Making History

MILITARY HISTORY

The Frenchman and the Colonel’s Helmet: II

‘It’s hot. It’s boiling hot and still they insist we wear these tunics.’

Hans Mend scuffed his boots along the duckboards in the direction of the forward trench, loudly and breezily damning the generals. Ernst Schmidt beside him remained as resolutely silent as usual, offering as comment only the occasional wheeze from his gas-injured lungs.

‘Mind you,’ said Hans. ‘Even if someone did explode a howitzer up their arses they would probably manage to claim it as a tactical victory. And another thing,’ he went on, after leaving a polite pause for comment, a pause he knew would go unfilled. ‘Franzmann and that twice-damned helmet. Something must be done. Our Franconian puppies need to be led by example. They should be shown that we Bavarians do not take this kind of insult lying down. A revenge must be exacted. A lesson must be taught.’

‘Talk is easy,’ said Schmidt.

Hans dug Ernst cheerfully in the ribs. ‘Then you should try it more often! Hey? Hah!’

‘It achieves nothing.’

‘On the contrary, it passes the time, exercises the lungs and sharpens the mind.’

‘It’s talk that is losing us this war.’

‘For God’s sake, Ernst!’ Hans looked about him nervously. ‘We’re not losing this war. Militarily we are doing well, we have a clear advantage, everyone knows that. It is only on the home front that we are losing. Morale is being fucked by the Bolsheviks, the pacifists and the artist queers.’

‘Someone being fucked by artist queers?’ A cheerful voice behind them. ‘Not another Prussian scandal, surely? That’s all we need.’ Rudi Gloder came up between them and clapped a hand to the shoulder of each.

Hans and Ernst snapped to a salute. ‘Herr Hauptmann!’

‘Cut that out,’ said Rudi with a shy smile. ‘Only salute when other officers are watching. So tell me, what is this talk of artist queers?’

‘Morale, sir,’ said Hans. ‘I was saying to Schmidt how morale is being undermined back home.’

‘Hm. Good choice of word. The enemy at home is using the same techniques as the enemy in France. Sapping and undermining are all any of us do in this war. The arts of twentieth century battle are not something our dear leaders understand. Fortunately, our foemen understand them even less.’

Foemen! Hans thought there was something boyishly earnest and entirely loveable in Rudi’s typical and apparently self-contradictory introduction of an antiquated Wagnerian word like ‘foemen’ into a conversation about modern warfare.

‘Those swinish Franzmanner understand it all right,’ said Ernst gloomily.

Rudi cocked an eyebrow. ‘How so?’

‘I think he’s referring to the Frenchman and the Colonel’s Helmet.’

‘The Frenchman and the Colonel’s Helmet?’ said Rudi. ‘Sounds like the title of a cheap farce.’

‘You won’t have heard about it yet, sir,’ said Hans.

‘You messengers always get the news fresh. We lowly trench rats have to digest it after it’s been chewed and spat out all down the line.’

‘Well, sir, what happened was this. One of the men watching the enemy trenches this morning saw Colonel Baligand’s Pickelhaube, his best Imperial lobster-tail, being waved triumphantly backwards and forwards on the end of a rifle. They must have captured it in the raid on Thursday.’

‘French bastards,’ said Rudi. ‘Arrogant pigs!’

‘Do you think we could devise some way of getting it back, sir? For morale?’

‘We must! It is a question of the pride of the regiment. We must retrieve it and return with a trophy of our own. These piss-blooded children of the Sixth have to be shown how real men fight.’

‘Yes, sir. But Major Eckert would never consent to any direct action for such a purpose.’

Rudi rubbed his chin. ‘You may be right about that. Major Eckert is, when all’s said and done, a Franconian. This needs thinking about. Where was this cocky Monsieur?’

‘Just to the north of their new battery position,’ said Hans, pointing. ‘Sector K.’

‘Sector K? Those were our trenches once, weren’t they? We dug the bastards ourselves four years ago. I’ve half a mind…Schmidt, what the hell!’

Hans stared in disbelief at the sight of Ernst grabbing hold of Rudi’s arm and tugging on it.

