Bent over, he sat there, still shaking his cropped head, his small eyes filled with reflections on the strange ways of the world.
The door gently opened and another soldier entered the cellar. He was lean and so tall that he practically had to duck. Blonde hair, parted on the left, not wearing brads under his soles. His uniform was shabby, and Bertin didn’t at first realise that the man in front of him was an officer, because his epaulettes and sword knot were such a dull grey. Bertin jumped up and stood to attention, hands on his trouser seams.
‘For God’s sake,’ the man said. ‘No need for that performance at the coffin. Are you from his unit?’ And, walking to the foot of the coffin: ‘So it’s come to this, Christel.’ You always were a handsome boy, he thought to himself. Well, be at peace. Sooner or later we’ll all be laid out as you are, only not as comfortably.
Bertin had seldom seen brothers who were less alike. Eberhard Kroysing, a sapper lieutenant, folded his bony hands over the peak of his cap and didn’t try to hide the two tears that fell from his eyes. Bertin withdrew quietly, giving the dead boy’s face a last tender look, himself now choked up with sadness and letting it show.
‘Stay, stay,’ boomed Lieutenant Kroysing’s deep voice. ‘We needn’t drive each other away. In any case the lid will be closed in a minute. Have a look and see if the pall bearers are coming.’
Bertin understood and turned round. The lieutenant kissed his little brother on the forehead. Got a lot to apologise to you for, little fellow, he thought. It wasn’t very easy growing up next to me, under me. And how come you, the baby of the family, got to look so much like our mother, while I only looked like Papa?
Outside, there was the sound of approaching boots. Two orderlies walked in. They were used to their work and didn’t observe the niceties at first, but they quietened down a bit when they saw the lieutenant and took the other two coffins away first – rough boxes made of spruce wood. Bertin helped them through the door and up the stairs to give the brother some time alone.
When the strangers were outside, Eberhard Kroysing took his small cigar cutter from his trouser pocket and cut a lock of hair from his brother’s temple – for his mother. He carefully hid it in his flat wallet. He didn’t want to break off his dialogue with the little one. ‘Did you really have to be so jealous of my stamp collection?’ he asked. ‘Did we have to quarrel constantly? Perhaps we could have had a decent adult friendship? Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!’ he said, quoting Dr Luther’s translation of the Bible. That was a pious wish. ‘Our family has been unlucky. No one will visit the beautiful family grave in the protestant cemetery in Nuremberg. You’ll be buried here in catholic soil, and I’ll most likely be eaten by the rats after the last shell has burst. Allons, let’s shut this hut up, so we can perform our final duty to you, my boy.’ And, choking on dry sobs, he kissed the little one once again on his cold mouth and on the dark fluff of his beard, and then fit the lid over the long box and screwed the corners down with practised fingers. When Bertin came back with the two orderlies, an officer, cap on head, strode stiffly past them into the land of the living where the slanting sun beat down.
The burial was a mundane affair, cloaked in a certain solemnity. The three fallen heroes were blessed by an army chaplain, whose cassock barely covered the uniform he normally wore. Delegations from the affected units led by sergeants had been drafted in. The Bavarian ASC men brought a wreath of beech twigs – a last greeting from the standby detachment at Chambrettes-Ferme, none of whom had been given leave to attend the funeral. The three coffins were placed on top of each other, and Bertin caught himself sighing with relief; little Kroysing was lowered in last and wouldn’t have to bear the burden of others even in death. As the other two dead men had been artillery drivers hit on their way to the ammunitions store, their comrades’ carabines fired a last salvo over the grave for all three. Then the funeral party hastily dispersed among Billy’s canteens to seize the rare opportunity to buy chocolate and jam, and raise a few glasses.
