Outside Verdun

^{CHAPTER ONE} Turning off a tap

THE EARTH WAS a disc flecked yellow-green and drenched in blood. Above it, like a mousetrap, hung the unrelentingly blue sky, imprisoning humanity within the misery its animal nature prescribes.

The battle had been at an impasse since mid-May. Now, in mid-July, guns were still pounding the valley between the village of Fleury and Fort Souville. Volleys of explosions rolled back and forth; billows of poisonous smoke, dust clouds, pulverised earth and flying chunks of stone and masonry darkened the air, which was riddled with steel splinters and whistling bullets. At night, the area behind the front blazed and roared with gunfire; by day, the blue skies throbbed to the rattle of machine guns, bursting hand grenades, and the howls and whimpers of lost men. Time and again, the summer wind blew off the dust from the assaults, dried the storm troopers’ sweat as they climbed from their dugouts, eyes and jaws fixed, and carried away the moans of the wounded and the last gasps of the dying. The Germans had been on the attack here since the end of February. This war between Europeans, which had been raging for two years, might have originated in the south east of the continent, but it was nonetheless France – her people, her land, her army – that bore the brunt of the devastation. There might be bitter fighting at this very moment in Bukovina, on the rivers Adige and Isonzo, but the combat was at its wildest on the banks of the two French rivers, the Somme and the Meuse. And the battle that raged by the Meuse was about possession of the fortress at Verdun.

Escorted by Bavarian infantrymen, a troop of French prisoners marched along the main road leading from the former village of Azannes to a surviving train station at Moirey. It was hard to march between fixed bayonets as prisoners of an opponent who had shown just how cheap life was to him – his own as much as the enemy’s – during the invasion of Belgium and France. In Germany, people were starving. Everyone knew that. In Germany, prisoners were maltreated. It said so in the all the newspapers. For the French it was terrible to think that they should have fallen into the hands of the Germans precisely now, at the eleventh hour. Soon the Germans would have to call the whole thing off, because the force of the Franco-British attack on the Somme would knock the stuffing out of them. Still, these prisoners had escaped from hell fire with limbs intact. If they behaved themselves, they’d get through a few months in prison too, even if it did make them want to puke to be led away like a herd of cattle. The ravines and what had once been woods, now a mass of shell craters, were behind them, as were the Meuse hills and the descent to Azannes. The landscape here was still in one piece, so to speak. Beneath them to the right flowed a stream. Around them rose the rounded, green hilltops of the Lorraine countryside. If only they could have a drink. Heat, dust and sweat tormented the 40 or 50 marching men from the Fourth Infantry in their blue-grey tunics and steel helmets or twin-peaked caps.

As they turned a corner on the left side of the road, they spotted two big troughs, each with a jet of clear water gushing into it. Men from the German Army Service Corps (ASC) were washing pots and pans there. The Frenchmen raised their heads, straightened up and quickened their pace. The Bavarian guards knew about thirst too. They’d give them time to drink or fill their canteens. Both armies were really only bitter enemies in battle. In any case, word had long been out among the French that the ASC men were unarmed non-combatants, reservists from the Landsturm too young or too old for battle, harmless folk.

On the slope above the road, black against the blue sky, was an extensive hutted encampment with steps leading down. Waves of ASC men ran over. They wanted to see the spectacle, and it was lunchtime. Well, the more hands, the quicker everyone would get a drink. A blue-grey clump of thirsty men surrounded the troughs. Brown faces, all bearded, reached up; dozens of arms stretched out; there were mugs, pots, pans. Men dunked their faces in the translucent water, which shimmered and rippled at the bottom of the troughs. This French water, the last they’d swallow for a long time, tasted so good in their parched throats. It restored them. The ASC men understood immediately. They filled their pots and pans and helpfully took them down the line. German and French aluminium and tin clinked amicably together; white and pale grey fatigues framed the Frenchmen’s dark tunics.

‘Look lively,’ shouted the NCO in charge of the platoon. ‘Get a move on!’ This was an unplanned stop. But he wasn’t really serious. No one was in a hurry to return to their unit at the front if it was dug in at Douaumont. The men who’d quenched their thirst moved slowly away from the trough, dried their dripping beards and reformed in the middle of the road. Their eyes shone more brightly now. After two years of war, a certain mutual respect, liking even, had built up between the Germans and the French at the front. It was only to the rear, beginning with the lines of communication, that considerable numbers of people laboured to whip up hatred and anger lest the human material get infected with war weariness.

An ASC private named Bertin, recognisable from a mile off by his full, shiny, black beard, watched with satisfaction as one of his NCOs, a book seller from Leipzig called Karte, offered one of the Bavarians a cigar, holding out his trench lighter and pumping the Bavarian for information in his Saxon dialect. Hauling a container of water, Bertin pushed through the swarm of men, shouting a word or two to his comrades Pahl and Lebehde, and trotted to the end of the line, where people were vainly trying to elbow past those in front. Like drifting brown animals, a herd of strange yet familiar creatures, the men swore and pleaded in guttural tones, their necks straining from their open coats. They greeted the three men who’d come to take care of them with grateful eyes.

‘Come on, make room,’ Bertin shouted, coming away from the trough with a field kettle balanced in one hand and a full pan lid in the other. Suddenly, there was danger: officers had appeared up by the barracks and were watching what was happening. Fat Colonel Stein, his huge belly protruding over his bandy legs, hastily stuck his monocle in his eye and took it all in. On his right, he was flanked by his adjutant, First Lieutenant Benndorf, on his left by the company commander, Acting Lieutenant Graßnick, while Acting Sergeant Major Glinsky wryly watched the goings-on down below from a respectful distance. The colonel waved his riding crop indignantly at the dripping faces of those who’d cooled off in the trough. How long had this been going on? Three minutes or four? The four men absorbed all the details.

‘Bloody shambles,’ snarled the colonel. ‘Who told them they could drink here? They can stick their bloody snouts in water somewhere else.’ And, with one hand on his moustache, he shouted down the command: ‘Sergeant, move on!’

Colonel Stein was commander of the ammunitions depot at Steinbergquell, which stretched up across the hill. First Lieutenant Benndorf was his adjutant. Graßnick was only a second lieutenant in the labour company attached to the ammunitions depot. All three men had seen action in 1914 and been wounded (Benndorf still walked with a stick and limped) and were now in charge here. Colonel Stein could therefore expect obedience.

But without a favourable wind, the human voice obviously doesn’t carry very far out in the open. There was at first no response to Colonel Stein’s order, though this was against the natural order. Sergeant Major Glinsky rushed over to the balustrade, his backside wagging up and down, and, leaning half over, roared: ‘Stop that, fall in, move on!’

Glinsky knew the right tone. The Bavarian sergeant’s hand moved up involuntarily to the hilt of the bayonet hanging from his belt. Unfortunately, there were epaulettes glittering up there on the hill – otherwise that dirty Prussian pig would have got a few choice greetings in Bavarian. As it was, the sergeant turned sharply to his troops: ‘Fall in, form up.’

It’s as well if prisoners understand even what they don’t understand, and some of the guards spoke a smattering of French. Slowly, the first infantrymen pushed forwards. The ASC men pushed between them with greater determination to make sure they all got a drink. The column reformed peacefully.

The colour rose in Colonel Stein’s face. People down there were going against the spirit of his order. Down at Moirey train station, looking like tiny toys, the wagons were already rolling up that would take the prisoners away and then return as quickly as possible with gas ammunition. Time enough for the men to drink at the station. ‘Stop this nonsense!’ he ordered. ‘Sergeant Major, turn the water off!’ Everyone there knew the two brass taps near the feed trough that cut the flow of water to the lead spouts. Glinsky jumped to it.

Those ASC men who happened to be nearby heard this order with a grumble, a grin or a shrug, but it pierced one man to the heart. Bertin blanched under his black beard. He didn’t think about the tap at Moirey train station. He felt the agony of having to carry on past the trough without drinking almost as if it were his own. He had just filled his canteen. He should now empty it into the dust, as some of his comrades were doing: that docile little chap Otto Reinhold for example, or Pahl the typesetter. But Bertin knew there was still a number of thirsty men waiting at the rear. They were shuffling past the troughs, barely moving, with three Bavarians behind them. No one would now dare to fill their cupped hands or mugs.

‘Nowt we can do. They’re turned off.’ Private Lebehde, an innkeeper, pointed to the two taps, which were running dry.

‘Now I’ve seen it all,’ grunted Halezinsky, a gas worker, ‘and they call themselves human.’ And shrugging his shoulders he showed the last Frenchmen his empty field kettle.

Bertin’s canteen was made of aluminium. It was battered and black with soot on the outside but snow-white on the inside and full of delicious water. As he moved along the edge of the column – conspicuous because of his shiny, black beard – he calmly distributed the water. To a gunner who, with anguished eyes, had only reached out cupped hands he handed the full lid. To another man he gave the water from his canteen, holding it to his lips himself.

‘Prends, camarade,’ he said, and the gunner grabbed hold and drank his fill as he walked. Then he gave the canteen back.

All going well, Bertin, who was training to be a lawyer, had every prospect of living to be an old or at least an elderly man. But he would never forget the look that came into those brown eyes, which were shadowed black with exhaustion and set in yellowy skin grimy with artillery smoke.

‘Es-tu Alsacien?’ the Frenchman asked the German.

Bertin smiled. So, if you behaved decently towards a French prisoner, you had to be from Alsace. ‘Certainly not,’ he answered in French. ‘I’m a Prussian.’ And then by way of goodbye: ‘For you, the war is over.’

‘Merci, bonne chance,’ replied the Frenchman, turning to march on.

Bertin, however, stayed put while the ASC men slowly slipped off up the steps. Satisfied, he watched the blue-grey backs with a warm glow in his heart. If those people were now sent to Pomerania or Westphalia as farm labourers, they’d know they weren’t going to be eaten alive. He could and would defend his actions. What could they really do to him? All he need do was lie low in the barracks for the next quarter of an hour or until he was next on duty. Wrapped in a pleasant afterglow, Bertin climbed up the wooden steps with his canteen, from which Frenchmen had drunk, dangling all nice and clean from a crooked finger. Deep in thought, he strolled past Pahl the typesetter and didn’t even notice the long look of amazement Pahl gave him.

Pahl let him pass because he wouldn’t like to be seen with this particular comrade that day. He’d often taken him for a spy who stuck close to the workers in the company to get information and pass it on. But this man wasn’t a spy. No. He was the opposite: rashness personified. If Wilhelm Pahl knew Prussians, this man was for it – but he didn’t seem to care. Pahl the typesetter, by contrast, cared a great deal. He stood in the sun, a kind of big gnome with thick shoulders, overly long arms, a short neck and small, pale grey eyes, and gazed after the man who had followed his heart – in the Kaiser’s army.

^{CHAPTER TWO} Inspection

DURING THE AFTERNOON’S work on that memorable day, an order swept through the sprawling park with its turfed ramparts, huts, tents and stacks of grenades: inspection at six o’clock! Inspection? How come? Hadn’t there been four inspections in the past fortnight – with boots, underclothes, fatigues, tunics and neck bands? Hadn’t the nearby gunners, sappers, radio operators and railwaymen been poking fun at this enormous labour company of 500 men for ages because they liked to play soldiers? Everyone knew they were the army’s forgotten children: old people doing sterling work, being treated like new recruits in the middle of France. Quite a circus. Admission free. Annoyance and cursing, then, by the field railway wagons and tracks, ammunition tent and grenade stacks. But nobody connected the order with the events at lunchtime.

