this situation with all means possible since it is depressing for the men and they have no confidence in German artillery.
XIII Morale
The morale of the men was excellent from first day to last. The Westphalian man does not yield no matter how hard things may get. It is therefore not surprising that, after the men were from 8 to 16 September for the most part constantly under the heaviest artillery fire, without sleep, with little food, under great nervous tension and the greatest mental strain, remained at their posts and fought off numerous infantry attacks, they should go through an evident relaxation of body and mind. It changes nothing in the assessment of their conduct. It can be said generally that the impression of high morale was all the greater since they were exposed not only to very accurate heavy calibre shelling of their trenches but also inaccurate German artillery fire. The infantry attacks were a convalescence for the men. The attacks were greeted with relief and jubilation. It meant that they were thrown into hand-to-hand combat man against man and in that – as they knew – they were superior to the French. Pale and hollow-cheeked through lack of sleep and the nervous pressure, they came out of the trenches all in good heart. A certain reaction is now being perceived as the nervous situation subsides.
Signed: Riebensalm
Oberst and Regimental Commander, 26 September 1916
Hugo Frick (1894 – 12 May 1917) Vizefeldwebel later Leutnant, Reserve-Inf.Regt.6/Reserve-Div. 9
In Civilian Life a Law Student at Ellwangen
(Source: BfZ N97 – 1)
Letters to His Mother and Sister at Ellwangen
29 September 1916 (Somme Front)
And we made our Somme summer trip, whether I shall return from it I have no means of knowing. If not I shall die a hero for whom you need shed no tears. My things, diary etc. will then come home. Perhaps all worries are unnecessary and I shall escape from the mess safe and sound.
Leaving Champagne came all too quickly, mail was blocked, so that probably you have received no letter of mine for some time. I am lying in rain and mud in the bivouac. Tonight I have cold, damp earth to lie on, last night a nice soft bed. I look forward to seeing how it all turns out: we are north-east of Péronne near the greatest battlefield and cemetery in world history. As soon as it starts I will of course report to you as often as possible. But the mail stops for such large military operations. For Joseph, Father etc. I have a long letter which I could not post. It is still raining. Many people say it is not so bad here at Verdun by a long chalk, so chin up. Today we go into battle as heroes. Therefore best wishes to all, parents, sister, relations, friends, sooner or later there will be an end to it.
Therefore warmest greetings. Your young Hugo TChr [abbreviation for the Tübingen Student Union Cherusker, to which Frick belonged.]
P.S. I should have been a Leutnant soon, but now nobody knows when our troops will leave the Somme.
3 – 4 October 1916
1 to 3 October, I never experienced anything like it, these seventy-two hours became an eternity, the seconds minutes. Believe me, my experience at the Vaux pales into insignificance against what I lived through north of Péronne. It is now 2100 on 3 October – my confirmation was ten years ago – a shell fell behind our hole. We have only shell craters etc. for protection – and it buried us in masses of earth several inches over our heads: I dug myself free, wriggled out and pulled out the other two, platoon leader Lt Völlger and the orderly officer.
None of us was hurt by splinters, escaped with understandable terrible shock, for what hours we had behind us, where one so systematically courts death. It mocks you, against this one cannot defend oneself, in the shape of exploding shells, whose ferocious splinters spray around, then mortar bombs which tear holes in the ground as deep as a house, myself in a one-metre deep hole in the ground, the whole three days long, seventy-two long, long hours: one might despair morally, run from it, get white hairs, three days in the forward trenches, then we were relieved 3 October evening and went into two (support) trenches where a moment ago giant twenty-eight cm shells lit everything up, yet we have, thank God, who can evaluate the word, a bombproof underground room for some time, but also the whole area ahead lies under French artillery fire. It is no longer war but mutual extermination with technology, what chance does the soft human body stand against that?
We have to stay here another twelve days, pray for me, I also have belief in, and comfort from, prayers in the hours of terror, just think, earlier if I spent half an hour in the rain I got sick, and now after thirty hours in the rain, sitting in the wet, afterwards no warm fireplace, no dry clothes, nothing happens. Tensing all one’s strength stops one falling ill. Probably rheumatism will come later, now I am really well if you can call it that. I have received no post for ten days, have you been long without news from me? Well, let us hope to God that I survive this Somme (=summer) trip in one piece.
Warmest greetings and kisses, your young
Hugo Tchr!
