‘If those are lightweight, I wouldn’t like to see the heavy ones,’ said Bertin.
A screen of wire and branches covered in earth protected the mine throwers from aerial view. Hot coffee was brought to them from the dugout. Süßmann suggested going down. Bertin asked to stay up. The cold, damp earth and the smell that escaped from it disgusted him. He watched the small, thin Saxon men at their posts in horror. There were so few of them, and their faces were wretched. This was the front – the grey Wall of Heroes that protected Germany’s conquests. They were already worn down and overextended. Gingerly sipping his hot coffee, Bertin asked Süßmann if the surrounding dugouts would withstand a bombardment.
Süßmann just laughed and said they were safe against shrapnel, nothing more. In an emergency, they might withstand one 7.5cm shell, but not 10. If the rain came, it would get inside. He pointed to the pale, hazy ball of the moon, which cast a faint glow, and said that rain was on its way as surely as their wages. The newly replenished battalion of over 700 men had 12 light and six heavy machine guns at its disposal, and with that it was expected to hold an area twice as wide as the previous month. And the French were always putting fresh divisions in the front line, and they withdrew their men after a short stint for a proper rest and a good feed. They didn’t undermine their nerves with inadequate rations of fat, poor quality jam and stale bread made with leftovers. The four mine throwers were to replace two batteries taken out of the line. Everyone was ready for peace, that much was clear, but it didn’t much look like peace. Men in helmets and caps kept rushing past them, stumbling and swearing under their breath. Like a dark cloud, danger, palpable to all, seemed to roll in across the upturned earth from the other side of the trenches. Two hundred metres of land is a broad stretch but for a bullet it’s nothing. Advancing infantrymen cover it in five minutes, a shell in a second. So this is the war at last, thought Bertin. Now you have it. You’re stuck on its outermost edge like a fly in glue. Your heart and lungs are pounding, and the enemy isn’t even doing anything. Pale light poured down from above, casting black shadows in the trench. Had they missed the sound of the rockets going up? There’d definitely be more action tonight. Bertin noticed that his knees and hands were trembling with suppressed tension. He made to leave his cover and climb up the recess cut into the trench wall.
‘Have you gone mad?’ Süßmann hissed in his hear. ‘They’ll be able to pick out your pale face against the black earth quite easily from over there with their night glasses.’
Nothing would happen in their sector, but if the French were paying attention the battalion that was being relieved might get some grief as the troops were being exchanged. Suddenly – and Bertin’s heart seemed to stop – the machine gun they had passed earlier spat out a furious volley. It thrust maliciously up into the night, though he didn’t see its fire. Three or four of the same weapons continued the noise. Nearby, rockets whistled up and released their signal lights, bathing the huddled soldiers’ faces in a strange red glow. Soon, a wild gurgling roared over their heads and there was a crash far in front of them.
‘Barrage fire,’ said Süßmann in Bertin’s ear. ‘It’s just for show to fool the Frogs.’
From the way the two Saxons had pressed themselves into the ground, Bertin could tell that they were frightened too – the guns often shot too short. What if the diversion worked and the French replied? It did work. Flashing and roaring ahead, with blinding light from the sides. Men in artillery caps appeared from the dugout with an aiming circle. Under the protection of the mine throwers’ screen, they sighted the flashes from the French guns and shouted figures to one another. Bertin wondered how long this terrible din would last, the explosions, flames, flickers, howling and droning in the starlit night. He couldn’t stand it. There was a thunderous ringing his ears, and the once repellent dugout now seemed like a refuge. He stumbled down the stairs, pushed aside a tarpaulin and saw brightness and men sitting and lying on wire grating, their weapons to hand beside them. A stearin cartridge on a box cast a thin glow, and the air underground was thick and smoky. The faces of the sappers, gunners and Saxon riflemen made him feel almost sick. Until now he had garlanded them with splendid delusions, draped them in noble titles. But no illusion could hold out here. The men in this boarded clay grave were just lost battalions, the sacrificed herds of world markets, which were currently experiencing a glut in human material. Crouched on a plank under the earth 200m from the enemy and yawning suddenly from exhaustion, he saw that even here the men were just doing their duty – nothing more than that.
