“Then it is decided,” finally said an obviously relaxing Kaiser, as he sat deeper into the chair, having said his piece, and satisfied his Minister of Marine agreed with him.

  Infanterie-Regiment Graf Schwerin

  In defense of the Edre River Ridge, April 22nd, 1916

  Private Soldier Oskar Danztz, of the so-called “444’s” – the 2nd Army’s 4th Division, 4th company, 4th section – was loosing one round after the other, the bang of his rifle slamming into his shoulder hurting like a hammer was hitting it because he’d been doing so non-stop for the last two hours.

  The British, helped by their American cousins of the 3rd Infantry Division, had crossed the river west of the ridge and were deploying north/northwest, while more troops attacked Oskar and the 4th Division on the ridge itself.

  The unit had been on the ridge since the fall following the German Army's retreat from Nantes and had successfully defended against over ten enemy crossing attempts. In the end, it looked like they would be defeated not by what was in front of them over the river (southern bank), but by the forces that had crossed on their right flank.

  The enemy had also broken through further west and overrun the town of Heric, endangering the entire German defensive line. Nort-sur-Edre was also in danger of falling, now that the enemy was over the river and through the thick of the German defenses. Oskar and the rest of the men expected to be ordered to retreat any minute by late afternoon. “The fucking brass sure is taking its time,” said Sergeant Wilhelm, cursing out loud.

  The ground around Oskar and the sergeant was littered with dead soldiers, and they were all, unfortunately, Germans. The recruits had not survived the last enemy assault, and they were the last remaining men in their little part of the ridge defenses. “We need to move, Sergeant,” yelled Oskar between two world-shaking artillery blasts that showered them with dirt. As he reloaded, he looked over his shoulder, seeing yet another wave of brown-uniformed British soldiers racing up the hill. “Sarge!” he yelled. “Yes, Dantz, let's move, we won’t be able to stop the bastards this time.” They turned around and started running across the trench, jumping over dead and gravely wounded soldiers, broken crates, and half-crumbled sandbag and timbered walls.

  The sky above was choked with smoke and noise, but they negotiated their way through a large connecting tunnel leading to the rear of the position. By then, they heard the British claim victory with several hurrahs as they reached the top of the position. “We’ve got to hurry, Dantz! The bastards are right behind, we’ve got maybe a minute head start!” They ran down the tunnel, again littered with debris and a few barely moving wounded soldiers. “Where is everyone, Sarge? Looks like they pulled out!” “Yeah, I guess they just forgot to tell us.” A large enemy shell landed right at the tunnel entrance, where they had just been a moment earlier, and slammed the ceiling down, sealing the entrance.

  A large wall of dust and smoke followed, enveloping everyone and everything in the tunnel. Oskar found it hard to breathe and coughed painfully. “Sergeant, we can’t see a thing!” “Stop whining and put your fucking gas mask on or you’ll suffocate.“

  He picked it up from its small satchel bag hanging by his waist. The mask snapped tight against his face with a rubbery slap, sealing him in darkness broken only by two fogged glass circles. His own breath thundered in his ears in a slow, hoarse, unnatural way, like an animal trapped inside his chest. Outside, the choking dust rolled low across the tunnel. The world beyond the lenses seemed distant, warped, unreal, as everything was dark and grey. His heartbeat thudded against the mask’s straps, each inhale a strained rasp through the filter. Claustrophobia squeezed him; the mask smelled of rubber, sweat, and fear. He tried not to imagine it failing. A shell burst somewhere ahead, scattering the smoke a little, only for more to coil around him and Sergeant Wilhelm's living fingers. Still, he breathed, slow and terrified, inside his little prison of rubber and glass. “This way, if the blast brought some air with it, it means it’s the exit,” said the NCO, grabbing Oskar by the sleeve.

  A minute later, they finally saw a foggy light at the end of the long tunnel and emerged. Oskar removed his mask, and it was just in time, because from the left corner of his eye he saw an enemy soldier jumping them. He only had time to throw himself to the side, and the Brit bayonet tip missed by a few inches. He grabbed his entrenching tool, also on his belt, and slammed it in the man’s face, while Wilhelm brought his rifle up to shoot two more onrushing enemies.