9 October 1916 (Somme)
The strains and deadly fears we experience here are more than horrendous and defy description. We hope to be away soon, the losses are also considerable, mostly from artillery. On 29 September I went to the religious service: general absolution gave us the best preparation for everything which lay ahead. And you, dear little mother, are thankful in every letter that I am not at the Somme. It is a mutual war of extermination. Let us hope that Joseph also comes through well. With winter underwear I remain provisionally at peace still but since we are in the trenches I can carry nothing around. Also packed a large parcel with two shirts and underwear, chalk from Champagne and some other things, I do not know if I can get it to the Post. Once again my thanks for your four parcels! I am still rolling my own cigarettes. But you sent papers again, I had enough for 150, and when the tobacco is all used up I will still have 120 papers. The stamps are also all stuck together. At the moment I have no time to write letters to Africa and America.
Received hoey from Uncle Hugo, still in Champagne, still have had no time to thank him! I celebrated the Feast of the Rosary without being aware of it, with many rosaries, on 1 October one rosary, 2 October three rosaries, 3 October six rosaries. Was between Bouchavesnes and Moislins where the French are the most far forward. We will soon be relieved, probably Norbert will soon be taking part in the Somme playground, one is still astonished to think that soft, sensitive human bodies can still emerge sound from this hail of iron! It seems I am immune against colds. Over thirty hours under artillery fire, cowering in the rain in a small hole, water covering all members, and now after great nervous and physical tension, having been buried alive and caught nothing, not even a cough, that must be a miracle. I cannot explain it.
In Württemberg it is a Royal House anniversary, try to get a Jubilee thaler! Is it really the Queen’s birthday and a Government anniversary? And since then daily one or two rosaries for consolation and strength. When I was smoking heavily it seemed as though I had something in the oppressive hours and days when I needed it most. I have now stopped the chalk work, I have no time for study and even less inclination! Fruit was good! The cigarette paper is gummed better.
Warmest greetings and kisses!
Your Hugo TChr.
10 October 1916 (Templeux-la-Fosse)
In commemoration of that wonderful day when Generalmajor von Glahn pinned the Iron Cross to the hero’s breast and made me a knight – Also the birthday of Swabian Queen Charlotte. I had today the strangest stroke of luck: in enemy territory, in hard fighting on the greatest battlefield in world history, north of the Somme, north of Péronne, I have met my best friend, my bosom friend, for whom I would have gone through fire, and he for me! In Templeux-la-Fosse. That was really a wonderful day, 10 October 1916. True I am still in the dangerous Somme region and staying in a French private house from which the occupants were probably ejected suddenly, for many cherished things have been left behind, and those dear men in field-grey naturally use everything, and so we have a white tablecloth and cutlery at mealtimes. Many of them are fooling around dressed in women’s clothing. Afterwards we sleep in the cellar, for at any moment a French shell can kill us all and bring the house tumbling down around our ears.
Well, we take that all into account, and today had quite a pleasant day. Today I tried out something new with alcohol. Coffee, tea, tea with rum. Cognac from Ellwangen and cognac from Jupp. One glass of beer, one bottle of wine and when I reported wearing my Iron Cross, which the general pinned on me himself, to my dear Company Commander Lt Steinbrecher (from Saxony), a very dear man whom I like, we celebrated with champagne. A few more cognacs but still alert despite that. With God’s help I will bring my Iron Cross home safe and sound. I look forward to meeting Joseph again perhaps tomorrow. Received today back-number newspapers of 12th, 14th and 16 September! Humbug. Also letter of 3 October (yesterday also of 5th), then a small package with socks. From father also received the watch.
Warmest greeting and kisses,
Your young Hugo TChr.
24 December 1916 (Sainte Emile)
Magic of Christmas! Today is Christmas Eve, the Feast of Joy and Love! We here in the tumult of war are slaves of war, of stone-hard hearts and rough appearance. Yet today a breath of Christmas pass through every heart! Therefore my dear ones! Only a single wish – Peace!
We have been here in Sainte Emile since 18 December, Joseph must know it well for he was here in October? We are here as divisional reserve, tomorrow we move out to Moislains, which was previously in the midst of the horror of the Somme cannonade, today somewhat quieter, and after a few days further on.
