His meal completed, he remained sitting at the table. There was a knock at the door. His orderly opened it and stood hesitantly at the threshold. ‘Is there anything you wish, sir?’
‘Not at the moment,’ Triebig replied. Thoughtfully, he regarded the shy, boyish face. Then he beckoned the man into the bunker. ‘You can keep me company for a bit,’ he said. ‘I really hardly know you. Sit down somewhere.’
The man looked around the bunker, indecisive. Triebig was sitting on the one chair. ‘Sit down on the bed,’ Triebig suggested. ‘Are you always so timid?’
The orderly risked a shaky smile as he obeyed. ‘No,’ he murmured under his breath. He perched on the extreme edge of the narrow army cot.
Triebig lit a cigarette and studied him with interest. Keppler had been sent to the battalion from a replacement unit only a few weeks ago. Triebig had taken him for an orderly because his own orderly had just been wounded. Keppler was also a runner for 1st Company. No older than nineteen, Triebig guessed. His soft, unformed features bore a helpless expression which was further accentuated by the way he kept his mouth slightly open.
‘Where do you come from?’ Triebig opened the conversation. Keppler clasped his hands over his knees. ‘Frankfurt, sir.’
‘Is that so? I know Frankfurt quite well,’ Triebig commented. ‘I used to run over that way frequently in my car.’
With satisfaction he noted the look of respect that came into Keppler’s face. ‘You have a car of your own, sir?’
Triebig nodded casually. ‘Had one for years. Though it’s been taken over by the army now, like everybody else’s. But we must all do our share for victory.’ Raising his eyebrows, he put on a lofty expression. No need for the boy to know that the car had belonged to his firm. It was always wise to impress these fellows right at the start. Made everything easier. He puffed reflectively on his cigarette for a moment, then leaned forward. ‘Do you live with your parents?’ he asked.
Keppler shook his head sadly. ‘No, they’re dead. My father’s been dead for ten years, and my mother died seven years ago.’
‘Oh!’ Triebig pretended sympathy. In a kindly tone he said: ‘That must have been very hard for you. Where did you live?’
‘In an orphanage, sir. Later I went to work for a baker. I learned the trade there, and lived in the baker’s house.’
‘Didn’t you have any relatives ?’ Triebig asked. ‘I mean, anybody who could take you in?’
‘No, sir. You see, we used to live in Munich. Then we moved to Frankfurt and my parents died there.’
‘Well, well,’ Triebig said. I couldn’t have made a better choice, he thought with gratification. He felt excitement spreading from his thighs throughout his body. He moistened his lips, while his eyes rested upon the boy’s narrow waist. Keppler’s face slowly reddened as if he guessed the lieutenant’s thoughts.
‘You’ve had a tough time,’ Triebig declared. He sat down on the bed beside Keppler. ‘But time heals all wounds. If you get along with me, you’ll have a good life here. You may go now. Come back this evening and arrange my gear.’
Keppler jumped to his feet with repressed excitement. ‘Yes, sir! When shall I come, sir?’
Triebig considered. It was clear that he would have little trouble with the boy. A naive young fellow, and just the type to while away the boredom of long, dull spells with little to do. ‘Don’t come too early,’ he replied. ‘Around ten. We’ll have a chance to talk.’
Keppler’s face flushed with pleasure. He clicked his heels sharply. ‘Yes, sir,’ he began briskly. ‘I -’ Abruptly he paused and lowered his eyes.
‘Well ?’ Triebig smiled. He stood up and chucked the boy under the chin. ‘What did you want to say?’
His jovial tone restored Keppler’s confidence. He raised his head, looked into Triebig’s eyes, and said: ‘I want to make good on this job, sir.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Triebig said patronizingly. He barely touched Keppler’s cheek. ‘Do your best and I’m sure I shall be satisfied with you.’
I hit it just right, he thought, as he watched the boy go out. He felt perspiration starting all over his body. ‘Damnable heat,’ he murmured, dropping on to the cot. For a while he stared blankly at the ceiling. What the hell, he told himself. Who knows whether we’ll be alive tomorrow. You had to grab your chances. But all the same he would have to be careful. For a moment he tried to imagine what would happen if Stransky found out, or one of the other officers. You could not trust anybody. His thoughts drifted back to Keppler. Closing his eyes, he allowed his imagination free rein.
The bunkers of the Regimental Combat HQ were situated on the western slope of a chain of hills that ran from south -east to north -west, shielding the headquarters from the enemy. In the commander’s bunker Lieutenant -Colonel Brandt and Captain Kiesel sat at the table opposite one another. The commander’s gaunt face was angry. ‘I have to attend to every damn triviality,’ Brandt complained violently. ‘Ought to have every corporal in the regiment reporting directly to me every day.’
Kiesel shrugged equably. ‘That would be a good deal of trouble,’ he remarked. ‘Besides, you can hardly blame Stransky. He’s a conscientious officer and was strictly obeying orders.’
‘Don’t tell me that again,’ Brandt replied irritably. ‘To me the word conscientious stinks of pedantry. I need officers able to act on their own initiative when the situation demands. Look at Vogel—by God, I wish I had more like him.’
