Outside Verdun

^{CHAPTER ONE} October

THE EARTH WAS a rusty disc, capped by a pewter sky from which rain had been falling for a month.

On 20 October, four tired ASC men trudged up morosely from Moirey station. They and Sergeant Knappe, the ammunitions expert, had been engaged in the tedious task of loading powder charges on to a goods lorry and now they were done. All of them longed for a cigarette or a smoke of a pipe, but it was out of the question. Their wages weren’t due until the day after next, when they would all get their tobacco ration for the next 10 days. Until then, they helped each another out. Private Bertin, for example, had promised to give one of his remaining cigarettes to each of the other three, as the paper irritated his sensitive throat. Shivering and fed up, the four men tramped back along the main road to the depot. The road was covered in a layer of whitish mush as thick as a thumb unsuited to their lace-up shoes. The men wore tarpaulins wrapped round them like short hooded coats to protect them from the rain, but as they’d already done a day’s shift in Fosses wood, the stiff canvas material was soaked through. The canvas jackets they wore underneath were damp too. Only their tunics were still dry, and if it got any colder they could put their coats on for another layer. These four very different men had all volunteered to help the ammunitions expert; Lebehde the shrewd inn-keeper had offered because he hoped to bum a smoke from the railwaymen, Przygulla the farm labourer because he did everything Lebehde did, good-natured Otto Reinhold because he didn’t want to leave his fellow skat players in the lurch and Bertin for reasons connected with his visit to the front-line trenches.

Sergeant Knappe, a thin, hollow-cheeked men with a straggly, blonde beard, was extremely conscientious and reliable, the sort who usually makes it to 80 although he looks like a consumptive. Lebehde the inn-keeper was a well-known figure. Until his death by a Reichswehr bullet in the desperate workers’ uprising of 1919 in the Holzmarkstraße-Jannowitzbrücke area of Berlin, he would use his energy and powers of persuasion to pursue what he thought was right, a benevolent smile always crinkling the corners of his eyes. Przygulla the farm labourer, a neglected child from a family of nine or 10, might have turned out differently and had a livelier intelligence if the growths behind his nose had been removed when they should have been. As it was, his thick lips hung open because he had trouble breathing, which made him look stupid. Otto Reinhold, finally, was pleasantness itself. His friendly face, toothless smile and bluish eyes might have lent him a spinsterish air, but a carefully trimmed moustache asserted his virility. He was also a respected master plumber from Turmstraße in Berlin-Moabit.

Private Bertin had changed a lot since he’d been ‘up front’. Everyone said so. He couldn’t forget the Saxons’ haggard faces, their worn skin and sleepless eyes – couldn’t forget that it had now been raining in those trenches for a month, that the men ‘up front’ scarcely saw hot food and were surrounded by a layer of sludge, which covered their hands, clothes and boots. Their dugouts were irretrievably swamped, and their every step took them through slippery, squishing mud. All the shell holes were now flooded pools, and the roads, pathways and traverses had been impassable for ages. It was inhuman, which was why Bertin had volunteered to do overtime that day. He’d explained this to his comrade Pahl, but Pahl was having none of it – he said it was for those at the front to think about the causes and consequences of their situation.

The four men were tired and hungry. They wished they had something to smoke and longed to remove their wet things by a warm stove. It was between 4pm and 5pm, and the damp air made the early dusk even darker. It happened not to be raining at that moment, but just wait until evening.

At the end of the road, along which those French prisoners had once marched, a car appeared. It approached quickly with its lights off as regulations required. Karl Lebehde studied the approaching vehicle, his hand under the peak of his cap. ‘Blimey,’ he said to Przygulla the farm labourer, ‘take a look at that. Looks like that chap’s hung a cloth over his headlights.’

Meanwhile, the ‘chap’ had drawn considerably closer, and the cloth was revealed to be a square black and white pennant with a red border. The large dun-coloured saloon with two officers in the back was hurtling towards them. ‘Lads,’ shouted Przygulla the farm labourer. ‘Line up! The crown prince!’

The regulation salute for members of the imperial family was for the men to stand stock still at the side of the road and follow the passing vehicle with their eyes. The four weary men now did this. They stood in the clabber, pressed their hands to their sides and awaited the inevitable muddy spray from the vehicle. The driver, who was probably a common soldier like them, would not be allowed to slow down just to save four ASC privates in grey oil-cloth caps an hour cleaning their uniforms. Splat! The vehicle sped past. But then something remarkable happened. As a slim man with his chin wrapped in a fur collar lifted his glove in the direction of his cap, the other man in the back of the car lent out of the window and threw something. It landed some way back due to the speed at which the vehicle was travelling. The speeding car disappeared into the distance, and it was all over.