My losses in men here are from illness: whether I can hold out remains to be seen. We live the filthiest existence like animals of course. Today, Sunday and Christmas Eve we began with exercises. Then I rested and attended Christmas religious service for confessions at 0600 in a barn. Afterwards we sang carols around a Christmas tree, we are billeted in the big sugar factory. Otherwise we have no Christmas. Weakness is a stranger to me, though some would be happy to be taken prisoner as at Verdun. I gird myself against it and will defend the Fatherland to my last drop of blood.
Greetings and kisses,
Your Hugo TChr.
28 December 1916 (Somme Trench)
I wish you a happy New Year 1917: may this year at its birth bring us the ardently desired Peace on Earth for all people! Received yesterday the photograph with the four girls: many thanks! How I spent my Christmas: on Christmas Eve all warrant officers of the 8th were with the Company Commander: there was champagne and red wine, beer and various schnapps: towards 0200 on the shutter lamp. Then on 25th at midday we got ready to move out. Marched for hours with pack over tracks and fields, all covered in mud: some shelling greeted us, then this night at Moislains – was once a large village of 1,300 souls, today no house left in one piece, from the thousands of shell hits: additionally they fired at us at Christmas – had noticed our departure – especially heavy although nothing to compare with October. We sought a cellar: the one-metre high rubble of a house sheltered the cellar. A nice cat had remained loyal to the ruins and sat on my knees. From 26th I was with the 6th Company in a trench, but not the foremost one: colossal deep system. I never worked up a Christmas spirit with the carols, after the first verse I dried up.
My Christ child has arrived: ten marks for Maria, fifty to the savings bank.
Warmest greetings and kisses,
Happy New Year,
Your Hugo TChr.
31 December 1916 (Somme Battle)
New Year’s Eve 2000 hours, last moments of the bloody year of war 1916. Oh, these are heavy hours, such portentous moments to live bound to a narrow dug-out with no merriment or punch, no freedom to move nor without the loved ones of home! I would love to be sitting with you on the sofa, singing, chatting and praying, afterwards burying myself in the pillows of my bed to sleep and sleep and never wake! How were the New Year’s celebrations in the cathedral, I would love to have been there. The rosary is often my only comfort! We are not far from the British. Am near 6th Company and do not have my comrades of 8th, decorated a ten cm tall tree with lights and sang the first verses of several Christmas carols. I do not smoke very much. Anthon Withum wrote to me, he also wants to be an airman. If people have it good, they want to do better for themselves.
Warmest greetings and kisses,
Hugo TChr.
9 January 1917 (Somme Infantry Trench)
So, your Bua, your Boy has become a Prussian officer. But under what circumstances here have I become a lieutenant. This afternoon we trembled for our miserable lives despite all our phlegm. The French poured twenty-eight cm shells on our trench line – we are the fourth back – leaving nothing recognizable: many of the deep galleries were collapsed, and we were even scared in the deepest! When I describe how I look, that goes for us all. Covered in mud and filth! Same shirt and socks since 16 December 1916, therefore since last year chilled to the bone and then again breaking out in sweat. I have not frozen yet, and on 7 January I crawled out of my gallery and somebody came up to congratulate me, then my Company Commander – am still with 6th Company – but officially I still did not know. Two days went by, was with Company Commander and spoke by telephone to Battalion Commander Hauptmann Peschak who informed me that, according to an Order in Cabinet, I have been a lieutenant officially since 3 January.
Tonight 9/10 January 0400 we were relieved and will be resting at Sainte Emilie until 14th: I have not washed since Boxing Day, last time was at Moislains! Just now sewed shoulder straps with a safety needle on my old jacket – you know the one! I am surprised at my luck – if even the shells are not silent for officers – I became lieutenant as youngest of three 8th Company applicants and another two of 5th Company. God gives me no protection! Or does He? How are the trousers for which I was measured at Rindelbach? And have you enough material for a suit? If so, have it made, the tailor has the measurements! I will write then about my decoration. Therefore I hope to bring the lieutenant home safely.
Warmest greetings and kisses,
Your Hugo TChr.
17 February 1917 (Ancre Region)
Just received with gratitude the parcel with cheese and cigarettes from Würzburg. We have now arrived at the worst place on the whole Western Front, on the Ancre (part of the Somme Front) where the British attack several times a day every day, we live under a hail of iron. Whoever survives that has God’s special protection. But you need have no unnecessary fears! Where Grandcourt was evacuated, near Miraumont, it is under fire from two sides. The earth trembles and shakes. The heaviest calibres do their work here, just the British and us. Therefore only a miracle can bring me out of this battleground, which puts Verdun and October on the Somme in the shade. All that is said to prepare you. If there is a delay in my letters it may be because of the postal system. If I am wounded you will hear soon enough. If I fall, I die a hero’s death for the Fatherland. Am I assured for war in the policy? I hope you are all really well, and send the warmest greetings and kisses.
