When I left the shelter completely sodden the following morning, I couldn't believe the sight that met my eyes. The battlefield that previously had borne the stamp of deathly emptiness upon it was now as animated as a fairground. The occupants of both trenches had emerged from the morass of their trenches on to the top, and already a lively exchange of schnapps, cigarettes, uniform buttons and other items had commenced between the two barbed-wire lines. The throng of khaki-clad figures emerging from the hitherto so apparently deserted English lines seemed as eerie as the appearance of a ghost in daylight.
Suddenly a shot rang out that laid one of our men dead in the mire, whereupon both sides quickly scuttled back into their trenches. I went to that part of our line which fronted on to the British sap, and called out that I wanted to speak to an officer. And lo, I saw several British soldiers going back, and returning with a young man from their firing trench who had on, as I was able to see through my field glasses, a somewhat more ornate cap than they did. We negotiated first in English, and then a little more fluently in French, with all the men listening. I reproached him for the fact that one of our men had been killed by a treacherous shot, to which he replied that that hadn't been his company, but the one adjacent. 'Il y a des cochons aussi chez vous!'* he remarked when a few shots from the sector next to ours plugged into the ground not far from his head, causing me to get ready to take cover. We did, though, say much to one another that betokened an almost sportsmanlike admiration for the other, and I'm sure we should have liked to exchange mementoes.
For clarity's sake, we gave a solemn mutual declaration of war, to commence three minutes after the end of our talks, and following a 'Good-night!' on his part, and an 'Au revoir!' on mine, to the regret of my men I fired off a shot that pinged against his steel loophole, and got one myself that almost knocked the rifle out of my hands.
It was the first time I had been given an opportunity of surveying the battlefield in front of the sap, seeing as otherwise one couldn't even show the peak of one's cap in such a perilous place. I saw that immediately in front of our entanglements there was a skeleton whose bleached bones glimmered out of scraps of blue uniform.
* 'There are some unscrupulous bastards on your side too!'
~ From Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, p. 56