A hospital sergeant came up to Lieutenant Kroysing. The company had asked for his brother’s effects and had already collected them, and he gave him a list, which Kroysing glanced at absent-mindedly and put in his pocket. In the few seconds that this took, Bertin struggled with and made a decision. He walked briskly towards his friend’s brother and asked to have a word with him. Eberhard Kroysing gave him a rather scornful look. These poor ASC men exploited any contact with an officer to ask advice about their petty concerns or air a grievance. This one here, who was obviously an academic sort and a Jew, would no doubt want to pester him about leave or some such. ‘Fire away, man,’ he said, ‘but make it snappy or you’ll get separated from your comrades.’
‘I don’t belong to that unit,’ said Bertin carefully, ‘and I would like to speak to you alone for 10 minutes, Lieutenant. It’s about your brother,’ he added, seeing Kroysing’s dismissive expression.
Billy had been shot to pieces and patched up badly. They were both silent as they walked through the streets, both thinking about the freshly dug gave. ‘It was nice,’ said the lieutenant at length, ‘that you sent him the wreath.’
‘It came from his men at Chambrettes-Ferme, where he died. That’s where I got to know him – early in the morning the day before yesterday.’
‘You only knew my brother for such a short time and yet you came to his funeral? I really must thank your sergeant major.’
Bertin smiled weakly. ‘My orderly room refused me leave to come here. I came off my own bat.’
‘That’s a strange state of affairs,’ said Kroysing, as they went through the door of the officers’ mess, a kind of inn for officers with soldiers serving.
Several gentlemen in shiny epaulettes looked over in surprise as the sapper lieutenant and ASC private squeezed in opposite each other at the table for two in the window alcove. Such fraternisation between officers and men was undesirable, forbidden in fact. But the poor bastards in the trenches didn’t always behave in line with orders from the administration behind the lines. At any rate, the tall lieutenant with the Iron Cross, first class didn’t look like he would appreciate a lecture.
Indeed no. From Bertin’s first words, Eberhard Kroysing’s face looked rather set. Bertin asked if he had known that his brother had problems at his company. Certainly, said Kroysing, but when you were stuck in the sapper depot at Douaumont, under daily fire from the French, you weren’t overly interested in minor squabbles among NCOs at another company. The wine here was excellent. Bertin thought so too. He drank and asked if it had occurred to Lieutenant Kroysing that there could be a connection between those squabbles and Christoph Kroysing’s death. At that, the lieutenant’s eyes widened. ‘Listen,’ he said in a low voice, ‘men fall here every day like chestnuts from a tree. Imagine if everyone tried to find connections…!’
‘In connection with this case, might I explain how I got to know your brother and what he told me in confidence?’
Eberhard Kroysing looked into his wine glass, twirling it lightly between his fingers, while Bertin uttered one considered phrase after another, his eyes on Kroysing’s face. Bertin’s chest pressed against the marble table, which was a little too high for the low seats. He sensed that the young man opposite wasn’t convinced, but he couldn’t stay quiet. The main part of the room echoed with the booming laughter of boozers.
‘To be blunt,’ said Kroysing eventually, ‘I don’t believe a word you’ve said, sir. Not that I think you’re lying. But Christoph was an unreliable witness. He had an over-active imagination. He was a lyrical soul, you know, a poet.’
‘A poet?’ repeated Bertin, taken aback.
‘So to speak,’ confirmed Kroysing. ‘He wrote verse, pretty verse, and he was working on a play, a drama, he called it, a tragedy — what do I know? Such people quickly become obsessed by inconsequential things. Prejudices. Suspicions. But I, my dear chap, am a man of fact. My subject was engineering, and that pre
cludes such fantasies.’
Bertin scrutinised his companion. He found it perplexing that Kroysing was so sceptical about someone whose personality and tone Bertin had immediately found convincing.
‘I don’t mean,’ continued Kroysing, ‘that my little brother was an idiot or a blabbermouth. But you men in the rank and file are prone to persecution complexes. You fancy everyone is bad and wants to make things difficult for you. You’d have to come up with some proof, young man.’
Bertin considered. ‘Would a letter from your brother count as proof, Lieutenant? A letter that my wife was supposed to send to your mother? A letter in which the case is set out, so that your uncle in Metz may finally intervene?’
