Outside Verdun

by Zweig, Arnold; Rintoul, Fiona;

  ‘That was a nasty shock for her,’ said a voice from above, an agreeable young voice that Bertin already knew, and two legs in grey-green puttees dangled into the shell hole opposite Bertin’s legs. Instinctively, he straightened up, because a sergeant is still a sergeant and deserves respect, even in the lunch break. According to the clock it was 11am, according to the sun midday, and you could feel that. The two young men seemed to be the only sentient beings hereabouts. The cat crouched three paces away, invisible between two roots as thick as arms that had the same grey-on-grey flecks as she did. The two young men scrutinised each other and liked what they saw. The sergeant asked if Bertin wouldn’t rather lie back down, and Bertin said no. You could sleep anywhere. He wanted to feel alive here, to open his eyes and smoke his after-lunch pipe. From his haversack he pulled a delicate pipe, which was made of meerschaum and amber and was already filled. The Bavarian shielded the sputtering lighter with his cap – a special cap, nicely worked. Bertin saw the letters CK embossed on the leather edging. Yes, this young person came from a good home. His neatly parted hair, broad forehead, and narrow wrists and fingers gave the game away. The Bavarian asked the Berliner how he had come to be here, lighting a cigarette himself. Bertin didn’t understand the question.

  ‘I’m on duty,’ he answered, surprised.

  ‘What? Just like anyone? Couldn’t they find a better use for you?’

  ‘I don’t like the air in the orderly room,’ Bertin replied with a smile.

  ‘I see. You’d rather work outside and be photographed,’ the Bavarian smiled back.

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Bertin, and the acquaintance was made. They exchanged names. The sergeant was called Christoph Kroysing and came from Nuremberg. His lively eyes scrutinised Bertin’s face, almost sucking information from it. For a moment, they were silent. A couple of metallic strikes – did they come from Hill 300 or 378? – reminded them what time and space meant. Then young Kroysing shook himself. In a neutral undertone, he asked Bertin if he would like to do him a favour.

  Nobody in the vicinity paid any attention to the two men. The root system of an enormous Beech, knocked over as if by a lightning strike, reared up to shield them. Neither of them even noticed how the cat, familiar with the ways of brainless bipeds, sloped off with the precious sausage end and paper in her teeth.

  Christoph Kroysing told his story. For nine weeks, he and his men had been living in the cellars at Chambrettes-Ferme, and if it was up to retired civil servant Niggl and his orderly room, he would remain there for the rest of his days. He had committed an act of gross stupidity. He explained that he had joined the war during his first university term, been quite seriously wounded and then promoted. He’d been sent out with the Reserve division for now because they needed every educated man they could get, but he was due to start officer training in the autumn and should get his commission next spring. However, he had the bad luck not to be able to tolerate the way the NCOs abused the men’s rights. The NCOs had set up their own kitchen where they scoffed the best bits from the men’s rations: fresh meat and butter, sugar and potatoes, and above all beer. Meanwhile, thin noodles, dried vegetables and tinned meat were considered good enough for the men, who did heavy work on niggardly leave. This stuck in his craw, said Kroysing, due to family tradition. For a century, his forefathers had supplied the state of Bavaria with high-ranking officials and judiciary. Where there was a Kroysing, there was justice and fairness. And so he was stupid enough to write a long letter full of grievances to his Uncle Franz, a big noise at the Military Railway Administration (MRA) in Metz. The censors were naturally very concerned about what a sergeant said to the MRA head. The letter was sent back to the battalion with an order to court-martial its author. When Kroysing heard about it, he laughed. They only had to ask and he would talk, and he certainly wasn’t short of witnesses. However, his brother Eberhard, who was at Douaumont with his sappers, took a different view. He came and gave him a hard time about his youthful folly, and said no one would speak up for him if the court martial got to them first. In any case, he’d said before he left, he wouldn’t be able to do anything for Christoph. Everyone had to make their own bed, and now Eberhard’s post would also be gone through with a magnifying glass.

  They’d not had a good childhood together. The big brother was five years older than the younger one and always felt disadvantaged, something he bitterly resented, as is normal among brothers.