In the elaborate parlance of the German army, inspection means the ceremonial assembly of a company of men in its entirety in the barracks yard. Anyone who can move has to be there, even clerks from the orderly room and those from the ‘sick bay’ who are only a little ill. At 10 to 6 precisely, then, the company filled the empty space enclosed by the barracks, forming a horseshoe comprised of three columns. The roll call ceremony took place. Everyone was there – except the company commander, who kept them all waiting.

The ASC men were meticulously arranged and ordered according to size, with the giant Hildebrandt on the far left of the first column and tiny Vehse, Strauß and Naumann II furthest to the right, but an essential something was nonetheless missing, and Lieutenant Graßnick could never quite get over it. Their tunics spoiled the picture. It had started in Küstrin in Brandenburg – heavy Prussian Army Litevkas in dark grey with red lapels. Then came several dozen milky grey tunics made of a coat fabric meant for military officials. In Serbia, they’d received a batch of greyish brown infantry tunics, red about the seams from repeated delousings. Then finally in Rosenheim in Bavaria, on the way here, the depot had splashed out on a few dozen artillery tunics made of a greenish material with black piping. When the men were at work or marching, it didn’t matter. But these kinds of colour games were too risky for the parade ground… The grey field caps and blue cord epaulettes made no difference. More than half a million German men were running around like this: Landstrum reservists with no weapons, workers, salesmen, intellectuals. Not in great physical shape, but with a little military drilling. The combat units’ work slaves. Soldiers and yet not soldiers. A pitiful joke and essential troops rolled into one.

‘Attention! Company – eyes left!’

The company froze. Acting Lieutenant Graßnick, whom the men nicknamed Panje of Vranje after the small town in the Serbian mountains where he’d spent his best days, approached at an easy pace. The company tailors had done everything in their power to make a proper officer of him. His tunic hugged his back perfectly, his high grey cap with its silver cockade was perched impressively above his red face and his epaulettes looked almost as good as a real lieutenant’s. But to the actual officers he was still just a jumped-up sergeant major, and so he wafted about in a lonely void somewhere between the promoted men and the ruling class.

‘At ease!’ he croaked. ‘Listen up, everyone.’

He received the communications, accepting a piece of paper from Herr Glinksy, to whom it had in turn been handed by the clerk Sperlich, rigid with obedience, and read what was on it: a Fifth Army brigade order. The men learnt that the great attack planned for 5 May had been betrayed by Alsatian deserters, and that this had now been confirmed by French prisoners. They were reminded of their duty to be discrete even when chatting to one another, on the train or writing home.

The men stood there, trying to keep a straight face. For God’s sake, they thought. The silly French naturally hadn’t noticed that the German army planned to shower its princely leader with successful attacks and captured trenches for his birthday. Obviously, no one over there had any idea that the crown prince was born on 6 May. General Pétain had to rely on deserters – and from Alsace to boot – to alert him to the forthcoming attacks. There were two Alsatians in the company, one young, one older, both exceptionally good workers and popular comrades. ‘Alsatian traitors’ thus sounded particularly tactful. Yes, the Prussians had imbibed tact in spades. But it looked like Panje of Vranje was finishing up now in his croaking lieutenant’s voice. God help him. Amen.

But no. ‘Unfortunately,’ Herr Graßnick continued, flapping his hands excitedly, ‘unfortunately, an unprecedented lapse occurred right here in my company this afternoon. Private Bertin, step out 30 paces. Forward march!’

A twitch ran through the company, like a horse or a dog pricking up its ears. Watch out, it said. This concerns us. Such a huge body of 500 souls is very sensitive to matters of honour and shame, and in certain circumstances one individual represents the group. It took Bertin a second to grasp what was happening. He blushed, then blanched under his black beard. Only then did he move. He hadn’t expected to be plucked from among his comrades like a frog in a stork’s beak. But a soldier should be prepared for anything, as Herr Graßnick was about to teach him.

‘Didn’t you hear?’ he trumpeted into the profound silence that always descended when someone was to be punished. ‘By the rear – march!’

Obedient as a well trained dog, the trainee lawyer Bertin turned, marched round the right wing of his, the third column and breathing heavily came to halt back in his place.

‘Private Bertin, 30 paces, forward march!’

In his neatly blackened boots, Bertin sprang forward again. After 30 paces, he took position diagonally to the right of the company commander. Graßnick gave him a wry glance, looked him over and ordered him to: ‘About turn!’ The soldier swung round. Sweat ran down his glasses. Perhaps the blood was pounding in his eyes. The company rose around him like the three walls of a room under construction, the rows of his comrades in their different greys topped by a reddish strip: their faces caught in the sunlight. It was hard to feel so many eyes upon him, but there was nothing to be done about it. Why hadn’t he followed Karl Lebehde’s advice and shaved off this bloody beard that stood out like black Sauerkraut? Now he was going to pay for his obstinacy. But that fellow Graßnick could rattle on as much as he liked. What Bertin had done was right by both military and human law. Comforting prisoners was in the Bible, as was giving the thirsty to drink. It didn’t matter what happened now. He was at one with himself and the moral code in his heart. Still, he couldn’t stop his knees shaking slightly. Good that his wide trousers hid it.

‘This man,’ crowed Herr Graßnick with a forced snarl, ‘this man here had the effrontery to allow French prisoners to drink from his canteen, although the colonel had expressly forbidden it. I leave it to each of you to decide what to call such unworthy conduct. One can only describe such a man as a stain on the company.’

‘Am I in the pillory here?’ wondered the black-bearded soldier, unable to stop his nose and forehead turning a sickly grey. His sticky-out ears felt like they had when he was at school and Herr Kosch the teacher pulled them. But because he was at peace with himself, he was able to feel sorry for the superior officer to his left. A town clerk from Lausitz disguised as an officer. The ruling class would never take him seriously, and yet he had to stand there blaring on in his staccato voice, trying to sound convincing between long pauses. He was about as well suited to this as spinach to a grater. Yes, he heard Graßnick croak, Bertin’s behaviour was all the worse because he was an educated man of whom better might have been expected. He’d set a bad example to his comrades. Fortunately, his example did not extend to the whole company. The company’s morale was good. Those in higher places were well aware of that. Drastic measures to put a stop to these kinds of incidents once and for all would therefore not be necessary.

Can you put a stop to an incident? wondered Bertin but he was breathing more easily. A couple of curious gunners from the ammunitions depot staff were now watching this carry-on at the labour company scornfully. A light wind from the west carried the scent of hay. On the other side of the stream, some emaciated artillery horses were being nursed back to health in a big tent. The drivers were cutting the tall, sweet grass in preparation for winter. For a moment, Bertin almost lost himself in this illusory peaceful world – framed by the dull thud and clash of the artillery battle on the other side of the horizon. So, these are the kinds of things our company is worrying about at the siege outside Verdun, he thought. Why would a man like me worry about this rubbish? There he stood, black-haired and pale, heels together, hands on his trouser seams, letting the clatter of Graßnick’s closing remarks wash over him. Hopefully he realised that he deserved a court martial for what he’d done, Graßnick said. However, as his behaviour to date had been passable, justice would be tempered with mercy – and he’d better remember this favour. ‘Fall out!’

Could’ve been worse, the company thought, and Bertin thought so too, as he bounded back to his place between docile little Otto Reinhold and Pahl the typesetter like a terrier let off the lead. Reinhold nudged him with his elbow and gave him an imperceptible smirk.

‘Company – attention! Fall out!’

Four hundred and thirty seven men about turned and stomped off to enjoy their free evening. No one wasted a word on what had just happened. They had underwear to wash, trousers to mend, dinner to eat, letters to write or cards to play. They could do what they wanted now. Be human, free. Werner Bertin strolled back to the barracks more slowly than the rest. Perhaps he felt a bit down-hearted. He decided to lie down for half an hour and then take his beard over to Naumann (Bruno), the barber. Off with it. Enough of standing out – basta.

From among the group of NCOs still standing together, Herr Glinsky’s expressionless, bulging eyes fell on Bertin. To the right, above the hills at Kronprinzeneck and forward towards Romagne hung sausage-shaped captive balloons, shining gold in the evening light.

^{CHAPTER THREE} A glimmer

THE JULY NIGHT lay heavy on the 3^rd platoon’s barracks where some 130 men slept after a hard day’s graft. Stacked three high on wire netting and sacks of wood shavings, they rolled from side to side, groaning, sweating and scratching themselves without waking. The company was riddled with lice. The men had left the delousing station at Rosenheim clean and as if new-born, and before they moved into the grimy barracks here they’d cleaned up Prussian style, jettisoning cartloads of their predecessors’ rubbish. But the yellowish lice had waited patiently in the seams of the yellowish sleeping bags for their moment – and this was their moment. Lice are like bosses and fate: you can fight them but in the end you pretty much have to come to terms with them.

From the outside, the long barracks seemed to be cloaked in darkness. Dr Bindel, a civilian doctor in uniform, had got the company carpenter to install ventilation flaps in the roof, using plans drawn up by Private Bertin and Schnee, a medical NCO. Non-soldiers would probably have thought it impossible to sleep there and wake refreshed. But they would’ve been wrong. It was possible to sleep there, as 130 men proved. The rats that zipped happily along the passageways could confirm it too, for they never woke anyone, except when they bit into their big toe. In any case, the rats preferred to be under the barracks rather than up in the land of the living. It was safer below.

There were two glimmers of light in the barracks. Bertin was still reading, and by his head a stearin candle stuck on a tin holder burned, protected by his tunic, coat and rucksack. Some four men away and one level up, Pahl the typesetter was smoking a cigar. He smoked in order to think undisturbed, and his thoughts centred on Private Bertin.

The comrade down below wasn’t reading because he wanted to. He had to play the writer again and was reading proofs. The first galleys of a new book that was being printed in Leipzig had arrived for him in the field post that evening. He’d shown the wide-margined columns of print, set in a clear font by reputable printers, to his comrade Pahl, who after all was in the business. Evenings and nights were the only times Bertin could check his text for printing errors and mark them up with the traditional squiggles in the margins. He’d thought he wouldn’t be able to concentrate after the stupid business with the inspection earlier, but he’d be getting a delivery like this every day now, so he’d reconsidered. Pahl knew only too well how important commas and colons were to writers, and how they chased down unnecessary repetitions. Bertin was quite right to keep his sentences in order, although he had other demands on his time now. The Germans were avid readers at the moment. They even read young authors – especially those. There hadn’t been so many new writers for more than a century. Bertin’s novel Love at Last Sight, which was typeset in the lovely Breitkopf font, had been unexpectedly reprinted that spring, and the royalties had greatly helped his wife. That much Pahl the typesetter knew from dinnertime chats. Pahl was very interested in the technical side of printing: the familiar names of the typefaces, whether it was better to set type manually or use a machine, the correction process. But he was much more interested in the author – admittedly for his own very particular reasons. As he lay there puffing on his company cigar, he mentally evaluated his comrade Bertin’s aptitude for the boxing match that surely lay ahead of him. Before bedtime, Pahl had received a hint from Sergeant Böhne, an affable type who’d been a postman before the war and was a Party sympathiser, as to what might happen the following morning. Pahl’s thoughts moved slowly one step at a time. It had awakened something within him to watch his comrade standing all alone at the centre of the company in the barracks yard with Graßnickian phrases raining down on him. Karl Lebehde was right. Bertin had shaved his beard off just a few hours too late – trust an innkeeper to understand the ways of the world. But it didn’t do to scoff at a typesetter’s musings either. For they drew on a thorough knowledge of the military order, which was based on a thorough knowledge of the social order…

In Pahl’s view, the whole point of human society was to ensure that there were always enough workers available at the lowest possible wages, so that the workers didn’t share in the profits of their endeavours and couldn’t themselves sell what their skills produced, but were nonetheless loyal servants of the manufacturing process. To achieve this in peacetime, various conditions had to be put in place and maintained. In wartime, things simplified themselves nicely: anyone not working full out ended up in the trenches and had a hero’s death to look forward to. Pahl had grasped this early on and resisted all attempts by the newspaper house back home to claim him back. He’d stood down in favour of married colleagues, having carefully weighed up whether the comparative freedom of the labour company was more tolerable than the slavery of the newspaper house. Let someone else pump out the dirty stream of lies to the nation that helped prolong the war.