  The tool slashed a deep, ugly, and bloody gouge into the enemy’s face, and he started to yell in a guttural tone, clutching the gash. “Quick, Dantz, there’s no fucking time to waste! The bastards are on us.” Oskar lifted himself up and ran after his sergeant. It was desperate, and the British soldiers were right behind them, some running in the trenches and others on top of them.

  Oskar ran until his lungs burned, his boots slipping in the loose earth as he followed Wilhelm through the maze of battered trenches. The passageways were half-collapsed from the shelling, timber beams jutting like ribs from the mud, and every few meters, they stumbled over German bodies, greatcoats twisted and soaked, mouths open to the sky. “Don’t look, Dantz! Keep moving!” Wilhelm barked, his breath ragged.

  But looking was impossible not to do. These were the same boys who’d shared tins of coffee, who’d cursed the mud, who’d huddled under ponchos during the January storms. Now they lay across the duckboards like broken mannequins, some with hands still clutching rifles they hadn’t fired in time.

  They reached an intersection where the trench forked. The right branch was crushed under a collapsed parapet; the left still stood, but only barely. Wilhelm didn’t hesitate. “Left! Toward the old reserve line! They might still be there!”

  They plunged into it just as a British Mills bomb clattered onto the boards behind them. Wilhelm flung himself forward, and Oskar dove, dirt erupting behind in a savage blast. Shards of splintered timber and iron rained down. “Move! MOVE!” Wilhelm roared, shoving Oskar ahead.

  The trench turned sharply, then opened into a communications trench choked with smoke. The air burned their throats. Oskar coughed violently as he sprinted, tears stinging his eyes. Behind them, he heard the triumphant shouts of the British getting closer and closer.

  Boots thudded against boards. Someone yelled, in English – “There! Fucking Germans! Don’t let them get away!” Wilhelm fired blindly over his shoulder, the rifle cracks echoing off the mud walls. “Keep going! Don’t stop unless you want to die here!”

  The communications trench widened and dipped downward. The floor was slick with water and loose clay, and Oskar nearly fell twice. His legs screamed, his heart pounded so violently he tasted copper on his tongue. Another turn, another burst of rifle fire snapping overhead, with British bullets chewing into the trench lip.

  They darted through a narrow chokepoint where the trench walls had partially collapsed. It forced them to clamber over a pile of debris of broken duckboards, sandbags spilling blackened sand, the stiff arm of a dead man jutting sideways like a warning.

  Beyond that, the trench dipped again and came to an end. The last twenty meters had been flattened by a direct hit. A crater yawned ahead, steaming with billowing smoke rising to the sky. On the far side, thirty meters away, the trench resumed, with German sandbags and the faint shape of wire. The next defensive line. But between them lay open ground and almost certain death.

  Wilhelm sucked in a breath. “We jump it. No choice.” Oskar stared at the crater, at the churned mud, at the nowhere to hide. “Sergeant … ” Wilhelm grabbed him by the collar. “You want to live? Then run.” They bolted. Their boots tore through mud, slipping on loose stones. Behind them, British voices rose … “There they go! After them, chaps!” Rifle shots cracked. One bullet kicked up dirt inches from Oskar’s heel. Another whined past his ear with a wicked hiss.

  They reached the lip of the crater and leapt down. Mud sucked at their boots. They scrambled up the far wall, clawing at roots, slipping, cursing. A bullet struck the slope next to Wilhelm, showering him with dirt. Another ricocheted off a stone inches from Oskar’s head.

  Hands bleeding, lungs exploding, they dragged themselves over the rim. The German trench was ten meters ahead. But the British were already cresting the crater behind them, shadows with rifles and bayonets, silhouettes framed in smoke. Oskar heard the clicking of bolts being drawn, saw steel glinting in the pale afternoon light.

  “RUN, DANTZ!” Wilhelm howled. Oskar forced his legs to obey, stumbling toward the sandbags, the faint sight of Feldgrau helmets ahead, with friendly shapes waving them on. Then the world erupted in a hammering roar.

  A Maxim opened up from the German line. Its staccato rattle tore the air like ripping canvas, taktaktaktaktaktak, spitting fire and brass. The gunner traversed the barrel in a smooth, deadly arc across the crater’s lip. The British silhouettes jerked backward, thrown to the ground. Two toppled into the crater. Another pitched forward, limbs loose. The rest scattered desperately for cover, shouting in panic.

