by Richard Fox
“Is your offer to see the trenches still good?” he asked.
The lieutenant looked Manfred over, but didn’t stop walking. “Don’t you have to set the table for dinner?”
“No, I’m only a lieutenant, a captain handles the china.” His joke fell flat. “Look, Lieutenant…”
“Eisen”
“Lieutenant Eisen, I had to beg, literally beg, my captain to—”
“All right, shut up,” Eisen said. “You been in combat?”
“Some,” Manfred said. Was one losing battle enough to impress him? “I was in the cavalry, but horses don’t do well against machine guns.”
“Men don’t do too well either.” Eisen sighed heavily and shook his head. “Fine, you do what I say and stay out of the way. Got it?”
“Yes!” Manfred said, a smile on his face for the first time in months.
“Won’t matter. Should be quiet for the rest of the day,” Eisen said as he looked to the sky, the afternoon sun giving way to early evening.
Their march toward the trenches was quiet, Eisen deflecting Manfred’s attempts at conversation. The green farmland around the headquarters morphed into earth rent by war. Shell craters dotted the landscape with greater frequency as they moved west. Dark soil, kicked up by explosions, stained fields like blood splatter.
They passed through a forest, now nothing more than blackened trunks with little more than stubs for branches. Red poppies sprang from the soil, bits of color across the churned earth.
Manfred picked up a poppy and examined it.
“I haven’t noticed these before,” he said.
Eisen stuck his arm out, his hand halting Manfred’s progress.
“Quiet,” he hissed. Eisen craned his neck, searching the sky for something.
Manfred did as ordered. He saw orange-and-red bands of sunset creeping up from the horizon, but nothing else.
“Sorry, thought I heard an airplane,” Eisen said. “We’re almost to the trenches.” A ripple of distant thunder claps washed over them, the source of the sound far to the west. Eisen continued walking.
“You’re more worried about an airplane than that French artillery?” Manfred said.
“Those are French one-oh-five mortars, they can’t range us from here,” he said.
A gust of wind stole the sound of the distant artillery, and brought with it a smell of rot. The smell reminded Manfred of a wolf-ravaged deer carcass he’d come across while hunting years ago. The deer was tucked beneath a patch of bush, maggots writhing in the flesh.
“Good god, what is that smell?” Manfred asked.
“Bodies in no-man’s-land. We’ll have a truce with the French every once in a while to get them, but then some new commander will show up on one side of the lines and put an end to that. Soon as the wind blows strong enough, the truce will come back.”
Eisen looked to the sky again, and led Manfred into the trenches. “The aircraft are spotters for the artillery. Normally, the barrage is off the first few rounds. We have enough time to get into bunkers, and the guns might never find the right range.” Eisen’s voice shrank and seemed to come from a faraway place as he continued. “With a spotter, the rounds are dead-on almost from the start. I had to dig out two bunkers that took direct hits.” His hand went to the now empty pouch dangling from his belt.
The trenches were deep enough that Manfred couldn’t see over the top and zigzagged every few yards to stop an invader from shooting straight down the entire length of the trench. The crooked line of trenches would contain the explosion of an artillery shell or hand grenade well enough that a soldier the next section over might survive the blast. Manfred appreciated that Vauban forts, one of the many topics that hadn’t held his interest at the academy, were resurrected for twentieth-century warfare.
Manfred kept within arm’s distance of Eisen, who navigated the maze of trenches, machine gun nests, and dugouts with ease. Soldiers they passed gave quick nods of respect to Eisen and curious glances to Manfred.
“What can be done about the spotters?” Manfred asked. A dark spot in the amber sky caught Manfred’s attention.
“Not much we can do down here. There are a few pilots who can—”
“What do the spotter planes look like? Is that one?” Manfred pointed to the spot, which had changed into an oblong shape.
Eisen’s answer was a string of expletives. The lieutenant started running.
Manfred, caught flat-footed, took off in pursuit. Soldiers across the trench line shouted warnings and ducked into their dugouts. Eisen moved with surprising quickness for such a large man. Manfred managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of him disappearing around a trench wall as the first shell landed.
