Outside Verdun

^{CHAPTER ONE} Wild Boar gorge

THE MEUSE HILLS descended from left and right to the winding river like a herd of horses stretching their necks to drink in water. They began as outliers of the Argonne, rolling or tabletop hills running from west to east. The land was green. Green and crossed by streams, so that the valleys were full of marshy woodland. Between tall beeches, alder and ash, ducks nested and wild boar rooted about in the blossoming shrubs and briers of the undergrowth. Villages had grown up around the few tracks on the cleared uplands. There were mills by the streams, and the skilled and industrious Lorraine peasants grew fruit and corn, and raised cattle and horses. The land between the Moselle and the Meuse had been fecund and productive for a thousand years. Celts, Romans and Franks had cultivated it, and it was favourably situated beside the green and white lands of Champagne.

The city of Verdun had watched over the crossing where the Meuse forked and formed a natural fortress for 1,500 years. The citadel sat above old churches and monasteries with formal round windows and devout pointed arches. The streets bustled with the kind of life typically found in small French towns that work with the produce of a fertile landscape. Around 15,000 people lived from their handiwork and ingenuity, born of long-standing civilisation. They produced embroidery, sweets and linen goods, smelted metal, and built machines and furniture. They fished in the river, prayed at altars decked with flowers, drank aperitifs and coffee, dressed up for weddings, and let their blonde and dark-haired children play in the streets and courtyards.

The city was surrounded by a ring of several lines of entrenched forts, some modern, some older. The total width was more than 15km, the circumference over 50km. For across from the city, far off to the east and yet threateningly close, rose the colossus of the German Reich, which glorified war. The fortress of Verdun had known German guns and spiked helmets in 1792 and 1870. In 1914, the city was threatened with a third attack. It was averted by the French army’s victory at the Marne, and by the help of the British and the Maid of Orleans, who loved her home village of nearby Domrémy.

On 21 February 1916, after thorough preparation, shells fell howling into the city’s streets, killing residents, splintering children’s skulls and throwing old women down stairs. Fire. Smoke. Uproar. Havoc. Aircraft dropped whistling bombs on the areas the long-range guns couldn’t reach. Over a thousand guns, among them 700 heavy guns including the heaviest available, spat cloudbursts of explosive steel on to the target area: a 30 km wide arc on the right bank the Meuse, the eastern bank, open to the south-west between Consenvoye and the Woevre plain. Then the German divisions burst out of holes and trenches full of icy mud for the attack. It was a surprise attack, and the Germans were counting on that, but the Posen grenadiers and the Thuringian reserves and the men from the Mark, Hesse, Westphalia and Lower Silesia met resistance wherever they went. Resistance from the earth, softened by snow, and from the water-logged shell holes. Resistance from the woods, which became silent clusters of auxiliaries, chained together like ancient warriors by creepers, brambles and briers that never tired. Resistance from entrenched field positions, blockhouses and barbed wire. Resistance from the French infantry, riflemen and gunners. After the first four days, the first week, the world knew that the surprise attack on Verdun had failed. Six army corps, nearly 200,000 Germans, had led the assault, and it had not been enough. The fall of Fort Douaumont made the world sit up and listen and gave the Germans a sense of victory, but victory was not theirs. The Fortress at Verdun was not to be taken by surprise attack.

The Germans refused to capitulate in the face of this outcome. Their troops had performed feats that surpassed the legends of centuries. They’d stormed woods, taken hill ridges, cleared blockhouses and driven the enemy out of the ravines. They’d stood up under the leaden hail of shrapnel and the steel knives of shell splinters, and then, angry and dogged and full of hate and a sense of self-sacrifice, they’d drilled their bayonets into French bodies and hurled their hand grenades. From the Souville ridge beyond Douaumont, their advance troops had glimpsed the roofs of the Verdun suburbs. One more push, the commanders said, and we’ll have them. They said it in March, in April, in May and June and until the end of July, and then they didn’t say it any more. The troops didn’t know why they hadn’t advanced. They were replaced then redeployed. Hordes and hordes of men were lost and replenished with ever younger men. It wasn’t their fault that the fortress at Verdun held. They left their shattered lines at the ordained time. When ordered to do so, the sweating gunners, half deafened by their own detonations, fired. When ordered to do so, the infantry threw themselves at the French shell holes and trenches in the way they’d been taught and captured them. They raged amongst French flesh and blood, and gave of their own flesh and blood, their sweat and nerves, brains, courage and presence of mind. They’d all been told that they were defending their homeland and they believed it. They’d also been told that the French were exhausted and they’d believed that – just one last effort, one more push. They made that effort; they pushed forward once again. Orderlies fell bringing rations, lorry drivers were killed in their cabs, and the gunners worked under counter-fire. New troops were brought in to take up the charge: Bavarian divisions, Prussian guards, infantry from Württemberg, regiments from Baden and Upper Silesia. Then they finally realised that it wasn’t working. Who had made mistakes? Who was to blame? More and more missiles had been hurled, and more and more men had been torn to pieces, killed, mutilated, taken prisoner or were missing. The defence of Verdun cost the French army a quarter of a million men, including nearly 7,000 officers. The Germans lost even more. The pretty villages were turned first to ruins, then piles of rubble and finally brickworks; the woods went from having gaps and tangles to being a battlefield full of white stumps, then a wasteland. And this wasteland stretched from Flabas and Moirey to beyond the village of Souville, over hills and through gorges on both banks of the Meuse. It was a white-flecked lunar landscape across its length and breadth, the colour of the dessert, full of round holes. But protected by its heavily damaged fort, the city of Verdun stood. There were attacks and counter-attacks, and the war rumbled on around it.

During August, ASC Private Bertin had come to feel quite at home in these ravaged spots that were still called Fosses wood, Chaume wood and Wavrille wood on the map. He had changed a lot since the beginning of July. He often looked unshaven, even bristly. His whole face was now deeply tanned and tighter. His mouth no longer fell open so easily, and behind his glasses his eyes had taken on a thoughtful, more mature look, for in the past two months he’d been plunged, much against his will, into a stampede of events. It bothered him, and the many thoughts he’d had about Kroysing’s disappearance had altered him, as had the sight of the never-ending fields of felled trees, which he’d become so used to that his feet instinctively avoided the countless steel splinters. This best of worlds here revealed a flaw in the system, and the glorified necessities of existence on earth came to seem rather odd. He’d come under fire on various occasions and had run away from shells and shrapnel, and into them as well. He relied on luck. But now it had somehow been ordained that he should have an encounter with something much different – and much hairier – before he realised what was what in the world.

One day, in the middle of Fosses wood he heard his name being called from the far end of a valley. He was kneeling at the time, screwing a couple of rails on to a railway track that would allow ammunition to be transported to the 15cm siege guns. Startled, he shouted: ‘Over here!’

A young lad, an NCO and sapper with a tattered Iron Cross ribbon in his buttonhole, strolled towards him with his hands in his pockets and gave him a questioning look. Above a childish nose, the lad’s eyes twinkled in his long face like the piercing eyes of an animal. Yes, little Sergeant Süßmann resembled nothing more than a small knowing monkey that appears every couple of days, has a look around, then disappears again. His puttees had been put on carelessly, and he wasn’t wearing a belt. With a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he squatted down beside Bertin.

‘It wasn’t easy to find you,’ he said.

‘Well, you have,’ said Bertin. ‘I can’t screw it any tighter.’

It was good that he’d learnt how to use all sorts of tools in his father’s joinery workshop. As a result, he was considered not to be inept. Sergeant Süßmann gave it a try. The fishplate sat right across the two sleepers.

‘All right,’ he said in English. ‘But I didn’t come for that. I’m to take you to the lieutenant.’

‘Which one?’ asked Bertin.

‘Mine, of course; Lieutenant Kroysing. It really wasn’t easy to find you. You didn’t give him your name.’

Bertin stood up. ‘Are you one of his men?’

‘But of course.’

They moved to the next section of track, taking the fishplates and nuts out of a sack. ‘It doesn’t do your hands much good,’ Bertin said, looking at his fingers, ‘but it’s better than being stuck in an orderly room.’ He knelt on the ground; Süßmann screwed down the other fishplate as if he weren’t his ‘superior’. Autumnal leaves drifted above their heads on a gust of wind. ‘And what does he think about his brother now – in case you happen to know?’

‘He’s consumed with regret,’ replied Süßmann. ‘Apparently, he’s quite certain of a few things otherwise his brother’s company and battalion staff wouldn’t be at Douaumont now.’

Bertin looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Captain Niggl?’

‘Now inhabits Douaumont. Coincidence. Douaumont is a large garrison. In my father’s house there are many mansions. Now the lieutenant wants to know if you’d like to be there when that letter is read.’

‘But what about my company?’ Bertin asked uncertainly.

Sergeant Süßmann spat out his cigarette end. ‘Lieutenant Kroysing is a big noise in these parts, and the further towards the front you go, the bigger a noise he becomes. Even the Panjes of this world know that. The only question is whether you have the guts. Douaumont and its approach routes are considered calm now, but our definition of calm is different from yours.’

‘How do you know?’ countered Bertin. ‘Before I used to be keen to distinguish myself. But now after 15 months in the Prussian Army—’ They both laughed. The ‘old guard’ with their caps pulled low and their easy stride preferred to throw themselves in the mud once too often than once too seldom. ‘If need be, I’m sure I can manage in your area. But how do I get there?’

‘We’ll ask for you,’ Süßmann replied simply, explaining what they had planned for Bertin. All the field railways in the area – and there were quite a few – were run by the sapper depot. Some of the workforce was billeted in dugouts, some in Nissen huts. They’d had nothing to laugh about throughout August, but things had calmed down now and as a result they were on holiday. A railway hut in Wild Boar gorge, which was east of Bezonvaux and not far from the Ornes heavy artillery batteries (‘And it’s always safe as houses where they are’), needed a temporary telephonist. They’d asked Bertin’s company to supply one, and the man they’d sent – a deaf carpenter, who was scared to death of the switchboard with its measly eight plugs – had been sent back. Bertin bent over laughing. So he had; it was Karsch the carpenter. And it wasn’t as if there weren’t plenty of intelligent men in the company.

‘But you won’t get me,’ Bertin said. ‘They don’t transfer Jews. That’s against the laws of nature.’

‘That’s no laughing matter,’ Sergeant Süßmann rebuked him. ‘Every Jew should defend the equal rights of all Jews at every turn.’

‘Defend them to Jansch and his gang,’ said Bertin, frowning. ‘There are 10 Jews in the company, and none of us is in the orderly room. Major Jansch is what’s called a nationalist editor.’

‘That won’t do him any good,’ said Süßmann contemptuously. ‘Kroysing will ask for you. You and no one else. A fortnight in a little hut in the middle of the wood. On duty for eight hours, your own master for 16.’

‘Done,’ said Bertin.

