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Updated: May 6, 2025
The big bushman from Gippsland at a neighbouring coffee stall praise heaven for that institution gives them a drink of the warm stuff. And I verily believe that at that moment they emerge for the first time out of a frightful dream. For they are the men who have been through the Trommelfeuer. Strong men arrive from that experience shaking like leaves in the wind.
I cannot see what it is aimed at some battery, I suppose; or perhaps a much-used road; or some place they suspect to be a headquarters. Clearly, it is not always so safe as it seems to be in the green country behind the German lines. France, August 21st. The Germans call it Trommelfeuer drum fire. I do not know any better description for the distant sound of it.
It is just then that the lighter guns join in with the roll as of a kettledrum Trommelfeuer. The enemy is throwing out his infantry, and his shrapnel is showering on to our lines in order to keep down the heads of our men to the last moment. Suddenly the whole noise eases. The enemy is casting his shrapnel and big shell farther back.
"There was only one doctor, an unter officer," he pointed to a man who lay asleep on the ground face downward "and he bandaged some of us till he had no more bandages; then last night we knew the end was coming. Your guns began to fire altogether, the dreadful trommelfeuer, as we call it, and the shells burst and smashed up the earth about us. "We stayed down in the hole, waiting for the end.
Someone is playing the tattoo softly and very quickly. If it is nearer, and especially if it is German, it sounds as if he played it on an iron ship's tank instead. That is Trommelfeuer what we call intense bombardment. When it is very rapid like the swift roll of a kettledrum you take it that it must be the French seventy-fives down South preparing the way for a French assault.
They were always in fear of British infantry sweeping upon them suddenly behind the Trommelfeuer, rushing their dugouts with bombs and bayonets. Sentries became "jumpy," and signaled attacks when there were no attacks. The gas alarm was sounded constantly by the clang of a bell in the trench, and men put on their heavy gas-masks and sat in them until they were nearly stifled.
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