When Ludwig Weber became corporal in his stead, Kessel’s hatred became palpable. Some thought Kessel a buffoon, but Weber knew better. Despite the advantage in rank, Weber still tried to stay out of the man’s way and felt that someday, somehow, Kessel would try to kill him. Through the rumor mill, he’d heard that Kessel, in his tormented logic, thought Weber was responsible for his demotion and the hurt done to his face.
But what were they doing on alert, and how long would it last? It had rained lightly all night and the trench was inches deep in mud and water. If it weren’t so warm, they could be in real trouble. Worse, it was still raining and looked as though it would continue all day. The clouds were dark above, and Weber felt he could reach out and touch them. He turned imploringly to Captain Walter, who merely shrugged. Despite the difference in their ranks and social standing, a degree of cordiality, if not friendliness, had developed between them. Walter was not, Weber realized, an archetypal Prussian. Even Sergeant Major Gunther had begun to acknowledge Ludwig with a friendly nod.
About ten in the morning, they heard the distant crackle of small-arms fire. They stiffened and pointed weapons at targets as yet unseen. If the Yanks were about, the 4th Rifles were ready. The regiment held an earthen-walled fort shaped like a five-pointed star with trenches that protected the riflemen’s bodies both to the front and rear. On all sides in front of the fort the shrubs and trees had been hacked and pulled out for several hundred yards in what had been backbreaking work. Now it seemed the effort might have been worthwhile. Directly in front of the walls, the ground sloped down to a man-made cut in the ground that not only protected the fort from direct fire, but forced any attackers to stop and negotiate a ten-foot drop. But before they made it to the drop, they would have been confronted by an array of wooden spikes that had been driven into the ground and laced together to break up their formations or delay them.
Machine guns were set in both the points and recesses of the embankments. The whole thing was designed so that overlapping fields of fire could protect the inhabitants. The design had been perfected centuries before and it still worked. Inside the perimeter, a battery of howitzers stood ready to shoot at any target found by the lookouts on the fifty-foot-high wooden tower.
Without warning, one of the howitzers barked. “What the hell?” said Kessel, his face pale. It suddenly dawned on Ludwig that Kessel, for all his bluster, had never been in a real battle. All his exploits in China had been against helpless peasants. Somehow, Ludwig found it comforting.
The other cannon fired and continued to fire as quickly as shells could be rammed into the smoking breeches. Obviously, the Yanks were out there, as yet unseen. Damn the rain, Ludwig thought. He gulped and concentrated on trying to locate his firing lane and the range markers they’d staked out at fifty yards, on which to register their rifles.
Through the sound of the guns he heard distant and undecipherable voices, screeching and yelling. Suddenly, he could see a group of men, maybe a hundred, rushing in the general direction of their fort.
The machine guns opened up and he watched men fall, flopping like puppets with their strings cut. He found it hard to think of them as humans. The Americans stopped and pulled back, clearly stunned by the ferocity of the German defense, and commenced long-range and inaccurate rifle fire.
As yet the German rifles had been silent, and Captain Walter walked among his troops. “Patience, men, that was just a probe. There will be plenty more for us.” Some men chuckled. Ludwig thought he heard a whimper come from Kessel.
More? He didn’t want more. Ludwig sighted down his rifle and tried to ignore the annoying thwacks as American bullets landed randomly in his area.
“Now they’re coming,” the captain shouted. As if in response, the land in front of them erupted with a solid wave of blue-coated Americans, their bayonets fixed, running forward. “Fire!” Captain Walter screamed, and the trench erupted in fury.
“Steady, men. Aim low. Let them come to you. Watch your markers.” Captain Walter walked the top of the trench behind them, ignoring the fact that he made a splendid target.
Ludwig felt Sergeant Major Gunther’s presence behind him. “Squeeze the trigger. Don’t pull it, squeeze gently. Just like your sweetheart’s tit,” coached the sergeant major. “That’s right, squeeze it like a tit, don’t jerk it like you do your cock.”