  Wilhelm and Oskar dived into the trench as bullets whipped overhead. Two German soldiers grabbed them, dragging them down. “Jesus Christ,” one muttered, “you two look like ghosts.” Oskar slumped against the wall, chest heaving, mud dripping from his chin. Wilhelm crouched beside him, wiping sweat and soot from his brow. “Told you we’d make it,” he said, though his voice shook.

  Above them, the Maxim thundered on, protecting the line, stitching death across the crater where they’d nearly left their bones. And for the first time all day, Oskar felt something like safety.

  (…)

  In a general sense, the German line of defenses was breaking up in its entirety, and the generals above Oskar and Wilhelm were already issuing orders to move northward, where yet another line of defense was being hastily dug. The new idea was to establish a line twelve miles north, running from Chateaubriant to Gueméné-Penfao, then to the Atlantic Ocean at Laroche-Bernard and Pelestin. The Germans were getting desperate, and a strategic withdrawal was their only option.

  Big Red One Division

  St-Nazaire suburbs, April 26th, 1916

  (…)

  The fight for Lavau-sur-Loire was a fierce battle pitting a mixed force of American, French, and British soldiers against approximately a third of the German Army, lasting over ten days. The Konzprinz’s men fought tooth and nail to keep the enemy at bay. However, in the end, the combination of artillery, overwhelming numbers, and, frankly, American grit (the Big Red One was the unit at the tip of the spear that pierced the city's last line of defense) led to the order to retreat being issued on April 19th.

  From there, the way to St-Nazaire was opened, and another type of battle ensued, with a series of skirmishes and rearguard actions, as the Germans executed a well-ordered fighting retreat all the way to the suburbs of St-Nazaire.

  The fact of the matter was that by the time the line was pried open by the Entente forces, the OHL in Berlin had already decided on a new course of action that involved a sortie of the blockaded fleet in St-Nazaire and a general withdrawal out of St-Nazaire and to the north, where a new line of defenses was being prepared. That line would be straighter, anchored on a natural feature, and, most importantly, would mitigate the German Army's quantitative inferiority by having fewer miles to defend, enabling the Konzprinz to concentrate his forces better. In short, the OHL had decided on a strategic withdrawal.

  Throughout history, such withdrawals could collapse into routs, full-on retreats, or, at times, one side suing for peace. But the Reich of 1916 was far from a beaten state, and its army was a superb instrument of war.

  The area commander (overseeing operations for the 2nd and 3rd German Armies), General Karl von Bülow, thus initiated a masterful backward movement that he kept echeloned in such a way that the Entente was unable to break through to the rear, but instead faced organized resistance at every step.

  It was in this fashion that the First Division advanced, mile by mile, fighting and harassed by sharp enemy counterattacks, machine gun nests, ambushes, and the like. As the division entered the city on the late morning of April 26th, it then faced a new problem, something that they had to face every day in the trenches but that was now seeing its efficiency multiplied tenfold because of the urban environment: snipers.

  (…)

  B Company moved up in a long, loose file along a ruined boulevard of brick houses and low warehouses. The road had once been lined with trees; now only black stumps remained, jutting out of cracked sidewalks. Somewhere to the south, over the unseen river and the docks, guns still grumbled, but here on the northern edge, the fighting had thinned out into scattered cracks and pops. Smoke billowed everywhere, and the men weren’t sure whether it was fog or artificial. But they were certain of one thing. It made for an eerie scene as they moved into the area of the city scheduled for the advance, especially since it was draped in almost complete silence.

  “Feels wrong,” Emmet Kinderland muttered, stepping over a fallen telegraph pole. “Too quiet.” Private Brent “Tex” Walker shifted his Springfield to a more comfortable carry and scanned the broken windows and rooflines. “It’s quiet until it ain’t,” he said. “Keep your eyes up.”

  Sergeant Dockerby stalked along the ditch at the side of the road, hat brim low, his voice a harsh whisper snapping from man to man. “Stay spread out. No bunching. Watch those windows. Just because Jerry’s running doesn’t mean he can’t shoot.” He spat on the ground. “The bastards are hiding and ready to shoot us like wild dogs.”

  They’d been told the German line had broken along the Edre and the Loire, that the enemy was pulling back north to avoid being trapped against the sea. The Big Red One and the French 14th were to push into Saint-Nazaire itself, secure the suburbs, and feel for any organized resistance. It sounded clean on paper. Out here, where the pavements were full of shell holes, and the walls had machine-gun chips in them, nothing felt clean.