Well, not quite all. Some small, square packages lay on the muddy road – four paper packets, undoubtedly cigarettes, which the lofty gentleman must have brought to distribute to the men and which his adjutant had thrown at these ones. The four men stood on the road digesting what had just happened, still taken aback, looking after the car then at the surprising gift. What was the crown prince doing here? What business had he at the front? People said he looked after his troops. But the army just shrugged its shoulders over him, because people knew only too well how little the fact of the battle of Verdun had disturbed his princely way of life. While the German tribes had been spilling their blood for him at the front for seven months, he’d been playing around with his greyhounds, with pretty French girls, nurses and tennis partners. But now he’d been here bestowing cigarettes, and if they didn’t pick them up soon they’d be soaked and spoilt. Otto Reinhold was already bending over, grunting happily, prepared to get his fingers dirty for all of them.

Someone grabbed his wrist. ‘Leave them,’ Lebehde the inn-keeper commanded in an undertone. ‘There’s nowt for us there. Anyone wants to give us a present, they can give it to us properly.’

Reinhold, shocked and ashamed, looked into Karl Lebehde’s fleshy, freckled inn-keeper’s face, at his compressed lips and angry eyes. Lebehde ground the nearest packet of cigarettes to a pulp with his boot, then he carried on up the stairs that led past the water troughs to the barracks. Bertin and Przygulla the farm labourer followed him wordlessly, and so, with a murmur of regret, did good-natured little Otto Reinhold. Three pale, abandoned packets were left shining on the muddy road: 30 cigarettes.

Bloody hell, thought Bertin, that was something else. That Lebehde can handle himself. No one complained; we all obeyed. Maybe Przygulla the farm labourer or Reinhold the master plumber would creep back out of the barracks quickly later – but that would be it. As they climbed the steps, Bertin caught himself wondering what he would have done if Karl Lebehde hadn’t been there. He’d laughed in a superior, philosophical way when the gifts came flying out of the car. And besides he wasn’t bothered about cigarettes. But he was honest enough to admit to himself that he would definitely have picked them up so as not to waste them. The crown prince had driven past – a strange experience. He’d probably been distributing a load of Iron Crosses and was now hurrying back to Charleville, little suspecting that Lebehde the inn-keeper had condemned his behaviour.

The crown prince travelled through the dusk, his lips pinched. He was deeply dissatisfied with circumstances, which were stronger than him, and with himself, who was weaker than circumstances. He had not in fact been distributing decorations. He had travelled to the front to ascertain that he had once again been right, though he had not prevailed, that he had been overruled and had once again not had the guts to stand up to the All Highest, stop the truck and get out. It was a seductively commodious truck, splendidly upholstered with every comfort. But what good did that do him if incorrect military decisions were being taken in his name that would ultimately be attributed to him by history? Two days previously in Pierrepont, on the railway line from Longuyon to Metz, the Kaiser had chaired a meeting of the generals together with representatives of the Supreme Army Command, which had inveigled its way into the whole business since the end of August. The alarming situation outside Verdun and what to do about it was the topic. The day was marked by a refreshing openness, and he, Friedrich Wilhelm, crown prince of Germany and Supreme General of the Prussian army, heard his most secret convictions vindicated – all his complaints and grievances. First, the attack was on too narrow a front, and secondly, reinforcements had been promised but not sent when the first thrust proved inadequate. Many a mother’s son had died a hero’s death for nothing because the attack had not from the beginning been launched on both banks of the Meuse simultaneously with double the troops. The strength of the French resistance had also been underestimated. The French did yield but they always fought back again, so that the exhausted Reserves could advance no further than Douaumont. Then, all of a sudden, enough troops were deployed to conquer tiny strips of land at a terrible cost of lives – advances that did nothing to prevent the French from preparing and launching their attack on the Somme. And so now a decision had to be faced: admit bankruptcy outside Verdun and preserve the lives and health of tens of thousands of young German men, or maintain the façade, keep up appearances, prolong their suffering and fill the hospitals with casualties.

The prince lent back and closed his eyes. In his mind, the grizzled heads of the generals from the day before yesterday and the young faces of the infantrymen from earlier were strangely intermingled. First one group then the other pushed forward in time with his heartbeat. It had only been raining for a month, but the casualty figures for the rifles had already reached 30 per cent, sometimes more. Men caught cold, were feverish and had to be sent to the rear for treatment. It was because of the position of the front line. The front line had resulted from the furious fighting in July. It had not been selected or prepared for winter conditions. It was no use either as a base for future attacks or as a defensive position should the French ever decide to attack between Tavanne and Pepper ridge, since it was overlooked, badly damaged and drowned in mud. The artillery was in a hopeless situation except where it was served by the narrow-gauge railways. That was the only way of bringing materials and ammunition up to the front line. He had agreed wholeheartedly when a couple of officers said that the line should be moved further back, relinquishing the gains of recent months, that positions should be prepared on the hills of Hardaumont, Fort Douaumont and Pepper ridge, and that the front should be ‘shortened’ one night and the whole quagmire chucked back to the French, and good luck to them.

