Bernard Potrykus, a German soldier of Polish ancestry, while serving with the German infantry at Verdun, barely managed to escape being buried fatally in a collapsed dugout while helping dig out men entombed by an earlier explosion. He described the experience in his 1939 war memoir Wspomnienia Kaszuba spod Verdun (Memories of a Kashubian from Verdun).
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| German Trench at Verdun |
Suddenly, the ground beneath our feet shifted. We heard a bang as loud as a hundred thunderbolts. It got dark because of the dust. Everybody ran toward the other edge [of the dugout], while those in bed started to call for help. The enemy did his job: he penetrated our cover. All those sleeping were buried.
“Boys!” The deputy officer Winkler yelled in uproar, “help our companions!” He himself was there, and he started to dig up the ground with a small shovel that he found. Around ten people, who were more courageous and were not afraid of dying, came to help the buried. Our Winter… did not search for a shovel but started to dig with his own hands, he ripped his nails, he tossed the boards with his teeth. The efforts of those who tried to rescue the buried soldiers were superhuman.
At first, the layer of ground that covered them was apparently not so thick, cause we could hear their cries and we could even understand individual words that they used to call for help. However, more and more ground started to fall, much more than dozens of hands could handle. A second explosive must have hit a spot near the entry, because a new avalanche of ground and stones fell on those unfortunate ones, and the third hit the same spot, Winkler yelled, “Move back!” As if he sensed something. They jumped to the side, and a great part of our dugout was buried.
Those who had tried to rescue the other soldiers were also almost buried… Our situation was horrible… A shell hit half of the stairs at the exit. Although they were thick, the boards did not endure it: we heard a creak; when we turned our eyes to this spot, we could not see daylight anymore. The entire staircase was buried down to them bottom. There was an overwhelming darkness, like in a grave. We were also silent because everyone got scared so much that we could not speak. Only when someone lit a match did everybody start moving. There was an undescribable tumult.
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| German Soldiers at Damaged Trench and Dugout |
Some kept saying on and on, “We are lost now!” Others ran from one wall of the trench to the other, like wild animals in a cage, and they wanted to break them down with their chests to get outside; besides, they screamed loudly and stridently for the help of God and the saints…. Our commander ordered us to search through our pockets, [because maybe] we will find matches or a candle. We found a little of that. Half of a matchbox, a lighter, and, what was most important, a piece of candle, although it was small. Winkler took it all, light up the candle, and said: “Now, boys, let’s get down to work. We have to dig ourselves out of here. There are too many of us to just die here, and we still have healthy hands and legs. Get down to work with everything you got and we will soon escape from this unfortunate place.”
First, he ordered us to gather all the rifles and masks in one place, so that they do not get buried. Then, he formed us in a chain: he stood at the head by the stairs and transfered the ground to the nearest soldier. He gave it to another one, and so on, until it was in the very corner of the trench. Winkler emphasized the fact that we have to place it high and tight, so that it does not take much space… We worked in silence. We only grunted heavily since the work was extremely burdensome since we lacked big shovels; we had only the small ones that we carried on our belts. We alternately worked in standing positions and on our knees, and it was even worse when Winkler blew out the candle, because he was afraid that we would run out of the candle at the end. Then it often happened that one would hit his companion’s side with a shovel in the dark…
The air was thick with dust, less and less oxygen, and it was so hot that we thought we were in a bakery oven. Sweat flew down our bodies and hurt our eyes with the dus. A crust grew on our faces, which was so big that – when Winkler lighted a match to have a look – we could barely see anything at all. The trench slowly started to fill with soil. Winkler did reach the point where the shell hit, but the more ground we tossed, the more ground fell down, as if from the horn of plenty! … Space quickly diminished.We moved closer to each other, eventually working back to back. Breathing became increasingly difficult with each passing second.
Eventually, one of us fainted… Soon, a second soldier fell down, thena a third right after him, almost when our candle faded away. “It is bad,” a dry throat gasped. It was a cry that would begin general panic, which would be the end of us, had our Winkler not exclaimed with his shrilly but dry voice: “Boys, I see sky!” Indeed, it was true. We dug ourselves out from the ground… Then, we came out, one after another. God, what a joy! It was night, the half moon above, so many stars in the sky! What a great difference: this sky and the black abyss. It was still much better to die here, on the surface.
Source: "Poles in Kaiser’s Army on the Front of the First World War", Ryszard Kaczmarek, STUDIES IN HISTORY, MEMORY AND POLITICS, Vol. 33