  But the company wanted to avoid an investigation at all costs. They were clearly very anxious about it, and so, most unusually, the court martial didn’t get in touch. ‘That’s why they’ve put me at Chambrettes-Ferme,’ finished Kroysing. ‘They’re hoping the Frogs will do them a favour and consign the whole business to the files. For nine weeks, I’ve been watching every single face that fetches up in this lousy hole…’

  Bertin sat there, his face shadowed and flecked by the beech leaves above him. Something inside him laughed with joy. It was good that he had come here. Here was someone about to be mired in brutality, and he could reach out a hand and pull him out. ‘So what can I do?’ he asked simply.

  Kroysing gave him a grateful look. He just wanted him to transport a few lines, which he would give him next time, to his mother. ‘Your post is above suspicion, isn’t it? When next you write home, put my letter inside yours and then get it put in a postbox at home. My mother will then telegraph Uncle Franz and the ball will be set in motion.’

  ‘Done,’ said Bertin. ‘We’ll soon know when we’ll be back here again. That sounded like an announcement. Did you hear it?’

  ‘Fall in!’ came the call from below.

  ‘Better we’re not seen together again,’ said the Bavarian. ‘I’ll sit down and write the letter immediately. Thank you so much! Hopefully, I can pay you back sometime.’ He shook Bertin’s hand, and there was a gleam in his brown, wide-set, boyish eyes. Stiffly, he touched his hand to his cap and then disappeared between the trees, nearly stumbling on the cat, which was prowling around in the irrational hope of a second sausage end.

  Bertin stood up, stretched his arms, inhaled deeply and looked happily around him. It was wonderful here. The felled trees were beautiful, as were the white shell holes, the limestone, and the terrible high-calibre shell splinters, which were stuck in the ground like serrated throwing knives. He ran like a young boy down to the solitary gun, where his comrades were already standing in their tunics and haversacks, and Sergeant Böhne was lining the detachment up to march off. Bertin had found someone like himself, had forged a bond, perhaps even a friendship. He laughed off muttered comments from his comrades, who said there would be trouble on the way back just because he had slept so long. They said they’d keep a better eye on him when they came back the day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, then, Bertin thought, taking his place for the count off.

  The Bavarian sergeant was also lining his men up to march off. He waved and shouted, ‘See you the day after tomorrow.’ His greeting reached everyone, but Bertin knew whom it was really meant for.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sometimes things happen quickly

  IN THE MIDDLE of the night, Christoph Kroysing ducked out of the entrance to the dugout, which had once been the Chambrettes-Ferme cellars, straightened up and took a couple of steps. His silhouette was slim and boyish against the light sky. His hands were in his pockets and he didn’t have a belt or a cap on. His lank hair, still neatly parted, flopped across his right eye. He was entirely used to the dreadful Walpurgis Night that howled above his head. Steel witches hurtled towards the ground; long-range guns rattled and banged like trains; every four or five minutes, tonnes of metal from the heavy mortars ripped the air with a desolate gurgle. The screech and whistle of small field grenades mixed with the roar of 15-centimetre shells, which, being the army’s main weapon, arched steeply through the air from three or four different types of gun. And in response came the banging, roaring and pounding of the French 7.5s, 10s, 20s and the dreaded 38s, which spat at the flank
of the Germans’ positions and trenches from the impregnable Fort Marre on the other side of the Meuse. It must be all go at the front. In the small section just about visible from Hill 344 behind the Douaumont ridge, the fighting divisions had been trying to exterminate each other with hand grenades, machine guns, and bare steel, and the aftermath was now subsiding. The Germans had advanced a few paces between Thiaumont and Souville, but the French had held firm, and the German artillery was now hammering their position, and they in turn were hammering the German artillery to give their infantry a break. It was the normal back and forth of the fronts, and Christoph Kroysing often thought that there would be no end to it until the last German and the last Frenchman limped out of the trenches on crutches to finish each other off with pocket knives or teeth and finger nails. For the world had gone mad. Only an orgy of madness could explain this stamping on the spot amid squirting blood, rotting flesh and cracking bones. They had been taught in school that people were rational beings, but that idea was a pedagogical swindle that should be buried – together with the bearded gentlemen who had the cheek to teach school children and who ought simply to be clubbed to death with human bones. ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’ ‘God is love.’ ‘The moral law within us and the starry heavens above us.’ ‘It is sweet and honourable to die for the Fatherland.’ ‘Justice and law are the pillars of the state.’ ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.’ Well, he’d always been of good will and now he was here.