Your Hugo.
Fell in action, 12 May 1917
Sächsische Pionier (Mineur) Kompanie 323/Reserve-Div. 23
Company Order
25 October 1916 (near Nurlu)
Point One The fundamental principles of the German Army are discipline and order. Trench RII presents the contrary. We are responsible in every respect for Sector D. I therefore order: Upon arrival at RII trench, every sergeant must collect at once and daily from all living quarters all objects lying around. These include ammunition, hand grenades, dirty sandbags, rolls of barbed wire, stakes, entrenching tools, wire-cutters, miners’ beams used as bridges, helmets, leather wear, gas masks, etc. He has at his disposal for the area of a single living quarters, a completion squad of ten, therefore thirty for three living quarters, who can clean out a small area of trench in a very short time.
Point Two This morning a sergeant who had arrived at the position two hours earlier was unable to describe to me its dimensions. In future I will consider this attitude of disinterest as disobedience to my order of 24 October.
Point Three The order that no more chalk trenches can be dug for lack of men does not mean that piles of chalk rubble should be deposited in the galleries. This abuse is to be countered energetically.
Point Four I know that the demands on dutiful sergeants are great. The segeants are superior in authority under all circumstances to sergeants of the completion squads. These are to be used to assist.
Point Five Our miners are preparatory workers and can deploy completion squads in any manner necessary at this location.
Signed Geissler
Hugo Natt (1881 – 1963) Stabsarzt, Inf.Regt 118/Reserve-Div. 56
In Civilian Life a Physician from Frankfurt/Main
DIARY (Source: BfZ NO5.4)
8 November 1916 (St Quentin)
Not much to report. Remains tense awaiting next move to Somme. Thus no calm while working. General busy visit to the pension/restaurant on the market place. The first time with Carsten saw Prinz Eitel Friedrich with his Pour le Mérite. Later same place we saw Lt Althaus (airman) with same decoration. Airmen are the mainstay of the wine restaurant. Mostly good-looking figures, less lovely are the monocle-wearers and the amounts of champagne consumed. Ate together in the officers’ mess at the Hotel de France. After that went back to pension where to my pleasant surprise met my colours-brother Ramsch, and agreed to see him later. A lot of drunkenness, as usual, before going to the front. Hauptmann Collmann, face florid, related in a loud voice so that all the adjoining tables could not avoid hearing of his exhausting contribution at Divisional Staff. Hauptmann Lüters was at his side, all interest and friendship: ‘a pair of lovebirds, strangers to falsity’ I quoted to Reuling, who was sitting near me and watching the theatre with equal enjoyment. The new regimental commander seated near them left because of the smoking. Next, orderly officer Klein was sent a glass of champagne. What a farce! This rivalry for the favour of superiors from the lower orders, who perhaps somehow, some time, might need some influence on the commander. Ramsch and I enjoyed a cordial bottle of wine. We talked of home and exchanged photographs in his flat at Rue d’Orleans 118. As he recovered only recently from diphtheria, I promised to call by early tomorrow to give him a check-up.
9 November 1916 (Fresnoy-le-Grand)
Visited Ramsch this morning. Regiment left 0900. Marched to Fresnoy-le-Grand where we spent the night. Good quarters in the pharmacy.
10 November 1916 (Walincourt)
Marched to Walincourt. Fairly large village. Mainly occupied by walking wounded from military hospital. On first stroll through locality immediately impressed by the women and girls who give you the eye more randy and brazen than anywhere before. My ‘landlady’ brings me her ‘friend’, a fat, tolerably pretty girl allegedly the bride of a German soldier. I gave her an icy reception. Next day I got another, much better and quieter lodging in the walking-wounded quarter. Great unrest, speculation on where we are being sent. Corresponding massive alcohol intake.
14 November 1916 (Marquion)
Left today for Marquion. The route led us through Cambrai, of which we saw little marching through the outskirts, arrived at destination late afternoon, worn out after twenty-five kilometres. All ate together. Oepen has been transferred to the field hospital, we have Graeff instead. We talked about the peace negotiations with Russia, of which much has been discussed in last few days. The talks are under way: in Berlin the Russian legation has been lit up and a double guard posted. Now it seems that the talks were broken off at the last moment after the Entente guaranteed Russia a big loan. Accommodation really cramped and unpleasant.