‘Take 15,’ shouted Sergeant Böhne. ASC men appeared from all sides with canteens, drinking cups and swinging haversacks (only the gas masks in their little tin canisters were never taken off; gas shells were used a lot). Bertin walked over to his tunic, which was hanging from a shell splinter sticking out of a beech tree at the height of a man. Süßmann stuck by him. As they walked, Bertin asked him if the hut came under fire much. Süßmann shook his head. The hut itself never got shot at; that was why it had been put in that out-of-the-way spot. However, 60 paces to the left and 100m to the right you came into range of the French. They’d made the most of that, but since the Bavarians had captured the Fumin and Le Chapitre woods and the Alpine Corps had attacked Thiaumont, the French batteries had slipped back. From his haversack, Bertin took some of his bread ration, a knife and a tin of artificial honey, a yellowish spread made from sugar. He offered some to Süßmann, who shook his head.

‘I prefer a hot breakfast,’ he said, lighting another cigarette. ‘No butter?’ he asked. ‘No lard substitute?’ (Lard substitute was the name of a tasty conserve made from the fat and flesh of pigs’ stomachs.)

‘Not for us,’ said Bertin.

‘With us you’ll get everything. Compared to what you’re used to, Douaumont is luxury.’

‘How far is it?’ Bertin asked.

‘If “they” don’t shoot, three-quarters of an hour. If they start shooting, you’ll have to lie down until they stop. And never forget your gas mask.’

‘We’ve got used to eating some strange things, we Jews,’ said Bertin, chewing away.

Süßmann smoked. ‘Even before, I ate everything.’

‘So did I,’ said Bertin. ‘But that didn’t include lard substitute.’

‘Pretty soon we’ll be licking our fingers after eating it,’ said Süßmann. ‘Things are going to get serious this winter.’

‘How old are you, Sergeant Süßmann, if I may ask?’

‘Forced my way into the sappers as a volunteer at 16 and a half. Work it out.’

Bertin propped his open knife against his knee and stopped chewing. ‘Good grief. I took you for 25.’

Süßmann grinned. ‘I’ve seen a lot. I’ll tell you about it later. So, you’ll be asked for and you’ll set off early tomorrow morning. Ring us about 6am. We have a direct connection to you, if it hasn’t been shot to pieces. Kroysing will be pleased. He seems to think highly of you because you believed his brother straight away.’

Bertin shook his head. ‘It wasn’t hard to believe him. Only a brother could be so blind.’

‘I’ll split then,’ said Süßmann in Berlinerisch, straightening his tunic.

Bertin was taken aback by his authentic Berlin dialect. ‘Blimey. Sent you here from the Spree, did they?’

Süßman saluted. ‘Yes, sir! Berlin W., Regentenstraße, Counsellor Süßmann. Tomorrow afternoon, then.’ He nodded and strolled off, disappearing between the tree trunks. Bertin looked after him in amazement, then lay down on the warm trampled earth of the woodland floor, chewed his sweetened black bread, looked up into the blue sky and drew contentedly on a company cigar. And as he let the gold-tinged heavens seep into him with something like joy, he considered that up until now nothing had been imposed on him that he couldn’t handle. He was still kidding himself; the war had not yet punched him in the face the way it had poor little Kroysing. You had to take your hat off to the older brother, who’d managed to manoeuvre those skilful gentlemen into his patch by their own methods. Life was a roller-coaster. The war had brought him ever closer to himself. Next stop Wild Boar gorge, then. After that Douaumont. That was fine by him. A writer shouldn’t dodge fate’s trawler nets. His eyes closed. He saw silver fish, their stupid mouths hanging open, swimming in the blue sea, all in the same direction. His hand holding the cigar fell to the ground. Nothing could happen to him. Nothing could happen to the fish either. He fell asleep.

The following day at 2pm, Private Bertin reported to his orderly room ready to march. It’d been thought important to smarten him up. He’d been given a belt, which held the lad together, and one of those grey oil-cloth caps with a badge and a brass cross that until then had been lying around in some Prussian warehouse or other.

It’s hot in France at the end of August. Acting Sergeant Major Glinsky wanted to sleep, but he couldn’t deny himself the pleasure of bestowing a parting blessing on Private Bertin. Open-collared and looking replete, Glinsky blinked as he circumambulated Bertin’s rigid figure. Everything was in order: grey trousers tucked into blackened boots, infantry tunic, rucksack packed impeccably, one boot to the right and one to the left under the rolled-up coat and folded blankets. He sat down astride a chair, all friendliness. He knew and Bertin knew that if the order had taken him to a village behind the lines, the company would have tried to snatch him back even though he’d been requested by name. But it took him to the front, and life is ruled by chance. If the sappers wanted this particular man as a telephonist, they were most welcome to him. The company had no contact with the sappers and therefore didn’t know who had made the request. Cooperation between the two units happened exclusively through the artillery depot – an arrangement that was jealously guarded – where nothing was known of what had happened to the Kroysing family.

‘At ease,’ said Acting Sergeant Major Glinsky. ‘You’re an educated man, so I need not waste words.’ (Oh no, thought Bertin, he’s buttering me up. What’s he planning?) ‘You have many mistakes to atone for, so we hope you’ll make a good fist of things.’

Bertin adopted a military bearing and said: ‘Yes, indeed, Acting Sergeant Major.’ But even as he spoke these obedient words, he resolved to get a little dig in by mentioning the hospital leave to Billy that Glinsky had refused him.

‘It’s quite a nice little perk to spend 14 days at a switchboard,’ Glinsky continued chummily. ‘Just make sure you come back to us in one piece. Your post will be sent on. I assume we have your home address?’

Ah, though Bertin, almost amused, he’s scratching around now, poor soul. Because what he meant by this last question was: who should receive the bad news should anything happen to him? Bertin acted daft and looked unconcerned. ‘Yes, indeed, Sergeant Major,’ he said cheerfully and waited for his moment.

‘It must be a good friend of yours who got you this nice little posting,’ Glinsky went on, winking confidentially. ‘Sergeant Süßmann, wasn’t it?’

This question had a sting to it as well – the insinuation was that a Jew always looks out for another Jew, at least that was the opinion men like Glinsky had of Jews.

But this was Bertin’s cue. ‘No,’ he said, looking evenly into Glinsky’s eyes – those sleepy, grey bulldog eyes. ‘I assume it was Lieutenant Kroysing from the sapper depot at Douaumont who arranged it.’

That hit the mark. Still riding on the chair, his mouth fell open. ‘What’s the lieutenant’s name?’ he asked.

‘Kroysing,’ Bertin repeated readily. ‘Eberhard Kroysing. He’s the brother of a young NCO who met his maker in mid-July.’

‘And he’s in command at Douaumont?’ Glinsky asked, still stunned.

‘Certainly not, Sergeant Major,’ Bertin answered. ‘Only of the sapper unit attached to it.’

He didn’t need to say more. Glinsky was quick on the uptake. There had been something funny about the transfer of the Bavarian ASC men to Douaumont (which, naturally enough, had got about), and this explained it, albeit in the most unsettling and unclear way. His expression darkened. ‘Forward march!’ he snarled suddenly. ‘Dismissed! You’ll have to work out how to get there yourself.’

Bertin about-turned and left the orderly room feeling very satisfied. He’d long since worked out how to get where he was going: with the drivers who brought the short, fat 21cm shells to the howitzer guns in the Ornes valley.

(Naturally, no one knew why the 1/X/20’s rations improved so much after Bertin left: butter and Dutch cheese, big chunks of meat at lunch – magic! And this wonderful state of affairs lasted fully five days. On the sixth and seventh, it tailed off, and on the eighth the old menu took hold again as if nothing had happened: gristle in ‘barbed wire’, dried vegetables and the turnip jam known as Fat for Heroes.)

At 2.10pm, Bertin laid his rucksack down on the wooden floor of the telephone room at the artillery depot, so that his new duties could be explained to him. The telephonists from the Steinbergquell ammunitions depot were all very pleasant. They’d been worried for days that one of them would have to provide leave cover for the operator at Wild Boar gorge; they knew the score. That someone else now had to go out to that dreadful place where shells were always falling filled them with gratitude.

‘Oh, it’s child’s play, comrade’ they explained. ‘You’ve got your eight switches for the stations in front and behind of you – for the sapper depot, the next exchange and the artillery group – and your new comrades will show you how to use the plugs in two minutes. And it’s not dangerous at all because if the cable gets shot up, other men have to go out to mend it.’ They kindly didn’t tell him that as the newcomer he might have to run to the sapper depot and tell them that the cable had been shot up.

‘And there are men from your part of the world nearby – Upper Silesians,’ said the telephonist Otto Schneider.

Bertin wasn’t particularly attached to men from his part of the world. He had more in common with Bavarians and men from Berlin and Hamburg. He only took an interest in one Silesian regiment: the 57th, which was on active service and where his little brother served. The day before yesterday, he’d received another letter from his mother. The fear that Fritz Bertin might be no more pulsated behind her faint handwriting. The lad had already been wounded once the previous autumn.

About 3pm, a message was sent up that the short 21cm shells had been loaded up. Bertin swung his rucksack on to one shoulder, took his knotty stick in his hand and ran downstairs, cheerfully parrying the curious, mocking shouts from his closer friends in the Third Company. Oddly enough, everyone was in clover that day; those who were staying behind were glad to be staying behind, and Bertin was glad he was going.

The Silesian gunners, bony men with strained faces, didn’t stand on ceremony. ‘Chuck your pack on top of the pots and let’s get going, lad,’ they said with their hard r’s and high-pitched vowels. Bertin hid his disappointment. He hadn’t bargained with having to help push the loaded trucks. But as he looked in some annoyance at the stubby, pointed shells lying there like chubby babies, he realised something: Glinsky had made no impression on him – he was neither confused nor worried. Something quite new and brilliant!