Wilhelm Pahl saw himself as a product of the pressures and counter pressures of the class system. He’d come into the world with an ugly body and a squashed face. That’s fate, although mountain sunshine and exercise – that’s to say, wealthy parents or better social welfare – might have improved his physical condition. He was one of six children of Otto Pahl, a turner. He finished primary school – a royal Prussian primary school in Schöneberg – where his smart mind attracted attention early on. With his aptitude for thinking and learning, he could have gone far if he’d had wealthy parents or if social provision had been better. But being Pahl the turner’s son, he left school at the age of 14, and an apprenticeship at a printers was the best that a good reference from his teacher could secure for him. He couldn’t become an explorer or a natural historian, so he turned his attention to the circumstances of his own existence early on. It was too late to change his parents’ financial position; he therefore joined those who wanted to reconstruct society. He went to the Workers’ Party school and became a conscious component of the masses to which the future (due to the pressure being exerted by the masses) must inevitably belong. To keep the masses fenced in, society used them. Every year, in Germany and elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of society’s have-nots were shoved into uniform and drilled, building on the work done in schools, to make them useful and ready to shoot themselves in the shape of other workers – entirely against their own interests. In peacetime, this was just a possibility; in wartime, it was a ghastly and shockingly stupid reality. It goes without saying that Pahl the typesetter hated the army and everything it stood for. He despised war, which he saw as the spawn of the masses’ endless stupidity. At the same time, he understood war. It was essential to society’s struggle for world markets. It allowed tensions within states to be redirected to the outside and meant that armies of proletarians, who might rise up against the ruling classes tomorrow, were busy slaughtering each other on the field of honour today.

Pahl the typesetter closed his eyes. He would’ve liked to go to sleep but couldn’t just yet. The truth of his theory excited him. The slightest sign that the proletariat saw through the clever differentiation created by uniforms and manners of speech made the military machine nervous. The devil alone knew what they’d made of that harmless sheep Bertin. In any case, the performance earlier clearly demonstrated that they intended to use his example to proscribe fraternisation with French prisoners. But Bertin had acted purely out of good heartedness, out of a decent, perhaps slightly sentimental sense of comradeship. He hadn’t been trying to condemn war itself. He was far too much the product of a higher education for that. Karl Lebehde had guessed that too. You had to hand it to Comrade Lebehde.

Now there would be nothing left for ‘comrade’ Bertin but to become a real Comrade. Wilhelm Pahl saw that, which was why he couldn’t sleep. He wanted to promote this outcome. Sergeant Böhne had confided to him that a new commando was to be sent forward early the following day. Two long-range guns were stuck in a valley between Fosses wood and Pepper ridge. They had to be removed the next day so that a new (Bavarian) howitzer battery could be installed there. Front-line commandos were normally drawn from the strong men in the first and second platoons, but tomorrow’s commando, unusually, was to be made up of the small, weak men in the 9th, 10th and 11th platoons, who had worked in the ammunitions tent until now. The recent offender, Bertin, belonged to the 10th platoon, Pahl to the 9th, and the sergeants and corporals who would have to go forward with them were the three platoon leaders.

‘See anything unusual in that, Pahl?’ Böhne had laughed. ‘If you were a veteran soldier, you’d spot it.’

Wilhelm Pahl wasn’t a veteran, but he’d spotted it anyway: this was an example of group punishment. The Prussian military sometimes liked to inflict disadvantages and unpleasantness on a whole group when one of its number was guilty of misconduct, so that the group would turn against the guilty party and make his life a misery. That was why Herr Glinksy had assembled the NCOs after the inspection.

In normal circumstances, for example at work, punishment wipes the slate clean. In the abnormal circumstances that pertain in the army of the class state, however, punishment marks the start of a man’s suffering. From now on, Bertin would always be in the wrong, slipping from one awkward situation to the next. It would be a gradual process, possibly with the odd break along the way, but however uneven the delivery of the knocks, as surely as copulation leads to reproduction they would teach Private Bertin that life is harsh. Until now, he hadn’t fared badly in the company, as he himself admitted. It was part of his idealism to want to be like any other ASC private, and idealism, as Wilhelm Pahl knew, was one of the subtlest lures used by society to prevent gifted men furthering their own interests and to seduce them into serving the interests of the ruling classes for no wages other than glory. If the men in the company and the officers in charge of the depot assumed a Jewish writer and future lawyer must be a socialist, then they were smarter than Private Bertin himself and understood his true nature and the meaning of his feelings and impulse towards solidarity better than he did. Deep down, Bertin obviously knew the score. But not consciously. Consciously – and he’d often made this point – he believed that wars were necessary and Germany’s cause was justified. As the majority of the Party thought the same way, he could hardly be criticised for this. Nonetheless, the default approach with all such lads was to adopt a certain entirely understandable mistrust until they’d shown by their actions which side they were on. In this particular case, however, it was highly desirable to bring the man into the fold.

There Bertin stood in the bright sunshine, in the pillory, a servant of the ruling class, still thinking the stupid things he’d been told to think. It just showed what an important and powerful force education was. But now Bertin really was going to get an education. Glinsky, Graßnick, Colonel Stein and the entire machinery of the army would see to that. He, Pahl the typesetter, would make sure this education had the right spin; he was the man for the job. A man such as Bertin could be invaluable to the working class. He was a writer who was having a book published right in the middle of the war. Wilhelm Pahl had never read anything by him, but he’d heard him talking. It was obvious the man could put anything he wanted across in words, even in front of an audience. Pahl recalled speeches Bertin had given to 40 or 50 highly sceptical ASC men when they were working in Serbia. By contrast, he, Wilhelm Pahl, preferred not to express his views in front of more than one or two trusted friends. He was aware of his ugliness, his hunchback, his short neck, his squashed nose and piggy eyes, and this held him back from appearing in public. And yet nothing was more important to further the cause of the working class. If the gifts of Bertin the lawyer and the thoughts of Pahl the typesetter could be combined that would be no mean weapon. If the hatred in Pahl and his indignation at class injustice could be made to burn in Comrade Bertin’s breast, if Bertin’s natural courage and disregard for personal danger were turned in the right direction, then they really could start something. It was something to work on. Maybe even during the war. Definitely afterwards. At the moment, all the power was in the hands of the ruling class. The owning classes, from which the officers came, had 70 million Germans at their disposal. They controlled their thoughts, deeds and desires. Only idealistic sheep such as Bertin believed they would ever willingly give this power up. But there was no need to decide how to wrest it from them just yet. No, Wilhelm Pahl would have time enough to work it out clearly in his own slow way. He certainly didn’t want to go to the Party majority with questions of how, what and when. The company hadn’t honoured him with the nickname ‘Liebknecht’ for nothing. His opinion of those who had passed the war credit bills was exactly the same as that lonely man’s. Liebknecht had paid for his courageous protests in the Reichstag and on Potsdamer Platz on 1 May with a prison sentence. In some places, comrades had risked a strike because of it. Not a bad sign. But at the moment the battle for Verdun and the costly campaign to control Europe – the world even – had eclipsed all else.

Pahl’s cigar was burning down. He was pleasantly tired now. Sleep would come quickly and do him good. Those, then, were his ‘War Thoughts’ – quite different, admittedly, from those that appeared in the newspapers, penned by venerable, patriotic professors. Wilhelm Pahl had earlier consigned one such column to the underworld, tossing it down to the rustling maggots in the latrine. The big 42cm gun 2km away in Thonne-le-Thil, which had roared so loudly it made the barracks shudder, was also quiet now and had been since the day before yesterday. The story was that a squib round had wiped it out – it and its entire crew. No doubt they were surprised when the shell, which was as big as an eight-year-old boy, burst in the gun’s barrel and ripped it open, spewing out a craterful of fire and steel – but not on to the French. What was this war for? A gigantic undertaking organised by the industries of destruction, involving extreme mortal danger for all concerned. You didn’t even need the French pilots, who were getting cockier by the day, to finish a gun off… There: Bertin had put his light out. Pahl’s cigar stub fell sizzling into a tin. A little water stopped it stinking the place out. Pahl snuggled down in his wood-fibre bag, pulled his blanket up and rested his head on his folded-up tunic. Bertin, he happened to know, used a fine latex air cushion as a pillow. May sleep bring balm for your nerves, my boy, he thought. You’re going to need it. For the first time, Pahl felt a kind of grim sympathy for his comrade.

The snoring in the barracks was louder than the guns outside. Or had they gone quiet? Had society muzzled their iron jaws? Had the typesetting machines at the front stopped clattering? Were the printing presses no longer rolling that had flattened thousands of men into the letters of a new alphabet describing the future? No more trams on Schöneberg high street. Time for Sunday rest.

^{CHAPTER FOUR} Christoph Kroysing

‘SUPERB!’ SAID PRIVATE Bertin the next morning. The dew sparkled in the sunshine, and the cross-country march took the Böhne commando away from the company commanders, and the men hated being near them. Yes, Bertin was responding rather differently to his despatch to the front than Herr Glinsky and his like had anticipated. For Bertin, this march provided an excursion into life proper. He positively quivered with joy at the thought that he was at last about to experience something. His whole being was as receptive as a dry sponge and pushed impatiently forwards, as if he were on an invisible lead. He was all eyes and ears that morning, totally alert.

There were several routes to the front from the Steinbergquell ammunition depot, which was tucked away at the junction of the Flabas to Moirey station road and the Damvillers to Azannes road. The shortest route was in Fosses wood and passed through a village called Ville, which had been shot to pieces and had gaping holes in its roofs and walls. It was still nice and early, and the sun slanted down behind the marching men. Pear tree leaves and laundry hung out to dry by signals men and flak gunners in their billet yard flashed in the morning light. The billets were all in the cellars. Ville was now a town of cellars, full of technical troops and infantry.