The earth rumbled above him, chunks fell from the walls, dust rained down from the timbers and as the infantrymen calmly carried on smoking their cigarettes, he wondered hesitantly how he had come to see this truth. It hurt! It robbed you of the strength to endure life. Surely it couldn’t be the same everywhere else as in his own company. He must tell Kroysing about it. Was that Kroysing coming through the door? Yes, there was young Kroysing in his sergeant’s cap, smiling engagingly. Things were pretty jolly in the cellars at Chambrettes-Ferme. The sausage machines were rattling away and guts were being stretched for sausage skins, and on the door hung the new regulation about using human flesh, grey human flesh…
Sergeant Süßmann looked at Private Bertin’s face both in amusement and complete sympathy. He’d fallen abruptly asleep and his steel helmet had fallen from his head. Süßmann took Bertin’s hand and moved it to and fro, establishing that the boy had come through it all fine.
‘The relief of the battalion took place one and a half hours ahead of schedule. Nothing to report.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
The gift
AROUND 11PM, SÜSSMANN woke Bertin in darkness; the candle had burnt down and gone out. He’d been dreaming about an incredibly violent storm on Lake Ammer. Lightning seemed to whip up the expanse of water, and thunder echoed off the mountain walls against underwater banks.
‘Up you get,’ said Süßmann. ‘Big fireworks display. It’s worth a look.’
Bertin knew immediately where he was. His head hurt, but it would clear in the open air. Outside, the trench was full of men, all looking behind them. A roar like an organ playing filled the night with thunderous tones. Flames sprang up over the neighbouring sector. Fiery discharges rained down, methodically spread out across the approach routes and familiar hills and valleys. As the shells hit, they hurled up fiery gasses and earth in cloud-like columns. The howl as they approached, the pounding tide of vicious hissing, the ringing, rattling and manic cracking, made Bertin’s heart tremble, but he also pressed Süßmann’s arm in fascination as the full force of the human drive to destroy was unleashed – rejoicing in evil’s omnipotence.
A thin, bespectacled Saxon sergeant standing next to Bertin surprised him by calmly observing: ‘That’s what we can do, bastards that we may be.’
As Bertin looked at the man’s stubbly face under his helmet, his narrow cheekbones and shrewd eyes, and the two ribbons, black and white and green and white, in his top buttonhole, he felt a surge of pride and admiration for his comrades, these German soldiers with their sense of duty, their hopelessness, their grim courage. They’d seen it all.
Luckily, the first battalion was to get off lightly this time. It would all be over in 10 minutes, Süßmann shouted in his ear. Then, Bertin knew, the German artillery would take its turn, and this squaring of accounts would create more destruction – a new day of anti-creation.
In the meantime, the young Saxon calmly lit his pipe, and a couple of others shared his lighter. The wild noise gradually petered out. They could hear one another again. It was only above the Adalbert line that shrapnel was still exploding. That’s where the long 10cm guns were, said the Saxon. They’d obviously received a big batch of ammunition and were now getting rid of it. Of course, his neighbour confirmed. Otherwise, they’d have to take it back home if peace broke out that day. The young sergeant pooh-poohed this. Peace wouldn’t break out that quickly. Plenty of time to pour a few more
pots of coffee before that happened. There were many more medals to be pocketed and bestowed before peace could be allowed to break out.
‘Of course, it’s not just medals,’ said the neighbour. Bertin listened up. These men were talking like Pahl, like the inn-keeper Lebehde, Halezinsky the gas worker and little Vehse from Hamburg. In the pallid darkness that had once more descended, their faces shimmered like masks under the sharp edges of their helmets.
The men who were still on duty looked ahead again, while the others began to vanish into the dugouts. The bespectacled Saxon had just expressed his amazement at Bertin’s cap and was asking what kinds of folks Süßmann and his lieutenant had brought to the front, when Father Lochner’s substantial shoulders came into view, topped by Kroysing’s tall form. Süßmann quickly kicked the Saxon in the shin, and he got the message equally quickly. ‘I’m a theology student too and I’ve never been out of Halle in my life,’ he said.