  Alfred Hickman trotted ahead and then back along the column, as usual. The runner never seemed to walk. “Dockerby!” he called, holding up a folded message. “Captain says keep moving; recon says Krauts pulled artillery out last night. Only rearguards left.”

  Dockerby grunted, took the paper, glanced at it, and stuffed it into his tunic. “Rearguards are the bastards that kill you,” he said. A few soldiers around him nodded, as they were well aware of the danger since they’d lost several of their comrades to carelessness and overconfidence in the last week. “Pass it down; expect snipers, stray machine guns, maybe some Maxims covering crossroads. The buggers aren’t done for yet.”

  Tex eyed a three-story brick building ahead where the street forked. The windows on the top floor were blown out, glass glittering in the gutter. Something about the dark shapes of those windows bothered him. They looked too… regular. Too square. Curtains removed. No debris on the sill.

  He slowed his pace. “Emmet,” he said under his breath, “tell me I’m seeing things.” Emmet followed his gaze, frowned. “Yeah,” he said, “those top windows look like they’re waiting on someone.” “Like a blind,” Tex said. He raised his hand slightly. “Sarge.” Dockerby was on him in a moment. “What is it, Walker?”

  Tex pointed with the tip of his rifle. “Those top windows? No glass left, but the sill’s clean. Like someone leaned something there.” Dockerby stared a second, then spat into the dust. “Sniper nest, you think?” “Would be, if I were them,” Tex said. “Good field of fire. Overlooks this fork, and that side alley.” “Right,” Dockerby said. “On your bellies, boys.”

  He didn’t shout it. He just said it loud enough, and the word passed back man to man. The file dissolved, while men melted into doorways, dropped into the shallow ditch, slid behind piles of rubble. Tex and Emmet went to one knee behind a shattered delivery cart, its wheels splintered.

  Hickman blinked. “What’s going on?” “Maybe nothing,” Tex said. “Maybe a rifle barrel.” The quiet held for a heartbeat, two, three. Somewhere, a dog barked once and then fell silent. A strip of torn poster flapped lazily on a wall. Then a single shot cracked across the street, needle sharp.

  A man near the front jerked backward and slammed into the cobblestones, helmet bouncing away. The report came an instant later, echoing off brick. Tex saw the tiny puff of smoke from the third-story window, but it was hardly noticeable, unlike the big battlefield rifles. Sniper, maybe with good smokeless powder.

  (…)

  Snipers emerged early in the Great War when static trench lines transformed the battlefield into a deadly contest of concealment and precision. Armies that had once relied on massed rifle fire suddenly needed men who could strike a single exposed target with calm accuracy. Germany, Britain, France, and later the United States began forming dedicated sniper schools, drawing heavily on hunters, foresters, and marksmen accustomed to shooting from concealment. Specialized rifles with telescopic sights, camouflage smocks, periscopes, and loophole plates soon made snipers indispensable in trench warfare.

  Their uses multiplied quickly, and by the spring of 1916, they were commonplace. Snipers harassed enemy front lines, killed officers and machine-gunners, denied movement across open ground, and supported assaults by eliminating key defenders before attacks began. They were also crucial in counter-sniping, detecting and neutralizing enemy marksmen hidden in ruins or tree lines. The psychological effect was immense: a single, unseen rifleman could freeze entire companies, halt repairs on barbed wire, or force soldiers to crawl rather than walk.

  Snipers proved especially valuable during withdrawals, and the German Army excelled at employing them in such situations. When retreating from positions (such as in the Loire Valley), the Germans often left behind carefully chosen sharpshooters, sometimes as few as two or three men, hidden in upper floors, attics, haylofts, or church towers. Their mission was not to hold ground but to delay and disrupt the pursuing Entente forces. These sniper teams targeted officers, runners, engineers, and reconnaissance elements to slow the Allied advance and create the illusion of continued German strength ahead. They fired a few precise shots, then shifted positions or slipped away through pre-planned escape routes across rooftops or alleys. During the Loire Valley strategic withdrawal, small German detachments were able to delay entire battalions, buying precious hours for their retreating units. Their presence turned every empty village and ruined suburb into a potential trap.