The prince shivered. He pulled his fur rug tighter round his legs and rubbed his shoulders inside his fur jacket nervously against the upholstery. The twin lines that ran from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth gave him, in profile, a certain resemblance to his ancestor, Old Fritz. Unfortunately, such half measures wouldn’t fix the problem. The East Meuse Group Command had sent in its most capable officers, and they had established that moving the line would do nothing to alleviate the main problems of long approach routes, lack of accommodation for reserves, and inadequate supplies and ammunition. Neither would it be possible to use the position on the hills for further sorties, as the French were much too clever to allow themselves to be lured into the sludge. It was tough, but what was required was to evacuate the ground so arduously conquered and pull back roughly to where they’d been before the February attack. That would mean moving to near the railway line to Azannes; they couldn’t even hold Hill 344 and Fosses wood. It was very sensible – and completely impossible. Given how the year 1916 had turned out, the House of Hohenzollern’s reputation could not tolerate such a retreat. The battle of the Somme had turned out badly, and the eastern front, thanks to the Brusilov offensive, very badly. The Austrians were taking a pasting as usual. They were stuck in the Adige valley, and entire regiments had deserted in Bukovina – the Czechs had simply had enough of the Habsburgs. And you only had to think back to the year 1908 and the annexation of Bosnia by Aerenthal to realise that the entire war had started with Habsburgian home affairs. Now the Romanians were intervening with 15 army corps, which was hardly small beer. It looked bad for Germany. And added to that, a retreat on the western front? Impossible! The German soldiers would start to have doubts, and the officer class, which they still trusted blindly, would be seen in an unfavourable light, with potentially unpredictable consequences within Germany. Germany was facing its hardest winter yet. It had been necessary to reduce the bread ration to half a pound, and even the soldiers faced months of hardship. It was morale alone that kept the people going, belief in the imperial house, the unvanquished army and the certainty of eventual victory. To admit that the battle of Verdun was hopelessly lost was to elevate Karl Liebknecht to the status of prophet, invite attack from the parliamentary majority in the Reichstag, and make the imperial house and army command look like fools, which would lead to demands that all the ‘senselessly spilt blood’ be accounted for. Should that be allowed to happen? It should not. Was it avoidable? It was avoidable if they did nothing, left everything as it was and, with a heavy heart, burdened the German soldiers with yet more sacrifices. The German soldiers would bear it. They’d be glad to die for the glory of the Fatherland, would stand all winter uncomplaining in the sludge, keeping guard against the ancestral enemy. Signs of weakness and false humanity must be avoided at all costs. The Germans liked to be led, loved a strong hand. Then they’d fetch the stars down from the sky.

The crown prince visualised the wrinkled face of the old Junker who spoke those words with such conviction, his small eyes and rasping voice, and smiled to himself. Others had contradicted him, for example von Lychow, who had been in command on the left bank of the Meuse for some time. But their arguments didn’t hold water. They were very sensible, but you didn’t get the stars down from the sky through good sense alone. He, the prince, had watched his father, the supreme warlord, while the generals were arguing. Ah yes, Papa understood how to give the right sort of appearance, how to play the royal chieftain of the council of war, imposing as an eagle. But he didn’t fool his son. His face sagged, his eyes were wreathed in wrinkles, and it was a struggle for him to maintain his confident imperial mien. His son knew what only sons can guess: that dear Papa had imagined the war would turn out quite differently when he unleashed it with such panache. More like his manoeuvres no doubt. But that wasn’t how the barrow was rolling, your majesty; it was rolling quite differently. At the beginning of the war, the old man had thought he’d be his own chief of staff; that had been a lovely dream in the idle hours of peacetime. Then he’d had to send brave old Moltke out into the desert, followed by the unctuous Falkenhayn, and summon two new gods whom he couldn’t stand. Half-measures, nothing but half-measures! The war would be over in six months if they would stop worrying about neutral countries and order the U-boats to sink whatever passed in front of them, knocking out Great Britain’s provisions and the American shells supplied to France. The American gentlemen and their Wilson could protest as much as they wanted. They could even send their miserable army over. They’d be very welcome. Fodder for the field howitzers, nothing more.

