Our new positions were an improvement. We were located at a higher elevation, and surface water no longer bothered us. Moreover, the ground was easy to work. Shell-proof dugouts and shelters thirteen to twenty feet underground had been captured in the attack, and these were impervious to the French artillery. I shared sleeping quarters in a dugout with an officer of the Uhlans—like myself, a company commander—which we could only reach by crawling on all fours. By day, we suffered bitterly from the cold since we dared not light a fire. The merest wisp of smoke was enough to bring heavy harassing fire from the French.
Ten-day reliefs were established: front line, reserve position, and rest camp alternated with one another. to the good positions and dugouts, front line losses were slight, although the French artillery increased the volume of its harassing fire from day to day. Their batteries apparently had plenty of ammunition, in contrast to ours, which were so short that we only opened fire on occasion.
I heard that the five severely wounded men we had left behind to be taken prisoner on January 29 were getting along well, and a few weeks later I was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, for that operation. I was the first lieutenant of the regiment to get this decoration.
The next three months were spent in rectifying our lines in conjunction with our neighbours. The 120th Infantry on the right got a bit farther forward than we did on January 29. The 123rd Grenadier Regiment on the left worked itself forward toward Cimetiere, which adjoined Central on the east. Again and again sap trenches were driven forward and then interconnected. In this way the front line was moved nearer the French, and we finally reached the French wire entanglements in front of their main position.
Our work was hindered by artillery and trench mortars, the latter appearing for the first time; and many a soldier was hit in the sap trenches. The communication trenches and passages to the rear, the command posts, and the supply dumps were constantly subject to French harassing fire. When the company moved back to the rest camp, everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Usually, during such reliefs, we also had the sad duty of burying our fallen comrades. In time the reliefs became fewer, losses in the forward line increased, and the quiet forest burial ground became much more extensive.
From the beginning of May, the enemy raked our foremost trenches in the Central sector with light and medium finned mortar bombs. The quiet sound of their discharge was all too familiar to veterans of the Argonne. Although weaker than other battle sounds, it was enough to wake us from the deepest sleep and send us scurrying out of the dugouts post-haste. In daytime the missiles could be seen flying through the air, and we had ample time to duck. At night it was best to avoid the menaced area entirely. On the other hand, nobody bothered to wake up and leave the dugouts during harassing fire by the artillery.
In spite of daily casualties and the nerve-wracking strain of combat, morale remained high; everyone performing duties in an amazingly matter-of-fact manner. We even found ourselves becoming “attached” to this blood-drenched corner of the Argonne. The hardest thing was saying goodbye to buddies who were carried back dead or severely wounded. Never to be forgotten is the soldier whose leg had been blown off by a mortar round. On a bloody shelter-half, they carried him past us down the narrow trench at sunset. I found it difficult to express my feeling at seeing this fine young soldier leave us this way, and I could only press his hand to encourage him. But he said “Lieutenant, this is not so bad. I shall soon be back with the company even if I have to use a wooden leg.” The brave lad never saw the sun rise again, for he died on the way to the hospital. This conception of duty was characteristic of the spirit of my company.
In early May we received our first delivery of pit-props which we used to construct well braced one and two-man dugouts sunk into the forward walls of the trenches. By this arrangement we could quarter the sentry reliefs at the sentry posts. The front line was now so close to the main enemy works that the French artillery could not fire on us without endangering its own people. It transferred and increased its activity against the rear units, the supply routes, the reserve positions, command posts, and encampments.
About this time a senior first lieutenant who had not yet had field duty took over the 9th Company. The regimental commander wished to transfer me to a different company, but I declined and remained with the men whom I had previously commanded.
For ten days during the middle of May the 9th Company was attached to the 67th Infantry, which was located in the middle of the Argonne near Bagatelle to the west of the 123rd Grenadiers. This aggressive unit was badly depleted as a result of its many fights in the campaign. A different sort of trench warfare prevailed here. Less value was put on positions offering shelter from artillery and mortar fire. The whole battle was conducted at grenade distance from shallow depressions and from behind low sandbag walls. At Bagatelle there were few indications that the Argonne was a dense forest, for the French artillery fire had cleared the trees thoroughly, and for miles all that remained visible were stumps. While the junior commanders were making their reconnaissance prior to taking over, a brief but violent hand grenade fight broke out on a wide front; and before it was over we had suffered several casualties. This was a sample of what was in store, and we made the relief with mixed emotions.
As was our custom, we deepened the trench at once and built dugouts for ourselves. Sudden and violent bursts of French artillery and mortar fire, accompanied by hand-grenade fights all along the line, kept us from having dull moments. In the warm weather the frightful stench of corpses wafted into the position. Many French dead still lay in front of and between our positions, but we could not bury them because of the strong enemy fire.
The nights were really exciting. Hand grenade battles went on for hours along a broad front and became so confused that we never knew whether or not the enemy had broken through at some place or had worked his way behind our front line. Added to this, various enemy batteries chimed in from the flanks. This was repeated several times nightly, and we soon found it a strain on our nerves.
The platoon command post that I had inherited from my predecessors lay to the left rear of my platoon sector. At the level of the bottom of the trench— about six feet below the ground—there was a narrow vertical shaft in the forward wall. This shaft was just wide enough to permit one man to lower himself through it. Another six feet, that is, twelve feet under the surface, it opened on a horizontal tunnel the size of a large coffin. The floor was made up of cork slabs, and small niches had been cut into the wall to provide storage for rations and sundry other belongings.
The walls and roof were devoid of bracing; and, while the clayey soil was holding, I knew that anyone caught there by a shell exploding near the entrance was certain to be buried alive. As soon as shells struck in the vicinity, I got out of my hole and joined my platoon. Anyway it was better to stay up forward for the hand grenade fight which kept us on our feet half the night.
The heat was unbearable during those days. One day Ensign Moricke, an especially fine soldier, visited me. I was down in my dugout, and we had to talk to each other through the shaft because there was not room for two in my warren. I told Moricke I was convinced that we were not safe from the dammed flies even when we were twelve feet underground. Moricke said it was no wonder since the edge of the trench was simply black with them. He got a pick and started to dig there, and at the first swing the half-decayed, blackened arm of a Frenchman came to light. We threw chloride of lime and earth on it and left the dead man in peace.
We managed to weather the ten days, and on our return to our regimental sector we were shoved back into the front line. We found that every effort had been made to render trench warfare more unpleasant, for they had added mining to an increased volume of artillery and trench mortar fire. The opposing outposts were only a few yards apart in half-covered sap trenches heavily reinforced with wire, and the night was full of lively hand grenade battles which from time to time brought the entire garrison to its feet. Each side tried to destroy the other's advance tunnels and positions and hardly a day passed without an explosion.
One day the French succeeded in cutting one of our sap trenches which had ten men of our company working in it. We got them out, but it took several hours of hard fighting and digging, for several were completely buried.
Our attempts to capture the nearby French sentry posts usually ended in considerable losses. These posts and the sections of trench leading to them were completely enclosed with barbed wire. At the slightest noise, the French in the blockhouses would sweep the obstacles with machine-gun fire. These conditions soon became exasperating and we hoped to remedy them by storming “Central.”
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