‘Sir, I know what you’re thinking and it is out of the question!’ said Ernst.

‘How dare you assume any such thing?’

‘Sir, you must not. Really, you must not!’

Rudi removed the hand calmly, something, it seemed to Hans, between annoyance and amusement creasing the eternal smoothness of his brow. ‘Ernst,’ he said, ‘how well named you are!’

‘Certainly, Herr Hauptmann!’ said Ernst, unrelenting. ‘And I must assure you…ich meine is mit bitteren Ernst.’

Rudi smiled and sang softly, ‘Ernst, Ernst, mein Ernst! Mir ist so ernsthaft ernst!’

‘Forgive me, sir, but I know just what you were considering. And it won’t do, sir, really it won’t.’

‘How could you possibly know?’

‘I know, I just know. I know your courage, sir. But it is too dangerous. We could easily afford to lose a colonel’s helmet, twenty helmets, twenty colonels even, but…’ Ernst’s coarse face reddened and thickened with emotion and Hans saw tears in his eyes, ‘…we could never afford to lose you.’

Hans did not believe he had ever in all his life seen such naked and unashamed hero-worship. No, damn it, such love. Comradeliness was the hearth-side of the trenches; unless the men warmed themselves in the glow of some sort of mutual companionship, they could never endure the soul’s winter of warfare. That was the agonising paradox of their lives here: without friendship you could not continue, yet every day friends must die. Make someone the crutch of your existence and their death leaves you weaker than ever you were before. So it was that affection went unstated and the death of friends was shrugged off with black jokes. It was astounding to Hans that Ernst, Ernst Schmidt of all people, should, changing metaphors, strip off his mask and risk the full force of the gas.

God knew, they all loved Rudi. God knew, his was the one death they would never easily laugh off.

Rudi, however, could laugh anything off. His arm was around Ernst now and he smiled down, his eyes warm with affection.

‘My dear old friend,’ he said, ‘would you have me two miles back with the generals? Sitting in armchairs and smoking on a pipe? I am a warrior. You must know by now that no harm will ever come to me. I have bathed in the dragon’s blood.’ Somehow, it seemed to Hans, such language in Rudi’s mouth never sounded as ridiculous as it should. If I were to talk like that, he thought, a bar of soap would be hurled at me and I should be ragged to the end of time. But Rudi, Rudi belongs in a stained-glass window, radiant in silver armour and flanked by holy knights and shining heroes. My God, listen to me! Hans pushed the nails of his ringers deep into his palms to stop himself from laughing aloud.

Ernst meanwhile, caught up in a coughing fit, was still managing to be…ernst.

‘Promise me, sir. Promise me!’ he said, whooping like a seal.

‘I never make promises I cannot keep,’ said Rudi. ‘But have no fear. I shall be here safe and sound tomorrow morning. That I do swear, my faithful one. And don’t get yourself so excited! You should have stayed on sick leave longer, you know. Your lungs are still recovering.’

‘I am as fit as any man here,’ protested Ernst.

‘I think maybe I should recommend you for another leave.’

‘No, sir! I beg you do not.’

‘Well then, for lighter duties perhaps…’

‘It’s just a cold, nothing more! I am fighting fit.’

‘That’s right, old friend,’ said Rudi, soothingly. ‘Of course you are. Fit for anything.’

The contrast between the two men struck Hans as absurd. Rudi, golden and glowing with health and Ernst, hacking and coughing, coarse-featured and a head shorter.

Rudi turned to Hans. ‘Look after him for me, will you? See he keeps out of danger.’ He strolled away singing Wagner while Ernst gazed pathetically after him, wheezing like an old hound.

The pure sound of Rudi’s natural Heldentenor sprang up the shining intervals of the Siegfried motiv like a stag leaping up a mountain and filled Hans’s ears with a music of swords and spears and steeds that shamed the distant boom of vulgar guns.

There’s a moment to take to my grave, he thought to himself. Then he slapped his leg in annoyance. Hans Mend, you are growing too sentimental, far too attached. Just like old Ernst here. After all, Rudi might be dead in five minutes. Don’t lean on a blade of grass.