The car ran well. Perfect engine, springs made of outstanding German steel. When the Romanian business was sorted out, Papa wanted to risk a bid for peace in order to shut the pope up. It couldn’t hurt because Belgium would certainly stay in German hands, as would the Briey-Longwy iron ore basin. If you thought about it properly and took a look at the map, the whole Verdun offensive was really just about strategically safeguarding those conquests ahead of the coming peace agreement. Naturally, they didn’t say that to anyone, not even to their esteemed members of parliament, who liked to honour General Headquarters with their annexation memoranda. Military decisions, naturally, were taken for purely military reasons. That was why poor Falkenhayn had invented the famous ‘battle of attrition’ after the first strike on the fort failed and the Verdun adventure lost its shine. From a military point of view, Verdun was just another fort behind which the French, supported from Châlons, had prepared another line of defence. But politically speaking, Verdun was unique and irreplaceable for Germany’s future and for her industry. And for that reason, the old front line would have to remain, the heir to the throne saw with a sigh, and the men would have to get through the winter there.

It was now completely dark. The car’s wide headlamps swept the road as it sped towards the gleam of light on the horizon called Charleville, where well-heated, comfortable rooms and a decent dinner awaited. The prince’s musings had warmed him up; he felt cheerful now and was in a good mood. He turned to his adjutant, who had evidently been dozing: ‘We should have taken a detour, old chap, and had coffee with Sister Kläre at Dannevoux field hospital,’ he said jokingly. ‘That would’ve been an idea, eh?’

That would indeed have been much more pleasant than hurtling around in the wind and dark like some latter-day version of Goethe’s Erlking, agreed his companion, whose duty it was always to have an answer ready. ‘We could just as well have stayed at home, Imperial Highness. Retreat or not – what difference does it make? “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” as the Tommies sing – and our field greys sing: “For this campaign, Is no express train, Wipe your tears away, With sandpaper.” Nations have broad backs.’

What was to happen over the next four days had been settled long ago. Four French citizens, all experienced soldiers, had decided it between them. Up until the morning of 24 October, the French guns fired as usual. Then 600 guns unleashed a barrage of heavy fire. An annihilating wall of exploding steel hurtled towards the German line. Then suddenly the guns were silent, as though the infantry attack were at last about to begin, and 800 German guns, over 200 batteries, let rip in order to throttle that supposed attack. Which was what the French wanted. The German emplacements had long ago been marked on the French artillery maps. Now the French laid into them. Shells tore into the gun emplacements, demolishing the guns, ripping the gunners’ arms and heads off and exploding the shell stacks in volleys of wild crashing. The dugout ceilings fell in, and the dugouts themselves filled with thick smoke as their supports collapsed. Observers fell out of the treetops or were smeared against the walls of their hideouts. Death strangled the stranglers that day between Pepper ride and Damloup, and steel hatchets smashed the shell factories. When the real attack began at midday on the 24th, there were no more than 90 German batteries across the entire area to respond to the enemy bombardment.

The enemy bombardment. What the Germans had withstood up until then was unimaginable, those seven weakened divisions, some 7,000 men in total, scattered and lost across the ravaged terrain. They’d gone hungry, crouched in watery sludge up to their waists, dug themselves into the mud because it was their only cover, gone without sleep, fought fever with Aspirin and held on. Now they began to crack. The air turned to thunder, crashing down on them in the shape of steel cylinders filled with Ecrasite explosive. Impossible to leave the trenches, which now hardly were trenches. Impossible to stay in them, because they were moving, squirting, undulating, spurting up towards the sky and pouring themselves into the chasms that kept opening up all around. The dugouts in which the men sought refuge subsided. The occupants of the deep tunnels, which had been stopped up by the heaviest shells, were buried by them, gasping, shivering, mentally decimated, even if physically unhurt. Behind the trenches lay the spitting, knife-sharp steel barrier of the field guns. The fire of steel from the heavy calibre guns and trench mortars struck the trenches themselves. The machine guns were swept aside, the nice new mine throwers got covered in mud or broken to pieces, and even the rifles were damaged by the flood of clay and steel splinters. The Germans had created the battle of materials in February but had unfortunately neglected to patent it. The French had taken it over some time ago and now mastered it. Their artillery, tightly bound to the infantry, worked systematically, exactly according to the map and timetable, even when there was no visibility. It covered the advancing infantry with a double volley of fire, creating one death zone of shrapnel 160m in front of the infantry and another of shells 70-80m in front of it. The speed of the advance was stipulated exactly: 100m of impassible sludge to be crossed in four minutes.