‘A colleague?’ asked the chaplain innocently.
‘Yes, Pastor, sir!’ replied the sergeant, standing to attention. Bertin bit back a grin. ‘Sir’ and ‘pastor’ didn’t go together.
Father Lochner didn’t notice. He wanted to be kind to the young man. ‘The hand of our Lord God will continue to protect you,’ he said and made to move on.
But in his polite voice and as if agreeing with the priest, the young theologian replied, ‘I almost believe that myself. Nothing will happen to us for the time being. The likes of us get killed on the morning of the armistice.’
Lochner twitched, said nothing and tried to move on. The Saxons nudged one another. As they moved on, Kroysing spoke into his companion’s ear, asking him if this sample of sentiment at the front was enough for him and if he’d like to head for home.
‘Ten minutes and a schnapps,’ the priest requested.
Kroysing was happy to oblige. ‘When will you speak to Herr Niggl?’ he asked casually as he unhooked his canteen.
Lochner’s face took on an imploring look. ‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ he promised. ‘As soon as I get back.’
Kroysing’s head revolved on his long neck like a lighthouse. He was looking for Bertin. ‘I want to gather in my chicks,’ he explained.
Sergeant Süßmann cocked his thumb Bertin’s direction. ‘He’s studying no man’s land.’
Bertin had forced his head into a gap in the screen above the mine throwers. Hands cupping his eyes, he peered into the night at the glinting barbed wire entanglements. The reflection from the explosions no longer blinded him. Far back to the right, German shells were now bursting. Something formless menaced in the distance, something dark, strange and fascinating. And he remembered a school excursion he’d gone on one morning as a 13-year-old to Three Emperors’ Corner, where the German Kaiser’s Reich met those of the Austrians and the Tsars behind the town of Myslowitz. The greenish waters of a stream called the Przemsa snaked between them. Nothing distinguished one bank of the stream from the other: flat green land, a railway bridge, a sandy path, and in the distance a wood. Only the uniform of the border Cossack was different from that of the German customs guard. But the young schoolboy had nonetheless sensed the foreign on the other side of the stream, another country both threatening and fascinating, where the language was unintelligible, the customs different and the people uneducated, perhaps even dangerous. Borders, thought Bertin. Borders! What tales we’ve been told! What had that clever Saxon said when the French were shooting? ‘Bastards that we may be.’ We: that’s what it was all about. Who had held his canteen to a Frenchman’s thirsty lips? And now this…? There was no hope of getting to the truth.
Kroysing watched his charge approvingly. He’d brought him here partly to study his behaviour at the edge of the abyss. No doubt about it: he’d done well. Let him go back to his stuffy old company, he thought, and then my suggestion will seem to him like a message from heaven.
‘Why are you shaking your head, Bertin?’ he asked behind his back.
‘I can’t see anything,’ Bertin answered, climbing down carefully.
‘Reason should have told you that would be the case.’
‘Sometimes we believe appearances more than reason.’
‘All right,’ said Kroysing. ‘Now we can get some sleep.’
On the way back, the moon and stars lit the pitted area. Refreshed from his sleep, Bertin gladly breathed in the air, which cooled as they pushed on. The burnt smoke from the explosives hadn’t blown this way; the night wind had driven it to the river. After half an hour of walking in silence, Kroysing tapped Bertin on the shoulder and pulled him back a little.
‘I don’t know if we’ll get a chance to speak tomorrow, as you’re sleeping in Süßmann’s billet and clearing off early,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen what kinds of nice surprises the Frogs have in store for us. We got off lightly today; tomorrow could be a different story. For that reason, I’d like to prevail on you again in relation to our small family matter. There are a couple of objects in my desk drawer that belonged to my brother and a couple of papers that Judge Advocate Mertens must receive as soon as someone has signed a certain harmless slip of paper. If I’m not able to do it, I’ll rely on you. Will that be okay?’ he asked urgently.
And after a moment’s thought Bertin said, ‘That’ll be okay.’