15 November 1916 (Favreuil)
Marched to Favreuil. Arrived late afternoon. Streets soft underfoot. The entire Battalion Staff in a tiny room. We lay on stretchers. The companies in huts of corrugated iron, have window frames but no glass. The entire Battalion Staff in one similar barracks hut: the horses another, but no straw and the poor animals have to bed down in the mud. There are far too many people in the village. Heavy artillery fire can be heard from the front.
16 November 1916 (Miraumont)
This evening we went to the position, initially the so-called resting area Felsenkeller at Miraumont. The Battalion Staff marched together. Cloudless night. At Achiet-le-Grand I saw the medical team of Regt.120 whom we are relieving. Achiet is under fire and the patients are in the cellars. We became separated from Staff. We assumed they had gone on ahead. Near Achiet-le-Petit a couple of duds hissed by overhead. We waited ten minutes for them to explode. Unpleasant situation in the darkness, alone on the highway, not knowing roads, a lot of firing. We had just found out that we had to wait for the companies to arrive when Staff turned up. Hauptmann Lüters had waited fifteen minutes for us but we came along a parallel road and so missed him. The route was tolerable, single file. Now and then a shell-hole. The first to see it had to shout ‘Shell-hole! ’ and everybody following then took up the cry. The roads got continually worse. Now and then an ammunition truck came roaring up, at the order ‘Move aside right’ we usually finished up in deep ditches alongside the highway. The trenching officer, the tall Lt Unterhorst, led us.
Next we followed a railway bridge and then, because this spot is under constant heavy fire, marched at quick tempo along a steep embankment up to the ridge where the Felsenkeller is found (a few metres above the embankment). Overall it took us three and a half hours. All terribly exhausted. ‘What next?’ Is the question repeated over and over. To our right, no more than a regiment’s breadth away is where the British broke through. Apparently they had an artillery barrage for three days then attacked in fog without any softening-up, took five battalions prisoner including a regimental commander.
17 November 1916 (Miraumont)
Have a good spot in a niche in the rocks where a bed has been fitted. Graeff made himself comfortable on a stretcher. I surveyed our new surroundings. We are in an enormous chalky depression: walls, ceiling, everything white chalk. The walls are uneven with zig-zags and cracks, permeated everywhere by fissures running in parallel. The limestone is in layers and it is quite easy to peel away great blocks. In the candlelight the water trickles and glitters, less surface water than damp or from exhalations. In the depression is an entrance aperture about two metres high, three metres broad. A corridor about four metres wide and the same height, about eight metres long, leads slightly upwards. At its end it forks into two-metre high tunnels, one and a half metres wide, very narrow, into either side of the hill. The corridors are uneven and passage is very awkward over long stretches.
In an extension to the entrance corridor is an ante-room to the two main corridors, like a small hall built round a large column of rock. This is the dressing station. Between this room and the corridor there is a raised space like a grotto. Access to it is by a stairway of fallen rock: since its roof has deep fissures and cracks it is supported by thick beams. These are the living quarters for the medical team, and in the dim light the grotto looks like a thieves’ kitchen, like the company in ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ etc. I walked and climbed through most of the corridors. The conditions are awful. We have at the moment two battalions in the tunnels, apart from men of Regt.120 and pioneers, etc. Altogether about 3,000. There is only one exit: two small orifices so close to the exit that it amounts to only one way out. There is a single air vent. The air situation in the tunnels is so bad that men go naked because the heat is so intolerable. They lie together on the stone floors in the narrow tunnels. If a shell were to hit the air vent or exit I shudder to think of the disaster it would cause.
18 November 1916 (Miraumont)
Last evening Battalion Staff went to the position with Feldunterarzt Graeff. I did not get to bed until after midnight. Because of large fissures in rock – large blocks in roof seem to be hanging free – feeling of safety not great. Early today snow, deep mud. Heavy firing began early morning. After lunch we learned that the British had taken Grandcourt. Hauptmann von Beringe then came with the report that the British broke through Regt.106 to our right and had access to our trench from the side. Battalion 120 immediately ahead of us, whom we were supposed to relieve today, were taken prisoner. Our Company Commander at Battalion for briefing was also captured. We lost the three MGs. Lt Perron, Oberleutnant Becker and Lange are PoWs. I dressed a very complicated fracture of the upper thigh, then a wounded Regt.120 officer. This latter told me that the British approached the trenches with their hands raised in surrender, then suddenly hurled hand grenades. Orders came from II.Battalion to prepare. I Battalion was to take over trench of lost Battalion 120. Tremendous artillery barrage. Now and then heavy, thundering impact on the roof of rock bunker.