The track that formed the gunners’ route forked off to the east in the middle of a desolate valley floor. Wild Boar gorge opened off the the right, they said. It was the third one along and quite narrow, easily recognisable by all its greenery. He’d find it. Despite his rucksack and tunic, Bertin walked very quickly. For the first time, he found himself alone under the open sky in the flashing sunlight. Death might crash down upon him at any moment from the summer air. He had to summon all his courage. He cursed his stupidity for following this order simply because he wanted Eberhard Kroysing to have a good opinion of him. Footprints everywhere between the shell holes. Who wouldn’t get lost here? Sweat stuck to the lenses of his glasses, and his hands shook as he cleaned them. The deathly silence frightened him; every sound that wafted over the ridge frightened him; when a plane appeared up above, he felt like throwing himself to the ground – he was too short-sighted to make out if it was German or French. He scurried on, teeth clenched on his pipe, pursued by his humpbacked shadow, just as one of his forebears might have dragged his wares from farm to farm in the mountains of Austrian Silesia in the time of the empress Maria Theresa. He counted the openings in the land ahead: one was already behind him, there was one opposite and two shimmered in the sunlight ahead. He looked at his watch as if that might help him. His heart thumped wildly on account of his load and from loneliness. If he hadn’t been thoroughly used to crushing his internal demons, he would’ve turned round and not carried out his orders. He rested briefly at the edge of the next shell hole, drank a couple of slugs of lukewarm coffee from his canteen, relit his pipe and forced himself to breathe calmly. At last he was steeped in solitude – as he’d longed to be. He cursed himself and called himself an ass. He was like a peasant from the countryside blundering about in the bustle of city traffic for the first time. The peasant is frightened of the cars, trams and hurrying people and doesn’t dare to ask his way. He feels like he’s fallen to earth from the moon and when he finally does open his mouth, he finds he’s already at his destination. Bertin narrowed his eyes and shaded them with his hands. That there, diagonally to the right, could be the opening of Wild Boar gorge. He set off at a trot, bounding up the hillside then slowing down on the valley floor. A tangle of green beckoned to him. The chopped and scattered remains of felled trees with terrible butchered trunks covered the slope to his right. Pale, yellowed leaves covered the branches and bisected crowns. A profusion of young shoots, dried rose hips and beech saplings that soared like flag poles pushed through them above shell holes as white as bones. A German bombardment must have caused this. The slope was open to the north. The southern side had been similarly ravaged by the French. There the mown down trees had larger, greener leaves and were piled up horizontally.

Suddenly a sign with an arrow rose up in front of him: ‘Wild Boar gorge! Lower reaches may be subject to enemy observation’. Bloody hell, he thought and feeling relieved and worried at the same time, he set off at a trot through the fallen trees and found a footpath. A few minutes later, something screamed past. He was down before he knew it, pressed against a beech tree with his rucksack thumping into the nape of his neck. A dull thud on the hillside behind him, then a second. He waited. No explosion. Duds, he thought with relief. The French were using new American ammunition, and it was useless. The howling of the shells alone, that desolate, ripping sound, had got to him this time, and he hurried on, his hands filthy from the swampy ground. The dead trees struck him as unearthly. How would this destruction of nature ever be made good? A minute later, the valley took a turn: pristine wood, primaeval.

He was surrounded by green and shadows. Birds called in the beech tops. Bundles of young shoots as thin as fingers or children’s arms rose up beside the sun-dappled tree trunks high enough to open their leaves to the light. Bramble bushes spread out their tendrils, heaving with late flowers and pink and reddish black fruits. The steep slope shone green with the sword-shaped leaves of the lily of the valley. Hawthorn and barberry bushes intertwined, and the feathery bracken fluttered above the moss and stones. It was amazing— like a mountain wood on a holiday walk at home. It was wonderful to sit there with his rucksack propped against a stone and his stick between his knees, free from thought, relaxed. The air among the tree trunks was cool and refreshing.

Five minutes later, Bertin again came across the light railway track, a branch line, and a blockhouse with a corrugated iron roof. At last! He reported military style to a corporal, a bearded man, who was sitting by the door cutting a stick.

‘Ah, here you are,’ the corporal said equably.

He had a Baden accent, as did his colleague, who came over, barefoot and in shirt-sleeves, pleased that the new third man had actually arrived. Bertin was asked if he could play skat – he could – and if he’d brought a lot of lice with him. They said he’d be able to keep clean there. Thank God, said Bertin.

At a push, the two reservists from the Landsturm could’ve managed alone. They only had one fear: being recalled. The telephone box, which was looked after by the railway service, did indeed only have eight switches, but someone had to stay awake day and night in case one of the switches dropped. Bertin checked over his new bed, hung his rucksack on the post, unrolled his blankets and unpacked his smaller items: washing things, writing things, smoking things and a picture of his wife in a small, round frame. This would be his home for the next fortnight.

Just before 6pm, he put a call through to the sapper depot at Douaumont at the suggestion of the corporal. He was called Friedrich Strumpf and he was a park-keeper in Schwetzingen, not far from Heidelberg. When Bertin spoke into the black mouthpiece and asked to report to Lieutenant Kroysing, the man from Baden looked at him suspiciously. The new boy seemed to have fancy friends. After a while, Sergeant Süßmann answered: the lieutenant sent his best wishes and he, Süßmann, would pick Bertin up at a convenient time the following afternoon. Happy working until then. ‘Fine,’ said Bertin. He then set about reassuring his new colleagues that he was an all right sort.

He offered the men from Baden a cigar, chatting away about how he’d swum in the river Neckar in 1914, and describing the castle grounds at Schwetzingen. They contained a mosque, didn’t they, built by the prince-elector Karl Theodor? And beautiful birds kept in an aviary. There was also a Chinese pavilion and a little marble bath. After five minutes of this, he had won Strumpf the park-keeper’s heart. Strumpf beamed. Soon he was showing Bertin a picture of his two children – a boy with a satchel and a 10-year-old girl holding a cat in her arms – and enlightening him about to the character of the third man, a freckled, sandy-haired tobacco worker from Heidelberg called Kilian. Kilian was quick-tempered and argumentative and didn’t like to be contradicted but he was a good comrade when you knew how to take him.

That afternoon, Bertin learnt what his duties would be, which batteries were firing nearby, when the French shot and what their targets were, how the land lay. Douaumont was to the south-west, and to the north-east, behind them beyond the great depression, was the Ornes valley, and Bezonvaux, or what was called Bezonvaux, was practically due east. To their left, the French were attacking an artillery position, and three-quarters of an hour to the front were the field howitzers. They sometimes got post from them; they brought it past with their ammunition. If they didn’t show up for a couple of days, you had to remind them. They were a dour lot, Poles from the Russian border, and when they spoke, the words clattered from their mouths like bricks, but their lieutenant was nice and bored to death over there. Schanz was his name.

Later when they were at their evening meal – tea with rum and toast with rashers of bacon – and Bertin was holding his sandwich skewered on a twig over the fire, a clamour sounded above the roof. Outside it began to boom, sing, roar, gurgle and rattle, fading away then returning again and again. The two men from Baden didn’t even look up. It was just the 15cm guns’ evening blessing on its way to Thiaumont and beyond. It was a repulsive, unnatural sound, whose deeply evil nature was instantly apparent. Private Bertin sat there deeply affected by it. What he heard wasn’t the drone of a man-made implement whose purpose and use were determined by men. To him, it was as if an ancient force, a bit like an avalanche, roared out there, for which the laws of nature, not man, were responsible. The war, an operation instituted by men, still felt to him like a storm decreed by fate, an unleashing of powerful elements, unaccountable and beyond criticism.

^{CHAPTER TWO} A voice from the grave

SUDDENLY, THE FOLLOWING day at noon, Erich Süßmann was there, looking around with his piercing eyes and promising the men from Baden to send the newcomer back in time. Their route took them past the field howitzers. Great. They strode off like a couple of ramblers, crossed the light railway tracks and the stream on some planks, climbed up the slope through branches and bushes dappled with light and shade, turned into a gorge on the right, which was currently a mass of pulverised woodland, and followed a sort of cattle path halfway down the slope that led to the railway tracks in the valley. Sergeant Süßmann knew all these woods by name: they were in Moyemont, Vauche wood was further back, Hassoule with its ravines further on. Each one had literally cost streams of blood, German and French. They turned on to a narrow path, and Bertin grabbed Süßmann’s shoulder. ‘Look! A Frenchman!’ A few feet from them was a blue-grey figure with his back to them. His steel helmet hung round the nape of his neck and he was pressed against a bush as though about to walk on.

Süßmann gave a short laugh. ‘God, yes, the Frog. He signposts the way to the field howitzers. No need to be scared of him. He’s deader than dead.’

‘And no one has buried him?’ asked Bertin in disgust.

‘Where have you been living, dear chap? In the Bible probably and with Antigone. They needed a signpost here and took what came their way.’ Bertin looked away as they walked past the murdered man, who was nailed to the truncated tree with a shell splinter like a sword. ‘Heavy mortar,’ said Süßmann.

Bertin felt ashamed in the presence of the dead man. He had an irrepressible urge to scatter earth on his helmet and shoulders, to atone for his death, to give him back to Mother Earth. His gaze sought out the ravaged face and desiccated hands. Good God, he thought, he might have been a young father. He might have carried his little son on those shoulders the last time he was home on leave. He trotted along silently beside Süßmann. Unexpectedly, they came upon piles of ammunition covered by greenish tarpaulins. To the left, the railway reappeared beneath their path. Shortly thereafter, the heavy barrel of a gun, whose mounting was wedged into the earth, reared up among the ruined trees. Only then did Bertin notice the overturned tree trunks bound together with wire cables, sandbagged and covered with canvas camouflage. A heap of useless iron in the form of spent cartridges rusted nearby. Someone called to them. Süßmann spoke to the guard, who was strolling around without a rifle, and learnt there was no post that day. Next day perhaps. The hard Upper Silesian dialect was unrecognisable on the lean soldier’s stubbly lips.

At last the hillside to the fort towered above them like a mountain that had had part of it blown off. The earth: it was beyond Bertin’s worst dreams. It bared its scabs and pus like a piece of leprous skin under the microscope. It was scorched and crumbling, and the remains of roots wormed through it like veins. A bundle of spoiled hand grenades lay in a shell hole. Of course, thought Bertin, the place had once been full of water. Scraps of cloth fluttered on a jumble of barbed wire – a sleeve with buttons, cartridge cases, the remains of a machine gun belt – and there were human excrement and tin boxes everywhere. But no bodies. In his relief he mentioned this to Süßmann, who waved a dismissive hand.

‘There were plenty of dead bodies here at the beginning of April. Naturally, we couldn’t let them stink away to their heart’s content. We buried them in the big shell holes back there.’

‘How long have you been here?’ asked Bertin in astonishment.

‘Forever,’ laughed Süßmann. ‘First we captured it, then came the rumpus inside the bowels of the place, then I was away for a few weeks and then I came back.’

‘What do you mean by the “rumpus”?’

‘The explosion,’ answered Süßmann. ‘I tell you, it’s a strange world. I was practically dead, and that wasn’t half as bad as being tormented by the question: why? Who are we doing all this for?’ Bertin stopped to catch his breath. All the answers that drifted into his head seemed impossible. In this place, every word smacked of rank pathos. ‘Yes, my young friend,’ joked his little guide, ‘even you don’t know what to say to that. It always feels to me as if people like you have fallen out of a balloon by chance and need some information about the planet they find themselves stumbling across.’

‘Gratefully received,’ said Bertin, not offended in the least. ‘If the Frogs give us time—’

‘Why wouldn’t they?’ Süßmann sniffed. ‘They’re as deep in hot water as we are. They won’t lift a finger.’

The approach turned into a mountain climb, and Bertin’s stick came in handy. Süßmann laughed as they stepped over the drawbridge and passed the barbed wire defences – the spikes of iron gratings bent by direct hits stared up from the moat – and Bertin sniffed the musty smell of rubble and other strange substances. ‘That’s the Douaumont smell. So we don’t forget the place.’