Kiesel shook his head in mild disagreement. ‘Not everyone can be expected to take on the burden of independent decisions when there is a chance to shift responsibility to superiors. However, if I know Steiner, he will find some way out. I count on his turning up tonight.’
‘It’s not only Steiner,’ Brandt said with sharp reproof. ‘It’s a whole platoon.’
Kiesel smiled fleetingly. ‘Of course, I was thinking of the platoon too. But without Steiner the others would never get through.’
‘Hm, do you think so,’ Brandt murmured, regarding Kiesel with suspicion. Brandt was tall and thin, with sparse hair covering an elongated knobby head. Under a high forehead were eyes that seemed to express a permanent bitterness. When he compressed his narrow lips, the tautening skin of his face deepened the hollows beneath his cheekbones.
The commander gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘I know what you are thinking. You can’t put anything over on me, Kiesel, remember that. But you are right to think so. People can think what they like of me, and have done so. But nobody can say I don’t know the meaning of gratitude.’
‘Certainly not,’ Kiesel quietly agreed. He had been adjutant of this regiment for eight months now, and had served under three commanders. With neither of the others had he reached so good an understanding as he now had with Brandt. I must look this fellow Steiner over some day, he decided. So far he knew a great deal about him from reports, but had never met the man. A few months ago Brandt had spoken to him about a black mark on Steiner’s record and had asked him to investigate. He had done so, but with inconclusive results. There was no question about the charge, but there was something suspect about the evidence, an unexplained contradiction somewhere. Brandt had had the same impression. Later, they had let the matter ride.
Kiesel stood up and began pacing back and forth in the bunker. For a while Brandt ignored him. Then he turned upon him. ‘For heaven’s sake stop the marathon. You bother me more than the Russians. Tell me your private opinion of Stransky.’
Kiesel stopped by a chair, pulled it between his legs and sat down backwards on it. ‘My private opinion?’ he said, drawling. ‘To tell the truth, I have not yet taken the trouble to form an opinion. Herr Stransky seems to think very well of himself. But that may be because he comes from a fine old family. Or maybe he is just too rich to be human.’
Brandt dismissed these suppositions with a gesture. ‘Stop beating around the bush. You’re a judge of people. What do you think of him?’
‘I have so far met Stransky
only once,’ Kiesel answered noncommittally. He lit a cigarette, holding the burning match in his fingers until it went out. ‘The few words I’ve exchanged with him were instructive in one sense. On the other hand, they were hardly enough to justify an objective opinion. My personal impression is that Herr Stransky considers himself an unusual personality who is above criticism. If I understood him rightly, he believes he has a great mission to perform, namely to achieve spiritual domination of the battalion.’
‘What’s that?’ Brandt asked in utter incomprehension.
Kiesel smiled. ‘It does sound odd, but I have an inkling of what he wants. To put the matter more clearly: Herr Stransky wants his orders obeyed not because of his rank, but because of the sheer impression his personality makes upon the men.’
‘If that’s so, his chances are pretty poor. I’ve had my own experiences with the obstinacy of the 1st Battalion.’ He laughed harshly. ‘You’ve dreamed all this up, Kiesel. I’ve been wearing this uniform a long time and I’ve never yet met such a case.’
Kiesel nodded. ‘I grant it is unusual for a commander to want to rule his men’s emotions as well as their actions.’
‘And how, may I ask, does Stransky intend to achieve this, ah, spiritual domination?’
‘I didn’t sound him out on this. But I gather he intends to use his company commanders as his tools since, in his own words, the influence of a commanding officer diminishes in intensity the lower you go in the ranks. He considers personal contact with the other ranks a dangerous experiment.’
‘Beautiful!’ Brandt brought his palm down against the table top in exuberant amusement. ‘You know, Kiesel,’ he said, with a confidential wink, ‘I am rather impressed by this man Stransky, even if he is a visionary.’
‘Not all visionaries are as unpopular as Stransky,’ Kiesel commented.
‘Do you think so?’ Brandt suddenly wore a look of studied indifference.
For a second there was silence between them. Then Kiesel said casually, ‘Oh, well.’ He regarded the tip of his cigarette and resolved to say no more on this dangerous topic.
Brandt drummed his fingers nervously on the table. At last he raised his head with an impatient gesture. ‘At any rate, in the First, Stransky will find few officers or men who will go along with his little game. Less than ever now. To tell the truth, the morale of the men is troubling me. No pep to them. They’re like a set of chess pieces; they’ll let themselves be moved around, but they won’t move of their own accord.’
‘Chess pieces?’ Kiesel frowned reflectively. ‘Haven’t they always been that?’
‘Not a bit of it.’ Brandt shook his head vehemently. ‘I tell you, up to a year ago we had the best troops a commander could wish for. The men knew just what they were doing and why they were doing it. They were capable of winning a battle even when it was being run by an amateur up on top. But today! I never feel easy unless I’m right up there in the trenches myself. It’s impossible to have any confidence in them.’
‘The feeling is mutual,’ Kiesel remarked.
