‘And what do you do?’ Bertin asked.
‘You know what I do: build field railways. That’s our way of recovering. And today I’ve been for a stroll. Later, I’ll take you back, and tomorrow morning I’ll visit your colleagues in Fosses wood.’
‘Give them my best wishes,’ Bertin laughed.
The sapper depot occupied half a wing of the mighty pentagon. Nobody smoked; it wasn’t just rolls of barbed wire, trench props and iron spikes that were stored here. Bertin glanced in passing at the two-handled wicker baskets shaped like giant arrow quivers. The tops of heavy mortar mines bored downwards into them. Crates of tracer ammunition reminded him of the crates of powder at his own artillery depot. They were brand new. An unshaven NCO was handing flares out to a couple of infantrymen. He carefully counted out the cartridges on a plank of wood laid across two kegs. Behind him was an open door to a white-washed cellar with zinc containers for liquid.
‘Oil for the flame throwers,’ said Süßmann.
‘You’ve got everything here,’ marvelled Bertin.
‘Resurrection stores,’ replied Süßmann. ‘We take up a fair bit of room in this old colliery, don’t we?’ Right at the back in the uncertain light from the lamps the Bavarian ASC men were handing in their tools. ‘They’ll get 12 hours’ rest now,’ said Süßmann. ‘The lieutenant takes damn good care no work gets sent their way in their free time. Captain Niggl finds it all rather surprising.’
‘And how deep into the earth does the place go?’
‘Deep enough for Sunday and Monday,’ answered Süßmann. ‘There’s 3m of concrete above our heads and an entire barracks, armoured towers, machine gun emplacements – in short, every possible comfort. Our lieutenant lives here.’
Bertin entered a vault and stood to attention. Lieutenant Kroysing was sitting by a window, an embrasure facing a wall split by two direct hits. ‘Nice open view,’ he laughed, welcoming Bertin. ‘I can even see a bit of sky from here.’
Bertin thanked him for getting him a nice job. The lieutenant nodded; he hadn’t acted out of kindness but so that there would be at least one person left who could explain the whole business to Judge Advocate Mertens in Montmédy. For it was down to him to clear Sergeant Kroysing’s name. ‘My father will get over Christoph’s death and mine if I kick the bucket. The rank and file march with death now. No exceptions, you understand, no special fuss. But if it gets around in Bavaria – and it will get around – that a Kroysing only escaped sanction from a court martial because he died, he’ll feel like a discredited outcast, and I’d like to spare him that.’
Bertin looked into his sallow face with compassion. It seemed even more gaunt than last time. It was terrible, he said in an undertone, to have to deal with such nastiness in a private capacity as well. Kroysing dismissed this. It wasn’t terrible at all. It was a game and it was revenge, and in that moment his face looked as pitiless to Bertin as the cratered earth outside.
The room was lit by pale daylight. Sergeant Süßmann brought in a dish of warm water. Lieutenant Kroysing took a couple of sheets of blotting paper from a drawer; it had taken more than a fortnight to get hold of them. Then with his long, slender fingers he unwrapped his brother’s letter, now gone stiff, from a white handkerchief and immersed it in the water. Three heads, two brown-haired and one blonde, pressed close together and watched as a pink then dark red colouring pervaded the water and settled on the bottom of the dish.
‘Careful now,’ said Süßmann. ‘Leave the preparation to me.’
‘Preparation. That’s a good one,’ muttered Kroysing.
It was a delicate businesss to make it possible to unfold the letter without destroying the paper or washing the ink away. The timing had to be exact. The dead man had used an army postal service letter card. You could write on both sides and on the inside of the envelope, and it was all held together with glue. Warily, Süßmann swayed the paper back and forwards. Soon the water was entirely brown.
‘May I pour it away?’ he asked.
‘Shame,’ answered Kroysing. ‘Now I won’t be able to make anyone drink it.’
Süßmann silently emptied the dish into a bucket and poured new water on the letter, whose gummed sides were already starting to loosen. The letter softened, and a third lot of water remained clear. The pages were laid between blotting paper. The writing was only slightly blurred.
