compared with the frightfulness of our own defensive battles. In comparison with them the Somme and Flanders battles were things of the past, a ghastly memory.
By the end of September my Division, for the third time, arrived at the positions we had stormed as a young volunteer regiment.
What a memory. Now, in the autumn of 1918, the men had become different, there was political discussion among the troops. The poison from home was beginning to have its effect here, as everywhere. The young drafts suc¬ cumbed to it altogether. They had come straight from home.
During the night of October 13-14 the British began to throw gas-shells on to the southern front before Ypres. We were still on a hill south of Werwick on the evening of October 13, when we came under a drum-fire lasting several hours, which continued through¬ out the night with more or less violence. About mid¬ night a number of us dropped out—some for ever. Towards morning I felt a pain which got worse with every quarter hour that passed, and at about seven o’clock I tottered rearwards with scorching eyes, reporting myself for the last time in that war.
MY STRUGGLE 9i A few hours later my eyes had turned into burning coals, and it was all dark around me. I was sent to hospital at Pasewalk in Pomerania, and whilst there I was destined to see the Revolution.
Bad rumours kept on coming in from the Navy, which was said to be in a ferment, but this seemed to me to be something born of the excited imagination of a few youths rather than a matter affecting large numbers of men. In hospital everyone talked of the end of the war, which they hoped was swiftly approach¬ ing, but no one imagined it was to come immediately. I was unable to read the newspapers.
In November the general tension increased. Then one day the disaster came upon us suddenly and with¬ out warning. Sailors arrived in lorries