We run back, pull the wooden wire-cradles into the trench and toss primed grenades behind us, to ensure fire cover to the rear. The machine-guns are firing from the next post.
We have turned into dangerous animals. We are not fighting, we are defending ourselves from annihilation. We are not hurling our grenades against human beings what do we know about all that in the heat of the moment? the hands and the helmets that are after us belong to Death himself, and for the first time in three days we are able to look Death in the eyes, for the first time in three days we can defend ourselves against it, we are maddened with fury, not lying there waiting impotently for the executioner any more, we can destroy and we can kill to save ourselves, to save ourselves and to take revenge.
We squat down behind every corner, behind every wire-cradle, and throw exploding bundles at the feet of those coming at us before we get away. The blast of our hand-grenades strikes hard against our legs and arms as we run, stooping like cats, swept by the wave that carries us onwards, the wave that makes us cruel, makes us into highwaymen, into murderers, I suppose into devils, this wave which multiplies our strength in fear and fury and the urge to live, which seeks and fights for a way out for us. If your own father came across with those from the other side you wouldnt hesitate to hurl a hand-grenade straight at him!
Weve given up the front-line trenches. Are they still trenches at all? They have been shot to pieces, destroyed there are just odd sections of trench, craters linked to one another by shallow communication alleys, groups of shell holes, nothing else. But the numbers of losses from the other side are increasing. They didnt reckon on so much resistance.
It is getting on for midday. The sun bums down and sweat stings our eyes, and when we wipe it away on our sleeves there is often blood there, too. We make it back to the first of our better maintained trenches. It is manned and ready to withstand the counter-attack, and the men take us in. Our artillery gets going at full blast and makes an attack impossible.
The lines of men following us have to stop. They cant move forwards. Their attack is cut to pieces by our artillery. We lie in wait. The shellfire lifts a hundred yards and we go over the top again. Right next to me a lance-corporal gets his head blown off. He runs on for a few paces more with blood shooting up out of his neck like a fountain.
It doesnt come to hand-to-hand fighting. The others are forced back. We get back to our original bits of trench and then go on beyond them.
God, this turning! You get to the protection of the reserve trenches and you just want to crawl into them and disappear; but you have to turn around and go back into the terror. If we hadnt turned into automata at this moment we would have just lain down, exhausted, stripped of any will to go on. But we are dragged along forwards again with everyone else, unwilling but crazed, wild and raging, we want to kill, because now the others are our deadly enemies, their grenades and rifles are aimed at us, and if we dont destroy them they will destroy us.
The brown earth, the torn and mangled brown earth, shimmering greasily under the suns rays, becomes a backdrop for our dulled and ever-moving automatic actions, our harsh breathing is the rasping of the clockwork, our lips are dry and our heads feel worse than after a nights hard drinking and so we stumble onwards, while into our bullet-ridden, shot-through souls the image of the brown earth insinuates itself painfully, the brown earth with the greasy sun and the dead or twitching soldiers, who he there as if that were perfectly normal, and who grab at our legs and scream as we try to jump over them.
We have lost all feelings for others, we barely recognize each other when somebody else comes into our line of vision, agitated as we are. We are dead men with no feelings, who are able by some trick, some dangerous magic, to keep on running and keep on killing.
A young Frenchman falls behind, we catch up with him, he raises his hands and he still has a revolver in one of them we dont know if he wants to shoot or to surrender. A blow with an entrenching tool splits his face in two. A second Frenchman sees this and tries to get away, and a bayonet hisses into his back. He leaps in the air and then stumbles away, his arms outstretched and his mouth wide open in a scream, the bayonet swaying in his back. A third throws down his rifle and cowers with his hands over his eyes. He stays behind with a few other prisoners-of-war, to help carry off the wounded.
Suddenly in our pursuit we reach the enemy lines. We are so close behind our fleeing opponents that we get there at almost the same time as they do. Because of that, we dont have too many casualties. A machine-gun barks out, but is silenced with a hand-grenade. All the same, those few seconds were enough for five of our men to get stomach wounds. With the butt of his rifle, Kat smashes to pulp the face of one of the machine-gunners, who hasnt been wounded. We bayonet the others before they can get their grenades out. Then we gulp down thirstily the water they have been using to cool their gun.