In the green valley, which they turned into as the road changed direction in the hills, they came upon the first dead. They lay under rust red tarpaulins, watched over by a sapper in a steel helmet. For a few minutes afterwards, the ASC men stopped talking. Then they found themselves in a green beech wood. Light shone through the young leaves on the treetops against the bright sky; a clear stream gurgled towards the men; drivers brought bareback horses to drink and carried full buckets of water up the hill on broad wooden shoulder yokes, disappearing behind black barracks where smoke billowed from narrow kitchen chimneys. The wood was practically untouched by shells, but the trees had been thinned and it was crossed by paths heading in different directions uphill. The further forwards the Böhne commando pushed, the more ripped and truncated trees they found lying on both sides of the valley. The red wood of the beeches stood out in the wild green tangle of creepers, foliage and brambles. Hazel bushes and wild cherry trees formed a thick undergrowth. Smooth, silvery grey beech trunks thrust upwards, hemmed in by dozens of younger saplings, pushing up branches as wide as a finger or arm to get as much light as possible and avoid being choked by the predatory tops of the older trees. Slanting light glimmered through the wild tangle, and birds called. As the valley turned southwards, all the trees were suddenly truncated, their bark hanging in loops. There were exposed white rocks everywhere, split open by shells, and a mass of creepers and shrubs sprawled round the edges of the huge blast holes, half submerged in the loam. Later – it must’ve been about eight o’clock – they crossed a plateau riddled like a sieve with shell holes, many of them as big as craters. The abused land stretched southwards: a desolate, brownish wasteland. Without warning, columns of smoke suddenly rose up, and a loud blast threw the ASC men into the nearest shell hole. Nobody knew which direction was which or if they were taking cover on the wrong side. The young man in Bertin felt great joy at that moment. This was how things should be. He was 27, but his heart beat like a boy’s, perhaps that was his good fortune. He pushed on and before the next blast came he was lying beside the detachment leaders, Sergeant Böhne and Sergeant Schulz, the ammunitions expert. For the first time, splinters and clumps of earth hurtled over the shocked ASC men. They regrouped at the edge of the field and advanced in the pauses between explosions. No one was hurt. Still, they looked pale by the time they arrived at the light railway tracks in the next valley, screened by wire netting interlaced with foliage. At that very moment, the whirr and clatter of the German counter bombardment howled past above their heads. Further down, they met a couple of gunners from the heavy batteries, who grinned at them unperturbed and asked how they liked the pyrotechnics. Bertin felt almost ashamed of his comrades’ blotchy faces and deathly pale noses.

‘Get a move on!’ said Sergeant Böhne, hustling his detachment down the pathless valley slope, pitted with shell holes and covered in footprints. Down below, a gunner was riding around. He inspected the edge of the wood and disappeared into a Beech copse. He clearly belonged to the battery that was to be installed there. In the valley, the barrels of two long-range guns stretched skywards like telescopes. Around them swarmed groups of small men. The light railway lines ended halfway up the shielding ridge. A new railway track needed to be laid between them and the guns so that the small locomotive could haul the barrel and mount of the first gun to the rear that night. Herr Böhne explained this to the young Bavarian NCO who was waiting for them. Bertin liked the look of the young man’s agreeable brown face and his warm eyes under his visor. He was obviously a 1914 volunteer who had acquired an Iron Cross, Second Class, a wound and his stripes in the space of a year, and was now in charge of a detachment. Bertin had gone to university in the south of Germany, and he loved the man’s dialect, which made him feel more homesick than his native Silesian. The work plan was simple. There were some piles of rails. The Prussians were to lay a new line to the guns, while the Bavarian’s men dismantled the two monsters, removing their mounts from their bedding. They’d have to be gone by midday or the Frogs would rain on their parade. He knew the score, because he and his men were dug in as a standby detachment in the ruin up the hill known as Chambrettes-Ferme. Every morning, the Frogs, who knew the area like the backs of their hands, battered the line to pieces. The Bavarian’s men then crawled out of their holes and laid new rails – and so forth. He had 30 men and two medical orderlies, because every now and then one of the men didn’t duck quickly enough and got hurt.

As he spoke, he shaded his eyes, squinting at the captive balloon. He said he could tell from its pale colour that the other side was out of action for the time being because of the ground mist and the morning sun in their eyes. And so the work began. Some of the men levelled the ground with picks and shovels, while the main group brought over the rails and stuck them together like a child’s model railway, fixing the sleepers into the ground with small clips. The hill ridge towered above them, a bleak yellowy brown dotted with grassy clumps between the shell holes, occasional thistles, camomile and dandelion leaves. At every step, they had to watch out for steel splinters, which came in all different sizes. The ground was covered with them, and they could damage the leather uppers of their boots. Perhaps there’s been shooting here, Bertin thought, as he chipped away with his pick at the front of the group. The sun felt strong on their backs. They’d ditched their tunics long ago. Sergeant Böhne watched them out of the corner of his pale eyes, which were sunk in wrinkles. Swinging his walking stick, he paraded up and down, rather pleased with the excursion, which might get him an Iron Cross, and with the work of his men, who, to the Bavarian’s astonishment, were making good progress. Yes, thought Bertin, who heard them discussing the topic, workers from Hamburg and Berlin get through it quicker than others. And was he mistaken or was the young Bavarian with the blue and white cockade deliberately hanging about in his vicinity? The Bavarian had given him a searching look earlier. Or did people tend to imagine such things when they liked someone?

Behind the work party, first one then soon a second wagon were lowered in a flurry of screeching and braking. In just an hour, they had reached the guns. With much cursing, the heavy steel equipment and the barrel and mount with their wooden spars, wedges and baulks were heaved on to the groaning wagons. Then 30 straining men pulled the wagons uphill on long cables. Each man had a cable cutting into his left or right shoulder. Like Chaldean or Egyptian slaves, they panted up the hillside, heading for the far-off station, which, amusingly enough, had the same name – Hundekehle – as the tram stop for a well-known Sunday pub in the Grunewald area of Berlin. Suddenly, a lieutenant rode up with a camera. He made the struggling men stop on the hillside and took a snap of them strung out along the cables like a line of smoked fish. Then the typical builder’s call to breakfast rang out: ‘Take fifteen!’ The Nissen huts up above, which had a telephone as well as an unfortunate name, had received news that it wouldn’t be possible to supply a wagon for the second gun that day. Plenty of time, then, for a slug of water from the canteen, a piece of bread and a cigarette.

The wide hollow, yellowy green against the blue sky, was filled with a shimmering heat haze. ‘That’s Fosses wood,’ Bertin heard the young Bavarian say, as he prowled round the gun positions in search of shade, gesturing expansively with his left hand. Bertin looked down on a ragged, grey slope covered in half-uprooted tree stumps. Small green leaves still sprouted from the splintered white and ochre timbers, and some of the trees still resembled chopped-down beeches, but most were tattered stakes, scarred by bullets and shell splinters, that looked more like skeletons. Unexploded cylindrical shells lay among the plants, some with their round ends sticking up towards the light. The grey fingers of ancient root systems thrust into the massive shell holes. Huge trees had been knocked to the ground and lay rotting, their earth-covered roots rising up like umbrellas, their crowns long since trodden into the ground. The destruction was a picture painted in three colours: the white of the chalky cliffs, the dark brown of the scattered soil and the irrepressible green of the foliage. In a few months, man had eradicated what nature had taken generations to produce.

In the odd protected corner of the embankment, one or two remaining whole trees provided shade. Bertin lay under one of them, the back of his head resting on his cap, his legs in a dry, crumbling shell hole. He idly watched the wind playing in the tree’s dark, shining leaves, wondering how much longer the sun and moon would shine on this scrap of nature and creation on this slope in Fosses wood and on the smooth, green-flecked columns of beech. No doubt the new battery would see to it that the surrounding desolation of tree trunks, earth and shrubbery engulfed this last little patch of growth too. What a shame, Bertin thought, oddly not considering the people who would be destroyed along with it.

A light west wind carried on it the whip of individual shells, the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire. But for a young man like Bertin the sun, shade and landscape were more meaningful and exciting than shrapnel or Tetanus bacteria. His was an essentially musical nature, in thrall to and moved by impressions, sensuous experiences and emotions. Right then, he was playing with a roaming cat that had appeared soundlessly in a bramble bush. Her bottle-green eyes were fixed on the sausage end lying on a piece of greasy paper near Bertin’s left hand. The sausage emitted a wonderful smell of curing and select cuts of meat. Of course, a cat that knows her business needn’t starve in wartime. The place was teeming with rats, and the cat’s fur was thick and glossy across her iron muscles. But this smelt like something tasty: she could jump over and bite the man’s hand, stick a claw in the sausage tip, then bolt up the slanting beech trunk into the high-forked branches… But she was a feral house cat, who understood how the locals operated these days. They no longer threw stones. Instead, they sent something that went pop whipping through the air from sticks with sharp, shiny ends. She crouched uncertainly among the creepers and brambles, tense one minute, relaxed the next. It was a rare treat for a soldier to be alone. Bertin loved it and he loved animals even more. He eyed the cat through the rims of his glasses. How beautiful she was in her wild composure! He remembered all the cats he’d ever had and lost as a boy in Kreuzberg – you never knew how. (Silesian people considered cat skin to be the best remedy for Rheumatism.) Nonetheless, he dithered about whether he should keep the sausage end to eat himself that evening. I’ve already sunk pretty far, he thought, if I’m weighing up whether to eat the scrap of meat in this sausage end or give it to a cat. No, he decided, she’d only get the skin. He flipped the sausage paper round the end of meat. The cat jumped back in alarm and spat.

‘That was a nasty shock for her,’ said a voice from above, an agreeable young voice that Bertin already knew, and two legs in grey-green puttees dangled into the shell hole opposite Bertin’s legs. Instinctively, he straightened up, because a sergeant is still a sergeant and deserves respect, even in the lunch break. According to the clock it was 11am, according to the sun midday, and you could feel that. The two young men seemed to be the only sentient beings hereabouts. The cat crouched three paces away, invisible between two roots as thick as arms that had the same grey-on-grey flecks as she did. The two young men scrutinised each other and liked what they saw. The sergeant asked if Bertin wouldn’t rather lie back down, and Bertin said no. You could sleep anywhere. He wanted to feel alive here, to open his eyes and smoke his after-lunch pipe. From his haversack he pulled a delicate pipe, which was made of meerschaum and amber and was already filled. The Bavarian shielded the sputtering lighter with his cap – a special cap, nicely worked. Bertin saw the letters CK embossed on the leather edging. Yes, this young person came from a good home. His neatly parted hair, broad forehead, and narrow wrists and fingers gave the game away. The Bavarian asked the Berliner how he had come to be here, lighting a cigarette himself. Bertin didn’t understand the question.

‘I’m on duty,’ he answered, surprised.

‘What? Just like anyone? Couldn’t they find a better use for you?’

‘I don’t like the air in the orderly room,’ Bertin replied with a smile.

‘I see. You’d rather work outside and be photographed,’ the Bavarian smiled back.

‘Exactly so,’ said Bertin, and the acquaintance was made. They exchanged names. The sergeant was called Christoph Kroysing and came from Nuremberg. His lively eyes scrutinised Bertin’s face, almost sucking information from it. For a moment, they were silent. A couple of metallic strikes – did they come from Hill 300 or 378? – reminded them what time and space meant. Then young Kroysing shook himself. In a neutral undertone, he asked Bertin if he would like to do him a favour.

Nobody in the vicinity paid any attention to the two men. The root system of an enormous Beech, knocked over as if by a lightning strike, reared up to shield them. Neither of them even noticed how the cat, familiar with the ways of brainless bipeds, sloped off with the precious sausage end and paper in her teeth.