At 11.40am the French front started to move, in thick fog. It hadn’t lifted that day and formed an impenetrable, milky white layer over the earth as it does high in the mountains or at sea. No need for thick smoke to wrap the battle zone in impenetrable mist. Visibility was less than 4m; no one saw the 24 October sun. The German dead lay staring upwards at the gods and their unfathomable decree with glazed and fractured eyes; the living, numb and too weak to resist, awaited their fate. Twenty-two German battalions were swept away before the attack had begun in earnest; the survivors screamed for barrage fire, a German barrage to stop the advancing troops and fend off their bayonets and hand grenades, so that it at least made a whisper of sense to fight back against the better-fed Frenchmen, who had enjoyed proper relief and were less worn out because their positions were more favourable. Trembling hands fired red rockets into the air. Barrage! But they disappeared in the white haze. The men who had fired them gazed after them into the milky blanket that lay over the whole area. Those artillerymen who were still alive, their officers, sergeants and gun pointers, waited by their guns, seeing nothing. The firing in front had stopped. Now the French would advance. Now was the moment to pepper their legs with contact shells, but where were they? No red light flashed in the fog, no telephone call came along the shot-up lines, no arrangements had been made for sound signals or direct contact with the infantry; only the group commands had the right to issue orders.

The minutes passed. The men in the trenches stared ahead, eyes popping. Surely they’d advance from over there, there in front. Could they hear them now? See them? Was there any point in waiting to be slaughtered with no artillery and the heavy weapons beyond use? The Fatherland couldn’t expect any more of them than what they’d already withstood. Singly and in groups they threw their rifles away and waded out into the sludge and fog, into the shredded, blown-down barbed wire entanglements, slithering and stumbling in the shell holes, hands as far as possible raised above their heads. ‘Kamerad,’ they shouted into the fog. ‘Kamerad!’

Kamerad – that word would be understood. He who shouts ‘Kamerad’ and raises his hands is surrendering and will be spared. He who abuses the word consigns himself and many of his fellows to death. Kamerad – now they appeared from the fog in their sky blue coats, slithering and stumbling, with assault packs and bayonets. Under their steel helmets, their faces were black, coffee-coloured, light brown: France’s colonial regiments from Senegal, the Somali coast and Morocco. And elsewhere were the Bretons, the southern French, the Parisians from the boulevards, the farmers from Touraine. France was mother to them all. They all knew they would be defending basic freedoms if they liberated French soil from the invaders. In no sense did they play the part of dashing warriors as they climbed out of their storm positions cursing and laughing, teeth darkly clenched, pale with determination. But they were fully engaged in the task ahead, these intelligent soldiers of France. They too had been told: just one more push and that’ll be it. They let the German prisoners through in silence and pushed them back towards the reserves at the rear, and then they crossed the German line and advanced on their objectives, with Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux at the centre. They pushed into all the valleys and overran the wooded slopes from Lauffée to Chapître wood, from the Thiaumont line to Ravin de la Dame, from Nawe wood to the stone quarries of Haudraumont. On the German’s left wing, the trench systems named after Generals Klausewitz, Seidlitz, Steinmetz and Kluck were lost, in the centre the Adalbert line and everything that had once been called Thiaumont, and on the right wing the ravines, positions and remnants of woodland between the village of Douaumont and Pepper ridge. The three French divisions pushed deep into the land, stormed the German military Reserve’s dugouts and positions, lashed out at the batteries with bare steel, finally exacting revenge for months of shell raids and shrapnel rain. The question was: would they succeed in breaking right through the German defences?

The front held at several places in the sector. On the escarpment north of the village of Douaumant, in Caillette wood, east of Fumin and in the Vaux hills the German clung to their ground and threw themselves at the French with hand grenades and such machine guns as were undamaged. The fighting lasted all day, then night fell. The German’s resistance boosted their prestige, but it made no sense. The next morning the French artillery restarted their terrible games, and the Germans had nothing to set against them. Two days previously the French had been fewer in number than the German artillery; now they dominated the field, placed their long-range guns on Douaumont’s eastern slope and decimated the casemates of Vaux with wild salvoes. They combed Caillette wood with fire, clearing gateways for their infantry, and smashed the fortifying outworks of Vaux. The field batteries advanced on the German flank, obtaining a foothold on Douaumont’s steep eastern slope and cutting all rearward communications in much the same way that a doctor amputates a smashed arm hanging by strands of muscle and skin. Go back, German soldiers, you’ve done enough. In some places it took the French just two hours to conquer what they’d planned to take in four, in others it took four days. They took 7,000 German soldiers prisoner and killed and wounded three times that many. You have done enough for your 53 Pfennigs a day, German soldiers, and for the Briey-Longway iron ore basin. In the impenetrable fog, you gave the last of your strength to fulfil orders, not questioning whether they made sense or not. Men from Poznan, Lower Silesia, the Mark, Westphalia, Pomerania or Saxony: peace is all you need and now you have it – the peace of the dead. Protestants, free thinkers, Catholics, Jews: your bloated corpses will surface in the clay and fog of Verdun and then disappear again into our national pasts. You’ll be ungratefully forgotten, and the memories of those who were once your comrades will hardly be disturbed by even the palest reflection of your suffering. But what was to become of Douaumont?