The British had Grandcourt bottled up. In general all down in the mouth. If the British wrap up Miraumont all of us in the rock-bunker mousetrap will go into the bag. At first we laughed about this then when we thought about it, it dominated all conversation. Graeff reported that the dressing station had been shifted back, also he was deafened in the right ear by explosion. A large number of wounded came streaming in. At 2100 suddenly: ‘Gas alarm!’ Earlier, when I smelled it, I could taste the gas. Rapidly donned mask. Some people searching around in desperation for their masks. Then it dispersed. Remove masks. Then it got stronger again. Outside the entrance we heard the repeated dull detonation of gas grenades. Feldunterarzt Binswanger arrived. More and more wounded. Wearing the gas mask, which continually steams up, it is really difficult to dress wounds. Meanwhile men excited, shouting, thought they had been gassed. It is exhausting to breathe through the mask for long periods. In the dimly-lit medical centre in the hollow, lit by a few candles, the wounded and sick-bay teams sat, lay or stood around, all wearing gas masks. Additionally outside heavy fire, the thunder of the hits against the rock-face, Ever more gas shells erupt before the entrance.
One conceals his fear behind the mask: fear of being blown up by a shell, crushed to death by collapsing masses of rock, slowly suffocated to death by gas or overrun by the British and killed. Hauptmann von Cappeln came to me seeking help: his eyes were bulging with the gas. I made him a borium compress: his valet Philipp brought him a bottle of wine to ease his distress. After midnight the gas shells stopped. Before going to sleep I tried to grab some fresh air: it was difficult to force a way through the men congregated around the entrance, especially since all were wearing gas masks. As I took a step outside a shell whizzed into the slope very close by. We saw the reflection of the explosion, everybody charged back into the hollow, sped on their way by a couple of shrapnel shells.
19 November 1916 (Miraumont)
Did not sleep well, probably as a result of breathing the gas. I got up at 0300 to receive wounded, found on the table a letter from home. Amongst the wounded was the Company Commander’s cook Schmidt of the Staff Company. He was always a very brave man and Hauptmann Sauer, with whom he had been together earlier, thought a lot of him. I thought of St Gilles, where he had cooked for Hauptmann Sauer and Stabsarzt Zahn, and I admired his wonderful beef steaks. The poor devil was badly hurt, a splinter across the face, the left eye destroyed, the right also looked lost. Dressed him, also at his request the serum injection. After treating the wounded I tried to rest a little. At the foot end of my little camping space a large chunk of rock had broken away. I have a niche in the rock concealed behind tarpaulin and blankets. It is quite small, besides the bed a fairly narrow little table which rocks back and forth in a constant struggle to remain upright on the uneven floor, and two chairs. For reading matter I have Rohrbach: Geschichte der Menschheit, plus medical works, ear, nose and throat, and a book on viruses. For lighting I have candles. A Regt.99 wounded lieutenant arrived. Yesterday’s report that Grandcourt had fallen was rumour: 500 British had been rounded up and pressed into service as stretcher-bearers. Two days later two carts full of seriously wounded came in, pulled by British. This cheered up our lancers (infantrymen) no end, and soon they were shouting ‘Tommy, Tommy’ from all sides.
23 November 1916 (Miraumont)
Early this morning I went forward with the orderly officer, Lt Klein. There had been a frost overnight and the ground was not so muddy as in recent days. At first to the railway bridge near Miraumont. Then along the embankment. Earlier this highway had received a lot of fire, therefore fast pace. The ground here was deep mud, and we had to wade up to our ankles.
To either side we saw the shelled ruins of the residences of Miraumont. Persistent artillery fire flew overhead towards the batteries. Clear, cold morning. Over a dozen British aircraft bustling in the sky. Everywhere deep shell craters, most filled to the brim with water. One skirts by them through mud. Then tree trunks, uprooted by the shelling, over which one has to clamber. Next a ghastly group of bodies, probably six, the torso in ribbons, covered in blood and mud. One has half its head missing, a bit further on a leg, and a pair of bodies so intertwined that the individual cadavers cannot be made out below their covering of mud. The single bodies. We went on at a fast pace, always with an eye on the aircraft circling overhead. Like poultry when a hawk circles. Lt Klein froze: a British aircraft above us banked sharply. We expected shellfire: suddenly there were a couple of explosions quite near: he had aimed two bombs at us. We ducked behind a heap of rubble.