‘Good ink,’ said Kroysing flatly. ‘The lad loved clear, black writing on the page. Do you want to hear what it says?’
This is it, thought Bertin, his breath catching. Who would have thought it possible?
‘Dearest Mother,’ Eberhard Kroysing read, ‘forgive me for writing to bother you with my troubles this time. Up until now, I’ve made my situation sound rosier than it is. We were brought up to tell the truth and never to shrink from pursuing what is right; fear God more than people, you used to say. And although I no longer believe in God, as you well know, that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten everything that was ingrained in us as children. In April, I wrote a letter to Uncle Franz describing to him how our NCOs misuse the men’s rations and live it up at their expense. Uncle Franz knows how important an unblemished sense of justice is to the men’s morale. Things are what he would call a bloody scandal. My letter was opened by our censor. Papa will explain to you why a court martial investigation was then started, and not of the NCOs but of me, and why our battalion doesn’t want this investigation to go ahead. As a result, I’ve been shifted on a permanent basis to the most dangerous place there is. If you only knew, dear mother, how much it pains me to write this. Now you’ll be sick with worry and sleep badly, imagining me already in the ground. Don’t believe it is so, dear mother. I appeal to your clever heart. I’ve been living here for two months in the cellar of a big farmhouse, and nothing has happened to me yet. You can tell from that how little chance there is that something will happen. But it can’t last forever or I might come a cropper after all. Please therefore wire Uncle Franz immediately. He must get me brought before the court martial in Montmédy as a matter of urgency. He must give the court martial my exact address, because I suspect Captain Niggl has had me declared “whereabouts unknown” or some funny business like that.’ (‘Well spotted, lad,’ muttered the older brother as he turned the page.) ‘He mustn’t allow himself to be fobbed off. He must phone the court martial immediately and support me to the hilt. He doesn’t have to worry. I’m exactly the same as I was two years ago when I volunteered. My sense of responsibility simply wouldn’t allow me to look on in silence. I’ve tried to rope Eberhard in, but he’s extremely busy – you know where he is and what he’s doing – and as an officer he shouldn’t be getting involved in my business. I haven’t heard from him for a couple of weeks. And I’m not sending this letter to you directly but through the good offices of an ASC private and scholar whom I got to know today. Act quickly and prudently, dear Mama, guiding light of our family, as you always do. You’ve had a hard time with us. But when we’re back and there’s peace, we’ll understand what life is worth, how good it is to be home, and what we have in each other. Because a great deal has turned out to be lies, much more than you realise, much more than ought to be. We’ll all have to start again to spare the world a repeat of what we’ve seen here with our own eyes, done with our own hands and suffered with our own bodies. But the mutual love between parents and children – that has proved durable and dependable, and that’s where I’ll finish. Always your loving son, Christoph. PS: Give Papa a big kiss and tell him he can write to me himself.’
The audience of two was silent. The faint rumble from the daily artillery fire rattled the closed windows. ‘If you think about it,’ said Eberhard Kroysing, ‘if you really think about it, we are no closer to the earth’s surface than the author of this letter – with one small difference that Captain Niggl is soon going to know all about.’
Suddenly, Bertin ducked. A brief, wild howl. Then a shattering crash nearby that echoed dully against the walls. Then a second. ‘This
all helps,’ smiled Kroysing.
CHAPTER THREE
Captain Niggl
CAPTAIN NIGGL— AFTER the march-in he’d lain down to sleep with a mixture of elation and disgust on an iron bed, which, to his eternal relief was tucked under a white-washed vaulting of reassuring thickness. ‘Safe wee billet, Douaumont, isn’t it?’ he kept saying to the garrison commander’s adjutant in his outmoded Bavarian accent. At least there was a good cart load of cement above his head. If he managed to sleep here for two weeks he’d definitely get the Iron Cross, first class and become a great man in Weilheim for the rest of time – and not just in Weilheim. Such were his thoughts. He’d convinced himself that the men of the Third Company, who were billeted in an enormous vaulted casemate in the same wing and had received hot coffee, bread and tinned dripping after their night march, would sleep reasonably well on their three-high wire bunks and sacks of wood shavings and that their first duty the following morning would be to scour out their new quarters.