Since the 23rd a column of smoke from the shell explosions had been hanging over Douaumont like a large black flag.

^{CHAPTER TWO} Breakthrough

IN THE DAYS before the decisive move, the Fosses wood detachment marched out in the morning and back in the afternoon with the regularity of a pendulum. To stop the mud getting into their boots, the men tied their bootlegs closed with string and so managed to march with confidence. Relaying railway sleepers higher up isn’t the most pleasant work in the world but it isn’t the dirtiest either, not by a long shot. And the lack of visibility took the danger out of it. Now that the air had turned to milky soup, the Frogs sensibly refrained from peppering it with shrapnel. A certain someone had predicted what a hard blow the transfer from Wild Boar gorge back to Steinbergquell depot would be for Bertin. You could see how disgruntled the men were by their puckered brows and tightly drawn lips, and by the way they stared straight ahead while their legs wrestled through the thick mush on the roads. It squelched and sucked, crackled and gurgled, and squirted up past the ASC men’s knees if they were too lost in thought to test the ground with their sticks and carelessly stepped into a sludge-covered hole. For days the pendulum swung undisturbed. But that day… They were already at Ville height when a dull rumble wafted over to them. Far behind, out of sight, a really heavy gun had bellowed after weeks of deceptive silence. While they were still listening and looking at one another, something started up behind, battering down like rain on a wooden roof, faraway and frightful: a barrage from Verdun just like in the worst months of summer – the French! They set off apprehensively on the march home. The air seethed and clamoured behind the horizon as they entered the barracks. The noise followed them into the kitchen, and they listened to it as they washed their canteens and hours later at their evening meal. At bedtime, Private Bertin thought about Kroysing, Süßmann, that poor, pitiable scoundrel Niggl, and the Saxons in their water-logged trenches, and he sighed heavily and turned over.

The noise swelled during the night rather than slackening off, and a wild clanging cascade was hammering down behind the hills by the following morning. The men heard it as they marched out and the German reply: a shot every two minutes. There were no shells. They shook their heads as they went about their work in the morning but found themselves back in the barracks before lunchtime. There was almost a sigh of relief in the ranks when the order came in the early afternoon: all working parties suspended, all men to stand by to unload ammunition. Naturally, the company had to wait a good two hours to be assigned its task. The men chatted and exchanged thoughts, and then finally two engines shunted a line of wagons up the track, maybe 40, maybe 50 – the ASC men lost count. The men spat into their hands as they were split into groups and set to it. Men who knew the ropes climbed into the open wagons and with a practised grip lifted on to their shoulders a wicker basket from which either a long or a squat 15cm shell stuck out like a bundle of spears in a quiver. Carefully balancing the unaccustomed weight, the men from the working parties trudged along the slippery boarded walkways. They groaned as they heaved the shells down from their shoulders and stacked them between grassy hillocks – the heaviest of them weighed 85 pounds. They recovered on the way back, rubbing their joints in preparation for the next steel load. Even before night fell, miners’ lamps were hung in the wagons, and their dim glow illuminated from below the faces of the three men between the sliding doors. And as they bent and lifted, while a constant stream of men passed them, presenting their shoulders to receive their loaded baskets, carrying on and then disappearing into the gathering twilight, they looked to Bertin like the labourers of destiny doling out to mortal men their allotted burdens. Men were just a number here, a shoulder and two legs. The tramp of hobnailed boots banished any thoughts coursing through their minds. When the last wagon had been emptied at almost 11pm, sturdy Karl Lebehde had carried exactly the same as Bertin who was much less strong and Pahl who was almost a hunchback.