  If you wanted to look south and west, you had to be prepared to take a small risk. Kroysing knew of a hole in the Ferme’s ramparts, a kind of seat, which he called his loge. It took scarcely a minute to scramble through the brickwork, but he might of course get hit. So what! He ran over and was soon squatting in his lair, where he caught his breath and laughed a little.

  The vague brightness of the moonless, starry night was becoming ever more transparent, and his ear gradually adjusted to the myriad sounds of war. The gulleys towards Douaumont were under heavy attack. Rifle and machine gun fire whipped the length of the Pepper ridge. On the rubbish tip that was the village of Louvemont red flames flew up and died down, and only then did the detonation come. Out of sight down below, field kitchens were trying to come through, as were ammunition trucks and working parties with rolls of wire, posts, entrenching tools – horses, lorries, men. No, the Frogs were no longer scrimping on ammunition. In the valley to the left, dark red bushes of fire had broken out. A few hundred metres further on, where you couldn’t see anything, was a much used field track that led to Herbe Bois.

  On the southern edge of Vauche wood, where the military road ran up to Douaumont, a chain of little volcanoes thundered and flared, new ones erupting all the time, and over Douaumont itself, over his brother Eberhard and his men, hung a great clinging red mist – the never-ending belching of the chimney that was Verdun. The army’s backbone was being pounded to bits there. Red and green flares flew up on the horizon, turning the infantry’s cries for help into a jaunty fireworks display. The French army’s white star shells floated slowly down, spreading a soft light – excellent for shooting each other by. Christoph Kroysing knew it all well: the Chemin des Dames, the Loretto Heights, the sugar factory by Souchez – all the sweet things associated with the war of 1914-15 when he was still an infantryman, putting his life on the line for the Fatherland. Now he was more inclined to watch. His little, rat-infested loge here in the shattered brickwork suited him just fine. The great arc of the horizon spread out before him, flashing and flickering, lighting up like a bolt of lightning and going black again. Despite the natural dampening caused by distance, the full ferocity of the roaring and clamouring reached him, overlaid by the thunder of German guns. The Fosses wood, Chaûmes wood and Vavrille batteries were working at full strength. Half-naked gunners, support troops, observers in the trees, telephonists at their apparatus: this was the night shift. He knew them all, those bloody shell-smiths. The next day, the new battery would settle in nearby, drawing French counter-fire into this quiet valley. Shame about that scrap of wood that was still standing. Shame about all the men who would meet their end here. Shame about Christoph Kroysing himself, who, at 21, was forced to accept that man’s brutality and his instinct for survival were as vital as war and harder to escape. He leaned on a ruined wall, half crouching, half sitting, his hands cupping his lean, boyish face, which was framed by floppy hair. This is what it looks like outside Verdun, he thought. In all these weeks, things have hardly changed. The front line has been pushed forwards slightly, and we could cover the ground we’ve won with corpses. But that was what it was like at the Somme too, where the French and British were stage managing the same kind of hoax. There was a sudden boom on Hill 344. Bright lights flashed, fiery red on smouldering white. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to sit outside much longer. At least he wouldn’t go to sleep feeling as hopeless as he had the night before, haunted by the scum who snooped through his post, checking what he’d written to Mother and Father. No, he was alive again. He had his bottle back and he felt clearer in his head than ever before. They hadn’t reckoned with the camaraderie of decent men in the army. Tomorrow or the day after, his comrade Bertin would return. The letter he had written that afternoon with his trusty fountain pen was already crackling in his tunic pocket above his heart. He’d have to be very careful for a couple of days. Then a mighty hand would reach down and remove Christoph Kroysing from this rat hole. Because even if the gods had abdicated and those who ran the world seemed to have turned into clockwork maniASC, there were men everywhere in the German army, individuals and groups, who wanted to put an end to injustice, who would be incandescent with rage if it were proved to them that brutality, self-interest and treason began right behind the foremost trenches.