The sentry hadn’t challenged them. ‘Salute when you see an officer here, oh stranger,’ Süßmann instructed him. ‘You’re never off duty.’

‘I actually can’t see a thing,’ Bertin answered, his voice echoing in the dark tunnel. Vaults opened off to the right and left, and there were small electric lamps in the ceiling.

‘We’re in the north-west wing,’ said Süßmann. ‘At the end of March, the Frogs were practically dancing on our heads, but they didn’t pull it off.’ ASC men ran past them with bundles of tools on their shoulders. A couple of sappers covered in dirt nodded to Süßmann. ‘They’ll be able to sleep today,’ he said, ‘but otherwise we’re trained to be night owls. Funny how you get used to things. It seems there are no limits to what human nature can take.’

‘And what do you do?’ Bertin asked.

‘You know what I do: build field railways. That’s our way of recovering. And today I’ve been for a stroll. Later, I’ll take you back, and tomorrow morning I’ll visit your colleagues in Fosses wood.’

‘Give them my best wishes,’ Bertin laughed.

The sapper depot occupied half a wing of the mighty pentagon. Nobody smoked; it wasn’t just rolls of barbed wire, trench props and iron spikes that were stored here. Bertin glanced in passing at the two-handled wicker baskets shaped like giant arrow quivers. The tops of heavy mortar mines bored downwards into them. Crates of tracer ammunition reminded him of the crates of powder at his own artillery depot. They were brand new. An unshaven NCO was handing flares out to a couple of infantrymen. He carefully counted out the cartridges on a plank of wood laid across two kegs. Behind him was an open door to a white-washed cellar with zinc containers for liquid.

‘Oil for the flame throwers,’ said Süßmann.

‘You’ve got everything here,’ marvelled Bertin.

‘Resurrection stores,’ replied Süßmann. ‘We take up a fair bit of room in this old colliery, don’t we?’ Right at the back in the uncertain light from the lamps the Bavarian ASC men were handing in their tools. ‘They’ll get 12 hours’ rest now,’ said Süßmann. ‘The lieutenant takes damn good care no work gets sent their way in their free time. Captain Niggl finds it all rather surprising.’

‘And how deep into the earth does the place go?’

‘Deep enough for Sunday and Monday,’ answered Süßmann. ‘There’s 3m of concrete above our heads and an entire barracks, armoured towers, machine gun emplacements – in short, every possible comfort. Our lieutenant lives here.’

Bertin entered a vault and stood to attention. Lieutenant Kroysing was sitting by a window, an embrasure facing a wall split by two direct hits. ‘Nice open view,’ he laughed, welcoming Bertin. ‘I can even see a bit of sky from here.’

Bertin thanked him for getting him a nice job. The lieutenant nodded; he hadn’t acted out of kindness but so that there would be at least one person left who could explain the whole business to Judge Advocate Mertens in Montmédy. For it was down to him to clear Sergeant Kroysing’s name. ‘My father will get over Christoph’s death and mine if I kick the bucket. The rank and file march with death now. No exceptions, you understand, no special fuss. But if it gets around in Bavaria – and it will get around – that a Kroysing only escaped sanction from a court martial because he died, he’ll feel like a discredited outcast, and I’d like to spare him that.’

Bertin looked into his sallow face with compassion. It seemed even more gaunt than last time. It was terrible, he said in an undertone, to have to deal with such nastiness in a private capacity as well. Kroysing dismissed this. It wasn’t terrible at all. It was a game and it was revenge, and in that moment his face looked as pitiless to Bertin as the cratered earth outside.

The room was lit by pale daylight. Sergeant Süßmann brought in a dish of warm water. Lieutenant Kroysing took a couple of sheets of blotting paper from a drawer; it had taken more than a fortnight to get hold of them. Then with his long, slender fingers he unwrapped his brother’s letter, now gone stiff, from a white handkerchief and immersed it in the water. Three heads, two brown-haired and one blonde, pressed close together and watched as a pink then dark red colouring pervaded the water and settled on the bottom of the dish.

‘Careful now,’ said Süßmann. ‘Leave the preparation to me.’

‘Preparation. That’s a good one,’ muttered Kroysing.

It was a delicate businesss to make it possible to unfold the letter without destroying the paper or washing the ink away. The timing had to be exact. The dead man had used an army postal service letter card. You could write on both sides and on the inside of the envelope, and it was all held together with glue. Warily, Süßmann swayed the paper back and forwards. Soon the water was entirely brown.

‘May I pour it away?’ he asked.

‘Shame,’ answered Kroysing. ‘Now I won’t be able to make anyone drink it.’

Süßmann silently emptied the dish into a bucket and poured new water on the letter, whose gummed sides were already starting to loosen. The letter softened, and a third lot of water remained clear. The pages were laid between blotting paper. The writing was only slightly blurred.

‘Good ink,’ said Kroysing flatly. ‘The lad loved clear, black writing on the page. Do you want to hear what it says?’

This is it, thought Bertin, his breath catching. Who would have thought it possible?

‘Dearest Mother,’ Eberhard Kroysing read, ‘forgive me for writing to bother you with my troubles this time. Up until now, I’ve made my situation sound rosier than it is. We were brought up to tell the truth and never to shrink from pursuing what is right; fear God more than people, you used to say. And although I no longer believe in God, as you well know, that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten everything that was ingrained in us as children. In April, I wrote a letter to Uncle Franz describing to him how our NCOs misuse the men’s rations and live it up at their expense. Uncle Franz knows how important an unblemished sense of justice is to the men’s morale. Things are what he would call a bloody scandal. My letter was opened by our censor. Papa will explain to you why a court martial investigation was then started, and not of the NCOs but of me, and why our battalion doesn’t want this investigation to go ahead. As a result, I’ve been shifted on a permanent basis to the most dangerous place there is. If you only knew, dear mother, how much it pains me to write this. Now you’ll be sick with worry and sleep badly, imagining me already in the ground. Don’t believe it is so, dear mother. I appeal to your clever heart. I’ve been living here for two months in the cellar of a big farmhouse, and nothing has happened to me yet. You can tell from that how little chance there is that something will happen. But it can’t last forever or I might come a cropper after all. Please therefore wire Uncle Franz immediately. He must get me brought before the court martial in Montmédy as a matter of urgency. He must give the court martial my exact address, because I suspect Captain Niggl has had me declared “whereabouts unknown” or some funny business like that.’ (‘Well spotted, lad,’ muttered the older brother as he turned the page.) ‘He mustn’t allow himself to be fobbed off. He must phone the court martial immediately and support me to the hilt. He doesn’t have to worry. I’m exactly the same as I was two years ago when I volunteered. My sense of responsibility simply wouldn’t allow me to look on in silence. I’ve tried to rope Eberhard in, but he’s extremely busy – you know where he is and what he’s doing – and as an officer he shouldn’t be getting involved in my business. I haven’t heard from him for a couple of weeks. And I’m not sending this letter to you directly but through the good offices of an ASC private and scholar whom I got to know today. Act quickly and prudently, dear Mama, guiding light of our family, as you always do. You’ve had a hard time with us. But when we’re back and there’s peace, we’ll understand what life is worth, how good it is to be home, and what we have in each other. Because a great deal has turned out to be lies, much more than you realise, much more than ought to be. We’ll all have to start again to spare the world a repeat of what we’ve seen here with our own eyes, done with our own hands and suffered with our own bodies. But the mutual love between parents and children – that has proved durable and dependable, and that’s where I’ll finish. Always your loving son, Christoph. PS: Give Papa a big kiss and tell him he can write to me himself.’

The audience of two was silent. The faint rumble from the daily artillery fire rattled the closed windows. ‘If you think about it,’ said Eberhard Kroysing, ‘if you really think about it, we are no closer to the earth’s surface than the author of this letter – with one small difference that Captain Niggl is soon going to know all about.’

Suddenly, Bertin ducked. A brief, wild howl. Then a shattering crash nearby that echoed dully against the walls. Then a second. ‘This all helps,’ smiled Kroysing.

^{CHAPTER THREE} Captain Niggl

CAPTAIN NIGGL— AFTER the march-in he’d lain down to sleep with a mixture of elation and disgust on an iron bed, which, to his eternal relief was tucked under a white-washed vaulting of reassuring thickness. ‘Safe wee billet, Douaumont, isn’t it?’ he kept saying to the garrison commander’s adjutant in his outmoded Bavarian accent. At least there was a good cart load of cement above his head. If he managed to sleep here for two weeks he’d definitely get the Iron Cross, first class and become a great man in Weilheim for the rest of time – and not just in Weilheim. Such were his thoughts. He’d convinced himself that the men of the Third Company, who were billeted in an enormous vaulted casemate in the same wing and had received hot coffee, bread and tinned dripping after their night march, would sleep reasonably well on their three-high wire bunks and sacks of wood shavings and that their first duty the following morning would be to scour out their new quarters.

But first thing in the morning, the French sent him and his men a warning not to confuse this place with the previous one. While searching for a latrine, Privates Michael Baß and Adam Wimmerl ended up in a large courtyard open to the south that it was better not to enter at certain times. While they were still looking for somewhere to squat, a long-range battery, with which the garrison was very familiar, fired its first shell of the morning and blew them to bits. This caused a great deal of alarm, and struck the captain as an omen. It weighed heavily on him. Much weighed heavily on him. The air was bad, and the tunnels in this wing, unlike those in the other wings, were jet black with soot. The electric wiring had been newly laid. A side tunnel was completely sealed by a wall, which, though fairly new, consisted partly of old debris and boulders. The echoing vaults really were no fun, and the duties the company had been assigned were unpleasant: blasting operations while the French and German artillery exchanged fire; night-time spadework during which talking and smoking were forbidden, although the French front lay nearly 3km to the other side the fort. The commandant, a polite and taciturn Prussian captain from the Münster area, wasn’t a promising drinking buddy, much less the infantry officers, stationed here with a relief battalion, the radio operators and telephonists. The artillery lieutenant in charge of the armoured turrets was somewhat more affable. But when Niggl appeared in the towers, he pulled his head in nervously like a turtle, and the artillery officer hated that. Niggl hadn’t yet spoken to the sapper officer under whose command the Third Company was working. The sergeant majors had been in touch, and the lieutenant had inspected the men. But Captain Niggl had the right to expect the lieutenant to visit him first.

