by Ludwig Renn
After a while the nun came smiling with folded hands. She was old and full of wrinkles, but I liked the good, somewhat watery eyes. She went along the row of beds.
“So, how are things today?”
“Very good,” I laughed.
She raised me gently upright. There was a head-sized brown spot on my pillow.
“The puss has completely soaked through the bandage again! We have to place thicker pads underneath.”
Two young women brought in breakfast. It tasted good to me, only I was still hungry.
In the afternoon the captain came in and brought me two handkerchiefs. I was embarrassed. Was that supposed to be a gift? He sat on the edge of my bed and suddenly became old.
“Have you already been a long time in the west?”
“Since the beginning of the war, sir.”
“I was always in the east,” he said seemingly lost. “And then I came to the west and immediately forward. I have never even seen the regimental commander.—My adjutant didn’t want to let me go. ‘But that is impossible!’ He said over and over.—But I couldn’t function. I always sat in the bunker and didn’t know what I should do.—Naturally you can’t understand that.” He looked at me very sadly.
“Yes I can, sir,” I mumbled.
“But you can’t understand it completely. You’re different.—I have a wife and children at home. They would enjoy meeting you.” A glimmer of joy came into his movements. How terrible, I thought. He has lost all measure of how to act, for himself and for others! If only no one else heard it!
“If you need anything—I have my bags here.”
He shook my hand and crept outside.
The captain came again a couple of times. He appeared to me to be older and more uncertain. I thought again and again about what I should say to him, whether I could recommend something that would be good for him. But I couldn’t think of anything. I saw myself as cold and thought he must find me heartless. My comrades in the room made jokes about him. Maybe they were right but it hurt me. Then he stopped coming.
I asked the nurse. She looked at me seriously: “No one is supposed to know; he took his own life.”
It was odd! It didn’t even affect me. I absorbed it only as a fact.
Eilitz came to mind, whom I had left standing outside—and he was killed. I didn’t feel any regret about it, but I was moved by it.
My horrible attacks came more seldom and were also weaker. The blisters went away. Only the wound continued to soak the bandage through with puss every night. I was able to be up now for hours at a time. I quickly learned to dress myself with one hand. The only difficulty I had was trying to stick my shirt inside my pants. Either I would hold my pants fast or shove the shirt in or then the pants would slide down to my feet. Even buttoned they were still too big for me. Therefore I would lean against a bed post and so hold my pants fast.
One morning a doctor came and took a look at the wound.
“Now we can pull the wound together. It is all cleaned out now. Have you got the courage for that?”
“Yes, Herr Doktor!”
“Good! Bring him into the operating room!”
I went with the orderly into the room I had been in on the first night. They uncovered the wound. A nun washed around the wound with ether.
The doctor came.
“Three wound clamps!—It is not a good feeling. Would you rather have an injection?”
“No, doctor. I’m more afraid of shots than I am of downright pain.”
“Just as long as you don’t scream!”
“I won’t, doctor.”
The orderly gripped me on my wrists.
The doctor rumbled around behind me with instruments: “Now we begin!”
He stuck me over the wound in the flesh. That wasn’t so bad. Next he stuck me on the left, again above and then below. Then the third clamp.
“So, now comes the drawing together.”
I felt how the barbs dug deeper as if they wanted to rip the flesh out. Then came the next one, and then—that was not pleasant.
“You did a good job of holding still!”
I went up to the room. I held the shoulder somewhat slanted, but I was happy. I lay down in bed, however, could find no peace and after a half hour got up again and walked back and forth. It was as if the flesh was continually swelling and it became sorer and sorer from the metal clamps.
Then the food came. It repelled me and I ate very little.
Then I lay down in bed and went to sleep.
——————————
I woke up. Unimaginable fantasies like transparent barricades and wires from the dream were still agonizingly present. I looked around, unsettled. The pain wasn’t as bad as that. I drank a little coffee and let the bread lie.
The nun came all worried.
“Don’t you have an appetite? We have to apply the thermometer.”
I lay still. The time passed sluggishly. The nun came, took out the thermometer and looked at it. Her eyes appeared somewhat faint. She shook it down.
“We have to measure it again.”
I already knew that I had a fever.
She let me lay for a long time. Then she pulled it out and looked at it.
“We have to call the doctor.”
He arrived in just a few minutes and examined the wound.
“Everything is in order. It can be that if we take the clamps out again the fever will abate. However the healing will be extended for weeks if not months.” He said that to me questioningly.
“I would rather have the little bit of fever,” I said.
“Good, give him a shot for the night, Sister Brigitte!”
In the evening I could eat only a little and could hardly swallow it. Then the orderly washed a spot on my right upper arm. The nun came with a glass Hypodermic with cloudy fluid. She pinched up the skin and shoved the needle in. It caused a round rise on the skin like a blister. The orderly stuck a small plaster on the spot.
“Good night,” she said with her somewhat whining voice and nodded, smiling. I liked her a lot.