Christoph Kroysing told his story. For nine weeks, he and his men had been living in the cellars at Chambrettes-Ferme, and if it was up to retired civil servant Niggl and his orderly room, he would remain there for the rest of his days. He had committed an act of gross stupidity. He explained that he had joined the war during his first university term, been quite seriously wounded and then promoted. He’d been sent out with the Reserve division for now because they needed every educated man they could get, but he was due to start officer training in the autumn and should get his commission next spring. However, he had the bad luck not to be able to tolerate the way the NCOs abused the men’s rights. The NCOs had set up their own kitchen where they scoffed the best bits from the men’s rations: fresh meat and butter, sugar and potatoes, and above all beer. Meanwhile, thin noodles, dried vegetables and tinned meat were considered good enough for the men, who did heavy work on niggardly leave. This stuck in his craw, said Kroysing, due to family tradition. For a century, his forefathers had supplied the state of Bavaria with high-ranking officials and judiciary. Where there was a Kroysing, there was justice and fairness. And so he was stupid enough to write a long letter full of grievances to his Uncle Franz, a big noise at the Military Railway Administration (MRA) in Metz. The censors were naturally very concerned about what a sergeant said to the MRA head. The letter was sent back to the battalion with an order to court-martial its author. When Kroysing heard about it, he laughed. They only had to ask and he would talk, and he certainly wasn’t short of witnesses. However, his brother Eberhard, who was at Douaumont with his sappers, took a different view. He came and gave him a hard time about his youthful folly, and said no one would speak up for him if the court martial got to them first. In any case, he’d said before he left, he wouldn’t be able to do anything for Christoph. Everyone had to make their own bed, and now Eberhard’s post would also be gone through with a magnifying glass.

They’d not had a good childhood together. The big brother was five years older than the younger one and always felt disadvantaged, something he bitterly resented, as is normal among brothers.

But the company wanted to avoid an investigation at all costs. They were clearly very anxious about it, and so, most unusually, the court martial didn’t get in touch. ‘That’s why they’ve put me at Chambrettes-Ferme,’ finished Kroysing. ‘They’re hoping the Frogs will do them a favour and consign the whole business to the files. For nine weeks, I’ve been watching every single face that fetches up in this lousy hole…’

Bertin sat there, his face shadowed and flecked by the beech leaves above him. Something inside him laughed with joy. It was good that he had come here. Here was someone about to be mired in brutality, and he could reach out a hand and pull him out. ‘So what can I do?’ he asked simply.

Kroysing gave him a grateful look. He just wanted him to transport a few lines, which he would give him next time, to his mother. ‘Your post is above suspicion, isn’t it? When next you write home, put my letter inside yours and then get it put in a postbox at home. My mother will then telegraph Uncle Franz and the ball will be set in motion.’

‘Done,’ said Bertin. ‘We’ll soon know when we’ll be back here again. That sounded like an announcement. Did you hear it?’

‘Fall in!’ came the call from below.

‘Better we’re not seen together again,’ said the Bavarian. ‘I’ll sit down and write the letter immediately. Thank you so much! Hopefully, I can pay you back sometime.’ He shook Bertin’s hand, and there was a gleam in his brown, wide-set, boyish eyes. Stiffly, he touched his hand to his cap and then disappeared between the trees, nearly stumbling on the cat, which was prowling around in the irrational hope of a second sausage end.

Bertin stood up, stretched his arms, inhaled deeply and looked happily around him. It was wonderful here. The felled trees were beautiful, as were the white shell holes, the limestone, and the terrible high-calibre shell splinters, which were stuck in the ground like serrated throwing knives. He ran like a young boy down to the solitary gun, where his comrades were already standing in their tunics and haversacks, and Sergeant Böhne was lining the detachment up to march off. Bertin had found someone like himself, had forged a bond, perhaps even a friendship. He laughed off muttered comments from his comrades, who said there would be trouble on the way back just because he had slept so long. They said they’d keep a better eye on him when they came back the day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, then, Bertin thought, taking his place for the count off.

The Bavarian sergeant was also lining his men up to march off. He waved and shouted, ‘See you the day after tomorrow.’ His greeting reached everyone, but Bertin knew whom it was really meant for.

^{CHAPTER FIVE} Sometimes things happen quickly

IN THE MIDDLE of the night, Christoph Kroysing ducked out of the entrance to the dugout, which had once been the Chambrettes-Ferme cellars, straightened up and took a couple of steps. His silhouette was slim and boyish against the light sky. His hands were in his pockets and he didn’t have a belt or a cap on. His lank hair, still neatly parted, flopped across his right eye. He was entirely used to the dreadful Walpurgis Night that howled above his head. Steel witches hurtled towards the ground; long-range guns rattled and banged like trains; every four or five minutes, tonnes of metal from the heavy mortars ripped the air with a desolate gurgle. The screech and whistle of small field grenades mixed with the roar of 15-centimetre shells, which, being the army’s main weapon, arched steeply through the air from three or four different types of gun. And in response came the banging, roaring and pounding of the French 7.5s, 10s, 20s and the dreaded 38s, which spat at the flank of the Germans’ positions and trenches from the impregnable Fort Marre on the other side of the Meuse. It must be all go at the front. In the small section just about visible from Hill 344 behind the Douaumont ridge, the fighting divisions had been trying to exterminate each other with hand grenades, machine guns, and bare steel, and the aftermath was now subsiding. The Germans had advanced a few paces between Thiaumont and Souville, but the French had held firm, and the German artillery was now hammering their position, and they in turn were hammering the German artillery to give their infantry a break. It was the normal back and forth of the fronts, and Christoph Kroysing often thought that there would be no end to it until the last German and the last Frenchman limped out of the trenches on crutches to finish each other off with pocket knives or teeth and finger nails. For the world had gone mad. Only an orgy of madness could explain this stamping on the spot amid squirting blood, rotting flesh and cracking bones. They had been taught in school that people were rational beings, but that idea was a pedagogical swindle that should be buried – together with the bearded gentlemen who had the cheek to teach school children and who ought simply to be clubbed to death with human bones. ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’ ‘God is love.’ ‘The moral law within us and the starry heavens above us.’ ‘It is sweet and honourable to die for the Fatherland.’ ‘Justice and law are the pillars of the state.’ ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.’ Well, he’d always been of good will and now he was here.

If you wanted to look south and west, you had to be prepared to take a small risk. Kroysing knew of a hole in the Ferme’s ramparts, a kind of seat, which he called his loge. It took scarcely a minute to scramble through the brickwork, but he might of course get hit. So what! He ran over and was soon squatting in his lair, where he caught his breath and laughed a little.

The vague brightness of the moonless, starry night was becoming ever more transparent, and his ear gradually adjusted to the myriad sounds of war. The gulleys towards Douaumont were under heavy attack. Rifle and machine gun fire whipped the length of the Pepper ridge. On the rubbish tip that was the village of Louvemont red flames flew up and died down, and only then did the detonation come. Out of sight down below, field kitchens were trying to come through, as were ammunition trucks and working parties with rolls of wire, posts, entrenching tools – horses, lorries, men. No, the Frogs were no longer scrimping on ammunition. In the valley to the left, dark red bushes of fire had broken out. A few hundred metres further on, where you couldn’t see anything, was a much used field track that led to Herbe Bois.

On the southern edge of Vauche wood, where the military road ran up to Douaumont, a chain of little volcanoes thundered and flared, new ones erupting all the time, and over Douaumont itself, over his brother Eberhard and his men, hung a great clinging red mist – the never-ending belching of the chimney that was Verdun. The army’s backbone was being pounded to bits there. Red and green flares flew up on the horizon, turning the infantry’s cries for help into a jaunty fireworks display. The French army’s white star shells floated slowly down, spreading a soft light – excellent for shooting each other by. Christoph Kroysing knew it all well: the Chemin des Dames, the Loretto Heights, the sugar factory by Souchez – all the sweet things associated with the war of 1914-15 when he was still an infantryman, putting his life on the line for the Fatherland. Now he was more inclined to watch. His little, rat-infested loge here in the shattered brickwork suited him just fine. The great arc of the horizon spread out before him, flashing and flickering, lighting up like a bolt of lightning and going black again. Despite the natural dampening caused by distance, the full ferocity of the roaring and clamouring reached him, overlaid by the thunder of German guns. The Fosses wood, Chaûmes wood and Vavrille batteries were working at full strength. Half-naked gunners, support troops, observers in the trees, telephonists at their apparatus: this was the night shift. He knew them all, those bloody shell-smiths. The next day, the new battery would settle in nearby, drawing French counter-fire into this quiet valley. Shame about that scrap of wood that was still standing. Shame about all the men who would meet their end here. Shame about Christoph Kroysing himself, who, at 21, was forced to accept that man’s brutality and his instinct for survival were as vital as war and harder to escape. He leaned on a ruined wall, half crouching, half sitting, his hands cupping his lean, boyish face, which was framed by floppy hair. This is what it looks like outside Verdun, he thought. In all these weeks, things have hardly changed. The front line has been pushed forwards slightly, and we could cover the ground we’ve won with corpses. But that was what it was like at the Somme too, where the French and British were stage managing the same kind of hoax. There was a sudden boom on Hill 344. Bright lights flashed, fiery red on smouldering white. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to sit outside much longer. At least he wouldn’t go to sleep feeling as hopeless as he had the night before, haunted by the scum who snooped through his post, checking what he’d written to Mother and Father. No, he was alive again. He had his bottle back and he felt clearer in his head than ever before. They hadn’t reckoned with the camaraderie of decent men in the army. Tomorrow or the day after, his comrade Bertin would return. The letter he had written that afternoon with his trusty fountain pen was already crackling in his tunic pocket above his heart. He’d have to be very careful for a couple of days. Then a mighty hand would reach down and remove Christoph Kroysing from this rat hole. Because even if the gods had abdicated and those who ran the world seemed to have turned into clockwork maniASC, there were men everywhere in the German army, individuals and groups, who wanted to put an end to injustice, who would be incandescent with rage if it were proved to them that brutality, self-interest and treason began right behind the foremost trenches.

As he stood up, his leg muscles aching, he thought how heavily the dew was lying and how clearly the stars shone in the sky. Did the same nonsense go on up there as on Earth? You could depend on it. Same old matter and spirit up above and down below. In the half light, the rats were dashing about on the ground like thin cats; they should definitely shoot a couple of dozen of them the next day. The rats could have got much fatter nearer the front, but they never deserted the ruined stables where they were born.

Tired and heavy-headed but confident, Christoph Kroysing climbed back into the dugout where his comrades were snoring. It stank more than a little among the damp brickwork, but tender currents flowed from the letter in his breast pocket and washed away all his unease. And as he folded his tunic and laid his head on it, as he did every night, young Kroysing smiled in darkness.

In the early hours, the Frogs fired their usual morning greeting at the light railway tracks: booming bursts of shell fire, drifting splinters, crashing steel and clumps of earth. As soon as it was over, the Bavarians emerged from their rat holes to assess the damage. The bastard French had knackered two whole sections straight off, miserable gits. They created nowt but work. A French plane circled up above in the morning haze, then disappeared to the east.

A fabulous summer day, thought Christoph Kroysing. He felt good today, better than he’d felt in ages. Blue sky – air to make you feel like flying away! Perhaps he’d first pay a visit to Hundekehle station to see if they were going to send a truck today to remove the second gun. Carefully, he trotted uphill, sticking close to the sections of track or jumping from sleeper to sleeper. From time to time, the Frogs spat over a little reminder – crumps the Germans called these kinds of shots, because they were there before you heard the gun fire. This part of the valley was much too well disposed to artillery observation, but today Kroysing felt immune to danger. He had the advantage of having been in the same place for 60 days. That meant you got to know it like the back of your hand whether you wanted to or not. Also, for the first time, he noticed flowers growing again at the edges of the shell holes: purple lady’s smock, summer cornflowers, very blue, and a red poppy, like a swaying fleck of blood.