Eberhard Kroysing looked up, fixing his hard eyes on Bertin. ‘And what is my Uncle Franz’s involvement to be in this matter about which you’re so well informed?’
‘Set the wheels in motion for a court martial and cite Christoph at the hearing.’
‘And how long was the boy in the cellar at Chambrettes-Ferme?’
‘Over two months with no break and no let-up.’
Eberhard Kroysing drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Give me the letter,’ he said.
‘It’s in my haversack,’ said Bertin. ‘I couldn’t know that I’d meet you here, Lieutenant.’
Eberhard Kroysing smiled grimly. ‘You were right to doubt it. The news came to me indirectly from our battalion headquarters, and if the Frogs hadn’t been unusually quiet, I might have missed my connection. But either way, I must have the letter.’
Bertin hesitated. ‘There’s something I must tell you. The letter was in his pocket when he was hit. It’s soaked in blood and unreadable.’
‘His blood,’ said Eberhard Kroysing. ‘So there’s still something left of him above ground. But that doesn’t matter. There are simple chemical processes that can deal with that. My sergeant Süßmann can do them in his sleep. It would seem,’ he said, and his brow darkened, ‘that I didn’t look after the little one as well as I should have done. Damn it,’ he shouted, suddenly angry, ‘I had other concerns. I thought the court martial had given its opinion long ago and put everything in order. The idea that brothers look out for each other is just a fairytale. Often they fight and hate each other. Or have you had a different experience?’
Bertin thought for a moment then said no, his experience was no different. He usually only had news of his brother Fritz from his parents. The boy had been serving the whole time with the 57s, first in Flanders then in Lens, in the Carpathians and on the Hartmannsweilerkopf, and now, more was the pity, in the worst part of the Somme battle. Who knew if he was still alive? Brotherly love was just an ingrained figure of speech. Brothers had always fought for favour and position in the family, from Cain and Abel to Romulus and Remus, to say nothing of German royalty, who enjoyed blinding, murdering and exiling each other to monasteries.
‘Let’s go,’ said Kroysing. ‘The drivers here have organised a car for me, so I’ll be back in my hellish cellar by tonight. We’ll go via your park. And if I get the proof I need, then I’ll put it before the court martial. And then we’ll see. I’m not vengeful. But if those gentleman really did spirit little Christel away from my mother in order that he should end up awaiting resurrection on the third shelf of that grave, then it’s time they made my acquaintance.’
They waited for the car in front of the mess. Above the hills towards Romagne, known as the Morimont, the sky was a diaphanous green. Bertin was hungry. He was counting on someone from his platoon having kept some dinner for him. If not, a ration of dry bread was enough for a man who had furthered a dead friend’s cause. No one was better placed than Eberhard Kroysing to bring those responsible for his brother’s murder to account.
The army driver in his leather jacket drove the open car over the white roads like a man possessed because he wanted to reach the firing zone, where he had to drive without lights, before dark. Less than half an hour later they pulled up by the water troughs at the Steinbergquell barracks. Bertin ran over and came back a short time later. He handed the lieutenant what looked to be a piece of stiff cardboard, wrapped in white paper. Eberhard Kroysing clasped it carefully in his hand.
A few nights later, Private Bertin had a remarkable experience, which he only believed the following noon when he saw the evidence with his own eyes.
Like many short-sighted people, Bertin relied on his hearing to interpret the blurry, threatening world around him. As people also hear when they are asleep because from the time of the glaciers and forest swamps danger has approached by night, he’d had some difficulty adjusting to communal sleeping. It was a sweltering July night in the valley, which cut between Moirey and Chaumont like a butcher’s trough and was permanently filled with swamp fog from the Theinte. The moon was nearly full, and in its pale, milky glow the night seem deceptively clear. Nice weather for flying. The wakeful would do well to keep watch.
