Shortly before the show, the following flash signal was circulated: 'His Majesty the Kaiser and Hindenburg are on the scene of operations.' It was greeted with applause.
The watch-hands moved round; we counted off the last few minutes. At last, it was five past five. The tempest was unleashed.
A flaming curtain went up, followed by unprecedentedly brutal roaring. A wild thunder, capable of submerging even the loudest detonations in its rolling, made the earth shake. The gigantic roaring of the innumerable guns behind us was so atrocious that even the greatest of the battles we had experienced seemed like a tea party by comparison. What we hadn't dared hope for happened: the enemy artillery was silenced; a prodigious blow had laid it out. We felt too restless to stay in the dugout. Standing out on top, we gasped at the colossal wall of flame over the English lines, gradually obscuring itself behind crimson, surging clouds.
~ From Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, p. 228