The following morning, the milky dawn air breathed cold and damp across the barracks and ammunition dumps of the depot; the sun would not show itself there that day. From a few metres away, the cooks dispensing morning coffee looked like pale and shadowy demons in the steam from their kettles, bestowing a ladleful of the River Lethe on the souls of the dead. Then the working parties disappeared: the Orne valley commando, the commando for hill 310, the Chaume wood commando, the Fosses wood commando. But in barely two hours they were all back. All hell had been let loose in front. No one could get where they were going. The immobile wall of fog, thick as cotton wool, that hung over the camp dampened all sound, turning the depot into an island. The ASC men were delighted to be ordered to stay in their barracks and rest. The depot commander, First Lieutenant Benndorf, knew what had been required of them the night before and would be required of them again that night. Suddenly, around midnight, the rumour spread that the French had broken through, Douaumont had fallen, there was a gap in the front line. Within quarter of an hour, most of the men were in the grip of a vague anxiety. The NCOs were called out; they and the other trained men returned pale and silent. They had received ammunition, live cartridges and carbines, and in half an hour shooting would begin. This was no laughing matter for the ASC men. If things had got to the point where their peaceable NCOs were being called upon to fight, then they and the recruits from the depots in Crépion and Flabas would be thrown into the gap the French were meant to have torn in the front line too, wielding picks and shovels. Everyone agreed with Halezinsky the gas worker when he said: ‘Wow, if they haven’t got anyone better than the likes of us, they should sue for peace.’

But after lunch, the atmosphere lightened again, and this, oddly enough, was partly due to the men being completely cut off from the world, which gave them a deceptive sense of security. At 2.30pm they were assigned duties as usual; before that everyone who knew their way around at the front had been ordered to report to the field gun depot. Bertin joined them, though he didn’t know if he was supposed to, as he’d never had anything to do with field guns. But he knew his way around at the front, no doubt about that, and information was probably what was wanted.

Guides were required. NCOs and field artillery officers crowded round the map in chief ammunitions officer Schulz’s hut, while some ammunition was packed into the gun carts and some stowed in the small dump cars dotted around the depot. Fresh batteries were being brought in, some from the practice grounds at the rear, some from the other side of the Meuse. A carrier pigeon and a couple of runners had brought news; this was a black day. Sergeant Schulz assigned Bertin to the gunners who were to take ammunition up ahead on the narrow-gauge railway – the very line that led to the telephone hut in Wild Boar gorge. At the words ‘Wild Boar gorge’ something sparked in Bertin’s soul: Kroysing! Süßmann! If they had escaped, they would have gone there. He hurried back to the barracks to get his coat, gas mask, tarpaulin and haversack, and his gloves – it would be easier to push and brake the trucks with those on. Before leaving, he was also told to call the depot from the switchboard at the halt station to check if the line was working. The station wasn’t currently answering.

The gunners, strangers to Bertin with braid on their collars, said they were attached to the Guard Reserve Division. Big men from Pomerania, they spoke to each other in rapid Plattdeutsch. In the trucks lay the field shells in their long cases like cartridges for an enormous gun. Creaking and bumping, the long, low-slung ammunitions train pushed off into the void. Bertin had never had such a strong sense of confronting the unknown as he did then, clinging on to the front wagon as he left the familiar area behind in the half-light. Nothing to his right, nothing to his left, in front of him 1.5m of track, behind him two clearly visible wagons and one he couldn’t make out, two gunners beside him, further back noise and confusion. Otherwise all was quiet. The fog was so dense their heads seemed to touch the clouds. Their feet, the feet of seasoned soldiers, jumped automatically from sleeper to sleeper and over the boards laid by the track as a walkway. Not a shot was heard. The Germans didn’t know where the remnants of their infantry had assembled or where the French were gathering. All that was certain was that Douaumont was lost and that the corps would, if possible, mount a counter-attack to support the artillery. Bertin had heard this when he was in the ammunitions expert’s hut. But he had also heard – and this filled him with hope – that Douaumont had been voluntarily evacuated during the night. Voluntarily – that could cover a multitude of sins. At the same time, a thought that had flickered within him earlier resurfaced: a man like Kroysing wouldn’t go further from his post than was absolutely necessary. Was it 3pm or 5pm? Time was dissolving in clouds just as space was dissolving in the yellowish mist.

Wild Boar gorge… could this really be it? Calls, cries, curses, questions: ‘Fourth Company!’ ‘Where in God’s name is my platoon?’ ‘Paramedic, paramedic!’ ‘Second battalion – what’s left of it.’ ‘Sergeants, sergeants stand by for orders!’