  As he stood up, his leg muscles aching, he thought how heavily the dew was lying and how clearly the stars shone in the sky. Did the same nonsense go on up there as on Earth? You could depend on it. Same old matter and spirit up above and down below. In the half light, the rats were dashing about on the ground like thin cats; they should definitely shoot a couple of dozen of them the next day. The rats could have got much fatter nearer the front, but they never deserted the ruined stables where they were born.

  Tired and heavy-headed but confident, Christoph Kroysing climbed back into the dugout where his comrades were snoring. It stank more than a little among the damp brickwork, but tender currents flowed from the letter in his breast pocket and washed away all his unease. And as he folded his tunic and laid his head on it, as he did every night, young Kroysing smiled in darkness.

  In the early hours, the Frogs fired their usual morning greeting at the light railway tracks: booming bursts of shell fire, drifting splinters, crashing steel and clumps of earth. As soon as it was over, the Bavarians emerged from their rat holes to assess the damage. The bastard French had knackered two whole sections straight off, miserable gits. They created nowt but work. A French plane circled up above in the morning haze, then disappeared to the east.

  A fabulous summer day, thought Christoph Kroysing. He felt good today, better than he’d felt in ages. Blue sky – air to make you feel like flying away! Perhaps he’d first pay a visit to Hundekehle station to see if they were going to send a truck today to remove the second gun. Carefully, he trotted uphill, sticking close to the sections of track or jumping from sleeper to sleeper. From time to time, the Frogs spat over a little reminder – crumps the Germans called these kinds of shots, because they were there before you heard the gun fire. This part of the valley was much too well disposed to artillery observation, but today Kroysing felt immune to danger. He had the advantage of having been in the same place for 60 days. That meant you got to know it like the back of your hand whether you wanted to or not. Also, for the first time, he noticed flowers growing again at the edges of the shell holes: purple lady’s smock, summer cornflowers, very blue, and a red poppy, like a swaying fleck of blood.

  In Hundekehle, a heat ha
ze still shimmered over the corrugated iron station building. There were no trucks there, so the second gun wouldn’t be collected today, which was a shame. On the other hand, half a dozen infantrymen and a junior MO were taking the opportunity to sit and sleep in the shade of the railway hut, backs pressed to the metal, legs stretched out in front of them, completely covered in dust and earth. Their collapsed posture spoke of a superhuman exhaustion; inside, a young lieutenant, who had to stay awake and be responsible, was nonetheless making a phone call, wanting to know how he could move two machine guns and his men’s gear to the rear. Blinking, he stepped out into the glaring sun, scrutinised the Bavarian sergeant, offered him a cigarette and asked what he was doing there. The lieutenant decided he should wake his men. Once they’d started sleeping, they wouldn’t stop in a hurry, and as long as they were hunkered down in this accursed place, they’d needed to be awake, ready to scatter and take cover if there was an armed attack, even if they were relaxing now and enjoying the quiet. They’d come from Pepper ridge and been relieved about two in the morning. Their main contingent had taken the normal route via Brabant and been scattered by gunfire. He, Lieutenant Mahnitz, and his junior MO, Dr Tichauer, had been clear from the start that it was better to stumble through shell holes and cut across country to the rear than to come under heavy fire, especially as they were already dreaming about leave. He laughed cheerfully. They’d had a terrible time, but things would calm down now. The Germans and the French were both busy with the battle at the Somme. They richly deserved some peace, and they wouldn’t say no to some hot coffee either.

  Christoph Kroysing immediately decided to invite the lieutenant and his men for some freshly made ground coffee. Glad that his hint had been taken, the lieutenant selected a corporal who’d fallen asleep again to take the men’s gear and the two guns back to Steinbergquell depot on the next empty train and await new orders there. Then the men set off, plodding along the section of track with sore feet and sagging shoulders. They chatted quietly, wondering if they’d be able to get a wash at the ASC men’s billet or at least some breakfast. They were seasoned soldiers familiar with the conditions in this zone, and their slack amble and faded uniforms symbolised that. They always had one ear cocked in case the unhoped for happened. It was half eight in the morning. The Frogs couldn’t see much from their captive balloon, but you couldn’t be too careful, as they said in the army. So that the coffee would be ready when they got there, Sergeant Kroysing ran on ahead, telling the comrades from Hessen – for the men he’d picked up were from Hessen – to follow on slowly. There was no danger. ‘He’ had never fired at this hour.