I learned from an ammunition carrier, who later came crawling by to bring us hand-grenades, that an Oberleutnant had discovered the location of the machine gun on the other side of the Isonzo with his Trieder. Naturally, our Artillerie became instantly prudent, for then they even shot the Welsche machine gun section to pieces with a few well placed shells. Otherwise, who knows how long those Italian "Kanaillen" would have thrown their bullets at us. With this information, I then crawled cautiously out from my pit and drew a deep breath since I had hardly dared to breathe for as long as I had had to lay therein. It appeared to me as if I were climbing out of my own grave. After I had recovered my breath a little, I forced myself to also lift the second corpse from out of the hole. However the hand that I grabbed it by tore off because it was already rotted through. So now I had to again take hold of the slippery slimy torso and roll it out. There then came a third cadaver into view. I had had enough. I didn't take it out, but on the contrary, I threw a thin layer of dirt over it and then laid myself on this. It seemed to me that I must have laid down on a shell hole that had been filled up with corpses and so employed as a mass grave, as was generally the custom down there. As already previously mentioned, it wasn't possible to recover the corpses during the time of the Isonzo Battles which went on non-stop seven days a week. One had to cover them lightly with dirt on the spot and in this case a welcomed shell hole was utilized for this purpose. There were certainly enough places, for example, on the rocks which were growing bare and where only the heaviest shells were able to dislocate them into a crater. There one simply covered the covered the cadavers over with some lime chalk and stone.

Our area had become noteworthily quiet. One learned how to think again, unfortunately, because with the return of this ability there also feelings of horror, the fear of death, and the despair. Again and again I have always found that the threat is always more terrible and falls much heavier and disabling onto the heart than the object of the threat itself. For when you afflict a man with danger from a thousand sides he won't have the time to worry himself over his emotional thoughts. The pondering itself, which is the basis for the rapid growth and rage of the fear and desperation, is frightful and thus quite difficult to bear. One feels the loss of something with much more anxiety when he sees it passing before his eyes in all its beautiful colors than when it unexpectedly disappears.

Thus I was thinking again--what does this stillness mean? Had the Welschen been convinced of the futility of their painstaking exertions or had they some new devilry in mind, having used the pause in the struggle for the collection of their strength? I was right, as I had assumed the latter. Soon it came: wrr-wrr-wrr -- I had already come to know this noise very thoroughly. When we were out on the Dnjester, we were sincerely gratified to take careful note of this noise whenever our heaviest Mörser would shoot over our heads to cause a hot hell for the Russians. It sounded sort of like the rollers of a slowly driven tram, only amplified many times over, and almost agreeable if you excluded the small guns that barked and howled by comparison. To be sure, the thought of the following explosion didn't allow any "gemütlichen" feelings to thrive. There wasn't any crash like its single blow that sounded like a salvo from a thousand guns. The avalanche of tones followed first. 800 meters away from the point of impact of such a giant bomb, there still resulted soldiers badly wounded from being struck by the stones. They shot over here with their Naval Guns from Cormons. Our Batterien couldn't engage them because of the continuous fog and mist. Their shots howled far above and landed into where the 11/e (ersatz) Kompagnie and the 8^th Jäger impacted a little bit further behind the first, then the third, the fourth, the fifth, etc., with each continuing on in this way. That is to say that there was always a steady interval from one sudden impact to the other and thus each explosion came ever onward and closer to my location. They were genuinely thorough and cleaned out the trenches with complete precision. My gaze was firmly fixed upon the points of impact. I had counted approximately nine shells when the tenth exploded yonder, where the midpoint between me and the first point of impact would want to be. Consequently, I thought to myself, ten more and I'm a dead man. Moreover, I had already prepared my own grave. I looked all around myself at the corpses of many, many familiar and unfamiliar Kameraden and thought of how I would also soon be among them as a rotting mass of flesh, over which my Kameraden, who would still continue to live, would cursingly trip during the night. My best comrade in arms wouldn't recognize me any more since my face was already covered over with the morass. He might possible trample on my face, slip on my skin as it became slippery from decay and loosened from my skull, and then curse insultingly about the damn corpse obstructing him in his crazy mad rush of hurrying from one place to another, as I had done on so many others. These and similar such thoughts strained my mind with extreme tenacity. It didn't help any when I continuously cried forth to my crazed soul: Then you certainly won't know this any more -- for then there is night, huge black night. There was no possible rescue. The abandonment of the position didn't come to mind. To make myself scarce, no, not even at the price of my life. To my left were some who wanted to do this. I didn't recognize them at this distance. Indeed they subtlety started to set about it. They intended to use the pause between the individual impacts, which inevitably amounted to thirty seconds, to save themselves by making off to the left into the shell crater that had just been blown out, in the hope that no two shells would fall onto one and the same hole. But as they jumped up there rattled out a salvo of rifle fire which put them down again.

I counted the bombs and estimated after each how much the distance between the previous impact and myself had been reduced. Premm -- six more yet -- Premm -- five more yet -- Premm -- still four more -- As they came ever closer so the crash of their explosion became more unbearable to my ears. Their detonation was nearly equal to a blow to the head with a club, and the noise that they produced as they flew over here no longer seemed to be like the "gemütliche" rollers of the street cars. On the contrary I now thought them to be more like the howling and blustering of a hundred thousand devils, whereas the normal calibre guns appeared to be like squeaky mice in comparison. It is the most ghastly feeling to have to stay living like a "painted Turk" and to behold Death sharpening its scythe. So would be the mood of a flowering plant if it were to have a soul and could see how the harvester reaps his way upon it with his scythe infallibly shizzing to and fro. Whewee--Premm--I was nearly stupefied and was only roused by the blotches of earth which pattered down on me. The stones whistled over my head as they were forcibly vaulted high into the air. That one was the third to last by my calculations. One more and then it's my turn. There wouldn't be much trace of me left, I told myself, for as I looked over to where some Jäger had still laid before a shell's impact onto them, I could only see a huge hole in the newly exposed grayish-white limestone, into which the reddish-brown morass was slowly trickling. I noticed hardly a trace of the Jäger. No doubt they must have been torn to atoms or buried alive. I heard the second to last coming. I am of the opinion that it was the last which was of any importance to me: a howling whistle that made my heart stand still, a crunching blow to my ribs and spine, and at the same time, a single flash of thought that was ultimately expressed all at once and cried forth: "Death! I'm dying! Father! Adieu! Home! Future! Finished! Night! Nothing!"---