A stretching feeling went though my body as if it was becoming very long. The feeling didn’t go away. The pain became distant as if it was removed from the shoulder. I observed the stretching in me and lay very still.
——————————
I woke up in the middle of the night with a desire to drink. I had nothing there and also didn’t know if I was allowed to drink. It would not leave me in peace. I lay for a long time outwardly peaceful, but inwardly painfully upset. An electric light burned in the hall. That gave me a good feeling. Someone snored. Another moved restlessly and groaned.
——————————
The singing next door woke me from a restless sleep. The pain clung closely and sore on the shoulder. There was a dim light in the white hall. I didn’t know from where it came. In the distance a door slammed. I heard the soft singing of the wind in the double window and a distant rumbling like thunder.
The nun came in and in the pale light appeared weathered and yellow.
“Now, how was the night?” she smiled. I recognized her from the sound of her voice.
“It wasn’t very enjoyable. I would rather not have morphine again.”
Breakfast came. I didn’t drink all the coffee and ate only a little. There was a tinkling on the window. There was a yellow flash of lightning. Now I could clearly hear the thunder. The nun stuck the thermometer in my armpit. I felt very unwell.
The doctor came.
The nun whispered; I heard it: “He has almost a hundred and four.”
“Remove the bandage!”
I had to bend forward.
“There is a light reddening. He will have to be quarantined and you, Sister Brigitte, will have to care for him alone so that no one else will be infected! We don’t want any erysipelas in the room.”
The orderly came with a cart on rubber wheels. He moved me along a passage to the other side of the built-in ch
apel. Now I lay isolated.
The fever rose. In the morning the thermometer showed already 104 degrees. My fantasies began to become all mixed up. The fever rose even more and had almost reached 105 degrees. Only now and then I would receive a whipped egg with cognac to eat. It tasted sweet and gave off an aroma. My dreams became more and more confused. I was exhausted.
The time dragged. The fever slowly abated. The doctor found the wound to be healing well; however, the spots around it were quite red. I felt terribly weak.—Then one day the doctor declared. “Everything looks good. We can now remove the clamps.” He reached for the bandage cart and with a couple of quick grips the clamps were out.
Around noon I learned that I had become a non-commissioned officer. The sergeant had written it to me. I was happy.
In the afternoon the fantasies began to plague me again. But on the following morning I was fever-free. I still slept a lot and woke up every morning feeling better.
Then I was transferred to the garrison hospital. My wounds were naturally not completely closed yet, but I was already able to move the arm some. For the time being I could only raise it sideways two hand widths above the hip.
The Battle of Aisne-Champagne 1917
We traveled into the field by convalescence transport. Where were we going? The trip went through Metz. Therefore the regiment must be on the southern part of the front again. We climbed out an amazingly short distance behind Metz and marched into a wooded valley. There on the slope of the mountain lay a village.
We halted in front of a villa with a garden. Some people from our regiment came over and observed us from a distance.
I, along with Haensel and some others, was assigned once more to the third company.
I went into the company orderly room to report. There, at a small table with his back to me, sat a lieutenant.
“NCO Renn along with fourteen rehabilitated men reporting, sir!”
The lieutenant turned around.
“Good day!” He gave me his hand. I gripped it firmly and looked at him astounded. Was that really the earlier one-year man, Lamm?
“Have I changed so much that you don’t recognize me anymore?”
“Yes, I recognize you Herr Leutnant.”
“Are we on duty that you have to call me Herr Leutnant?” he laughed.
I was still completely amazed: what a powerful voice Lamm now had! And he had become so wide and appeared so completely different, so certain and relaxed.
We went to our quarters up the mountain.
We were far behind the front in the Ardennes, to exercise and to prepare for the expected French offensive in the spring.
This time the army leadership had a whole army ready for a counter stroke and we were part of it.
The company had completely changed. I knew only two or three and none of those very well. My platoon consisted of some pale, thin boys, none of which was very good at exercises, especially Brand, who always looked at you helplessly. Haensel was the strongest of them all. He did everything with great calmness and certainty, but no more than was required. It appeared to make him very happy to do no more than was required. Other than them Corporal Hartenstein was still there, a tough, tall man with a dark face, uncommunicative and coarse, but efficient. And then there was Weickert, the best rifleman in the company, lively and somewhat talkative.
It was already April and still quite cold as the order came to move out. The French offensive appeared to have begun.
We marched for a number of days through wooded, mountainous terrain. Then we came to a bare plain and around noon to a town so small as seldom one of our villages. Our platoon was quartered in the last house on the far side. The sun shone warm as in the summer. Our squad was placed in a room upstairs with a window whose sill was as low as a footstool. I sat in the window with Haensel. Outside stretched a flat plain with a narrow, sandy street with three bowed, still barren fruit trees. Further on the street became lost in the steppe without trees, bushes, or hills.