This happened. One morning between 10am and 11am, while the captain was writing an overblown letter to his wife, there was a knock on his door and the sapper lieutenant entered. Captain Niggl’s room was exactly the same as the lieutenant’s own, except that, as already mentioned, it faced one of the other sides of the moat, the north-west. This meant the entire length of the fort, some 300m, separated them. The lieutenant almost had to duck as he entered, and he rose tall and thin in the light from the window. Captain Niggl had turned his left side to it so that his writing hand didn’t cast a shadow on the paper. The captain was delighted to see the lieutenant and stood up to greet his visitor. But the visitor’s first words took his breath away. The sapper lieutenant asked that he kindly be allowed to introduce himself: his name was Kroysing, Eberhard Kroysing, and he hoped that he and the captain would work well together. As he uttered these harmless-sounding, official words, his eyes searched Herr Niggl’s face. A career in the civil service engenders self-control. Herr Niggl politely offered his visitor a seat, but his inner eye was scanning the threatening outlines of some shadowy connections.

‘Kroysing?’ he repeated in a questioning tone.

The tall lieutenant bowed in confirmation. ‘Exactly so. You know the name.’

‘We had an NCO in the Third Company—’

‘That was my brother,’ the lieutenant broke in.

Sadly, sadly, death always takes the best ones, said Captain Niggl sympathetically. Sergeant Kroysing had been a model of conscientiousness who would have been a credit to the officer corps. He’d only have had to hold out for another couple of months, and the worst would have been over. He would have got home leave and then gone to officer training and everything would have turned out well. Wasn’t it just like the thing that the Frogs had got him just before?

The lieutenant bowed in thanks. Yes, war didn’t pick and choose, and his parents would slowly get over it. His brother had implied something about a court martial procedure the last time they spoke. But that had been at the end of April or beginning of May, if memory served, soon after the dreadful explosion at any rate and during the heavy fighting towards Thiaumont-Fleury, and he really hadn’t had time to deal with it. He’d only spoken to his brother for about 20 minutes. What had the whole thing been about?

Captain Niggl began by asking how the lieutenant had come to serve in a Prussian unit when the Kroysings were a good Bavarian family, Franconian if he wasn’t mistaken, from Nuremberg. The lieutenant explained that he had been drafted into the Mark sappers as a staff sergeant in the military Reserve immediately after the end of term at the Technical University in Charlottenburg and had remained there as a lieutenant. This was a reflection of the unity of the German Reich that their grandfathers had talked so much about and that their fathers had fought for in 1870. But to get back to the court martial procedure: what was it really about?

Nothing, said Herr Niggl. Or as good as nothing. The army postal censor was overly nervous, and honest young Sergeant Kroysing had unfortunately written a couple of injudicious phrases to a high-ranking military official. He really couldn’t remember anything more specific at the moment. He’d been terribly annoyed to have to investigate such a good soldier for something like that. But it wasn’t up to him, and besides young Kroysing would definitely have emerged from the investigation untarnished. Alas, everyone underestimated the dangers the ASC men faced. Had the lieutenant heard that two of his men had been blown to bits only yesterday morning, just as Christoph had been a couple of months before?

The lieutenant made a mental note that Niggl had said ‘Christoph’. His expression remained unchanged. He too was sure that the court martial would have rehabilitated his brother, he said. But where were the files? Whom should he approach to get the process underway? Herr Niggl said he didn’t know. The files had gone through official channels, the way of all flesh. Perhaps the Third Company’s Sergeant Major Feicht could provide some information. Sergeant Major Feicht, the lieutenant repeated, noting the name down. And what about his brother’s effects? There were all sorts of valuable items, some from the time of their great-grandfather, Judge Kroysing in the Royal Bavarian Court, and personal things that might console their mother. And papers, maybe sketches or poems. Christoph had written some now and then. Their mother would probably want to pull together a small memorial booklet for relatives and friends. In short, where were these things?

Captain Niggl was taken aback and said that they had remained at the military hospital, which had sent them home as it was obliged to do. No, said Lieutenant Kroysing, that was not the case. On the day of the funeral, the military hospital had told him that the company had claimed the effects straight away in order to send them home itself. Ah yes, said the captain, it just showed how faithfully the Third Company’s orderly room looked after its men. The items must have been sent to Nuremberg immediately. Hmm, said Lieutenant Kroysing, then all that remained was for him to express his thanks. With the captain’s permission he would ask at home if the effects had arrived in the meantime and report back. But now he wouldn’t encroach on his time any longer. He’d interrupted him about a purely private matter when he was in the middle of writing a letter. Just one more question, this time of an official nature, and with this he stood up: in order to encourage his men, might the captain occasionally like to accompany the early-morning bomb disposal units or the night-time construction parties? It would definitely make a good impression and help the captain with the commanding officers. Danger lurked both inside and out. With that, he bowed and took leave of the higher-ranked, senior officer with the prescribed salute: heels together, finger to his cap. He didn’t give him his hand.

Niggl the retired civil servant from Weilheim sat there gazing after him as he wiped the sweat from his brow. He suddenly realised that he was being held prisoner here in this vault, that it was like a trap, perhaps even a grave. Why had that idiot Sergeant Kroysing not looked more like his brother – as dangerous as him? Why had he had such a harmless, boyish face and behaved like a fool? God help the man who came under the scrutiny of the brother’s eyes, into his hands. Only a bonehead could believe it was a coincidence that he and his Third Company – they and no other – had ended up here. That man knew something – what remained to be seen. Now he even wanted to send him, Niggl, out on official business into that bloody awful shell-cratered world, where a man could so easily be taken out by a shell splinter or a bullet. He would have to write to Captain Lauber immediately, or better still telephone him – immediately. Someone had deceived Captain Lauber: this was private revenge through official means. He and his ASC men were out of place here; he’d surely see that. Or should he first inform Simmdering and Feicht? What had happened to Kroysing’s effects? Were they still lying about in company storage because no one had found the time to read through the lad’s scribbles? Had the foxes been at them? No, there was no rush. He’d be able to take advice long before Kroysing had an answer from home. The most urgent matter was to discover the enemy’s intentions and find out what he knew.

Most urgent of all was that he keep his head. That he’d lost his nerve so suddenly was simply down to this dung heap, Douaumont. He’d allowed himself to be too impressed by the word. It looked almost exactly the same here as in the cellars of Ettal Abbey or Starnberg Castle. If he were sitting there he wouldn’t feel like giving up just because a man with whom he had to work was the brother of another man with whom he’d worked before. He sat there eyeing the white-washed wall in front of him. When he examined the whole discussion, it really hadn’t been so suspicious after all. He alone had ascribed a vengeful role to his visitor; he alone, persuaded by the fact that this stupid pile of bricks wasn’t called Ettal Abbey or Starnberg Castle but Douaumont, had given the situation sinister connotations. If you looked at it soberly, nothing could be proved. The question about the files was as natural as the one about the effects. The fact that a Lieutenant Kroysing was in charge of the sapper depot was as harmless as his brother being an NCO in the ASC. The lieutenant hadn’t really looked after his younger brother. And now he was meant to have had his brother’s company and battalion commander transferred in order to exact revenge. Rubbish! Preposterous nonsense! Young Kroysing was dead and couldn’t say anything. There were always ASC companies pottering around in Douaumont. If this wasn’t a coincidence, then there was no such thing as coincidences, and the Holy Father was right to believe in a jealous God sitting above the world observing wrong-doers and protecting the innocent. And it wasn’t hard to deal with the Lord God. You went to confession and did what the priest told you. Then you put one over on the devil – and his envoy, this lanky bloody Prussian, who wasn’t even a real Prussian but a Nuremberg imitation. Nothing’s up, Niggl. Write your letter home and don’t let on to the wife and kids.

Captain Niggl’s day passed tolerably well. The midday bombardment startled him. He was to go out with the men that night and he’d requested and studied maps and was reassured by the several kilometres that lay between him and the French. About 5pm, his company commander, Acting Lieutenant Simmerding, pushed into his room looking horrified. He closed the door and stuttered out a question: did the captain know what the fort’s sapper commander was called? In his cocksure way, Niggl tried to calm him down. Of course he knew; he’d known for ages. An affable chap, Lieutenant Kroysing. They’d be able to work well with him. Then why, hissed Simmerding, hadn’t he told Feicht and him anything about it? They were in hot water now. And he handed Niggl an official telegram, white and blue, as they always were when the telephonists transcribed a message over the wire: ‘Christoph’s effects not received, Kroysing,’ it read.

Niggl looked at the piece of paper for a long time, then asked flatly where Simmerding had got it from. He said the little Yid Süßmann had brought it over for his attention, requesting that it be returned. Niggl nodded several times. His pathetic attempts at self-deception were useless. You didn’t mess with a man who smiled politely and fired off telegrams like electric shocks.

‘You were right, old pal,’ he said amiably, ‘and I’ve been an ass. Herr Kroysing is a dangerous man. We’ll have to get a grip on ourselves and use our nous. To begin with we’ll blame it all on the army postal service.’ But his hand was shaking as he relit his cigar, and when Simmerding huffed, ‘Fat lot of good that’ll do,’ he didn’t know what to say.

Three days later, Captain Niggl was to be seen running down the echoing corridors, head bent. In that short time, the company had recorded two more dead and 31 wounded. French shells had twice exploded in the column, and although that word designated loose groups of men rather than a marching line, the ASC men and their officers nonetheless had the impression that they were helplessly exposed and must be prepared for anything when outside the stone pile. Captain Niggl now ran, hands pressed to his ears, for piercing shrieks were coming from the side corridor where the dressing station had been installed. The same shrieks had rung out across the field when the two dead men and nine of the wounded were shot down 50m in front of him. The lovely morning mist had been suddenly torn apart – the rest could be imagined. Herr Niggl wasn’t used to running. His belly shuddered, and his sleeves rode up. They looked much too short. But he ran. Under the dull light from the electric bulbs, he fled the unrestrained howling of tormented flesh.

^{CHAPTER FOUR} Dress rehearsal

WHEN EBERHARD KROYSING thought about Captain Niggl, his soul danced and sang, and the fort’s murderous grey air seemed to twinkle secretly. He was biding his time. There would be a lot to do in the coming days, for rain had suddenly set in overnight, and many were looking on it as the start of the autumn downpours. A fine, persistent drizzle fell from leaden clouds; when they woke in the morning, the land was already glistening with countless puddles and pools. The war had gone silent in astonishment.

‘Süßmann,’ said Kroysing, smoking his pipe in his cell and sprawled lazily on his bed, ‘we’ll finish my painting this morning.’ The plan for the construction of six new mine throwers drawn in crayon lay unfinished on the table. ‘But in the afternoon, we’ll have a look at the damage. If this doesn’t stop, we’ve seriously miscalculated and started our preparations too late.’

Süßmann confidently asserted that it would stop. ‘It’s just a shower, as we say in Berlin,’ he predicted. ‘And a benevolent one. Hurry up, she’s saying. Where are the First and Second Companies, she’s saying.’

‘And she’s quite right,’ said Kroysing cheerfully, ‘and deserves a schnapps or even a brandy. Pass me the bottle, Süßmann. We’ll allow ourselves one as her proxy.’