In Hundekehle, a heat haze still shimmered over the corrugated iron station building. There were no trucks there, so the second gun wouldn’t be collected today, which was a shame. On the other hand, half a dozen infantrymen and a junior MO were taking the opportunity to sit and sleep in the shade of the railway hut, backs pressed to the metal, legs stretched out in front of them, completely covered in dust and earth. Their collapsed posture spoke of a superhuman exhaustion; inside, a young lieutenant, who had to stay awake and be responsible, was nonetheless making a phone call, wanting to know how he could move two machine guns and his men’s gear to the rear. Blinking, he stepped out into the glaring sun, scrutinised the Bavarian sergeant, offered him a cigarette and asked what he was doing there. The lieutenant decided he should wake his men. Once they’d started sleeping, they wouldn’t stop in a hurry, and as long as they were hunkered down in this accursed place, they’d needed to be awake, ready to scatter and take cover if there was an armed attack, even if they were relaxing now and enjoying the quiet. They’d come from Pepper ridge and been relieved about two in the morning. Their main contingent had taken the normal route via Brabant and been scattered by gunfire. He, Lieutenant Mahnitz, and his junior MO, Dr Tichauer, had been clear from the start that it was better to stumble through shell holes and cut across country to the rear than to come under heavy fire, especially as they were already dreaming about leave. He laughed cheerfully. They’d had a terrible time, but things would calm down now. The Germans and the French were both busy with the battle at the Somme. They richly deserved some peace, and they wouldn’t say no to some hot coffee either.

Christoph Kroysing immediately decided to invite the lieutenant and his men for some freshly made ground coffee. Glad that his hint had been taken, the lieutenant selected a corporal who’d fallen asleep again to take the men’s gear and the two guns back to Steinbergquell depot on the next empty train and await new orders there. Then the men set off, plodding along the section of track with sore feet and sagging shoulders. They chatted quietly, wondering if they’d be able to get a wash at the ASC men’s billet or at least some breakfast. They were seasoned soldiers familiar with the conditions in this zone, and their slack amble and faded uniforms symbolised that. They always had one ear cocked in case the unhoped for happened. It was half eight in the morning. The Frogs couldn’t see much from their captive balloon, but you couldn’t be too careful, as they said in the army. So that the coffee would be ready when they got there, Sergeant Kroysing ran on ahead, telling the comrades from Hessen – for the men he’d picked up were from Hessen – to follow on slowly. There was no danger. ‘He’ had never fired at this hour.

What date was it that day? Immaterial. It wasn’t a good day for Christoph Kroysing. After a great deal of toing and froing, the French high command had agreed, much against its will, to a request from the foreign office to allow neutral, foreign journalists to make a short visit to the front at Verdun. Axel Krog, a diligent and respected correspondent for important Swedish newspapers, was now standing in the French battery position opposite, which had never fired a shot at this inopportune time of day. His visit aroused mixed emotions: hostility, mockery, welcome. Herr Krog was a long-time member of the Swedish colony in Paris and a great admirer of France, the accompanying officer from the General Staff press office explained. ‘He should join the Foreign Legion then,’ muttered Gunner Lepaile, in purest suburban Parisian argot. But the French artillery was the best in the world – and not just in the days of Napoleon, the only gunner to make commander. The press office wanted to give Herr Krog an opportunity to publish an impressive article in Sweden, where the Germans were shamelessly spreading their propaganda. Accordingly, he was put in the care of an observation officer and given a field glass through which to witness a bit of sharp shooting: a few Germans being picked off with slim shells. Did Herr Krog know that there was a light railway over there? Units on the Pepper ridge were being relieved that night, and the Boche was moving troops back through this valley. The gunners despised what they read in the newspapers. They spat on those who wanted to prolong the war as much as those who wanted to end it. Furthermore, the gun would now need to be cleaned again. However, at the of the day, it was a matter of honour to show how well the 31st brigade could shoot. Guns one and two were ready and trained on their target: the human game 2.5 km away that would soon appear in the field glass.

Christoph Kroysing trotted down the tracks, jumping boyishly over the shell holes. When things took a turn for the better, they didn’t do so by halves. Now he could choose whether to give his letter to this nice lieutenant or wait until the morning and give it to his comrade Bertin. In this remarkable way, the law of alternatives proved itself to be true. As he thought this, he came to the open valley floor. A light brown wasteland stretched out before him. Seventy or 80 metres before he’d reach cover.

What was that? Kroysing swung round. But even as he looked round, the burst of an explosive, the hot steel of a thudding missile crashed at his back. Pale and scared but miraculously unhurt, he made two leaps and disappeared into the next shell hole. But now the second gun chipped in. Roaring, yellow on black, the shell exploded in front of Kroysing, spun him round and threw him to the ground. God, God, God, he thought, fading from consciousness as the point of his chin hit the iron rail. Mother, Mother, Mother.

The Swedish journalist standing next to the French observer turned pale and said thank you very much. Amazingly artful shooting, but he’d rather not see any more. The men from Hessen were now speeding down the railway track at the double, the lieutenant at the front. They’d seen at once that the young Bavarian was no longer used to the fray or he would have thrown himself behind the rails immediately after the first explosion. You didn’t mess with crumps. They crouched round Kroysing’s lying body where blood was pooling. The junior MO Trichauer bent carefully over him. Nothing to be done. A morphine injection was all he could offer him now. The shell splinters had hacked through his shoulder blade and arm joint like a meat cleaver, severing his arteries and probably the lobe of his lung as well. There was no point in bringing him round. As astonished sappers and ASC men appeared above, asking why the Frogs were shooting at this unusual hour, and the group below gestured frantically for them to come down, Lieutenant Mahnitz looked with a sick heart on the creature laid out before him, with whom he’d been having such an enjoyable conversation less than five minutes before and who now began to groan like a suffocating animal. Half lying and propped up on his elbow, speaking to himself but also loud enough for his band of speechless, dirty men to hear, Mahnitz said: ‘I’d just like to know when this bloody shit will be over.’

^{CHAPTER SIX} To Billy

THE NEXT DAY, as the ASC men approached the front line, taking the route round the Meuse hills this time, there was talk about how lucky they’d been to be at home the day before, because there had been an armed attacked in this area and a couple of men had been seriously wounded and transported to Billy. Bertin was sceptical about these excitable rumours; he was already looking forward to seeing Kroysing. Would he come today or later? Was he already stuck down below at the gun position? In contrast to the day before, that day’s division of labour brought Bertin and his spade near to two Bavarians who were hacking away at the clay by the new track to make it easier to drag the track later.

‘Where’s your Sergeant Kroysing?’ Bertin asked the nearest one, a freckly red head with a particularly large Adam’s apple.

Without lifting his head, the Bavarian asked Bertin what he wanted with Kroysing. Bertin said he didn’t want anything in particular; he’d just found Kroysing appealing.

‘Well, lad,’ the Bavarian said, battering away at a lump of clay, ‘our Sergeant Kroysing won’t be appealing to anyone ever again.’

At first Bertin didn’t understand. His confusion lasted so long that the Bavarian lost his temper and asked him if his ears were blocked. Kroysing had stopped one, he said. He was a goner. He’d bled like a stuck pig in the truck that took him to the military hospital at Billy. Bertin didn’t reply. He stood clutching his spade. The colour drained from his face and he cleared his throat. Strange, strange. And here he was standing about stupidly, not screaming, not lashing out… That’s war for you. Nowt you can do about, lad. Had the Bavarian said that? He had. He was spitting it out, making his voice clear. It had happened the morning before. The explosion had smashed up Kroysing’s left shoulder. You today, me tomorrow. They wouldn’t be seeing Kroysing again.

They worked on. ‘Did you know Sergeant Kroysing from before?’ the Bavarian asked after a pause, looking up, his face dripping with sweat. Bertin said that he had known Kroysing before, that he had been a friend of his and that if there were more like him in the army, the world would be a better place. Yes, the Bavarian replied, blue eyes solemn in his farmer’s face. ‘You’re right there, lad. You won’t find another sergeant like him however hard you look. Even if some people are pleased that he’s out of the picture after yesterday afternoon…’ With that he drew his face down into his open collar as if he’d said too much. Bertin told him he could speak freely to him, that he knew what was what. But the Bavarian demurred. ‘It’s fine,’ he said, turning away.

But during the break the Bavarian appeared again in the company of a smaller, younger ASC man with a thin face and black, almost startled eyes. Both had their tunics open and their caps cocked over one ear. Casually and seemingly innocently, they came either side of Bertin, making it look like they were three ASC men strolling into the shade, bunking off in the hope of a nap. Between the bushy, truncated tree stumps, the remnant of a heavy shell or mine, blown off during the detonation, stuck in the soil like a small table. Its plate-like surface faced skywards, balanced on a steel leg as broad as a hand and thick as a finger. Bugger me! thought Bertin. This was their world – a world where men like Kroysing bit the dust.

This man here, the Bavarian told Bertin, was Kroysing’s buddy. He had helped to cut his tunic off his body when he was being bandaged up. Something had fallen out from the bloody tatters that no one in their detachment wanted to keep. If Bertin wanted it, he could have it. It was a letter. Bertin said he would gladly take it. He was oddly moved by this bold manifestation of the will of the dead, or almost dead. Gingerly, the Bavarian ASC man handed him a swollen rectangle of brownish red material. It was almost still sticky and looked like a thin bar of chocolate. On it shimmered fudged, blue-black writing. Bertin turned pale, but he took this last greeting and commission and put it in the side pocket of his haversack. When he slid the solid bag of blue-grey linen back over his hips, it seemed to have got heavier. He felt a certain chill, a light shudder, run through his body. He thought he’d found a friend and now he had a commission to fulfil that was both unclear and full of potential complications. Poor little Kroysing! The grey cat suddenly appeared in front of Bertin like a root come to life, gazing at him insolently with her bottle-green eyes, and he was suddenly overcome with fury. Cursing, he hurled the nearest shell splinter at her, missed her of course and saw the Bavarian looking at him in astonishment. She was alive. A creature like that was still alive.

EARLY IN THE afternoon, a man stood doubtfully in front of the company orderly room. Anyone not ordered to present himself there, usually saved himself the trouble, as things only ever went well for Glinsky’s favourites; decent men gave the place a wide berth. Nonetheless, Bertin from the ASC stood before the tar paper-covered door, crooked his finger, knocked and stepped inside, assuming the prescribed posture. It was clear from the rigid expression on his face and and the little crease above the bridge of his glasses that he had something on his mind. But with his officer’s stripes on his Litevka, a cigar between his thick lips and a dead look in his protruding eyes, Herr Glinsky didn’t allow such things to trouble him and hadn’t for some time. He’d spent too long in civilian life pandering to the emotions of those he insured in order to make a living as an insurance broker. Now there was a war. The state was looking after him. It was payback time, and he took his dues. He had never realised (though Frau Glinsky had) how much it had cost him to become that unctuous individual each day. Life now was therefore all the sweeter…

Private Bertin: that was the one with the water pipe who shaved his beard off. For the moment, Glinsky concentrated on the latter description, though the former would certainly come up during their conversation. In the hot and somewhat musty air of the orderly room, he asked: ‘What on Earth does that soldier with the shaved off beard want?’