Shut the fuck up, Ludwig wanted to scream as the rifle slammed into his shoulder again and again and his face burned from the powder. The Americans were falling, but they were still coming. They were into the obstacles and ripping them apart with their hands, screeching and hollering while sword-swinging officers urged them on. Ludwig could see faces and he was shocked that they were convulsed and flushed with rage. They wanted to kill him!
Some Americans, unable to get through the spikes, had dropped to their knees and were shooting at German heads and shoulders now visible above the trench wall. Some of the screams came from German voices as the hail of fire inevitably found flesh.
The obstacles were breached and the Americans ran to the ditch less than a hundred yards away from the German trenches. German rifles and machine guns cut the Americans down in quivering bundles, but they still came on. The Americans’ rifle fire grew more accurate and more intense the closer they got. Worse, they had brought up their own machine guns. Then American artillery started firing, and their shells churned up gouts of mud as they landed in the fort. As Weber fired back, he was pelted with falling dirt. Oh, God, he hoped it was only falling dirt.
It suddenly dawned on Ludwig that the regimental fort was not impregnable and that the Americans might overwhelm them through sheer weight of numbers and uncommon bravery.
The Americans reached the lip of the ditch and paused while the German guns continued to rake them. Some tried to climb down; others were pushed over the edge by those behind them. Still others tumbled lifeless onto the ground below.
The rain, until then a nuisance at worst, suddenly commenced to come down in torrents, blinding Ludwig and everyone near him. He could no longer see the Americans! Terrified, he wanted to run. At any second a horde of blue-jacketed Yanks would emerge from the sheets of rain that were beating on his face.
“Aim low!” Captain Walter shrieked. “Aim for the wall of the cut. You know where it is!”
The Yanks were on them. Emerging from the rain, they came at the German line screaming like maddened animals. Weber fired and fired again, pausing only to reload. He awkwardly dropped bullets into the mud and lost precious time as he hurried to jam them into the magazine of his Mauser.
A beast was before him—an enemy with wet hair plastered on his head, his red face surrounding an open mouth that vented a primal scream. Ludwig fired and the man dropped to his knees. He fired again and the man rose up and hurled his rifle at him like a spear. It skidded along the rain-slicked ground and came to rest just over the lip of the trench. The man lay facedown on the ground and stopped moving.
It was too much. Later, Ludwig felt he’d heard a sigh, and perhaps he had, but slowly, very slowly, the Americans began to withdraw in the now-slackening rain. As some of them tried to drag their wounded away, others turned to fire at their German tormentors, while German fire continued to reach out and kill.
Finally, the order came: “Cease fire!” It was not obeyed immediately. The intensity of battle had overwhelmed some soldiers who continued to fire until they ran out of ammunition or were grabbed by comrades and stopped. Not caring in the least what the mud would do to it, Ludwig set his rifle on the parapet and realized he was breathing convulsively. The Americans had tried to kill him. Now the enemy had a face. Part of him wanted to go out and look at the dead man who’d thrown his rifle at him. He knew he’d killed that one, but had there been others?
As Ludwig’s senses returned, he realized he was in a world of sound and smell, as well as sight. The area about the trench was full of the stink of blood, urine, feces, and other stenches he couldn’t recognize. He checked his crotch and found to his relief that he hadn’t soiled himself, although others had. He also realized he was hearing moans and screams that hadn’t reached his deadened ears in the heat of battle. A number of his comrades were hurt, many very badly. Although the earthen walls protected most of their bodies, soldiers had to raise their heads and upper torsos in order to fire, and most of the wounds were to those critical areas of the body. A handful of men had been hit by American artillery, which finally shifted to shrapnel that exploded above the trenches and showered the occupants with maiming shards of steel. For the first time, Ludwig also saw just what sickening things a bullet can do when it hits a man, twists inside, and leaves through a fist-sized hole.