Well, he said to himself, perhaps there’s no harm m sentiment, honest German sentiment. But how I wish Rudi had resisted the urge to tease Ernst like that. Knowing Ernst it’s possible he might be provoked into doing something foolish…

Hans shook his head and dismissed the thought from his mind.

§

He was swirling out the lees of his first foul mug of ersatz coffee the next morning when Ignaz Westenkirchner came up to him, shaking his head morosely.

‘Bad business, Mend. Bad business.’

‘What is?’

‘Oh dear, you haven’t heard then?’

Hans stifled a snort of impatience. He hated anyone to toy with him by releasing news slowly. Intelligence being worth more than chocolate at the front, almost all men relished the telling of it, but Westenkirchner was the worst. Like a bitchy little chorus girl, he would eke out his trivial gossip as though it were a brandy ration.

Hans stared squarely down at his knees. ‘No, I haven’t heard,’ he said. ‘And I’m almost certain I don’t want to. I dare say I’ll know soon enough, whatever it is.

He felt Westenkirchner’s hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Hans. I assumed you’d been told…’

Hans stood, his stomach throbbing with a sudden oscillation of fear. ‘What is it?’

Ignaz put a pair of field-glasses gently into his hands and pointed towards no man’s land. ‘See for yourself, old man,’ he said.

Hans climbed the nearest trench ladder, easing his head slowly above the parapet line. If Ignaz is pulling my leg, he muttered to himself, I’ll tear off his balls and load them up the breech of a gun.

‘Nine o’clock! It’s to the right of that crater. There!’

‘Where?’

‘There! Surely you can see?’

And quite suddenly, Hans did see.

Ernst lay face down, his back torn open and glistening like blackberries, his outflung fist clutched tightly around the strap of Colonel Maximilian Bali-gand’s grand Imperial lobster-tailed Pickelhaube. Just out of his reach, as if his dying act had been to fling it towards his home lines, was a French officer’s sabre, sheathed in a silver scabbard.

Sick with loathing and anger Hans stared. He knew it. He just knew Ernst would try something like this.

‘Fool!’ he yelled. ‘Shithead fool. Why for this? Why!’

‘Steady on,’ said Ignaz below him. ‘Nothing to be done.’

A movement in the foreground caught Hans’s attention. Slowly, centimetre by centimetre, from the direction of the German lines, a man was crawling on his stomach towards the body.

‘My God,’ whispered Hans. ‘It’s Rudi!’

‘Where?’ Ignaz grabbed the field-glasses. ‘Sweet Maria! He’s insane. He’ll be killed. What can we do?’

‘Do? Do? Nothing, you fool. Any action on our part will only draw attention to him. Get your bloody head down, we’ll use periscopes.’

For twenty minutes they watched, in silent prayer, as Rudi wormed his way towards the wire.

‘Careful, Rudi!’ Hans breathed to himself. ‘You can do it.’

Rudi edged his way along the main roll of wire between him and Ernst’s corpse until he came to a section marked with tiny fragments of cloth. This doorway safely negotiated he resumed his belly-down journey towards the body.

Once he had got there—

‘And what in hell does he do now?’ whined Ignaz. ‘I mean, my God, that’s the easy part.’

‘Smoke!’ said Hans. ‘Now he’s there, we can put up smoke between him and the enemy lines. Quick!’

Ignaz tumbled down from the ladder and hurled himself into the nearest dug-out screaming for smoke pistols while Hans continued to watch.

Rudi lay there as motionless as the corpse beside him.

‘What’s he doing? He’s frozen up!’

Hans became aware of a gathering commotion in his own trench. He pulled back from the trench periscope and looked about him. Ignaz’s alarm had alerted dozens of men. No, not men. Boys, most of them. A few had periscopes themselves and were relaying, in fatuous commentary, every detail of the scene. The others turned their big, frightened eyes on Hans.

‘Why isn’t he moving? He’s frozen. Has he lost his nerve?’