‘What’s that?’ Brandt gave him a look of astonishment that quickly became reproach. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked sharply.
‘What I said,’ Kiesel replied easily. ‘The men no longer have any confidence.’
‘Confidence in whom?’
‘In us, of course. We misunderstand their psychology if we think that they put the blame primarily on the top leadership. If I hop into a cab which gets in an accident because the brakes fail, I blame the driver, not the company he works for. I’ll say that he should have refused to drive a cab with defective brakes.’
‘Just what are they blaming the leadership for?’
Kiesel crossed his legs. ‘The morale of troops wears out after a time. The division has been on active duty for twenty -one months without a break. The men are fed up. You know yourself how often they’ve been promised they’d be taken out of line.’
‘Is that our fault?’
‘I’m no general,’ Kiesel replied evasively. ‘But the way things are now, the men consider every new commander a candidate for the Ritterkreuz who wants to earn his medal with their blood. Once he gets that Cross pinned on his chest, a new commander comes along. Within these twenty -one months they have changed their commanders, from general to company leader, as often as a man changes his shirt in peacetime.’
‘Yes, yes, I know.’ Brandt’s fingers drummed impatiently on the table. ‘We burn up replacements as fast as they arrive. On the other hand, the general staff know the situation better than we do, and what they say counts.’
‘I don’t agree. I think they make some big mistakes and that this is one of their biggest.’
Brandt smiled briefly. ‘I wish you could come forward as advocate of the other ranks’ interests. Unfortunately there doesn’t happen to be any such post in the Tables of Organization.’ He slumped back in his chair. ‘I agree with you that our men absolutely must have a change of air. I’m beginning to feel the same way myself. This damned country! The men have been lured into these steppes and endless forests. At first it was all new and exciting for the troops, but the excitement didn’t last long. These frightful spaces, monotonous, repetitive; you can’t help feeling that one of these days they’ll swallow you up. You end up with a complex about it. We’re getting that now. Still, we’re here and here we have to stay. The men must be made to realize how hard it is to relieve them. Where would we get the transport? You know how much it takes to move a division from France to Russia, and vice versa. Then again, you talk of twenty -one months of uninterrupted duty. Let’s be honest, Kiesel—how many of the original personnel are left?’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘In my former battalion I could count the survivors on my fingers. The regiment today consists 90 per cent, of replacements who have served no more than a few months in Russia. The general is right when he insists that relief of the division would not be justified for the sake of the few old hands. Don’t you see that?’
‘No.’
‘Why not, in the devil’s name?’
Kiesel crushed out the remainder of his cigarette. Brandt’s words had impressed him, less by their logic than by their psychological penetration. He would not have expected such insight from the commander. Abstractedly, he gazed at the small window near the door. Tiny particles of dust danced in the band of sunlight that fell through the single pane.
‘It isn’t easy to explain,’ he began hesitantly. ‘You have to put yourself in the soldier’s place. Consider what the situation was just a few months ago. That was when the first defeats began. But the defeats were not enough to shake the men’s confidence.’
‘Why not?’
‘For various reasons. The most important probably is that our men have a certain sense of justice; after all those grand victories they’re willing to grant our top leadership the right to make a few mistakes.’
‘In other words they want to be fair.’
‘I think that’s about it. The soldier is far away from the direct influence of the demagogues, but because of his sense of fairness he has managed to retain a good measure of patriotism.’
Brandt rubbed the knuckles of his left hand. ‘Those are harsh words,’ he said.
‘Perhaps. If it weren’t for the presence of a superior officer, I might express myself even more clearly. But I don’t intend to discuss politics.’
‘If you did I would ask you not to. Go on.’
‘If you wish,’ Kiesel puffed misshapen smoke-rings at the ceiling. ‘It is the few men who were here from the start that I am concerned about. They have been steady as steel all along, and they are the ones who have been keeping the replacements in line. To them we owe -’ Abruptly he fell silent as he caught the faint smile on the commander’s face.
‘Why are you stopping?’ Brandt said. ‘What you say interests me enormously. I’d like to hear it to the end.’
‘It isn’t worth saying,’ Kiesel murmured.
The commander studied him coolly f
or a moment. ‘It is always worth saying when I am your audience, remember that. But I can guess what you were going to say. You take the same view of the replacements that I do. They’re no longer any good; they’re infected by a spirit of tired resignation. They have experienced nothing but retreats here at the front, and have every reason to believe the myth of Russian invincibility. I started at the bottom, remember, and anything you can say about the old hands interests me now just as much as it did then.’
‘All right, let’s talk about the old hands. To them the recent setbacks have been nothing more than the shifting fortunes of war. During the years we were on the offensive, they saw the retreating back of the enemy too often to be frightened by his face now. The replacements, on the other hand, think every Russian is an infallible fighting machine.’
‘Good, we’re getting to the heart of the matter. Go on.’
Kiesel propped his chin in his fists. ‘I could spend hours praising them. And what is happening now? The elite of the division, the men who wear their medals as though they were a natural part of their uniforms, are becoming just as unreliable as the replacements. Why?’
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