Now we separated, I went to the medical post, Klein to the trenches. I passed through a deep morass in the depression, all churned up and ploughed over by shelling. To the left a battered tunnel entrance. I found Feldunterarzt Binswanger inside. A small room, primitively equipped. A couple of steps further on was the command post of Hauptmann von Cappeln who consulted me about his still thickly swollen eyes. After a short stay I went back as quickly as possible.
27 November 1916 (Favreuil)
Arrived back early yesterday in streaming rain. The mud was so deep that we decided to go along the embankment, but were then forced down, back into the filth. In places the mud is so deep that it slurps inside the boots or gaiters. Rain poured down incessantly. All the same we were in good humour, glad to be out of the cellar air. At Achiet-le-Grand the sick were brought into a cellar fairly near the railway. Schlüter told us that large calibres had bombarded the railway shortly before. I had the medical centre there evacuated to Favreuil.
Favreuil made a very poor impression with its roads of deep mud. I saw the provisions officers Lt Marchand and Lichtenberger, who supplied me to the best of their ability. Beautiful bright days, sunshine worth double.
14 December 1916 (Miraumont)
The stay at Favreuil was really unpleasant. I had bronchitis. Our quarters always overcrowded. I had a small alcove, stone floor, no stove. We ate together. Conversation low tone, mostly dull, miserable criticism of superior officers, especially Oberstlt Fabarius, then the active officers in general, then the divisional surgeon. Kept occupied with chess and a lot of skat. Yesterday they shelled Favreuil for the first time: one dead and a couple of wounded including a major in the pioneers. Great indignation. Lt Stein, who was a patient with us, and I were probably the least upset. At 2200 the order came from the district commandant to evacuate the civilian population immediately.
The little house was occupied by an eighty-year-old who could not bear to be parted from his small property despite having troops billeted on him. His forty-two-year-old daughter was also there. I often saw him entering his small room, modestly waving; a small, bent man with grey pointed beard. Like an old maid with a wooden face. The way the old man wept as he went through the rooms, and the daughter, with a bedroll full of clothing, all she could take from a trunk, plucked the heartstrings. Forced out into the night and fog with the certainty that upon their return there would be nothing left of their sticks of furniture and few possessions. Towards 2230 they left in silence. Scarcely were they through the door than the ‘Inspection Teams’ moved in, sorting through the cupboards for anything useful. There were four small hens outside, all dead within ten minutes. Lt Marchand, II.Battalion Provisions Officer, had given the order. He wanted to send two birds to his Battalion Staff, keeping two for the table. His devotion to the Staff was based on his fear of losing his comfortable post as Provisions Officer. I found the scenes of looting so disgusting that I could hardly bring myself to speak to the gentlemen. I made my point of view absolutely clear but they were unable to understand my ‘feelings.’
16 December 1916 (Miraumont)
Today with the ambulance to Irles via Bapaume and Grévillers. Bapaume seems to have been a small town similar to Roye: colossally bombarded. Enormous craters everywhere in the streets. The houses had great shell-holes, often more hole than wall. On the streets now in the early morning many troops, steel helmets and columns. Often the ambulance had to make a big detour, but in general one admired how quickly the cratered streets were repaired by the roadmakers. They keep at it. In Irles we stopped before the dressing and collection station of the medical company. Two days ago a big shell exploded here: four dead, five seriously wounded, six lightly wounded. We went through the ruins of Irles at the double. The whole village was a heap of rubble. Most of the roofs were on the ground or hanging down. We went safely along the Chaussee to Miraumont and the rock bunker.
Notes:
Der Weltkrieg 1914 – 1918: Reichsarchiv, Vol 10, Berlin 1936, p.348f (hereinafter ‘WKW’).
Historians mention more than twenty nations (as presently known) which fought on the Allied side on the Somme or whose citizens worked there as trench-diggers etc. These included: India, Pakistan, Barbados, Rhodesia, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Vietnam, Madagascar, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Russia, Italy and China.
Hermann von Kuhl (former Chief of General Staff, Army Group Kronprinz Rupprecht): Der Weltkrieg 1914 – 1918, Berlin 1929, p.488.