Süßmann grinned happily and fetched the tall bottle, still half full, from the lieutenant’s cabinet, along with two of the kind of small tumblers found in every French café. He poured two shots and put them on the iron stool by the head of Kroysing’s bed. The lieutenant told him to dig in, inhaled the scent from the golden liquid that filled the room and took a slow swig with unconfined pleasure, lost in the drink, man’s great comforter.

‘Listen, my friend,’ he said, speaking to the ceiling, ‘around midday when the captain has caught up on his sleep, wander over to his orderly room and nonchalantly ask where the two companies are. And then as an afterthought ask if you could please see the post book. The Third Company must have kept some kind of record when it entrusted my brother’s belongings to the choppy seas of the army postal service. Because, dear Süßmann, the parcel is lost. A certain percentage of packages and letters must get lost just by the laws of probability. And that Christoph’s few things were among them – coincidence naturally. We Kroysings are an unlucky lot.’ Süßmann would have preferred to go straight away, but Kroysing didn’t want to be alone. ‘If our friend Bertin is a hardened soldier then he’ll hoof it over here this morning and show his rather crooked nose,’ yawned Kroysing. ‘Do you think he’ll dare come?’

Süßmann said that if he stayed where he was it would only be out of shyness. In order to propel him over, he’d telephoned that morning – but lo and behold the bird had already flown. He was on night duty and was free during the day, and according to Strumpf from the Landsturm he’d gone to see a friend from school whom he’d discovered among the field howitzers. Then he planned to continue to Douaumont. ‘Would’ve been a miracle if there wasn’t someone he knew among all those Upper Silesians, poor lad,’ concluded Süßmann.

‘Why are you making fun of him?’ asked Kroysing.

‘Well, apart from the fact that everything strikes me as funny, I’ve never known anyone to have so many doubts about everything and anything.

Kroysing looked up. ‘Do you think he’s a coward? I don’t fancy that.’

Süßmann shook his long head. ‘Absolutely not,’ he retorted. ‘Did I say cowardly? I said he has doubts. The lad is more of a naïve daredevil, motivated by a mad desire for novelty – the devil only knows what drives him. One thing’s for sure, though, he’s scared of his superiors. Of the military, you know. Shells are no problem, but show him an orderly room or an epaulette and the poor dog shits his pants,’ he added thoughtfully.

Kroysing rolled on to his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. ‘You don’t understand a thing about it. It’s got to be like that. The common man, according to Frederick the Great’s theory, must fear his superiors much more than the enemy, otherwise, he’d never attack. Furthermore, I imagine Bertin’s tendency to panic would disappear with a good military education. What are men like him doing in the ASC? Do me a favour, Süßmann, watch him for me. If he looks like he could do something better, I’ll be happy to help him. He’s intelligent and educated, he’s been out here long enough and he’s a decent lad. It just depends whether he has guts – cold-blooded guts. You know what I mean. If he does we’ll put him on the usual road to a stripe and later a commission – like you.’

Süßmann banged on the table with a red pencil he’d been using to doodle on an army postcard. ‘Then he’d first of all have to request a transfer from his unit.

‘That he would.’

‘He never will,’ asserted Süßmann. ‘His scruples will get in the way. We had a chat on the way back last time. He’s had his fingers burnt. He volunteered for the west, but was assigned to a convoy for the east. That blunder landed him in Jansch’s battalion. Regret about that gnaws away at his soul. Never volunteer: that’s his motto now. And not a bad one, I’m sure you’ll admit.’

Kroysing shook his fist. ‘Scoundrel! Up with volunteers! They’re in the best Prussian tradition and a matter of honour for sappers. Didn’t you ever learn about Sapper Klinke and the Dybbøl trenches at school? “My name’s Klinke, and I open the gate,” wrote your countryman Fontane, and he should know.’

They both laughed, as Süßmann added: ‘Poets can do anything.’

‘Nothing against poets,’ warned Kroysing. ‘Here’s ours.’

Sure enough, there was a shy knock and Bertin entered, rather wet and with filthy boots. They commended him on his timely arrival. Kroysing offered the visitor a glass of brandy so he wouldn’t catch cold, got up to greet him and gave him something to smoke: Dutch pipe tobacco. Kroysing wandered across the narrow room in his padded waistcoat of slightly worn black silk to wash his face, and as he was drying it, he told Bertin about his delicate conversation with Captain Niggl. Bertin cleaned his rain-splattered glasses. In the pipe smoke, his myopic eyes could barely pick out Kroysing’s face and the flapping towel. He told them he hadn’t been able to sleep after the letter opening. Its contents had stayed inside him, spoken in the voice of the – he swallowed – dead man, which, curiously, he remembered extremely well. What kind of a man was Niggl that he could simply disregard an exceptional young lad such as Christoph?

Kroysing pulled on his tunic and slid past the visitors and furnishings into his seat by the table at the window. ‘A very ordinary man,’ he said in his deep voice. ‘One of x millions, a workaday scoundrel, so to speak.’

‘And what do you plan to do with him?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ replied Kroysing. ‘First, I’ll put him under pressure. The surroundings, this atmospheric mole heap of a fort and the Frogs will help me there. Next step: I get him to sign a paper confessing that he kept my brother at Chambrettes-Ferme until he was killed – in order to forestall the court martial investigation.’

‘He’ll never sign,’ said Süßmann.

‘Oh yes, he will,’ replied Kroysing, looking up. ‘I’m curious myself as to how it will happen, but it will happen. I feel like an adolescent boy again, full of drive and vengeance. That’s the only time you can really hate properly and persecute people for months. Perhaps the war has uncovered the ancient hunter in us, who drinks evening tea from his enemy’s skull. After two years of it, it’s no wonder.’

‘Do you call that a good thing?’ asked Bertin, shocked.

‘I call anything good that extends my life and finishes the enemy off,’ said Kroysing brusquely, carefully marking the locations of the new mine throwers with a green pencil; he’d already used blue for the German positions, red for the French and brown for the area’s contours. ‘This isn’t a girl’s school,’ he continued. ‘The lie about the spirit of the front and the comradeship of war may be fine, and it may be necessary to keep the show on the road for those behind the lines and our enemy over there. Supreme self-sacrifice, you know. Very inspiring for war correspondents, politicians and readers. In reality we’re all fighting to have as much as possible in our own domain. It’s a battle of all against all. That’s the right formula.’

‘I’ve often felt that,’ said little Sergeant Süßmann drily.

‘Exactly.’ Kroysing blinked at him. ‘We all have, if not as keenly as you. And anyone who hasn’t felt it, hasn’t been to war.’

‘Do you really believe,’ said Bertin with a secret sense of superiority and the trace of a smile, ‘that the drive for honours, for a career—’

‘Rubbish,’ said Kroysing. ‘Our own domain, I said, and our own domain is what I meant. Domain can mean different things to different people – every man has his own thumbprint. Some collect medals and give their hearts to metalsmiths. Others want to carve out a career and swoon with delight when they get ahead. But the great mass of people just want dosh. They loot French houses or share out dead men’s effects. Our friend Niggl just wanted a quiet life.’

‘And what does the lieutenant want deep down inside?’ asked Süßmann, pulling a funny monkey face.

‘Not telling, you cheeky monkey,’ laughed Kroysing. ‘You may assume that I want to be feared among my clansmen.’ And he added more seriously: ‘Never before has anyone spat in my soup the way that man has.’

They were silent for a moment, then Bertin said diffidently: ‘I must be abnormal then. I want nothing more than to perform my duties as an ASC private to the best of my abilities and for there to be an honourable peace soon so I can go back to my wife and my work.’

‘Wife,’ mocked Kroysing. ‘Work. Honourable peace. You’re in for a shock, and anyway you can find someone else to believe that— what was that?’

All three of them sat up straight as pokers and listened. A lacerating howl descended on them from the clouds, a dreadful sound; then a primordial crashing and rolling smashed through the rooms – not as near as they’d feared. ‘Up and have a look,’ called Süßmann.

‘Stay put,’ commanded Kroysing. There was running in the corridor outside the door. He picked up the telephone. ‘Ring me immediately you get news.’ The telephonist’s voice was still shaking with fear. Kroysing surveyed his guest with satisfaction. Bertin was surprised at himself: he felt the same wild delight he had when he chased across the shelled area with Böhne and Schultz. Sergeant Süßmann’s hands shook as he said that it could only have been a long-range 38cm or a 42cm, a German one that had fallen short. The telephone rattled; highest calibre, direct strike to the western trenches, reported the exchange. Extensive damage to the outer walls. Kroysing thanked them. Out of the question that the 42cm was so far out. Three thousand metres too short – no way. Even with the dunderheads back there.

‘Watch out,’ he warned. ‘Number two.’ This time all three of them ducked. Süßmann slid under the table. No one breathed. The splintered air screamed behind the lump of steel, getting closer, close, there. Red and yellow flash at the window. Thunder blast in the room. Plaster and paintwork on the table. The electric lamp went out. The men’s chairs shook beneath them. ‘Strike,’ said Kroysing calmly. The crash above their heads had been brighter and wilder than before, and had boomed louder too.

‘No harm done,’ said Süßmann, jumping up entirely without shame as if he were the only one who’d responded proportionately. Kroysing stated that unless he was very much mistaken the strike had taken down the armoured turret in the north-west wing. He asked to be connected to the turret. The other two watched expectantly as his face broke into a satisfied smile. ‘Damnable nation, the French. They can shoot but they can fortify too. The turret took a direct hit and withstood it. A new calibre, according to the NCO, a mortar heavier than the 38cm from Fort Marre. A new type, then, probably ordered in for the Somme.’

‘And they’re rehearsing it on us,’ said Süßmann, while Kroysing tried to speak to the turret again. This time the exchange reported that the turret had been temporarily evacuated on account of the gases from the explosion. It hadn’t been entirely spared. It could no longer be turned. ‘As long as that’s it,’ said Kroysing, hanging up. And then he sent Süßmann and Bertin off with emergency lights to see how the ASC men were coping with the incident.

They didn’t have to go far. The tunnel in front of the Bavarians’ casemate was filled with the ASC men’s cursing, wailing and crying, as they crouched down or struggled to get away. Their NCOs, brandishing torches, only just managed to stop them rushing out into the courtyard. At the entrance to the intersecting corridor, faintly illuminated by the daylight, stood Captain Niggl, his bottom lip between his teeth, bare-headed and in slippers, with his Litevka unbuttoned. Acting Lieutenant Simmerding pushed through to him, while Sergeant Major Feicht tried to calm down the men at the back of the corridor in his hoarse voice. The men were hopping mad, panted Simmerding. They didn’t want to stay in this place. They were unarmed reservists, not frontline soldiers. They’d no business here.