But first thing in the morning, the French sent him and his men a warning not to confuse this place with the previous one. While searching for a latrine, Privates Michael Baß and Adam Wimmerl ended up in a large courtyard open to the south that it was better not to enter at certain times. While they were still looking for somewhere to squat, a long-range battery, with which the garrison was very familiar, fired its first shell of the morning and blew them to bits. This caused a great deal of alarm, and struck the captain as an omen. It weighed heavily on him. Much weighed heavily on him. The air was bad, and the tunnels in this wing, unlike those in the other wings, were jet black with soot. The electric wiring had been newly laid. A side tunnel was completely sealed by a wall, which, though fairly new, consisted partly of old debris and boulders. The echoing vaults really were no fun, and the duties the company had been assigned were unpleasant: blasting operations while the French and German artillery exchanged fire; night-time spadework during which talking and smoking were forbidden, although the French front lay nearly 3km to the other side the fort. The commandant, a polite and taciturn Prussian captain from the Münster area, wasn’t a promising drinking buddy, much less the infantry officers, stationed here with a relief battalion, the radio operators and telephonists. The artillery lieutenant in charge of the armoured turrets was somewhat more affable. But when Niggl appeared in the towers, he pulled his head in nervously like a turtle, and the artillery officer hated that. Niggl hadn’t yet spoken to the sapper officer under whose command the Third Company was working. The sergeant majors had been in touch, and the lieutenant had inspected the men. But Captain Niggl had the right to expect the lieutenant to visit him first.
This happened. One morning between 10am and 11am, while the captain was writing an overblown letter to his wife, there was a knock on his door and the sapper lieutenant entered. Captain Niggl’s room was exactly the same as the lieutenant’s own, except that, as already mentioned, it faced one of the other sides of the moat, the north-west. This meant the entire length of the fort, some 300m, separated them. The lieutenant almost had to duck as he entered, and he rose tall and thin in the light from the window. Captain Niggl had turned his left side to it so that his writing hand didn’t cast a shadow on the paper. The captain was delighted to see the lieutenant and stood up to greet his visitor. But the visitor’s first words took his breath away. The sapper lieutenant asked that he kindly be allowed to introduce himself: his name was Kroysing, Eberhard Kroysing, and he hoped that he and the captain would work well together. As he uttered these harmless-sounding, official words, his eyes searched Herr Niggl’s face. A career in the civil service engenders self-control. Herr Niggl politely offered his visitor a seat, but his inner eye was scanning the threatening outlines of some shadowy connections.
‘Kroysing?’ he repeated in a questioning tone.
The tall lieutenant bowed in confirmation. ‘Exactly so. You know the name.’
‘We had an NCO in the Third Company—’
‘That was my brother,’ the lieutenant broke in.
Sadly, sadly, death always takes the best ones, said Captain Niggl sympathetically. Sergeant Kroysing had been a model of conscientiousness who would have been a credit to the officer corps. He’d only have had to hold out for another couple of months, and the worst would have been over. He would have got home leave and then gone to officer training and everything would have turned out well. Wasn’t it just like the thing that the Frogs had got him just before?
The lieutenant bowed in thanks. Yes, war didn’t pick and choose, and his parents would slowly get over it. His brother had implied something about a court martial procedure the last time they spoke. But that had been at the end of April or beginning of May, if memory served, soon after the dreadful explosion at any rate and during the heavy fighting towards Thiaumont-Fleury, and he really hadn’t had time to deal with it. He’d only spoken to his brother for about 20 minutes. What had the whole thing been about?