All around there is the clicking of wire-cutters, planks are manhandled across the entanglements and we jump through the narrow gaps into the trenches. Haie hits a massive Frenchman in the throat with his spade and throws the first hand-grenade; for a second or so we duck down behind a parapet, and then the straight section of trench in front of us is empty. The next throw whistles over the corner of the trench and gives us clear passage, and as we go past we toss explosives into the dugouts; the earth shakes, creaking, smoking and groaning, we stumble on over slippery fragments of flesh, over soft bodies; I fall into a belly that has been ripped open, and on the body is a new, clean, French officers cap.
The fighting stops. We lose our contact with the enemy. Since we cant hold out here for a long time, we are brought back to our original position under covering fire from our artillery. We hardly know what we are doing as we dive into the nearest dugout to grab what we can of any provisions that we happen to see before we get away, especially tins of corned beef.
We get back in one piece. For the moment there are no more attacks from over there. We he on the ground for more than an hour, getting our breath and resting, before anyone says anything. We are so completely done in that we dont even think of the tinned beef, even though we are ravenously hungry. Only gradually do we turn into something like human beings again.
The corned beef that they get on the other side is famous all along the front. Occasionally it serves as the main reason for a surprise raid from our side, because our provisions are generally bad; we are always hungry.
Weve got hold of five tins altogether. Those people over there get looked after well, its the lap of luxury compared to us lot here in hungry corner, with our turnip jam on the other side the beef is just sitting around, all you need to do is take it. Haie has also snaffled a thin loaf of French white bread and tucked it in his belt like a spade. Theres a bit of blood on one end of it, but that can be cut off.
Its lucky that weve got some decent food to eat now; well still need all our strength. Having a full belly is just as important as a good dugout; thats why we are so keen to get hold of food, because it can save our lives.
Tjaden has even managed to get hold of a couple of water bottles full of cognac. We pass them round.
The evening benediction starts. Night falls, and mist rises out of the shell holes. It looks as if the craters are full of ghostly secrets. The white vapour creeps around fearfully before it dares to float up over the edge and away. Then long streaks drift from one shell hole to the next.
Its cold. Im on look-out[164], staring into the darkness. I feel limp and drained, just like I always do after an attack, and so I find it hard to be alone with my own thoughts. They are not really thoughts; they are memories that come to torment me in my weakness and put me into a strange mood.
Up go the Verey lights and I see a picture of a summer evening, and Im in the cloistered courtyard of the cathedral looking at the tall rose trees that grow in the middle of the little garden there, where the deans of the chapter are buried. All around are stone carvings for the different stations of the cross[165]. There is nobody there; this flower-filled square is caught up in a profound silence, the sun shines warm on the thick grey stones, I place my hand on one and feel the warmth. Above the right-hand end of the cloisters slate roof the green spire of the cathedral rises up into the pale blue wash of the evening sky. Between the slender sunlit columns of the cloisters themselves is that cool darkness that only churches have, and I am standing there and thinking that by the time I am twenty I shall have learnt the secret of the confusion that women cause in mens minds.
The picture is astonishingly close, it touches me before it dissolves under the flash of the next Verey light.
I grip my rifle and hold it properly upright. The barrel is wet, and I put my hand round it and wipe off the dampness with my fingers.
Between the meadows behind our home town there was a row of old poplar trees that rose up by the side of a stream. You could see them from a long way off, and although they were actually only along one side, the place was still known as the poplar avenue. Even when we were children it was a favourite place and those poplars had an inexplicable attraction for us, so that we used to spend whole days there listening to their gentle rustling. We used to sit beneath them on the banks of the stream and dangle our feet in the bright, fast-moving eddies. The clean scent of the water and the song of the wind in the poplars captured our imagination. We really loved them, and picturing those days still makes my heart race, before the image vanishes again.
It is a strange thing that all the memories have these two qualities. They are always full of quietness, that is the most striking thing about them; and even when things werent like that in reality, they still seem to have that quality. They are soundless apparitions, which speak to me by looks and gestures, wordless and silent and their silence is precisely what disturbs me, forces me to hold on to my sleeve or my rifle so that I dont abandon myself to this seductive dissolution, in which my body would like to disperse itself and flow away towards the silent powers that he behind all things.