The Memory of it Weighs Heavily Upon Me
Rudolf Koch endures a brief episode of shell shock, and fires on a French position
The German typographer Rudolf Koch (1876–1934) wrote a memoir about his experiences during the First War. I am translating it into English and sharing a few excerpts from my first draft as I go. You can find them all here.
After the endless tension of the last few hours, I was about to crawl into the dugout, but at that moment a large shell exploded directly above me. I did not see anything. Instead I felt rather than heard a powerful blow. The men around me fell down with loud cries. I stood unharmed, but I was deaf and almost passed out from fear. I later learned that two or three of the men who were standing beside me had been killed instantly and that just as many, including our platoon leader, had been seriously wounded. I went into the tunnel and leaned against the wall. A kind of crying fit came over me; I can still see a wounded man, stripped naked, lying on a stretcher, bleeding from several locations. A corporal who, like me, had escaped unharmed but was in shock, fell down unconscious. I caught him and then sat down in a corner and drifted out of myself. Then I was seized by chills, similar to what I had experienced earlier at Verdun. I shook back and forth all night, but in the end my nerves calmed down again and I was able to stand my two hours of guard duty like everyone else.
We had been without a doctor until then, but he came up to the position that night and applied proper bandages. He also gave painkillers to the hopeless cases, and their constant moaning ceased. Under the cover of darkness we worked with redoubled zeal to fortify the position, and when we were not working we stood watch at posts which were on the embankment near the railway station and at the top of the ravine overlooking the field. Food carts even arrived, bringing two large pots of cold braised cabbage for every eight men, and a canteen of coffee. The latter amounted to two tablespoons and one sip per soldier. But then bread and fat also arrived, and we came back to life.
The position facing the enemy required the highest level of attention, and the others were on constant alert, so it was impossible to sleep properly the entire time. My post was on the right slope and I had to keep watch over the dreaded signalman’s hut — without allowing myself to be seen, of course.
On one occasion, I noticed that an enemy observer used to emerge from the hut every minute or so, only to disappear again immediately. The observer at our machine gun position could not see this spot. I raised my rifle and aimed calmly, as if I were lining up a target at the shooting range. The Frenchman appeared, I pulled the trigger, and at that very moment he disappeared. The man at our machine gun post later told me that, after I had fired, he had seen the French soldiers who were active behind the hut rush towards the location, but he had not been able to make out anything else. It may well be that this shot cost a Frenchman his life. The memory of it weighs heavily upon me, but I did what I was required to do as a soldier — and in this case I had no choice, given that he was certainly acting as the observer for the sniper who had inflicted such heavy casualties on us.
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