Suddenly the nearer explosions cease.
The shelling continues but it has lifted and falls behind us, our trench is free.
We seize the hand-grenades, pitch them out in front of the dug-out and jump after them.
The bombardment has stopped and a heavy barrage now falls behind us.
The attack has come.
No one would believe that in this howling waste there could still be men; but steel helmets now appear on all sides out of the trench, and fifty yards from us a machine-gun is already in position and barking.
The wire entanglements are torn to pieces.
Yet they offer some obstacle.
We see the storm-troops coming.
Our artillery opens fire.
Machine-guns rattle, rifles crack.
The charge works its way across.
Haie and Kropp begin with the hand-grenades.
They throw as fast as they can, others pass them, the handles with the strings already pulled.
Haie throws seventy-five yards, Kropp sixty, it has been measured, the distance is important.
The enemy as they run cannot do much before they are within forty yards.
We recognize the smooth distorted faces, the helmets: they are French.
They have already suffered heavily when they reach the remnants of the barbed wire entanglements.
A whole line has gone down before our machine-guns; then we have a lot of stoppages and they come nearer.
I see one of them, his face upturned, fall into a wire cradle.
His body collapses, his hands remain suspended as though he were praying.
Then his body drops clean away and only his hands with the stumps of his arms, shot off, now hang in the wire.
The moment we are about to retreat three faces rise up from the ground in front of us.
Under one of the helmets a dark pointed beard and two eyes that are fastened on me.
I raise my hand, but I cannot throw into those strange eyes; for one moment the whole slaughter whirls like a circus round me, and these two eyes alone are motionless; then the head rises up, a hand, a movement, and my hand-grenade flies through the air and into him.
We make for the rear, pull wire cradles into the trench and leave bombs behind us with the strings pulled, which ensures us a fiery retreat.
The machine-guns are already firing from the next position.
We have become wild beasts.
We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation.
It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down— now, for the first time in three days we can see his face, now for the first time in three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad anger. No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill, to save ourselves, to save ourselves and to be revenged.
We crouch behind every corner, behind every barrier of barbed wire, and hurl heaps of explosives at the feet of the advancing enemy before we run.
The blast of the hand-grenades impinges powerfully on our arms and legs; crouching like cats we run on, overwhelmed by this wave that bears us along, that fills us with ferocity, turns us into thugs, into murderers, into God only knows what devils; this wave that multiplies our strength with fear and madness and greed of life, seeking and fighting for nothing but our deliverance.
If your own father came over with them you would not hesitate to fling a bomb at him.
The forward trenches have been abandoned.
Are they still trenches?
They are blown to pieces, annihilated—there are only broken bits of trenches, holes linked by cracks, nests of craters, that is all.
But the enemy's casualties increase.
They did not count on so much resistance.
It is nearly noon.
The sun blazes hotly, the sweat stings in our eyes, we wipe it off on our sleeves and often blood with it.
At last we reach a trench that is in a somewhat better condition.
It is manned and ready for the counter-attack, it receives us.
Our guns open in full blast and cut off the enemy attack.
The lines behind us stop.
They can advance no farther.
The attack is crushed by our artillery.
We watch. The fire lifts a hundred yards and we break forward.
Beside me a lance-corporal has his head torn off.
He runs a few steps more while the blood spouts from his neck like a fountain.
It does not come quite to hand-to-hand fighting; they are driven back.