KRIEG (War)

by Ludwig Renn

  Lauenstein talked incessantly. I only half listened.

  “There,” one of the NCOs interrupted him, “is a house and there are two pretty girls in there.”

  The local commander had the windows barred so that no one would go in to them.

  “Them I have to see!” called Lauenstein.

  The house was low and appeared gloomy. We went through the garden, in which a few untended flowers stood, and knocked at the door.

  No one was roused. In the meantime Seidel went around the house. Lauenstein knocked again.

  “Over here!” called Seidel softly from around the corner.

  On the back wall of the house there was a window open behind the screen. One of the NCOs ripped the screen away on one corner and we crawled, one after the other, inside.

  A door opened on the left. An old man came out with a light, mumbled something and disappeared. Someone opened a door on the right. Inside there was a light burning on a chest of drawers. To the right stood two beds across from each other and two people were lying in them.

  “Bonjour,” said someone. The two looked at us silently. The NCOs went to them, shook hands and sat on the edge of the beds. We sat on chairs around the chest of drawers. The girl on the left, bored, began a discussion. I understood enough to get that they actually lived in Nancy and the war had surprised and trapped them here with relatives.

  The man on the left had reached around her and squeezed her breast. The one on the right whispered.

  “I like it here!” Lauenstein turned to me. “One will see something here!”

  A child in the right bed began to scream. It must be hidden under the covers.

  Seidel stood up and went toward the door. Lauenstein and I followed him. We crawled back out through the wire.

  “One can indeed learn French!” called out Lauenstein. “We can go here every evening, one day me with Renn and the next day the others!”

  “And Seidel can watch!” I laughed.

  “Well, everyone doesn’t have the desire. He can just go then.”

  Seidel went silently ahead of us. At the first houses of the place Lauenstein took his leave.

  He had barely disappeared inside his house when Seidel burst out: “What a swine! I won’t allow myself to be ordered when I should go see a girl! The right to give orders doesn’t go that far!” He continued to complain.

  I laughed and couldn’t help myself. That made Seidel even angrier and his rage made me laugh even more. Finally we were both worn out.

  ——————————

  In our house someone was playing the piano. The militia people were sitting around the table in the paved yard.

  We sat down. The moon came up and turned the leaves of the weeping willows to silver. The militia people looked at it dreamily. I examined them one after the other. The one had a hanging beard below folds that came down from his nose. The other had a red, round face with small, watery eyes. They could be melancholy and usually only talked about eating!

  Chords came out of the room and added sound to the distant sky, which after all was more boundless than the music.

  I saw the moon and the leaves on the meadows, and the flowers, whose colors were bleached out. Nature is not sensitive, even when one is sensitive. She is so completely cold and hard and that is what is so nice about her. That is also what is so nice about people, that they are so ugly with their melancholy.

  The time on watch came to an end. We were standing on a rise in a meadow, ready for an inspection. Officers came riding along the street. The commander’s car came buzzing along. He climbed out and onto a horse.

  Lieutenant Eger’s company was to be inspected first. He sat on a fat Appaloosa and endeavored to bring him to the center of his company. Sweat was standing on his forehead. We knew that he couldn’t ride.

  Our battalion commander gave him his battle assignment. He should go in a half-left direction and hold up the enemy, who was reported to be on the move.

  He set his company in motion at half left along the edge of a wood and rode ahead on the right of them. Suddenly his horse began to gallop and to increase its speed at an angle across the area. There was a small donkey over there tied to a stall. The donkey was frightened and ran around the stall, the fat Appaloosa with lieutenant Eger close behind.

  The officers on their horses laughed, only our major didn’t.

  He just stared across. The horse handlers—they were all little hussars—sprang around with joy like little devils. One officer galloped across the meadow to rescue Eger and the donkey from the Appaloosa.

  The engagement was broken off. During the rest of the visit the commanding General appeared to be torn between laughter and anger. From our company he requested a question-and-answer session led by lieutenant Fabian on weapons instruction, for which we were not prepared. However Fabian asked questions so skillfully and got such lively answers that we all took courage.

  “It has been a joy to me,” said the commander, “to have witnessed such a straight, fresh character by the third company. I express my appreciation before everyone to their leader that he was able to so quickly find his way into such an unexpected assignment.”

  We were proud of the praise and our lieutenant and had contempt for the fourth company because of their leader, Lieutenant Eger.

  In two more days we marched forward again and right into our old positions.

  XI

  While we were exercising in the rear new books had arrived. Included was a history of philosophy. I was annoyed that they sent such things to us in the field, but at the same time I was pleased because all along I had wished for something like that, and I read.

  The discussion was about number. But how should one understand that? How can then the number of basic matter be out of which one builds houses and thoughts?

  I was stirred up and troubled. I seized on a meaning for some philosophical theorems. But it was not the right one for which I was searching.

  I read, hurried and brooding.

