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It has started. We crawl away as fast as we can. The next shell lands amongst us.

Some of the men scream. Green rockets go up over the horizon. Dirt flies up. Shrapnel buzzes. You can hear it landing when the noise of the blast has long gone.

Close by us there is a recruit, a blond lad, and he is terrified. He has pressed his face into his hands. His helmet has rolled off. I reach for it and try to put it on to his head. He looks up, pushes the helmet away and huddles in under my arm like a child, his head against my chest. His narrow shoulders are shaking, shoulders just like Kemmerich had.

I let him stay there. But to get some use out of his helmet I shove it over his backside, not as some kind of a joke, but deliberately, because it’s the most exposed area. Even though the flesh is solid, a wound there can be bloody painful, and besides, you have to be on your stomach for months in a military hospital, and afterwards you are pretty certain to have a limp.

There’s been a direct hit somewhere not far off. Between the impacts you can hear screaming.

At last it calms down. The shellfire has swept over us and moved on to the back line of reserve trenches. We risk a look out. Red rockets are shimmering in the sky. Probably there will be an attack.

It stays quiet where we are. I sit up and shake the recruit by the shoulder. ‘It’s all over, old son. We got through again.’

He looks around in bewilderment. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ I tell him.

He notices his helmet and puts it on his head. Slowly he comes to himself. Then suddenly he blushes scarlet and his face has a look of embarrassment. Cautiously he puts his hand to his rear end[99] and gives me an agonized look. I understand at once: the barrage scared the shit out of him. That wasn’t the precise reason that I put his helmet where I did – but all the same I comfort him. ‘No shame in that, plenty of soldiers before you have filled their pants when they came under fire for the first time. Go behind that bush, chuck your underpants away, and that’s that —’