His only warning was a sibilant rush as the shell exploded outside the trench line. A wave of overpressure popped his eardrums and pounded the air from his lungs. He stumbled against the wooden boards that made up the trench wall and looked for Eisen. More rounds landed, each sending a tremor through the earth.
Manfred was at an intersection of the trench line, alone. Fear curled unyielding fingers around his chest.
“Eisen!” he yelled, the cry sounded distant to his battered ears.
A shell exploded in the trench line with enough force to throw Manfred to the ground. He lay in the mud as chunks of soil rained down on him. He rolled over to his hands and knees and pounded at his chest to force his stunned diaphragm into compliance. He managed a raggedy breath and saw something in the dirt in front of him.
A severed leg lay before him, adorned with a black boot and a gray trouser leg. It looked natural lying there, as if the owner had simply forgotten about it.
Manfred turned away from the limb and half-ran, half-stumbled away from it. More shells buffeted him before another near miss sent him into a fetid puddle. A chunk of roots and soil landed in front of him, splashing his face and mouth with horrid-tasting water. The idea of being buried alive suddenly became very real to the young officer.
Manfred felt himself being pulled from the puddle, then thrust into darkness. He wheezed and coughed as he groped around. Whispers greeted him from the blackness.
A match flared, illuminating the worn face of a soldier, a line of black stitches tracing their way up from his jawbone to his temple. The match lit a lamp, which cast a jaundiced glow through the dugout.
“Told you I’d find him,” said the soldier holding the lamp.
“Richthofen, are you all right?” Eisen asked as he knelt next beside the dirty and stunned officer.
Manfred nodded and spat out a glob of mud.
“Is this Lieutenant Weissgerber’s replacement?” asked the man with the lantern.
“No, he’s on loan from headquarters. Richthofen, this is Sergeant Haas, my ranking noncommissioned officer,” Eisen said. He pulled Manfred to his feet. “Show him around. I need to check on the kids.”
Haas hung the lantern from a wooden beam and handed Manfred a canteen.
“Here you are, sir. Nothing like trench mud to spice up a visit, eh?” The sergeant chuckled at his own joke as Manfred cleaned his mouth out with the vaguely cleaner water from the canteen.
The dugout was full of soldiers. Gaunt men, all too filthy for the parade field with faces that hadn’t seen a razor in days. The room stank of feet and an open privy. A near miss from a shell shook dirt from the ceiling and sent the lantern swaying.
“Is it always like this?” Manfred asked.
“No, it’s been worse since the spotters showed up. Too bad there’s only one Boelcke,” Haas’s face twitched as he ran a finger gingerly up and down the row of stitches.
“Who?”
“Sir, I thought you knew everything at headquarters. Oswald Boelcke, won an Iron Cross for shooting down a French plane. He got a Pour Le Merite from the Kaiser after the fourth plane he shot out of the sky,” Haas said. As the Kingdom of Prussia’s highest award for merit, and the Kaiser being Prussian, the Pour Le Merite was the highest award a Germany could give a soldier, on par t
o the English Victoria Cross or American Medal of Honor.
Haas pulled a dagger from his belt. “Which reminds me,” he said. He walked to the other side of a ceiling support beam and put the blade to the wood. Manfred joined the sergeant, who was carving another notch next to a palm-sized photo of a powerfully built officer smiling for the camera. There were seven notches next to the picture.
“I saw him shoot down his third a few weeks ago. Damnedest thing watching two planes dancing in the sky like that.” Haas sheathed the blade on his belt, which was covered with a mismatch of buttons and brass insignia.
“You like this, sir?” Haas said when he caught Manfred looking at his belt. “My hate belt—been adding to it since the first few days of the war.” He pointed to a worn button with a bugle emblazoned on it. “Got that one in Alsace off a French lieutenant wearing white gloves—strange thing to wear into battle.” He pointed to another button, “Got this off an English soldier that rode a bicycle to the battle…where was it?”
“You took those from the dead?” Manfred asked.