‘Excellent,’ said Kroysing. ‘Then all that remains is for me to carry out a commission on behalf of my brother, who sends you his fountain pen through me.’ Kroysing’s big hand held out a black rod.
Bertin was taken aback. His eyes under the rim of his helmet timidly sought those of Kroysing, whose war-like face was dusky in the gloaming. ‘Please, don’t,’ he said quietly. ‘This belongs to your parents.’
‘It belongs to you,’ retorted Kroysing. ‘I’m executing his will.’ Bertin hesitantly took the gift from Kroysing’s fingers and looked at it, concealing his superstitious feelings. ‘I hope it will serve you longer than it did the youngster and remind you of the Kroysings’ gratitude every time you put it to paper. A writer and a pen like that go together.’
Bertin thanked him uncertainly. The pressure of the long, hard object in the breast pocket of his tunic felt new and strange: the Kroysings held him fast.
BOOK FIVE
In the fog
CHAPTER ONE
October
THE EARTH WAS a rusty disc, capped by a pewter sky from which rain had been falling for a month.
On 20 October, four tired ASC men trudged up morosely from Moirey station. They and Sergeant Knappe, the ammunitions expert, had been engaged in the tedious task of loading powder charges on to a goods lorry and now they were done. All of them longed for a cigarette or a smoke of a pipe, but it was out of the question. Their wages weren’t due until the day after next, when they would all get their tobacco ration for the next 10 days. Until then, they helped each another out. Private Bertin, for example, had promised to give one of his remaining cigarettes to each of the other three, as the paper irritated his sensitive throat. Shivering and fed up, the four men tramped back along the main road to the depot. The road was covered in a layer of whitish mush as thick as a thumb unsuited to their lace-up shoes. The men wore tarpaulins wrapped round them like short hooded coats to protect them from the rain, but as they’d already done a day’s shift in Fosses wood, the stiff canvas material was soaked through. The canvas jackets they wore underneath were damp too. Only their tunics were still dry, and if it got any colder they could put their coats on for another layer. These four very different men had all volunteered to help the ammunitions expert; Lebehde the shrewd inn-keeper had offered because he hoped to bum a smoke from the railwaymen, Przygulla the farm labourer because he did everything Lebehde did, good-natured Otto Reinhold because he didn’t want to leave his fellow skat players in the lurch and Bertin for reasons connected with his visit to the front-line trenches.
Sergeant Knappe, a thin, hollow-cheeked men with a straggly, blonde beard, was extremely conscientious and reliable, the sort who usually makes it to
80 although he looks like a consumptive. Lebehde the inn-keeper was a well-known figure. Until his death by a Reichswehr bullet in the desperate workers’ uprising of 1919 in the Holzmarkstraße-Jannowitzbrücke area of Berlin, he would use his energy and powers of persuasion to pursue what he thought was right, a benevolent smile always crinkling the corners of his eyes. Przygulla the farm labourer, a neglected child from a family of nine or 10, might have turned out differently and had a livelier intelligence if the growths behind his nose had been removed when they should have been. As it was, his thick lips hung open because he had trouble breathing, which made him look stupid. Otto Reinhold, finally, was pleasantness itself. His friendly face, toothless smile and bluish eyes might have lent him a spinsterish air, but a carefully trimmed moustache asserted his virility. He was also a respected master plumber from Turmstraße in Berlin-Moabit.
Private Bertin had changed a lot since he’d been ‘up front’. Everyone said so. He couldn’t forget the Saxons’ haggard faces, their worn skin and sleepless eyes – couldn’t forget that it had now been raining in those trenches for a month, that the men ‘up front’ scarcely saw hot food and were surrounded by a layer of sludge, which covered their hands, clothes and boots. Their dugouts were irretrievably swamped, and their every step took them through slippery, squishing mud. All the shell holes were now flooded pools, and the roads, pathways and traverses had been impassable for ages. It was inhuman, which was why Bertin had volunteered to do overtime that day. He’d explained this to his comrade Pahl, but Pahl was having none of it – he said it was for those at the front to think about the causes and consequences of their situation.
Outside Verdun Page 21