The sight of a man freezing up in no man’s land was a common one. One minute you were running and dodging, the next you were stiff as a statue.

‘Not Rudi,’ said Hans with a confidence he did not necessarily feel. ‘He’s recovering his strength for the homeward run, that’s all.’ He turned back to the periscope. Still no movement. ‘Everyone with a smoke pistol, get ready!’

Half a dozen men crept to the top of ladders, their pistols cocked back over their shoulders, cowboy fashion.

Hans wetted his finger and checked the wind before settling back to watch. Suddenly, with no warning, Rudi was up, facing the enemy. He hooked his arms under Ernst’s and pulled him backwards towards the German lines, hopping backwards with bent knees like a Cossack dancer.

‘Now!’ shouted Hans. ‘Fire! Fire high and five minutes to the left!’

The smoke pistols clapped a polite round of applause. Hans watched Rudi as the bombs fell beyond him and a dense curtain of smoke rose and thickened, drifting gently in the wind between him and the French forward trenches. Rudi turned briefly for a second and waved a salute towards his home lines. Did he know the smoke would come? Hans wondered. Did he trust that we would know what to do? No, he would have risked it anyway. Rudi felt responsible for Ernst’s death and was fully prepared to lay down his life to atone. What magnificent idiocy.

‘What the hell is going on here?’ Major Eckert had stamped into the trench, moustache quivering. Who gave orders to send up smoke?’

A young Franconian saluted smartly. ‘It’s Hauptmann Gloder, sir.’

‘Hauptmann Gloder? Why would he issue such an order?’

‘No, sir, he didn’t order it, sir. He’s out there, sir. In Niemandsland. Recovering Stabsgefreiter Schmidt’s body, sir.’

‘Schmidt? Stabsgefreiter Schmidt dead? How? What?’

‘He went out last night to rescue Colonel Baligand’s helmet, sir.’

‘Colonel Baligand’s helmet? Are you drunk, man?’

‘No, Herr Major. The French must have taken it during Thursday’s raid up the line, sir. Schmidt went to rescue it. He did too, and what’s more he brought back a sword as well. But then a shell must have got him, sir. Or a mine.’

‘Good heavens!’

‘Sir, yes sir. And Hauptmann Gloder is out rescuing the body now sir. Stabsgefreiter Mend ordered us to protect him with smoke.’

‘Is this true, Mend?’

Mend stood to attention. ‘Quite true, sir. I believed it to be the best course.’

‘But damn it, the French might be led into the belief that we are attacking.’

‘Respectfully, Herr Major, that can do little harm. All that will happen is that Franzmann will waste a few thousand valuable rounds.’

‘Well, it’s all very irregular.’

Not as irregular as you, you shithead schoolmaster, thought Mend.

‘And where’s the Hauptmann now?’

Westenkirchner bellowed the answer from behind his field-glasses. ‘He’s at the wire sir! Sir, he’s all right sir! He’s found the doorway. He’s got the body. And the helmet, sir! He’s got the helmet and the sword!’

A great roar of delight went up from the men and even Major Eckert allowed himself a smile.

Hans watched as Rudi gently laid Ernst’s corpse into the upstretched hands of the men in the trenches below. Rudi made his own way down, shaking off the cheers and congratulations of the men, stunning them into silence with the immensity of his sorrow. He approached the body as if he were alone with it, in some private chapel miles from the war. The helmet and sword in his hands as he knelt, Tarnhelm and Nothung, reinforced the magnificent Wagnerian absurdity of the scene. Distant crumps of artillery served the office of muffled drums and the returning billows of smoke wreathed the trench in funereal incense. Rudi laid the sabre and helmet tenderly on Ernst’s chest, his face wet with tears. Hans wept too, hot rolling tears of grief and pride and love.

Rudi crossed himself, stood to attention, saluted the corpse and walked away, pushing past rows of white-faced boys.

Suddenly Hans knew something with absolute clarity and conviction. It is impossible, he realised with a burst of pride, for Germany to lose the war. If the enemy could see what I have seen they would surrender tomorrow. It will soon be over. Peace and victory will be ours.