Hermann Stegemann: Geschichte des Krieges, Vol 4, Stuttgart/ Berlin, 1921, p.117.
Major-General John Headlam: Notes on Artillery Material in the Battle of the Somme, 6 July 1916, p.10 in: Battlefront Somme, Keith Bartlett, Richmond 2002, Document 5.
See Enzyklopädia Erster Weltkrieg (hereinafter EEW), Hirschfeld, Krumeich and Renz, 2nd edition, Paderborn 2004 (Somme) p.851: also Hew Strachan: Der Erste Weltkrieg, Munich 2004, p.235.
EEW, p.853. German losses of 1 July were given as about 8,000, of which 2,200 were taken prisoner. See Martin Middlebrook: The First Day on the Somme, 1 July 1916, London 1971.
Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson: The Somme. New Haven, London 2005, p.115.
Maréchal Fayolle: Carnets secrets de la Grande Guerre, Henri Contamine, Paris 1963, p.169.
Kuhl, ibid, p.494.
And are counted several times here. WKW, Volume 10, p.384.
Ibid, p.349.
Diary entry, 23 November 1916 at Miraumont.
Stegemann, ibid, p.237.
Statistics from EEW, ibid p.855 and Strachan ibid, p.240. The official Army medical report ‘Der Sanitäts-Bericht über das Deutsche Heer im Weltkrieg 1914/1918’, Vol 3, p.51 – 54 gives the German losses as 335,688. British authorities speak of up to 650,000 (including lightly wounded): The estimated total losses at Verdun (February to December 1916) were about 500,000 as opposed to 1.1 million on the Somme (June to November 1916).
Prior/‘Wilson, ibid, p.301.
WKW, Volume 11, p.105.
Ibid, p.108.
Robin Prior: The Heroic Image of the Warrior in the First World War: War and Society 23 (September 2005) p.43 – 51.
For Hugo Frick.
‘Report of Military Surgeon Dr Blass on his Experiences in British Captivity, 1917.’ On 7 December 1916 Blass was exchanged together with other prisoners.
Lille in 1914, (photograph by Georg David Bantlin)
German trench at Fransart, 1914.
Military quarters, Flers church.
Divisional command post in the Somme Valley.
German guards with a variety of prisoners captured during the fighting at Frise.
Postcard from the pictorial volume Der Krieg 1914/1915 in Postkarten, Abteilung: Frankreich, Inhalt: Umgebung von Sankt Quentin, (published by Lehmanns Verlag).
Programme for a performance of Weber ’s opera Der Freischütz held at the German Theatre, Lille on 27 January 1916 to celebrate the birthday of the Kaiser.
French prisoners being paraded through Lille, 1914.
The Rulers of Lille at the Soldatenheim, 1916.
Ruins of the ammunition depot at Lille after the explosion of 11 January 1916.
A Lille street after the explosion of 11 January 1916.
Waiting for orders on the front at Cartigny, 13 July 1916.
3.Comp / Reserve-Infantry Regiment 29 in a trench at La Maisonette, 16 July 1916.
Sentry Raaf shouting ‘Alarm!’, La Maisonette trench, 19 July 1916.
Regimental band playing on the highway near Tertry, 22 July 1916.
Graves in the third trench line, La Maisonette, 19 July 1916. Péronne can be seen in the background.
Third trench line, La Maisonette, 19 July 1916.
German trench at Hattencourt, 1916.
German soldiers at Hattencourt, 1916.
‘Operation Alberich’, highway near Havrincourt, March 1917.
‘Operation Alberich’, felling their chimney of a sugar factory, February 1917.
‘Operation Alberich’, houses blown up at Roupy, February 1917.
‘Operation Alberich’, deportation of inhabitants at Metz-en-Couture, photographed by Georg David Bantlin, 18 February 1917.
Péronne town hall after the German withdrawal to the Siegfried Line, March 1917.
‘Operation Alberich’, the demolished castle.
British long-barrelled railway guns captured near Péronne, 1918.
Column of German artillery near Fontaine-leèès-Clercs, March 1918.
Battlefield near Albert, 1918.
Albert church with its ‘hanging Madonna’, 1918.
Interior of the church at Péronne.
Aerial photograph of the village of La Vacquerie near Gouzeaucourt.
German soldier walking down the high street at Péronne.
Damaged tank on the banks of the Somme, March 1918.
German military cemetery in France, 1920s.