Captain Niggl began by asking how the lieutenant had come to serve in a Prussian unit when the Kroysings were a good Bavarian family, Franconian if he wasn’t mistaken, from Nuremberg. The lieutenant explained that he had been drafted into the Mark sappers as a staff sergeant in the military Reserve immediately after the end of term at the Technical University in Charlottenburg and had remained there as a lieutenant. This was a reflection of the unity of the German Reich that their grandfathers had talked so much about and that their fathers had fought for in 1870. But to get back to the court martial procedure: what was it really about?
Nothing, said Herr Niggl. Or as good as nothing. The army postal censor was overly nervous, and honest young Sergeant Kroysing had unfortunately written a couple of injudicious phrases to a high-ranking military official. He really couldn’t remember anything more specific at the moment. He’d been terribly annoyed to have to investigate such a good soldier for something like that. But it wasn’t up to him, and besides young Kroysing would definitely have emerged from the investigation untarnished. Alas, everyone underestimated the dangers the ASC men faced. Had the lieutenant heard that two of his men had been blown to bits only yesterday morning, just as Christoph had been a couple of months before?
The lieutenant made a mental note that Niggl had said ‘Christoph’. His expression remained unchanged. He too was sure that the court martial would have rehabilitated his brother, he said. But where were the files? Whom should he approach to get the process underway? Herr Niggl said he didn’t know. The files had gone through official channels, the way of all flesh. Perhaps the Third Company’s Sergeant Major Feicht could provide some information. Sergeant Major Feicht, the lieutenant repeated, noting the name down. And what about his brother’s effects? There were all sorts of valuable items, some from the time of their great-grandfather, Judge Kroysing in the Royal Bavarian Court, and personal things that might console their mother. And papers, maybe sketches or poems. Christoph had written some now and then. Their mother would probably want to pull together a small memorial booklet for relatives and friends. In short, where were these things?
Captain Niggl was taken aback and said that they had remained at the military hospital, which had sent them home as it was obliged to do. No, said Lieutenant Kroysing, that was not the case. On the day of the funeral, the military hospital had told him that the company had claimed the effects straight away in order to send them home itself. Ah yes, said the captain, it just showed how faithfully the Third Company’s orderly room looked after its men. The items must have been sent to Nuremberg immediately. Hmm, said Lieutenant Kroysing, then all that remained was for him to express his thanks. With the captain’s permission he would ask at home if the effects had arrived in the meantime and report back. But now he wouldn’t encroach on his time any longer. He’d interrupted him about a purely private matter when he was in the middle of writing a letter. Just one more question, this time of an official nature, and with this he stood up: in order to encourage his men, might the captain occasionally like to acco
mpany the early-morning bomb disposal units or the night-time construction parties? It would definitely make a good impression and help the captain with the commanding officers. Danger lurked both inside and out. With that, he bowed and took leave of the higher-ranked, senior officer with the prescribed salute: heels together, finger to his cap. He didn’t give him his hand.
Niggl the retired civil servant from Weilheim sat there gazing after him as he wiped the sweat from his brow. He suddenly realised that he was being held prisoner here in this vault, that it was like a trap, perhaps even a grave. Why had that idiot Sergeant Kroysing not looked more like his brother – as dangerous as him? Why had he had such a harmless, boyish face and behaved like a fool? God help the man who came under the scrutiny of the brother’s eyes, into his hands. Only a bonehead could believe it was a coincidence that he and his Third Company – they and no other – had ended up here. That man knew something – what remained to be seen. Now he even wanted to send him, Niggl, out on official business into that bloody awful shell-cratered world, where a man could so easily be taken out by a shell splinter or a bullet. He would have to write to Captain Lauber immediately, or better still telephone him – immediately. Someone had deceived Captain Lauber: this was private revenge through official means. He and his ASC men were out of place here; he’d surely see that. Or should he first inform Simmdering and Feicht? What had happened to Kroysing’s effects? Were they still lying about in company storage because no one had found the time to read through the lad’s scribbles? Had the foxes been at them? No, there was no rush. He’d be able to take advice long before Kroysing had an answer from home. The most urgent matter was to discover the enemy’s intentions and find out what he knew.
Outside Verdun Page 13