  At the same time I wrote. For the third time I described the battle of Lugny. When I got up from writing I shivered and was stiff, but then there was also a cheerfulness in me that made everything I saw bright. But in comparison, when I stood up from philosophy I saw everything gray and morose.

  I became aware of how the writers so arbitrarily used words even though there was a completely clear necessity for how the word should be used. That is to say the words always follow in the order in which the reader should experience them. Not, for example, a green, over a number of rises climbing meadow: then one must first understand that it is a meadow and therefore it must come at the beginning of the sentence. In order to become clear about what was important I imagined the whole picture with all the details, with lighting, with every sound and every emotional feeling. Then first I wrote and left out everything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. But this scheme didn’t work for describing the important things. Therefore words continually failed me. I attempted to use unusual words. It was no use. That busied me for the entire day.

  In the evenings when I was lying in the straw a thought would come to me. But in the morning when I would soberly try to prove it I would toss it out. Something was missing, and it was always the same, and I didn’t know what it was. Certainly, I thought, I am missing some piece of knowledge. And I would search further in the History of Philosophy. After two months I had squeezed everything out of the book and one afternoon arrived at the last page, with nothing. Every philosopher says something different including the newest, completely unimportant things. There is no philosophy of life because there are many and all of them are neither wrong nor right. I gave up hope of getting any further.

  XII

  I was given ten days leave at home. The sergeant handed me the pass. I packed my description of the advance in a big sheet of paper to give to my mother for safe keeping. I had written until the battle of the Marne. Since then things hadn’t appeared to me to be worth describing.

&n
bsp; The next morning, having not slept, I marched along the treeless street in the dark to the little train depot.

  The train departed.

  Dawn came slowly.

  It was odd that I was just now finished with everything, with the advance and with the History of Philosophy. I stood ready for everything, but for what? What is there still?

  My mother came walking toward me out of the house, hugged and kissed me. If she knew how things were inside me, that I believe in nothing anymore, she would not kiss me!

  I said nothing and did not kiss her back, but went embarrassed with her into the house.

  My sister-in-law stood in the parlor and shook my hand. She immediately saw the ribbon for the Iron Cross in my button hole.

  “Lad, we have coffee here, would you like some?”

  “I would like to wash first.”

  She led me to one of the two rooms upstairs, which otherwise were always closed. There was a bed made for me. It smelled somewhat un-lived in. The furniture was well cared for, but lifeless from little use.

  “Make yourself comfortable! When you come down everything will be ready.”

  She went out. I took off my coat. I was living in the room of honor. Now I was important in the family.

  On the table with the plush cover was a photo album. I opened it up. There was my grandfather, fat and with a proud face full of wrinkles. And there was my father as a very young man. He sat carelessly on a chair, and with such innocent eyes! There must have been something about him back then that I never knew. Maybe he had also had such high-flown ideas as I and one day found that we cannot advance!

  As I came down the children were there, three girls and a boy. My oldest niece was already fifteen years old and was at the same time closely related and unapproachable.

  The younger ones were simpler and had continual respect for me.

  “Well, tell us about it!” said my mother. Tell what? I had a horror of it. However, I began talking, so that I couldn’t stop.

  In the following days I went everywhere, to the bee hives and up on the mountain.

  Of the children, only the small boy developed a real trust in me. He wanted to go everywhere I went and I gladly took him along. Otherwise I was uneasy and helped in the house and in the fields.

  XIII

  We came to a reserve position and then forward again. The French appeared to be saving ammunition and so seldom fired the daily disturbance shells.

  The trenches were straightened up and new dugouts were dug. Beside our dugout we drove a shaft in the chalk and supported it with mine timbers. Large, underground tunnel systems were begun so that a barrage couldn’t touch us anymore. We worked during the day below with digging lamps and at night dumped the mining sacks full of chalk behind the trench.

  We didn’t go to Chailly again for rest, but to a forest camp where tent-like barracks had been built by the engineers. In the beginning I liked it there quite well. However, the lice got the upper hand in the barracks so that one didn’t know anymore how to save himself from them. At that time we didn’t receive any more straw for the campsites because everything in Germany began to run out. Instead we got paper bundles. A person lay very hard on it and the lice lay in the rotten paper.

  Most importantly, we didn’t have any water in the camp and had to carry it a half hour from a solitary farm. The well the engineers were making was already twenty meters deep and still there was no water.

  ——————————

  One morning Fabian called me in.

  “I’m sorry that I have to post you to a detail, but I don’t have any other suitable Corporal. You have to go to the rear to Fromentin in the regimental workshops as a cabinet maker.” I stood staring. I had to leave my squad?

  “It is hard for you?” said Fabian. “You would rather remain here forward in danger instead of being in the rear in safety?”

  “Yes, Herr Leutnant.”

