THE YPRES TIMES
73
about is fighting in trenches. I put another company in; no good, the scoundrels
in the tree-tops continue to loose off merrily. The advance of the whole division is
held up by that score of men. I send back word for a Minenwerfer Section to be
brought up. We wait half an hour, my companies have had to dig in. We smoke
and curse. At last the minenwerfer arrive; hardly has their first bomb burst in
the tree-tops when the impudent snipers climb down and jump to the ground from
their hiding-place. On we go again. Still squatting in my shell-hole I order the
Battalion to advance. Out of the group of trees a single Tommy approaches.
Is he fed up with the war? We wave to him to come into our shell-hole. He
grins and makes a face. He actually picks up a clod of earth and throws it at us.
One of my runners, very annoyed, raises his rifle to shoot him, but has to laugh,
while all the others shout at him, Are you mad, man?" Forward! I take the
centre of Holnon Wood as directionwe enter it without hindrance. Here on the
South side there has been no fightingbut the whole wood is full of food.
Our Grenadiers have been for two years on blockade fare. Is it any wonder
that the well-known and always unavoidable moment of bad discipline has now
arrived The Battalion threatens to melt away. The officers have their work
cut out to get the men under control, who, incidentally, have been on iron rations
for two days. Everyone has seized some unheard of luxurya huge white loaf,
a sack of coffee, a pot of that butter we have not had for years. I trudge at the
head of the Battalion through the wood; on my right my Adjutant, Lieut. Borman,
my Orderly Officer on my left. It will be best to order a rest for food, otherwise
we shall become like a band of gypsies." Halt! ten minutes rest. Look out for
aeroplanes." From the west there comes a buzz. Hardly a hundred metres above
our heads four fighters with the blue-white-red ring, and in next to no time the
machine-guns are righted and bark upwards. The cheeky pilots turn off and
disappear towards the enemybut we must make a move. We are hardly half a
kilometre away from our resting-place when heavy shells whistle over our heads,
bursting in an eddy of fury. When we emerge from the West side of the Wood
in the dusk, before us lies the flat plain, and on the horizon the bushy high ground
which fringes the Somme Valley. Through this depression, as our maps show,
runs the fourth and last English line, the Lloyd George position. If we capture
it then the entire English defensive system will have been penetrated. Now it is
our turn at last to take it on.
Our advance guard, the ist Battalion, 12th Grenadiers, and the ist Battalion of
the 52nd, is already moving forward. Below us there is heavy rifle and machine-
gun fire. But now we have been spotted by one of the captive balloons which
sway over there in a long line like huge sausages against the red-streaked sky.
We are hardly out of the wood before there descends a H.E. barrage between us and
our comrades fighting in front. It cannot be helped, we must get throughI cannot
wait for orders from the Regiment. The battle is pulling us to it like a magnet,
but before we have reached the barrage night envelops the earth like a shielding
cloak. As observation fails the enemy artillery fire dies down, but to compensate
for this, as we draw nearer to the firing line, the more violent does the infantry
fire become, a sure indication of the furious fighting in front.
Knee high out of the dark there sweeps towards us a hurricaning horizontal
hail of lead. I tramp with my staff over the endless ploughland. overgrown with
weeds, which has not been furrowed for years. A thousand deaths speed towards us.
And so there comes over me once again that highest feeling the earth has to offer, a
feeling I have known in dozens of fights but which is never so pure or glorious
as on the day of an attack. I am delivered from earthly wrong and earthly blame.
I am ready to offer myself upI am no more myself, I am only a part of battling
GermanyI await my end, I welcome it, I go to meet it joyfully.
