Friendly Fire (19 February 1918)
Diary of a Stosstrupp Leader (Part 34)
This post continues the translation of the diary of a German soldier who fought in the First World War. Readers can find links to other posts in this series in the following guide.
19 February 1918 (Continued)
Just steps ahead of us, I heard a foot touch the ground, lightly, cautiously, as if someone was shifting from one foot to another to ward off the cold. We, too, had become stiff and inflexible, from creeping forward slowly and lying prone.
Then came the moment of truth. We readied our fingers to pull the cords on our hand grenades. Quietly, I gave my orders.
I still had five men with me. I had left two behind at the lane in the last barbed wire fence we cut, to cover our retreat.
My men understood what they had to do. We would capture the sentries in a frontal assault, rushing in as we threw several grenades behind them, thereby preventing their retreat.
Like snakes, my men crawled along the ground, maintaining, as I had ordered, a five meter interval between each one.
A short blast of a whistle served the signal to rush forward.
Then, suddenly, something happened. A huge concentration of artillery shells struck the ground to the left of us.
A few moments later, we saw a red flare fly through the sky above our own position. This was the signal for the defensive barrage. May the Good Lord have mercy on us all. We were lying in the target area for our own barrage.
When the artillery fire hit the neighboring sector, an experienced sergeant in our defensive sector called for this barrage. Unfortunately for us, our artillery performed splendidly.
In the distance, we saw the flash of the first rounds fired. Then we heard them scream.
'Hit the deck’, I cried, and jumped into the nearest shell hole, which, thank God, was one of many in the area.
I heard the enemy sentry scurry away. What a shame. We had wanted to capture him, and he was almost in the bag.
The next few minutes were frightful. Shells fell, before and behind.
The prospect of being torn apart by our own shells drove me crazy. We found ourselvs immersed in acerbic smoke and clouds of pulverized earth.
At last, the shelling ceased. I blew my whistle twice, giving the signal to retreat. I saw my five loyal men spring out of the shell holes in which they had found shelter. To my great relief, none of them - save one who had sustained a minor wound - had been hurt.
It was a good thing that I had given the command to retire. I could see that, in the last few minutes their morale had suffered greatly and they were in no position to attempt a second raid that night.
Those who haven’t been shelled by their own artillery cannot imagine how bad for morale the experience can be. My battle-proven men shivered from head to toe. They also resented the escape of the Frenchmen they came close to capturing.
The two sentries guarding the lane in barbed wire entanglement we had cut had found no shell craters near their posts, and so they remained where I had left them. Neither was harmed. As things turned out, they had been less worried about themselves than those of us who had been ahead of them.
As a rule, we were bound together by a strong spirit of comradeship. The greater the danger, the more we could depend upon it. But the trial had yet to run its course.
As we had come to expect, French ‘Christmas trees’ rose into the air. These were high-flying white rockets that released lots of little stars, so that it looked as if the sky was filled with Christmas trees. This was the French signal to fire a defensive barrage.
Within moments, a broad belt of shells fell between us and our trenches, a barrier that we would have to cross. So I gave the command: ‘Move separately. Assemble in the Pioneer Ravine (Pionier Schlucht)’.
In keeping with this (command), each one of us sprang from shell hole to shell hole, working our way to our own trenches.
Our own artillery stopped firing. Soon thereafter, the French followed suit. Thus we were able to walk upright, and thus quickly, during the last segment of our journey to our trenches. Once there, we crawled into our dugouts, found our bunks, and fell into a deep sleep.
Although we had failed to capture a prisoner, our raid had not been in vain. Thanks to it, we had established he exact position of the barrage protecting our sector. It turned out to be corrected where latitude was concerned, but a little too narrow when it came to depth.
I made these points in my report to the regimental commander and plotted the places where shells had struck in the sketch I enclosed with it. We had rarely been able to establish the fall of our shells as exactly as we had when they fell on top of the craters that had sheltered us.
The report went from the regimental commander to the commanding general of the division, who passed it to the commander of the artillery in our sector, who gave orders for the fine-tuning of the barrage.
To be continued …
Sources
The text comes from Alwin Lydding Meine Kriegstagbuch (My War Diary), an unpublished manuscript that I found at the Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) (Folder N 382/1).
The illustration shows a portion of a map I found in Folder PH 3-KART/2378, on the website of the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv).
Related Reading
Friendly fire - isn’t (just ask the French Army of this period).