  “It is the same with you as with me,” he said sadly. “They’re tearing me away from my company that I have led in the field now for two years. I know everyone and everyone knows me. And it’s only because there is an older officer who wants to lead a company. I am being sent to the rear staging area to the recruit depot.”

  “If the lieutenant is not here then I don’t want to remain either!” I burst out.

  He smiled at me gloomily and gave me his hand.

  “Farewell!” He turned away and went out.

  I packed my field pack. I couldn’t look at Seidel because I was so bitter.

  Outside it was foggy and frosty. Crows sat in the meadows and flew up ahead of me.

  I reported in Fromentin to a Sergeant Lieutenant, who found me a place in a friendly room with five, mostly older, craftsmen.

  The workshop was across the street. I had to make munitions boxes, splints, and trench signs.

  When I think back on it, this time is for me like a meadow in winter. I don’t know what I thought. Ziesche came soon after me in the blacksmith shop. Now he appeared sooty. His teeth and eyes stood white in his face and his lips deep red. But other than this I don’t know anything more of him from this period of time.

  A new spring came. Kaiser had fallen during some patrol enterprise. Had I begun to die inside and become entrenched in habits and opinions and to reject everything I didn’t understand?

  The Battle of the Somme

  One afternoon our regimental commander came into the workshop with his staff officer. During a discussion they opened the door.

  “But think about it,” said the Colonel, “one hundred howitzers on a one kilometer front! You think that is only by us! Our people wouldn’t be able to withstand the heavy barrage either!”

  They ended the discussion.

  I showed them my boxes and splints. They hardly looked at them and left again.

  They must have spoken about the battles at the Somme. I had fleetingly read the news reports in the paper. I also knew that our neighbor regiment had marched off to the Somme. However, I had thought nothing about it. Just what had I thought for the whole last year? Would our regiment also go? We craftsmen, would they leave us here? I wanted to believe it in order to calm myself. But with horror I didn’t believe it. And so unprepared! I cried inside. Why so unprepared? Why had I not thought about anything?

  But what should I think, then? There is nothing to think! Everything is just hollow.

  In the evenings as the others played cards, the fear was there. Sometimes in the evenings I went out alone. Sometimes I was gay and told stories to the others that made them double over with laughter. And I joined in the laughter. But it was just spasms. I got drunk. But it was useless.

  What was the reason I now had such fear? Was I afraid of death? No, not so much. Or of being wounded? No, or of being taken prisoner? Ah, I won’t be captured. It is not any of those things. What is it then?

  ——————————

  On 16 September 1916, we received the order to march.

  We moved some twenty kilometers behind the front and stayed in a village.

  The next morning we sat in our quarters, smoked, and waited. We had orders not to leave our quarters and to remain on standby alert.

  Midday came. We had no field kitchen and had only a half loaf of bread and a little piece of lard. And that had all been eaten up in the morning. Our leader, the old Sergeant Lieutenant Kretzschmar, walked excitedly about.

  About three o’clock he came and said we should get our meal at the hussars’ kitchen.

  “Herr Leutnant, when are we moving out?”

  “I have no orders yet.”

  This day passed; in like manner the next. I wanted to write a letter and took out a pencil and paper. But I never got past “Dear Mother!”

  Another day. Evening came. We lay down to sleep. On the following morning about nine o’clock the order finally came to move out to the train station. Already standing there were two companies of pale, eighteen-year-old recruits in new coats. They watched us cu
riously. We were all big, powerful guys, the regimental swim champion with his red face, Ziesche and the other blacksmith, six message-dog handlers, most of them policemen. Also they had brought Fifi, a sharp little rat catcher, along. In Fromentin I had to make a box for her five young ones for the trip.

  We boarded. The big wolf hounds tugged at their chains and sprang into the cars in one bound.

  The train moved slowly through flat, gray country, just sometimes a couple of cherry trees and white houses.

  Ziesche took a small chessboard from his pack and began playing with the swim champion. They didn’t speak a word.

  At one station we received lunch.

  The afternoon became grayer and more monotonous.

  At one station we halted for over two hours. In the distance we could already hear the muffled rumble of the cannons.

  “An enemy flyer is reported, a so-called double decker!” called someone on the landing.

  “I wonder if he thinks that double deckers are more dangerous than single deckers?” laughed the swim champion. “Let me at the window! I want to get a look at this wise man!”

  The caller was a pale rail official. A number of people walked toward the air raid cellar, which didn’t look very roomy. They leaned laughing out of the train windows and watched the crush at the air raid cellar.

  One German flyer after another took off but no Frenchman appeared. Gradually the people came cautiously back out of the cellar.

  “First you dragged me into your damned air raid cellar and then you also trampled my helmet!” someone complained. It was a combat soldier; you could tell by his patched and too large coat.

  Finally the train traveled slowly on. Empty freight cars, which had maybe brought wood and munitions forward, passed us going the other way. Captured Russians were working on a new train station. Then we came to Ham in the Picardy and disembarked.