7 o
THE YPRES TIMES
On March 14th we received the order to move. For seven weary nights we
marched southwards, and on the night of March 20th/2ist we reached our actual
assembly area, the reserve trenches due north of St. Quentin, where ruins we
had seen for the first time the previous day outlined against the sky to our south.
Our division, the 5th, was in the second wave, its orders were to follow in support
so as to reinforce the first wave and, if need be, relieve it directly its losses made
this necessary. So, immediately on our arrival, we crept into our dugouts aware
that at 4 o'clock next morning we should be awakened by the shock of our pre
paratory bombardment. We knew that the English were opposite, our maps
of course showed the enemy positions, with pin-point accuracy, four trench systems,
one behind the other, even though it was to be expected that the first line, and
possibly the second, would be annihilated by our gas shelling, we realized that the
rearward positions could only be taken at tremendous sacrifice, but in spite of this
our mood was festive rather than grave. Everyone rejoiced at the thought:
attack! after three years of those awful battles on the defensive, at lastattack!
Our faith in the Higher Command unshakable; the belief in victory permeated
the army, held in readiness, from the Commander-in-Chief down to the seventeen-
year-old recruit. I did not sleep much that night. I was nearing my 50th
birthday and four years of war had demanded too much of my nerves. I envied
my young Adjutant and my still younger Orderly-Officer, the eighteen-year-old
Lieutenant Bloem, my only son, their child-like slumber.
Punctually at four hell broke looseA few hundred yards behind us there
stood an enormous naval gun which every three minutes emitted a terrible blast
and spat its shrieking shell into the air. This put an end to any further sleep
for me, but the youngsters around me never woke up for a second. The first
wave ready in the forward trenches was to attack at 9 o'clock a.m., and we also
were to commence our advance at the same hour. Immediately in front of us lay
a broad stretch of country which had been transformed into a wilderness of craters
by the long years of trench warfare, and on the far side of Holnon Wood began
the actual area of the Somme battles of 1916. But the worst thing was that
exactly parallel to our position, there extended a marshy depression óf about
two to three kilometres, through the middle of which flowed a drainage canal.
In order to make it possible for the dense second wave to cross this unwholesome
tract with the least delay, it had been bridged in the last few days with a great
many narrow foot-bridges which had been accurately marked on our maps and
allotted amongst the supporting battalions. It was, therefore, a question of lead
ing the battalion exactly to the foot-bridge allotted to meit had been given
the romantic name of Kate's Walk which it would have been a feat to
accomplish even in usual circumstances in this hilly waste of ruins. When at dawn
the next morning, maddened by the raging artillery fire, I put my head out of the
dug-out and became aware of the trick, impossible to have foreseen, that fortune had
played. During the night an almost impenetrably thick mist had enveloped the
entire battlefield. The vapour had absorbed the fumes from the guns and held
them fastno doubt also the gas concentrations fired by either side. Should I
order the gas-masks to be put on but how then to get the battalion to its destina
tion and keep it together through this labyrinth of shell-holes It must be risked
I was ready to vomit. But with the help of the correctly set compass the improbable
occurred. I suddenly stood in front of the notice-board, Kate's Walk and
staggered over the frozen plank, the battalion following in single file behind.
During the night we had been unable to observe signs of counter-preparations
of the enemy artillery, nor were there any such signs yet. Evidently the English had
already suffered severely from our preliminary surprise bombardment and gas
attack, and probably now had its hands full in holding up our attacking wave and
