Drawing of buildings in a French village by Johann Hofbauer, I Company, 52 Battalion, 65th Regiment of German Landsturm. Hofbauer was from Rosenheim, Bavaria, and served first in Alsace, then other fronts through the war. One side is dated July 23 (?), 1916, the other April 21, 1916. The latter includes a stork in its chimney-top nest.
Hause in ?, 23.VII 16House in ?, July 23 (?), 1916Reverse:?, 21 April 21 16
"Daytime was play in the Islands that summer; night was a perpetual tangle. Straight lines did not exist. If one went forward patrolling, it was almost inevitable that one would creep round some hole or suspect heap or stretch of wired stumps, and then, suddenly one no longer knew which was the German line, which our own. I almost joined a German working party 'in all good faith' after such a careless circuit. Puzzling dazzling lights flew up, fell in the grass beside and flared like bonfires; one heard movements, saw figures, conjectured distances, and all in that state of dilemma. Willow-trees seemed moving men. Compasses responded to old iron and failed us. At last by luck or some stroke of recognition one found oneself; but there was danger in not doing so; and the battalion which relieved us sent a patrol out, only to lose it that way. The patrol came against wire, and bombed with all its skill; the men behind the wire fired their Lewis gun with no less determination; and, when the killed and wounded amounted to a dozen or more, it was found the patrol and the defenders were of the same battalion. I knew the officer who led that patrol; he was by temperament suited for a quiet country parsonage, and would usually have mislaid his spectacles."
Edmund Blunden, English writer and recipient of the Military Cross, was a second lieutenant and adjutant in the Royal Sussex Regiment, who fought at Ypres, in the Battle of the Somme, and in the Battle of Passchendaele. 'That summer' was the summer of 1916, and Blunden was east of Festubert, site of a British attack during the Second Battle of Artois in May, 1915. The 'islands' were isolated trenches, which Blunden reached during daylight, 'in spite of the accepted impossibility' of doing so.
Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden, pp. 74-75, copyright © the Estate of Edmund Blunden, 1928, publisher: Penguin Books, publication date: November 1928
1916-07-25, 1916, July, Somme, Battle of the Somme, Blunden, patrol, night patrol, barbed wire