“Yes, sir, but only from the ones I killed myself. The man that had this,” he raised the lower lip of his hate belt, and he ran his thumb over a French rank pin, “gave me this.” He turned his face so Manfred could see the stitches closing up what would turn into a lifelong scar. “I came out ahead in that deal.” He barked a laugh.
The bunker shook as a French shell landed nearly on top of them. Someone cried out in fear from the other end of the bunker. Haas and Manfred turned and saw a young soldier sitting in a corner, his knees pulled against his chest.
A pair of soldiers knelt next to the young man. One put a reassuring hand on the frightened man’s shoulder as the other spoke. Another explosion sent tremors up Manfred’s body.
“Dieter and Gregor, they do what they can for the fresh soldiers,” Haas said.
“How long has that man been here?”
“About two hours longer than you,” Haas said.
The rest of the soldiers in the dugout took the bombardment with practiced unease, by Manfred’s estimation. Men cleaned weapons, played cards, and took the time to sleep. How anyone could sleep with tons of metal screaming down on their heads was a miracle to Manfred.
Eisen approached, carrying a spiked helmet. He handed it to Manfred.
“Here, wear this when we leave,” he said.
“I’m an officer, not an enlisted man,” Manfred said.
“Pretend you’re a Frenchman. Who would you shoot first, an officer or just another soldier?”
“Then how can the men recognize us?” Manfred put the helmet on his head and adjusted the chin strap. The felt and cloth of the helmet provided little assurance against the threat of bullets and shrapnel.
Eisen pulled a whistle from a cord under his uniform and slapped the pistol at his hip. “Easy, I’m always out front.”
The bombardment lasted another two hours. Manfred sat next to the sleeping Eisen, who’d given him strict instructions to wake him up if more than thirty seconds passed without an artillery strike.
Manfred passed the time watching the soldiers. They joked among themselves and kept up raucous stories of French girls at the rest camps, and they grumbled over the food that made its way to the trenches. They weren’t, Manfred noted with sadness, that different from the cavalrymen he led into battle.
The new arrival, Private Otto, had kept to himself in a corner, his arms wrapped around his knees, trembling with the shell impact tremors.
After the first hour and a half, Dieter took a violin from a case and played songs from Wagner’s opera, Siegfried. Gregor sang the role of Mime, Siegfried’s adoptive father, and changed many of the lyrics to poke fun at the German army’s supply system. The two had worked for the Berlin opera houses before volunteering for the war, according to Haas.
Gregor was good enough that Manfred didn’t notice when the bombardment stopped. Soldiers looked toward the ceiling, as if the packed earth would give answers.
Manfred nudged Eisen with his foot. Eisen came awake with a snort. The lull in the shelling held.
Eisen put the whistle to his lips, but he didn’t blow it.
“Let me out!” Otto squealed. The soldier burst from his spot in the corner and ran for the door. Eisen placed himself between the door and the would-be escapee and stopped him with a stiff arm to the chest.
Dieter and Gregor scrambled to their feet and wrestled Otto to the ground, as he squirmed against their grasp.
A dozen shells fell within a few seconds of each other, rattling the entire bunker. Dirt rained down from the ceiling, creating a knee-high fog in the bunker. The pinned man cried harder.
“It’s a trick! They stop the bombardment long enough to lure us out, then they hit us again. Lieutenant Eisen saved your life!” Dieter said to his captive, who’d given way to sobs.
Eisen pressed his ear against the bunker door, and then blew his whistle as he opened the door. The ear-rattling call to battle shook Manfred more than the bombardment; the safety of the bunker was about to end.
Manfred followed Eisen out into the trenches, fumbling with the ill-fitting helmet. Whistles from other commanders reverberated up and down the trench line. Twilight gave a glimpse of the partially collapsed communications trench leading away from no-man’s-land. A wall had blown out, flooding the passageway with earth. The air reeked of ozone and old death, disinterred from the beginning of the war.
Soldiers raced past Manfred and took up positions on the foot-high fire step at the base of the trench. He drew his pistol and locked the hammer back. A jagged chunk of metal the length of his forearm stuck from a trench wall. He reached to pull it out, and then snatched his hand back as the metal burnt his fingers.