‘Not that mad,’ said Niggl under his breath, his eyes staring and becoming angry when Süßmann appeared with his black miner’s lamp. Unfortunately, the sapper’s strict military bearing gave him no way in. Niggl told him to inform the lieutenant that the men’s sleep had been interrupted, some of them had been thrown from their beds, there had been instances of grazed skin and a sprained wrist, and their nerves had of course taken a jolt. The bloody thing must have come down right above the casemate. Süßmann uttered soothing words, mainly to the men: the shots had been meant for the B-tower, which had also been hit, and the fact that the concrete had withstood such a heavy strike was the best proof there was of the vaults’ strength. For it had been a new type of gun, also a 42cm – he had no idea how close this improvisation was to the truth. And so the men should not let their rest be disturbed, for goodness’ sake, and should take consolation from that and go back to the casemate and to bed. The depot would issue an extra ration of rum with evening tea because of the shock.

Wanting consolation, the ASC men pushed into the light and listened eagerly. They knew this little man who was rumoured to have died and come back to life. They’d also heard that the lieutenant’s name was Kroysing. In many of their dull minds Süßmann was therefore accorded some of the trust they’d had in Sergeant Kroysing, who had also been quite short and brown-haired. As a result, his encouragement worked. All those patient men really wanted was reassurance, something to soothe their souls and help them come to terms with the situation. Süßmann stood in the midst of his three enemies and glanced fleetingly at their faces. Behind those faces, they were shaking. Oh, he felt exactly how much. Should he ask for the post book now? No, too potent a moment. They could have refused him with good reason. First they needed a chance to have other thoughts. After lunch then. He clicked his heels together, swung round at attention and vanished with Bertin into the endless, dark tunnel. The electric cable had been cut somewhere.

^{CHAPTER FIVE} Between neighbours

LATE IN THE afternoon, Captain Niggl asked Sergeant Major Feicht to come to his room. It was dark inside; the electricians were still working on the lighting cable. The captain cast a formless shadow on the wall in the dim light from the stearin candle on the table. He was sitting on his bedstead and had been asleep. He planned to spend some time in the open with the entrenching commando that night, but for now he was wearing breeches and grey woollen stockings that his wife had knitted and slippers – black slippers from Weilheim, each with a white Edelweiß embroidered on it. The sergeant major stood to attention in the doorway. In a tired voice, the captain asked him to close the door, come in and sit down on the stool. Sergeant Major Feicht obeyed, giving his superior officer a look of deepest sympathy. He too felt dreadful.

Feicht and Niggl came from the same area. Before the war, Ludwig Feicht, who was a native of Tutzing and married to a local woman, had worked contentedly as a purser on the handsome steamers that plied Lake Starnberg, or Lake Würm as it was also called. When the visitors from north Germany were standing in groups on the deck admiring the beautiful old coppices of trees, the clear water, the silver gulls circling above, Purser Feicht stepped forward in his blue reefer jacket with gold braid and his marvellous peaked cap and explained to the summer holiday-makers in broad but not impenetrable Bavarian that this was the up-and-coming spa resort of Tutzing and that was Bernried, with its little church that was much older than even the most impressive churches in Berlin. He was flattered when the clueless Berliners and Saxons addressed him as ‘Captain’ and asked indescribably stupid questions: was Rose Island over there by Tutzing artificial and had King Ludwig by any chance had a castle on it?

Ludwig Feicht loved his summer life on the long lake, and his broad, red face radiated goodwill. He had two small children in Tutzing, and while he was away his wife Theresa single-handedly ran a grocery shop and delicatessen for the many spa guests who packed the place out. Even now – especially now – the starving Prussians descended on the place to fill their bellies with Bavarian milk, dumplings and smoked meats, leaving their money behind, the new brown or blue 20 Mark notes. And Ludwig Feicht had been very happy with his life. He’d even faced the transfer to Douaumont with a certain composure, believing himself immune to the vicissitudes of fate. But as of that day, as of the two instances of shellfire, that feeling had been abruptly overturned. That the French had fired those two shells at the fort, that they were so bloody expert that they only needed those two: this took his breath away when the gunners from turret B explained it to him. His goal had been to return home in one piece with some tidy savings. Now he wasn’t sure what to think.

‘Feicht,’ the captain said in his new, depressed voice, employing the thick Bavarian dialect of their lakeside homeland, ‘answer me one question – not in your official, military capacity, but as a neighbour who’s in, you know, the same tight spot as me, as a Tutzinger to a Weilheimer, who has a dispute with someone from Nuremberg. Imagine the two of us are in a shooting hut above the Benediktenwand ridge and a nasty Nuremberger is due to turn up early in the morning wanting something from us – a Franconian, a right bastard.’

Feicht sat there squarely on the stool, bent forward, elbows on his knees. This was it. This was why he’d been brought to this evil vaulted place. He’d always made fun of clergymen and churches and pilfered from the steamship company without a second thought. Money was his second favourite thing in the world. But he should have kept his hands off dead men’s belongings. There was something wrong with that. ‘Captain,’ he said hoarsely, ‘I know what this is about.’

Niggl nodded. An intelligent man such as his neighbour would of course understand the ways of the world. Who would have thought that meek little mouse Sergeant Kroysing would have the devil incarnate for a brother. The brother had claws and he dug them in. He pursued his goal with tenacity, and his goal was to destroy.

Yes, exclaimed Feicht, waving his right hand about, which, being a sergeant major who understood what was proper, he’d never have done in a different mood or under other circumstances. Lieutenant Kroysing struck him as a crab that might skewer a pencil someone had put between its claws as a joke. There was only one solution: wave goodbye to the pencil or chuck the crab in boiling water.

‘You see, Feicht, that’s just it. We can’t chuck the crab in boiling water, but perhaps the lanky bastard will fall in by himself when he’s floating about with his mine throwers at the front line. Perhaps we could help him, shine a torch on him when he has us all up at the front and we’re under cover and he’s on the top. Until then, we’ll have to give him the pencil. Have you got the list?’ Feicht said that he had. ‘Do you know where the various things are?’ Without so much as a blush, Feicht considered for a moment, then said, yes, he knew where the things were.

‘What writings there were are still among my paperwork,’ said Niggl. ‘I’ll pull them together for you and leave them packed up here on my bed. Package everything up nicely while we’re gone – everything, old chum! Work out his pay up until the day of his death, not a Pfennig short. Can we produce the paper that the company commander signed when the belongings arrived?’ Feicht nodded. ‘By tonight the package is to be on the table in Lieutenant Kroysing’s room. I’ll answer any questions he may have. We mustn’t leave him any openings, Feicht,’ he said, eyeing his portly subordinate pensively. ‘For the time being, we have the weaker hand. For the time being. Now, be off with you, old chum. Tell Dimpflinger to get me a decent bit of meat, even if it’s from a tin. I want to see this game through. We’ll see who laughs last.’

Feicht looked with deepest sympathy at the gentleman perched on the bedstead in his slippers and blue knitted waistcoat with deer antler buttons. Here was a proper compatriot who wouldn’t turn his men over to that insane, scrawny Nuremberger, that rag and bone merchant. ‘It’ll be all right, old boy, even if it is a bit of a headache,’ said Feicht. ‘Whoever puts his trust in this retired civil servant from Weilheim will always have family. And when we’re all happily back home, Feicht will know whom to thank.’

‘Off you go, Feicht.’

The sergeant major walked to the door, turned the key and clicked his heels together, every bit the soldier. They’d understood each other without speaking plainly.

When there were spoils to share out, the sergeant major kept the lion’s share and gave something to the clerk who was working on the case, as well as the postal orderly and one or two of the NCOs to whom he was well disposed. It was very painful to have to cough up gifts already received, but a wise man does not questions orders from on high and he would no doubt get his reward in due course.

All alone in the small, square room that had been assigned to him and Simmerding the company commander as a billet and office, Ludwig Emmeran Feicht busied himself with the objects that the now almost forgotten sergeant had left behind in July. The company’s list lay on the table, and the cheerful electric light was working again. The door was closed, and a tumblerful of red wine and a filled pipe sweetened the unpleasant task. A coup had failed – never mind, they hadn’t meant any harm. Now in slippers himself, the portly man moved about putting everything in order, then sat astride the stool to take stock. Every time he found something he made a cross on the list with a freshly sharpened pencil.

First a leather waistcoat, worn but still usable, and (secondly) this fountain pen with the gold lever: they had formed the clerk Dillinger’s share. He’d been wide-eyed when he handed them back but he’d understood. Funny how the whole company had grasped that something to do with dead Sergeant Kroysing was in the air when that lanky fencepost of a brother appeared. Oh, they’d gloated a bit at the beginning, the little ASC men. But not any more. They visited their comrades in the sickbay and thought bitterly about how they had Lieutenant Kroysing to thank. Perhaps one or two workers from Munich thought about it more deeply and held the orderly room responsible for the disaster. But that way of thinking had no momentum, because the French shells had so much more momentum; he who dies, dies. Nowt for it. And so the Frogs helped keep discipline, and one army supported the other.

Pipe, tobacco pouch and pocket knife; Sergeant Pangerl had obediently brought them back. The knife had a deer antler handle and was stuck in its sheath like a dirk. The lad Kroysing had hardly used the pipe, which was of the best Nuremberg workmanship, and had kept it in a leather pouch. Now it would atrophy in a drawer – what a shame. Sergeant Major Feicht looked tenderly on the broad ebonite mouthpiece, the gleaming briar wood bowl and the wide tobacco chamber fitted with an aluminium tube. He put the parts back together again, wrapped the pipe in its pouch and crossed it off the list. A wallet full of slips of paper, a notebook, a leather-bound booklet with the calendar for 1915, a narrow moleskin notebook with writing – with poems! The kinds of verses that rhymed at the end. Ludwig Feicht’s lips curled in contempt. Typical. People who wrote verses should steer clear of other activities. If things went wrong for them, they only had themselves to blame. But now the most important items: the purse, watch and ring. Shame about the ring. He’d intended to give it to his wife Theresa as a souvenir, a holiday surprise. It was set with a beautiful green stone, an emerald, and the ring itself was in the shape of snake biting its tail and was patterned with scales. He, Feicht, had wanted to wear the watch, either on his wrist or strung on a long, thin gold chain across his waistcoat. It had all gone sour.