The soldier with the shaved-off beard asked for a leave pass to go to Billy and return after the curfew. The connection was unreliable, and so he might have to come back in the evening.

The two clerks grinned to themselves. In exceptional circumstances, a soldier did of course have the right to such a pass after a tour of duty. After all, a soldier is not a prisoner with chains round his feet. But power is power, and favour is favour, and whatever this comrade imagined, nothing would come of it. He wouldn’t be going to Billy today.

Private Bertin knew the two clerks. Sperlich, good-natured but stupid, had been some kind of office worker before. Querfurth, who had a goatee and wore thick glasses for long-sightedness on his squinting eyes, had been a draughtsman in the Borsig Works at Tegel. Under the previous sergeant major, they’d been pleasant enough, but mud sticks and their dealings with Herr Glinsky had corrupted them. He sensed that the three men were against him and that it would be hard for him to claim his rights. In a friendly enough way, Glinsky asked what he wanted in Billy. Bertin said he wanted to look for an acquaintance who’d been seriously injured the day before and taken to the hospital there. Remembering the blow he’d had, he swallowed hard two or three times and his voice quivered imperceptibly.

‘Is that so?’ said the venerable Glinsky airily. ‘A wounded soldier in the hospital? And here was I was imagining a washer woman or a whore.’

Bertin heard a couple of fat flies buzzing round a fly paper hanging from the low ceiling. The company knew he was recently married; they’d expect a protest, a flash of indignation. But he didn’t even think of it. He wanted to get to Kroysing and he would, and when you want something badly, you don’t let someone like Glinsky rattle you. He gazed quietly at Glinsky’s pasty, indoors complexion and prying nose and said nothing – and that was smart. Bertin’s silence seemed to satisfy Herr Glinsky. He sat back comfortably in his chair and asked who the distinguished gentleman intended to honour with a visit. A French prisoner presumably. Bertin smiled instinctively. He’d expected that. No, he explained. It was a volunteer soldier, the leader of the standby detachment at Chambrettes-Ferme, Sergeant Kroysing. He’d been seriously wounded the day before.

Grey-skinned Glinsky’s eyes and mouth fell open in delight. The story of the court martial had done the rounds, and a man like Glinsky naturally sympathised with all the Bavarian comrades who were threatened by it. But he pulled himself together lightning-fast: ‘You can save yourself the journey. That man’s been dead for some time. He was buried this afternoon.’

Bertin grasped that Glinsky was lying. Ordinarily, the 1/X/20 orderly room had no contact with the Bavarian labour company. NCOs from the two units swapped news and got to know each other when they met by chance at the big supply stores in Mangiennes and Damvillers. But it was hard to respond to the lie; he couldn’t very well say that he wanted to visit the dead man’s grave.

‘I see,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Dead and buried?’

‘Yes,’ said Glinsky firmly, ‘and now you can return to your duties and show me your back, Mr Water Tap Man. Dismissed!’ Bertin swung round and left, while Glinsky hurried to get in touch with Sergeant Major Feicht from the Bavarian company and congratulate him on the resolution of a matter that had been hanging over his head.

Bertin stood outside in the sun, pensively putting one foot in front of the other. If he couldn’t go to Billy on a leave pass, he’d go without one. But first he’d take advice from someone who understood the situation. Sergeant Böhne was passing at that moment, rubbing his hands together. Behind him the former innkeeper Lebehde, who belonged to Böhne’s squad, was carrying a pot of extra-strong coffee, which he intended to share with Böhne and a couple of others over a celebratory game of skat. For the depot had given orders that all front-line commandos were to remain off-duty when they got back, and the company couldn’t countermand those orders. Böhne’s small, bright eyes became serious when Private Bertin explained in an undertone what was going on. Böhne was a father of two, and the young Bavarian’s accident affected him profoundly. Karl Lebehde just shrugged his shoulders at the orderly room’s decision, saying there were many ways to get to Billy.

In the meantime, the barracks door had closed behind them. There were only a few men around, and the long room was quiet. At a table in the right-hand corner, Corporals Näglein and Althans were already waiting for their coffee and game of skat. Time to take action, said Althans, if the Prussians had given up on esprit de corps. As they all knew, esprit de corps was one of Acting Lieutenant Graßnick’s catchphrases. If Corporal Näglein, a farmer from the Altmark in Saxony-Anhalt, was rather a timid man, then Corporal Althans made up for it with his cheek. Althans was a thin Reservist, who hadn’t been away from his infantry regiment for long. He’d been with them during the February attack in this area and had taken a heavy ricochet shot between the ribs, as a result of which he’d lain for months in bandages. He enjoyed showing anyone who’d look the deep hole under his chest. He performed a kind of courier service between the battalion in Damvillers and the company, without actually doing duty as an orderly. As such, he had a permanent pass that gave him permission to be out and about at any time – and it was made out to the holder, not in his name. He told Bertin he kept it in the cuff of his tunic, and that his tunic was hanging on a nail behind him. Understood?

A few minutes later, Bertin was trotting over the board walks and short cuts to the park, past columns of men unloading and hauling ammunition. He had a good cup of coffee inside him and he now had something else in the cuff of his tunic. The ammunitions expert Sergeant Schultz and his two assistants always knew of ways to get to Romagne, Mangiennes and Billy.

^{CHAPTER SEVEN} The older brother

‘SERGEANT KROYSING, YES. He’s going to be buried at half five.’

Bertin was pointed in the direction of some steps that led underground. In the white-washed cellar, three coffins waited, one of them open. In it was visible the one part of Christoph Kroysing’s remains that was still presentable: his quiet face. The room was cooled by hanging wet linen cloths and a whirling fan, though it was still hard to breathe. But Bertin quickly forgot that. Here he was standing by the coffin of his newest and unluckiest friend. A youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance, he thought in the words of the Bible, and then, feeling solemn: Oh, Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest him? For man was like a blade of grass, blooming and withering like a wild flower. In Kroysing’s sallow face, his long eyelashes and widely spaced eyebrows rose like musical notes from the dead ovals of his cheeks. His tightly closed lips bent bitterly downwards, but the broad curve of his brow rose imposingly from his temples beneath his soft hair. Kroysing, thought Bertin, looking at the noble countenance of this boy, this man, why did you do them this favour? Why did you let yourself get caught? Mothers hope their prayers may be of some help, to say nothing of fathers’ hopes and of future plans. In a corner, there were further supports for yet more coffins. Shaking his head, Bertin went over to one and sat down on it to think by the whirring fan. He was back among the green-glinting beech leaves and the damaged tree trunks that looked as though they were made of corroded copper; he and Kroysing were sitting at the edge of the shell hole, a pair of field boots beside a pair of puttees, rusting shell splinters half buried in the earth, and the grey cat with the bottle-green eyes was staring hopefully at Kroysing’s hand. That was past, as irrevocably past as the sound of Kroysing’s voice, which Bertin could nonetheless still hear: ‘You’re the first person I’ve been able to speak to about these things for 60 days, and if you want, you can even be of great help to me.’ If Bertin wanted to be of help! And where did helping a person lead? Here…

Bent over, he sat there, still shaking his cropped head, his small eyes filled with reflections on the strange ways of the world.

The door gently opened and another soldier entered the cellar. He was lean and so tall that he practically had to duck. Blonde hair, parted on the left, not wearing brads under his soles. His uniform was shabby, and Bertin didn’t at first realise that the man in front of him was an officer, because his epaulettes and sword knot were such a dull grey. Bertin jumped up and stood to attention, hands on his trouser seams.

‘For God’s sake,’ the man said. ‘No need for that performance at the coffin. Are you from his unit?’ And, walking to the foot of the coffin: ‘So it’s come to this, Christel.’ You always were a handsome boy, he thought to himself. Well, be at peace. Sooner or later we’ll all be laid out as you are, only not as comfortably.

Bertin had seldom seen brothers who were less alike. Eberhard Kroysing, a sapper lieutenant, folded his bony hands over the peak of his cap and didn’t try to hide the two tears that fell from his eyes. Bertin withdrew quietly, giving the dead boy’s face a last tender look, himself now choked up with sadness and letting it show.

‘Stay, stay,’ boomed Lieutenant Kroysing’s deep voice. ‘We needn’t drive each other away. In any case the lid will be closed in a minute. Have a look and see if the pall bearers are coming.’

Bertin understood and turned round. The lieutenant kissed his little brother on the forehead. Got a lot to apologise to you for, little fellow, he thought. It wasn’t very easy growing up next to me, under me. And how come you, the baby of the family, got to look so much like our mother, while I only looked like Papa?

Outside, there was the sound of approaching boots. Two orderlies walked in. They were used to their work and didn’t observe the niceties at first, but they quietened down a bit when they saw the lieutenant and took the other two coffins away first – rough boxes made of spruce wood. Bertin helped them through the door and up the stairs to give the brother some time alone.

When the strangers were outside, Eberhard Kroysing took his small cigar cutter from his trouser pocket and cut a lock of hair from his brother’s temple – for his mother. He carefully hid it in his flat wallet. He didn’t want to break off his dialogue with the little one. ‘Did you really have to be so jealous of my stamp collection?’ he asked. ‘Did we have to quarrel constantly? Perhaps we could have had a decent adult friendship? Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!’ he said, quoting Dr Luther’s translation of the Bible. That was a pious wish. ‘Our family has been unlucky. No one will visit the beautiful family grave in the protestant cemetery in Nuremberg. You’ll be buried here in catholic soil, and I’ll most likely be eaten by the rats after the last shell has burst. Allons, let’s shut this hut up, so we can perform our final duty to you, my boy.’ And, choking on dry sobs, he kissed the little one once again on his cold mouth and on the dark fluff of his beard, and then fit the lid over the long box and screwed the corners down with practised fingers. When Bertin came back with the two orderlies, an officer, cap on head, strode stiffly past them into the land of the living where the slanting sun beat down.

The burial was a mundane affair, cloaked in a certain solemnity. The three fallen heroes were blessed by an army chaplain, whose cassock barely covered the uniform he normally wore. Delegations from the affected units led by sergeants had been drafted in. The Bavarian ASC men brought a wreath of beech twigs – a last greeting from the standby detachment at Chambrettes-Ferme, none of whom had been given leave to attend the funeral. The three coffins were placed on top of each other, and Bertin caught himself sighing with relief; little Kroysing was lowered in last and wouldn’t have to bear the burden of others even in death. As the other two dead men had been artillery drivers hit on their way to the ammunitions store, their comrades’ carabines fired a last salvo over the grave for all three. Then the funeral party hastily dispersed among Billy’s canteens to seize the rare opportunity to buy chocolate and jam, and raise a few glasses.

A hospital sergeant came up to Lieutenant Kroysing. The company had asked for his brother’s effects and had already collected them, and he gave him a list, which Kroysing glanced at absent-mindedly and put in his pocket. In the few seconds that this took, Bertin struggled with and made a decision. He walked briskly towards his friend’s brother and asked to have a word with him. Eberhard Kroysing gave him a rather scornful look. These poor ASC men exploited any contact with an officer to ask advice about their petty concerns or air a grievance. This one here, who was obviously an academic sort and a Jew, would no doubt want to pester him about leave or some such. ‘Fire away, man,’ he said, ‘but make it snappy or you’ll get separated from your comrades.’