Shortly after one, the machine guns at the Cape camp began to rattle furiously a few kilometres beyond Thil wood; anti-aircraft guns croaked red sparking shrapnel up into the air. They were coming! It wasn’t unexpected. Men of a very cautious disposition – a couple of gunners and a few ASC men, including Pahl the typesetter – had been sleeping in the old dugouts by the roadside for a week. The phone at Moirey shrilled with calls from the Cape camp. The Frogs wouldn’t be flying over at one in the morning to distribute biscuits. One of the telephonists at Steinbergquell sped over to see the on-duty sergeant. A bomb attack on a depot currently holding 30,000 shells of which 5,000 were gas shells – and the company was asleep in its barracks! The sentries rushed around, while from the south (the ammunitions depot was at the north end of the encampment) the gentle mosquito drone of the French engines began to build in the dormitories: ‘Air attack! Everyone outside with gas masks! Lights out! Assemble behind the kitchen hut!’ Behind the kitchen hut, the ground fell gradually away so that a flat mound of earth curved up between it and the dangerous ammunition.
A lot of ASC men slept in their lace-ups; no one needed more than a couple of seconds to wake up, slip into their boots, coat or tunic, and underpants or trousers, and leap on to the wooden floor with a crash. The barracks stood open and empty in the pale grey of the night. The clatter of hobnailed boots was drowned out by defensive fire from the MGs and the artillery. The white antennae of searchlights slunk across the sky to help drag down the mosquito swarm: three planes, or maybe five. They were flying so high! Spread out along the damp grass and hard, clayey soil of the southern slope, the defenceless ASC men listened breathlessly and looked up to the sky where the storm would soon start. Yes, they were for it. A fine whistle was unleashed up above, two-voiced, many-voiced, getting stronger, and then the valley filled with flashing and roaring, and a dull thunder crashed. For a second, the Earth’s fiery interior seemed to gape open were the bombs had hit; then the valley was engulfed in black. The valley roared under fire nine times; then the French had flown the loop that allowed them to escape the anti-aircraft fire; the planes flew off to the west, perhaps to launch a further attack on the other side of the Meuse.
‘Well,’ said Private Halezinsky in a quavering voice to his nearby friend, Karl Lebehde, ‘another successful strike.’
‘Think so? asked Lebehde, lighting a night-time cigarette with remarkable sangfroid. ‘I’d venture to suggest they were after the railway station, August, which did take one hit. They’ll sort us out next time.’
It was tempting to wander over there now. There would be hot shell splinters and fuses in the fresh bomb holes, and they could be sold for a good price. By early the next morning, the railwaymen would have nabbed them all. But the sergeants were ushering their men back to bed.
The barracks had been aired in the meantime and had cooled down. It was half past one, so they could still easily grab four hours’ sleep. Halezinsky went to his bed and shone a light to check for rats. The electric light fell on the bed to the left of his. Someone was actually lying there sleeping. �
�Karl,’ he called quietly in utter astonishment, ‘look at this. He must be a sound sleeper.’
The two men looked at Bertin’s sleeping form almost reverently. He’d slept through the alarm, the attack and the bomb explosions that had destroyed a railway track and the fields 70 or 80 metres across the road. The next morning, he would be the only one who didn’t believe the reports of the night before, who thought he was being taken for a ride. He would sacrifice some of his lunch break to go and see the bomb holes that had appeared overnight in the green fields and were big enough to accommodate a telephone box. He would bend over to touch the rails that had been blasted apart and check for freshly filled shell holes between the two rods. That was how completely his sleeping self had pushed aside the world of war, where a demise such as that of Kroysing was possible. A couple of kilometres ahead, machine guns were sweeping the ripped up ground under the limelight of flares; several thousand men, covered in earth, riddled with shell splinters, mangled by direct hits and poisoned by gas, huddled in bomb holes or behind ramparts to escape the fire bursts as the guns picked off flying shells. But only a mile and half away, a man of around 30 with good hearing had been able to sleep through a bomb attack, plunged into the deepest sanctuary and safety known to man, akin to the oblivion of the grave.
BOOK TWO
Outside Verdun Page 7