He hadn’t done too badly in this unit, but it was nothing compared to the infantry and cavalry, who’d marched into wealthy Belgium at the beginning of the war, into Luxembourg and northern France. They had seen some loot and no mistake. The clocks of Liège, the gold of Namur, and even the small provincial towns. Of course those dirty north German rogues hadn’t let the Bavarians at it. It was the Rhinelanders and Saxons who got stuck in, by Jove it was. Had it not always been considered right and proper that soldiers who were risking their life for the Fatherland should pocket something? Did the bigwigs behave any differently when they swallowed up whole provinces – Belgium, Poland, Serbia and the beautiful stretch of countryside here that they called the Briey-Longwy iron ore basin. If you didn’t get rich at war, you’d never get rich. And what a waste it would’ve been to melt down the beautiful watches, chains, bangles, necklaces, rings and brooches when the small towns were razed to the ground because they were full of god-damned franctireurs resistance fighters. Where had he met that clever man with the travelling military field library, which had a false bottom with drawers you could pull out – nothing but Belgian watches in them? Had it been in Alsace? Yes, that man had known what was what. But the war wasn’t over yet. A lot could still happen. All of France might be up for grabs if the Germans won. And they would win and must win – or all was lost. Feicht wasn’t the only one who knew that. So he could restore this Swiss watch with its beautifully engraved gold back cover to the lucky heirs with confidence. It kept good time, he could vouch for that. The money – he counted the folded notes. Seventy-six Marks and eighty Pfennigs – ah well! He could’ve got the children new clothes with it, pleated taffeta skirts, green silk pinafores and tops. But it didn’t matter. Theresa was doing very nicely out of the starving north Germans. He’d get over it. He’d kept it safe, and there you were – he’d been right. The last item on the list was underwear. Ludwig Feicht dipped a pen in ink and wrote an asterisked note on the list, placing it so that the company commander’s signature hovered protectively below it: ‘Distributed to comrades in need, as the deceased would have wished.’ Full stop.

The pile of goods lay on the grey-painted table carefully wrapped in the leather waistcoat. Dependable Feicht now took from a box a large piece of orange-coloured oil paper reinforced with woven-in threads and wrapped the whole lot up so that the affixed address label adorned the middle. He tied it with string, took sealing wax and the company seal and sealed Sergeant Kroysing’s effects with two big red stamps. He left the address intact. It was addressed to the Third Company orderly room, and the sender was given as the Fifth Echelon Army Postal Depot. A whole stack of letters had arrived from there after the battalion had been on the move for a week, battering over from Poland to Verdun. That now proved rather handy. Ludwig Feicht filled out a small yellow slip of paper in narrow, spiky handwriting: ‘Return to sender. Address incomplete. No duplicate enclosed.’ He checked the postmark – delightfully illegible.

He would suggest to the captain that he enclose a judiciously worded covering letter, saying that the package had been correctly addressed to Councillor Kroysing, but that due to an oversight on the part of the clerk Dillinger the army postal address of the company had been given instead of the Kroysings’ address in Nuremberg: Ebensee, Schilfstraße 28. What a silly mix-up! Dillinger had been severely reprimanded and would have spent three days in prison, but they had decided to put mercy before justice as his wife had just had a baby and his thoughts were back home. If the company hadn’t been suddenly ‘transferred’, the package would have been in Nuremberg long ago. That’s how it was, Lieutenant. Did the lieutenant have any further questions? Ludwig Feicht the purser grinned quietly to himself, dipped a small brush in the glue jar, stuck the return slip on the right-hand corner of the address label and rubbed it a bit with the sole of his slipper to make it look as though it had gone through the post. He then stamped it with the company stamp in such a way that only two of the curved lines and an asterisk were visible; ink doesn’t take very well on oil paper and he’d been careful not to press the stamp in the ink pad. With his hands behind his back, he contemplated his handiwork. Excellent job. The captain would be pleased.

As the men marched out that night in the deepest gloaming, Herr Simmerding and Herr Niggl met at the back of the column. Although Captain Niggl was a half bottle of Bordeaux to the good, he found the reek of alcohol off his company commander discomfiting. It wasn’t that he disapproved of Dutch courage. He drank himself and so did everyone in the army. They tramped along beside each other in virtual silence. Eventually, Niggl began to feel sorry for the other man with his hunched shoulders and pinched neck. They too were close compatriots. The Simmerding family lived all along the north shore of the lake. And so, in an undertone, he asked how he was doing after the shock earlier at midday. Fine, grunted Simmerding. Niggl said that was good, because he had every reason to feel fine. Sergeant Major Feicht had now sorted out the unpleasantness to do with young Kroysing’s effects.

‘Really,’ said Simmerding, with a wild, fleeting glance at the man on his right. ‘Sorted it out, has he? Ha, ha! Has Feicht brought young Kroysing back to life then? Got him out of his coffin, blown new air into him and put him back in the ranks? Because that man in there will be satisfied with nothing less.’

‘Simmerding,’ said Niggl soothingly, not allowing Feicht’s anxious tone get to him, ‘pull yourself together. All is by no means lost.’

Simmdering came to a halt. His clenched fists stuck out from the wide arms of his coat. ‘All is not lost! All has long since been lost! I’m sick of this whole business with Christoph Kroysing, if you really want to know! Sick to here—’ he raised his hand to his mouth. ‘I could kick myself for having got caught up in sending him to Chambrettes and that game with the files – your game.’

‘No one forced you, Acting Lieutenant Simmerding,’ said Niggl coolly. ‘Make sure you don’t fall too far behind your company. And say a couple of Ave Marias during the night.’

What a lily-livered specimen, he thought contemptuously.

Passed down from the front, the same warning resounded over and over again: ‘Watch out, wire below. Watch out, wire above.’

^{CHAPTER SIX} Snatched booty

WHEN LIEUTENANT KROYSING came home that night and turned on the light, his whistling abruptly stopped. He was always happy to get back to the welcoming vaults of the fort – welcoming vaults! He laughed to himself at the expression. He appreciated its irony, which came from the extent to which the world was distorted. The hours spent on the winding uphill route from the infantry positions, the rude presence of mind, born of repeated experience, needed to evade the French shells – it all meant he felt positively happy as soon as he heard his steps echoing off the stone walls. That’s why Lieutenant Kroysing was whistling. He broke off in the middle of the most beautiful part of the Meistersinger overture. Kroysing looked in astonishment at the surprising postal gift on his table and the folded note between the oil paper and the string. Uh-huh, he thought scornfully, who goes there?

He swung his steel helmet on to the coat stand, carefully hung his cape and gas mask under it, threw his belt with his dirk and heavy pistol and his torch on to the bed and sat down beside them to take off his puttees and mud-caked shoes. In other circumstances, he’d have rung and woken his batman, sleepy Sapper Dickmann, who only had one virtue: he could fry schnitzel and make coffee like no one else. But he wanted to be alone with this package. While he was bent over undoing his laces and putting on his house shoes, he didn’t let it out his sight for a second, as if it might disappear just as suddenly and magically as it had wafted in. Yes, he thought, this was a victory. Victory number two, won by fearlessly advancing, constantly upping the ante and exploiting the enemy’s weakness – precise knowledge of the terrain. The tactical instructions applied to Lieutenant Kroysing’s private war with Captain Niggl were bearing fruit. Funny, he pondered, I never for one moment thought that this could be one of the welcome packages from home that sporadically reach us. I’ve got my teeth some way into Captain Niggl.

He read the accompanying bumph signed ‘Feicht, Sergeant Major’ and written in Feicht’s best handwriting, examined the wrapping paper suspiciously and nodded knowingly. There was nothing to prove that the package had really been sent back by the army postal service. Asterisks and curved lines might convince a schoolboy. However, nothing proved the contrary either. The conspiracy against the young lad had been carried out by shrewd and experienced soldiers. They weren’t so easily unsettled. They’d parried his strike splendidly and hung the clerk Dillinger out to dry in the customary manner. If he fell for it and demanded that Dillinger be punished, the clerk would definitely be sent to prison, but as recompense for his silence he’d be off on leave in the next round. A wolf like Kroysing wasn’t about to be seduced by such tricks. His steady grey eyes looked through the wall at his target, the captain. He wasn’t finished with him. He pulled out his knife, slit the string with an audible rip and opened the package. Enclosed in the soft brown leather waistcoat he knew so well lay all that remained of Christoph on earth. It had without a doubt been shared among his enemies as booty: watch, fountain pen, purse, the little snake ring, a wallet, a notebook, his smoking things.

Breathing heavily with his balled fists pressed into the table, Eberhard Kroysing looked at his younger brother’s effects. He hadn’t been a good brother to him – definitely not easy to put up with. We don’t love our younger siblings. We want our parents’ love all to ourselves. We don’t want to share our domain. We want to be the sole object of their affection. As we can’t push aside siblings that are born later, we subjugate them. Hell mend them if they don’t obey. The nursery can be a mini hell. It can. Boys are very inventive and instinctively know how to wage war inconspicuously. That’s how it is – and not just in the Kroysing household. If the parents intervene, it just makes it worse for the weaker ones. In his case, it carried on until the bonds of home loosened and the brothers began to move in different circles. A cool indifference had then crept into the older brother’s attitude towards the younger. Only much later in the university holidays did he suddenly realise that his little brother was growing into a man with a good heart – a potential friend. Then the war started and he’d been turned into a savage again, and just when he was hoping that they’d both get leave by Christmas at the latest and be able to enjoy the festivities with their parents, it was too late. A couple of scoundrels had let the French finish the young lad off to spare themselves a bit of unpleasantness. He’d get his own back on the Frogs, but here and now written on the walls of this monk’s cell were the words: ‘too late’. ‘Too late’ on the ceiling and the window, ‘too late’ on the floor. ‘Too late’ hung in the air. Nothing was more natural for men at war than to believe in kingdom come, life after death, a reunion on the other side. The fighting man’s simple, forward-driven mind couldn’t grasp that those who were carried off had disappeared forever; his imagination couldn’t deal with it. The enemy had to live on, so that victory was eternal. And a brother had to live on so you could make up for all the bad and evil things you’d done in your youth.

Kroysing grabbed the little watch, wound it and set it. It was half eleven. From the distance came rumbling and crashing. It must be from the Fort Vaux area, where fighting was constantly flaring up and the French were improving their positions. Nonetheless, the tick of the watch was audible in the quiet room. The young lad’s heart couldn’t be made to tick again. But at least he had already made an offering to the dead boy. And he would pursue Niggl until he confessed. Then Judge Advocate Mertens would take up the case and deal with Niggl, and his machinations would all have been in vain. He’d thought about it and made up his mind. He could cheerfully have spat on the retired civil servant before witnesses, slapped his face or wrung his neck. But duelling was forbidden in wartime, and however satisfying it might have been to haul that fat, trembling lump in front of his gun, the legal route was the only possible one and actually the more effective. He would totally and utterly destroy Herr Niggl. Even if Niggl survived, he’d take no pleasure in his life. He’d be a social outcast, dishonoured by his years in jail. He’d be dismissed from his post and, as the bureaucrat’s life was all he knew, he and his family would starve. Perhaps he’d open a little stationery business in Buenos Aires or Constantinople. But wherever the German officer corps had connections he’d be a dead man, despised by his wife and hated by his children.

Will that satisfy you, Christoph? he wondered. You’re soft. Your enemy’s scalp means nothing to you, but it means something to me. It won’t be tonight or the day after tomorrow, but we’ll get it. And then we’ll make Bertin a lieutenant in your place. He resisted the temptation to look through his brother’s notebook, wrapped his effects up in the leather waistcoat, undressed, got into bed and turned out the light.