Someone chuckled behind him. Haas was there, holding a spade in one hand, a grenade in the other.
“What are you going to do with that? Dig to Paris?” Manfred asked.
Haas pushed the spade toward Manfred’s face; it was sharpened to a razor’s edge.
A machine gun cackled from the French lines, green tracer rounds zipped over the trench line. Soldiers, Manfred included, crouched against the wooden slats of the trench, seeking protection from the earth’s bosom.
“Here we go,” said Haas.
A roar erupted from the French lines. Thousands of voices raised as men went over the top and charged the German lines.
“Fix bayonets!” Eisen said. The blades hissed as they came from their scabbards, followed by the sound of dozens of clicks as the bayonets were attached to the rifles. Manfred looked at his meager pistol and felt like he’d gone to a formal ball only half-dressed.
Manfred stood up to look over the parapet, but was jerked back by Eisen.
“Not yet, there’s—”
A burst of machine gun fire cut Eisen off. A bullet kicked through the dirt where Manfred’s head would have been and impacted the rear of the trench with a thud. Eisen tightened his grip on Manfred’s uniform, his face stern as he opened his mouth to chastise the other lieutenant, when machine guns in the German lines opened up. Red tracer rounds burned through the air. Eisen let Manfred go and took a lightning-fast glimpse over the parapet.
“Open fire!” he ordered.
Soldiers pushed their rifles through small openings in the parapet and lashed out at the French. Manfred, emboldened by the chance to finally do something meaningful, looked into no-man’s-land.
The final rays of sunlight stung Manfred’s eyes, the timing of the French attack meant for precisely that advantage. Inconsistent lines of barbed wire filled the space between shell holes, some of it gnarled into clumps from the indiscriminate shelling. An undulating mass of French troops made their best speed toward him, their bodies striated by red pants and blue tunics.
French soldiers fell as bullets found their marks. Manfred aimed his pistol and pulled the trigger. The blast from the shot was almost lost in the din from the rifles firing around him. No idea if his bullet hit someone. He fired unt
il his gun clicked empty, and a mortar round landed among the French advance before he could retreat behind the parapet. The explosion flung a body into the air and erased a segment of the attackers. He ducked back into the trench before the body could land.
Manfred fumbled with the bullets as he attempted to reload. He’d perfected reloading his pistol while galloping on horseback, but trying to reload while men, determined to kill him, were approaching added an element to the process he couldn’t work through.
A soldier standing next to him shook with a sudden palsy, then fell from the fire step like a puppet with its strings cut. Manfred leapt to the ground next to him, where the soldier lay on his stomach, motionless. Manfred rolled the man onto his back, his helmet askew over his face. A hole the size of Manfred’s thumbnail was present just over the brim; wisps of red smoke came from the hole. Manfred paused as he reached for the helmet, sure of what he’d find underneath.
“Grenades!” Eisen said.
Haas and others hurled their explosives into no-man’s-land. The blast from the grenades was enough to pop Manfred’s eardrums. Screams rang out from no-man’s-land He grabbed the fallen soldier’s rifle and returned to the firing wall. He slipped on a muddy patch and nearly tumbled to the ground as panicked shouts erupted from the German soldiers.
Manfred made it back to the firing step and looked over the parapet. He found a pair of boots right in front of his face. He looked up to see a French soldier holding a rifle over his head like a club. Manfred pushed himself away from the firing wall as the club swung down, missing his head by inches.
Manfred flopped against the duckboard, hitting his head hard enough that a white flash overwhelmed his vision. He shook his head clear as the French soldier dropped onto the firing step. The Frenchman’s red face was drenched in sweat, his moustache dropping over his mouth.
Manfred still had hold of the rifle. He kept his eyes on the Frenchman as he brought the rifle to bear and squeezed the trigger. The Frenchman jerked back against the trench, and then sunk to the ground as if his hands suddenly held great weights. He left a welter of red and black gore on the wall behind him. The dead French soldier sat against the wall for a moment, his head bowed, before falling over on his side.