‘I don’t belong to that unit,’ said Bertin carefully, ‘and I would like to speak to you alone for 10 minutes, Lieutenant. It’s about your brother,’ he added, seeing Kroysing’s dismissive expression.

Billy had been shot to pieces and patched up badly. They were both silent as they walked through the streets, both thinking about the freshly dug gave. ‘It was nice,’ said the lieutenant at length, ‘that you sent him the wreath.’

‘It came from his men at Chambrettes-Ferme, where he died. That’s where I got to know him – early in the morning the day before yesterday.’

‘You only knew my brother for such a short time and yet you came to his funeral? I really must thank your sergeant major.’

Bertin smiled weakly. ‘My orderly room refused me leave to come here. I came off my own bat.’

‘That’s a strange state of affairs,’ said Kroysing, as they went through the door of the officers’ mess, a kind of inn for officers with soldiers serving.

Several gentlemen in shiny epaulettes looked over in surprise as the sapper lieutenant and ASC private squeezed in opposite each other at the table for two in the window alcove. Such fraternisation between officers and men was undesirable, forbidden in fact. But the poor bastards in the trenches didn’t always behave in line with orders from the administration behind the lines. At any rate, the tall lieutenant with the Iron Cross, first class didn’t look like he would appreciate a lecture.

Indeed no. From Bertin’s first words, Eberhard Kroysing’s face looked rather set. Bertin asked if he had known that his brother had problems at his company. Certainly, said Kroysing, but when you were stuck in the sapper depot at Douaumont, under daily fire from the French, you weren’t overly interested in minor squabbles among NCOs at another company. The wine here was excellent. Bertin thought so too. He drank and asked if it had occurred to Lieutenant Kroysing that there could be a connection between those squabbles and Christoph Kroysing’s death. At that, the lieutenant’s eyes widened. ‘Listen,’ he said in a low voice, ‘men fall here every day like chestnuts from a tree. Imagine if everyone tried to find connections…!’

‘In connection with this case, might I explain how I got to know your brother and what he told me in confidence?’

Eberhard Kroysing looked into his wine glass, twirling it lightly between his fingers, while Bertin uttered one considered phrase after another, his eyes on Kroysing’s face. Bertin’s chest pressed against the marble table, which was a little too high for the low seats. He sensed that the young man opposite wasn’t convinced, but he couldn’t stay quiet. The main part of the room echoed with the booming laughter of boozers.

‘To be blunt,’ said Kroysing eventually, ‘I don’t believe a word you’ve said, sir. Not that I think you’re lying. But Christoph was an unreliable witness. He had an over-active imagination. He was a lyrical soul, you know, a poet.’

‘A poet?’ repeated Bertin, taken aback.

‘So to speak,’ confirmed Kroysing. ‘He wrote verse, pretty verse, and he was working on a play, a drama, he called it, a tragedy — what do I know? Such people quickly become obsessed by inconsequential things. Prejudices. Suspicions. But I, my dear chap, am a man of fact. My subject was engineering, and that precludes such fantasies.’

Bertin scrutinised his companion. He found it perplexing that Kroysing was so sceptical about someone whose personality and tone Bertin had immediately found convincing.

‘I don’t mean,’ continued Kroysing, ‘that my little brother was an idiot or a blabbermouth. But you men in the rank and file are prone to persecution complexes. You fancy everyone is bad and wants to make things difficult for you. You’d have to come up with some proof, young man.’

Bertin considered. ‘Would a letter from your brother count as proof, Lieutenant? A letter that my wife was supposed to send to your mother? A letter in which the case is set out, so that your uncle in Metz may finally intervene?’

Eberhard Kroysing looked up, fixing his hard eyes on Bertin. ‘And what is my Uncle Franz’s involvement to be in this matter about which you’re so well informed?’

‘Set the wheels in motion for a court martial and cite Christoph at the hearing.’

‘And how long was the boy in the cellar at Chambrettes-Ferme?’

‘Over two months with no break and no let-up.’

Eberhard Kroysing drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Give me the letter,’ he said.

‘It’s in my haversack,’ said Bertin. ‘I couldn’t know that I’d meet you here, Lieutenant.’

Eberhard Kroysing smiled grimly. ‘You were right to doubt it. The news came to me indirectly from our battalion headquarters, and if the Frogs hadn’t been unusually quiet, I might have missed my connection. But either way, I must have the letter.’

Bertin hesitated. ‘There’s something I must tell you. The letter was in his pocket when he was hit. It’s soaked in blood and unreadable.’

‘His blood,’ said Eberhard Kroysing. ‘So there’s still something left of him above ground. But that doesn’t matter. There are simple chemical processes that can deal with that. My sergeant Süßmann can do them in his sleep. It would seem,’ he said, and his brow darkened, ‘that I didn’t look after the little one as well as I should have done. Damn it,’ he shouted, suddenly angry, ‘I had other concerns. I thought the court martial had given its opinion long ago and put everything in order. The idea that brothers look out for each other is just a fairytale. Often they fight and hate each other. Or have you had a different experience?’

Bertin thought for a moment then said no, his experience was no different. He usually only had news of his brother Fritz from his parents. The boy had been serving the whole time with the 57s, first in Flanders then in Lens, in the Carpathians and on the Hartmannsweilerkopf, and now, more was the pity, in the worst part of the Somme battle. Who knew if he was still alive? Brotherly love was just an ingrained figure of speech. Brothers had always fought for favour and position in the family, from Cain and Abel to Romulus and Remus, to say nothing of German royalty, who enjoyed blinding, murdering and exiling each other to monasteries.

‘Let’s go,’ said Kroysing. ‘The drivers here have organised a car for me, so I’ll be back in my hellish cellar by tonight. We’ll go via your park. And if I get the proof I need, then I’ll put it before the court martial. And then we’ll see. I’m not vengeful. But if those gentleman really did spirit little Christel away from my mother in order that he should end up awaiting resurrection on the third shelf of that grave, then it’s time they made my acquaintance.’

They waited for the car in front of the mess. Above the hills towards Romagne, known as the Morimont, the sky was a diaphanous green. Bertin was hungry. He was counting on someone from his platoon having kept some dinner for him. If not, a ration of dry bread was enough for a man who had furthered a dead friend’s cause. No one was better placed than Eberhard Kroysing to bring those responsible for his brother’s murder to account.

The army driver in his leather jacket drove the open car over the white roads like a man possessed because he wanted to reach the firing zone, where he had to drive without lights, before dark. Less than half an hour later they pulled up by the water troughs at the Steinbergquell barracks. Bertin ran over and came back a short time later. He handed the lieutenant what looked to be a piece of stiff cardboard, wrapped in white paper. Eberhard Kroysing clasped it carefully in his hand.

A few nights later, Private Bertin had a remarkable experience, which he only believed the following noon when he saw the evidence with his own eyes.

Like many short-sighted people, Bertin relied on his hearing to interpret the blurry, threatening world around him. As people also hear when they are asleep because from the time of the glaciers and forest swamps danger has approached by night, he’d had some difficulty adjusting to communal sleeping. It was a sweltering July night in the valley, which cut between Moirey and Chaumont like a butcher’s trough and was permanently filled with swamp fog from the Theinte. The moon was nearly full, and in its pale, milky glow the night seem deceptively clear. Nice weather for flying. The wakeful would do well to keep watch.

Shortly after one, the machine guns at the Cape camp began to rattle furiously a few kilometres beyond Thil wood; anti-aircraft guns croaked red sparking shrapnel up into the air. They were coming! It wasn’t unexpected. Men of a very cautious disposition – a couple of gunners and a few ASC men, including Pahl the typesetter – had been sleeping in the old dugouts by the roadside for a week. The phone at Moirey shrilled with calls from the Cape camp. The Frogs wouldn’t be flying over at one in the morning to distribute biscuits. One of the telephonists at Steinbergquell sped over to see the on-duty sergeant. A bomb attack on a depot currently holding 30,000 shells of which 5,000 were gas shells – and the company was asleep in its barracks! The sentries rushed around, while from the south (the ammunitions depot was at the north end of the encampment) the gentle mosquito drone of the French engines began to build in the dormitories: ‘Air attack! Everyone outside with gas masks! Lights out! Assemble behind the kitchen hut!’ Behind the kitchen hut, the ground fell gradually away so that a flat mound of earth curved up between it and the dangerous ammunition.

A lot of ASC men slept in their lace-ups; no one needed more than a couple of seconds to wake up, slip into their boots, coat or tunic, and underpants or trousers, and leap on to the wooden floor with a crash. The barracks stood open and empty in the pale grey of the night. The clatter of hobnailed boots was drowned out by defensive fire from the MGs and the artillery. The white antennae of searchlights slunk across the sky to help drag down the mosquito swarm: three planes, or maybe five. They were flying so high! Spread out along the damp grass and hard, clayey soil of the southern slope, the defenceless ASC men listened breathlessly and looked up to the sky where the storm would soon start. Yes, they were for it. A fine whistle was unleashed up above, two-voiced, many-voiced, getting stronger, and then the valley filled with flashing and roaring, and a dull thunder crashed. For a second, the Earth’s fiery interior seemed to gape open were the bombs had hit; then the valley was engulfed in black. The valley roared under fire nine times; then the French had flown the loop that allowed them to escape the anti-aircraft fire; the planes flew off to the west, perhaps to launch a further attack on the other side of the Meuse.

‘Well,’ said Private Halezinsky in a quavering voice to his nearby friend, Karl Lebehde, ‘another successful strike.’

‘Think so? asked Lebehde, lighting a night-time cigarette with remarkable sangfroid. ‘I’d venture to suggest they were after the railway station, August, which did take one hit. They’ll sort us out next time.’

It was tempting to wander over there now. There would be hot shell splinters and fuses in the fresh bomb holes, and they could be sold for a good price. By early the next morning, the railwaymen would have nabbed them all. But the sergeants were ushering their men back to bed.

The barracks had been aired in the meantime and had cooled down. It was half past one, so they could still easily grab four hours’ sleep. Halezinsky went to his bed and shone a light to check for rats. The electric light fell on the bed to the left of his. Someone was actually lying there sleeping. ‘Karl,’ he called quietly in utter astonishment, ‘look at this. He must be a sound sleeper.’

The two men looked at Bertin’s sleeping form almost reverently. He’d slept through the alarm, the attack and the bomb explosions that had destroyed a railway track and the fields 70 or 80 metres across the road. The next morning, he would be the only one who didn’t believe the reports of the night before, who thought he was being taken for a ride. He would sacrifice some of his lunch break to go and see the bomb holes that had appeared overnight in the green fields and were big enough to accommodate a telephone box. He would bend over to touch the rails that had been blasted apart and check for freshly filled shell holes between the two rods. That was how completely his sleeping self had pushed aside the world of war, where a demise such as that of Kroysing was possible. A couple of kilometres ahead, machine guns were sweeping the ripped up ground under the limelight of flares; several thousand men, covered in earth, riddled with shell splinters, mangled by direct hits and poisoned by gas, huddled in bomb holes or behind ramparts to escape the fire bursts as the guns picked off flying shells. But only a mile and half away, a man of around 30 with good hearing had been able to sleep through a bomb attack, plunged into the deepest sanctuary and safety known to man, akin to the oblivion of the grave.