Our platoon leader looked out past us: “A poet must live here.”
I looked at him, astounded. He was a large, strong person, still young. Today he peered out, spotted with red flecks and a strained expression on his face, and looked longingly into the distance. The air trembled above the steppe.
“I don’t feel good at all,” he said.
“What is the matter then, Herr Feldwebel?”
“I am not able to stand the marching.”
He lay down on the floor and appeared to be strained. I wondered that he wasn’t able to stand the marching, because he was a good gymnast and runner and had a lot of strength.
Haensel took me by the sleeve and drew me outside. We went a little ways out on the plain and sat in the sun on a little wall.
“Where are you hiding out?” called Weickert and came walking over. “We have been alerted. Someone just arrived from the front and reported that things are going bad there. The French have penetrated deeply into our positions.”
III
We marched across the plain and into a barren wooded area. Ahead of us rolled the continuous thunder of cannons. Dark clouds raced across the sky. Blasts of wind chilled us through and through. We curved from the road into a thin fir forest. There we pitched tents for the night and crawled inside. The wind had become even stronger. There was an opening next to me where two shelter halves had been buttoned together. The wind blew through it and every now and again raindrops blew in mixed with snowflakes. We all lay very close together and still we froze.—Will we be sent forward into the fight?
In the morning we crept, frozen, out of the tents. Our field kitchen stood there and steam rose from the cook pot into the swirling fog. Our horses were tied to the fir trees and stirred unhappily.
The coffee only warmed us slightly. Up front the cannons roared. We were unusually comfortable and lay down again in the tent and gossiped but not for long. Then we became too lazy to open our mouths and went to sleep.
“Take down the tents! Make ready to move out!”
We tore the tents down and strapped the wet shelter halves onto our packs. We stood around with our hands in our pants pockets and our shoulders drawn up high. It was snowing thick flakes.
“Hey, Albin, now it begins!” said someone. But nobody laughed.
“It won’t be long ‘til you’ll have wind blowing through a bullet hole like through a chimney!”
Three men sank to the ground with their backs against each other and then stood up the same way.
“How about a game, Max? It is snowing so beautifully.”
They sat down on a tree stump and played with ragged cards. Snowflakes fell over them.
Across the way several people started a large fire. The thick white smoke mixed in with the falling snow. Ahead of us the thunder of cannons rolled and stamped continuously. At one of the fires they were singing.
Hours passed. It stopped snowing.
Toward evening we moved out. No one could understand why they had made us tear down the tents six hours early.
We marched into a wooded valley and down to a stream. The valley became wide. The forest thinned out. To the right lay a large village. We crossed over the swampy creek on a long, wooden bridge.
Schum! One came roaring in and landed, Whack! next to the bridge in the swamp.
Probably we would be sent this night to relieve the people ahead.
Ahead of us lay thickly wooded mountains. We could hear shooting but saw nothing.
We came into a high, oak forest.
“Pitch the tents!”
It was already growing dark. We raked the wet snow from the yellow leaves on the ground with our feet.
My squad joined with the second squad and built a wide, flat tent in order to have extra shelter halves on which to lie down. Then we crept inside. The trees moved slightly. The falling snow rustled softly on the tent. Drops of water fell from the trees here and there into the mud. In the distance there were other sounds: moving wagons on a road and
shell bursts, sometimes closer and sometimes farther away.
Wham! One exploded very close. Wham! Further to the right. The splinters whined around outside.
“Bastards! I have caught one in the back!”
“Has anyone got a Hindenburg lamp?”
Someone had the thin lamp in his pocket and lit the wick. Weickert had a bruise in his back that had hardly even bled and didn’t even need to be bandaged.
“Well, so much for the lucky wound,” he said. “But now I have a hole in my coat.” He pulled his coat back on and lay down to sleep. We put out the light.
Wham! That must have been ahead of us.
A while later: Wham! Somewhat to the side.
My thoughts wandered. I heard a couple more explosions.
——————————
Wham! There was movement in the tent.
“What is it then?”
“Make a light!”
Someone cursed and moaned.
A match flamed up. Everyone looked into the light.
“What’s wrong with you, Albin?”
“I caught one in the foot. Cut my boot open!”
One of the men lay and was not worried about it. He only jerked his right leg. He had received a head shot and was unconscious. Haensel went to get the medics.
In the morning we stayed in the tents; it was icy cold outside and the field kitchen wasn’t there. The artillery fire rolled on uninterrupted. Today we will actually go forward, I thought. I was frightened.
Toward evening some of the men in the fourth platoon were wounded. As the medical NCO was bandaging them he caught a splinter in the leg. He came hobbling to Lamm, who stood peacefully with folded arms, and with his good-natured eyes smiling, said, “Now I have one in the leg, Herr Leutnant!”
Spontaneously I smiled along with him.
About 6 p.m. our field kitchen came carefully across the swampy meadow with four horses and without the front wagon. The lid was removed.