The lovely autumn quiet of the valley, that paradise of beech and rowan trees, was getting its fair share this time. The ravaged wood teemed with a confused throng of grey tunics. The little stream was blocked by fallen tree trunks and had overflowed. The tatters of tree stumps, lopped beech trees and far-flung treetops emerged as Bertin left the main line to climb the familiar path. Men stood in the water trying to clear the stream, free twisted rails and make a bridge out of planks. Sappers, ASC men and Saxon infantrymen worked at it together, and among them, issuing instructions, Bertin thought he heard a familiar voice. On the steep side of the valley, a number of undamaged trees still offered cover. There exhausted, grey-faced men, thick bandages round their heads or arms, sat, crouched or slept. Ripped tunics; ragged trousers; men who looked like they’d been pulled from the mud; big dark patches of blood. The small man directing the work, his left hand in a sling made of haversack straps, really was Sergeant Süßmann. He was having a siding cleared, which the blocked stream had covered in mud and slush. ‘Good heavens,’ he said when Bertin called to him, ‘it’s like being on Savignyplatz in Berlin.’ His eyes were no longer restless – to the contrary, they were very clear – but his hair was singed and his face was black from smoke.

Without asking what had happened to him, Bertin said: ‘Where’s the lieutenant?’

‘Inside,’ answered Süßmann, nodding in the direction of the railway hut. ‘Telephoning.’

‘I’m supposed to call my depot to check the line.’ Bertin was still looking at Süßmann, his mouth half open in shock.

‘When the egg is laid, the hen clucks. Go on in. We fixed it a few minutes ago.’

Half a beech tree, its crown still covered in yellow leaves, was propped against the hut’s corrugated iron roof. In a tangle of similar felled treetops next to the hut, three figures lay on a tarpaulin, covered in mud from head to foot, an encrusted layer of clay on their coats. Something about the cut of their clothes said they were officers. They were resting on the natural spring mattress created by the branches. Because their eyes were closed, their haggard faces – one of them a boy’s face – looked oddly like dirty plaster casts of death masks. But these death masks were talking to each other languidly in Saxon dialect, their faces expressionless.

‘If that mad sapper in there—’

‘Do you think he’s mad?’

‘Of course. Those eyes. And the way he bares his teeth. Recapture Douaumont…’

‘Straight out of a padded cell,’ giggled the one with the boy’s face.

The one in the middle chipped in again: ‘If that madman in there gets orders to recapture Douaumont, will you go along with it?’

The oldest one, whose chin was covered in brown stubble, didn’t reply for a while. On the gorge floor, the blocked stream had been cleared and was gushing along its old course. Finally, he said: ‘Of course he’s mad. Of course it would be pointless. But would you want to take responsibility for it all going wrong because you refused to take part? Because a surprise attack could miraculously succeed in this bloody fog.’

‘Three to 100 it’ll fail.’

‘Three to 100, of course. One to 50 even. Different matter if the ground were firm underfoot, but in these conditions…’

‘And as all three of us think it’s mad, all three of us will go along with it and drag our men into the shambles with us, because we’re worried about responsibility.’

‘Stop stirring, Seidewitz. That’s the way of the world. A madman can get a lot done.’

As Bertin opened the door, he knew full well that his trusty Baden Landstürmers would have slipped off to the rear as soon as the shooting started in the gorge. A tall figure was crouched by the switchboard, headphones over his ears, angrily ramming the plugs in and shouting futile hellos. Bertin closed the door softly and moved closer. And despite the horror of the situation, he couldn’t keep a note of humour out of his voice as he announced himself by clicking his heels: ‘Would you permit me to try, Lieutenant?’

Kroysing started, glared at him and gave a silent laugh, showing his wolfish teeth. ‘Ah yes. Good timing. It’s in your line of work,’ and he slid the headphones on to the narrow table.

Bertin threw his cap on Strumpf the park-keeper’s bed and checked the connections that could be made on that stupid switchboard with its couple of plugs: to the central exchange – in order; forward to Douaumont – broken; rearwards via the Cape camp – also in order. The telephonist there answered in some amazement; he tried to make the connection to Steinbergquell depot. Now there was a bit of trouble. Schneider, the on-duty telephonist, was a busybody who advised Bertin to return immediately and stop shirking his share of the unloading. They must all have been feeling a little weird over at the depot, for when Bertin tersely told him not to talk rubbish and put him through to Damvillers immediately, he received a testy reply. What did he want to talk to Damvillers for anyway? Instead of answering, Bertin turned to Kroysing, who bent over the mouthpiece with ominous calm: ‘Listen, you little swine, sort it out right this second or I’ll hang a charge of military treason round your neck. Connect us to Damvillers, understand?’

In the depot’s smoky telephone exchange, Private Schneider nearly fell off his stool. That was not the voice of the insignificant Private Bertin; this man sounded like a beast of prey, who might pose a threat to stronger men than a primary school teacher such as himself. ‘Certainly, Major! Right away, sir,’ he stuttered into the instrument and made the connection.

‘Officer Commanding Sappers, Captain Lauber,’ a voice said. Kroysing sat in front of the instrument again, gave his name and was understood. Bertin stood beside him, filling his pipe. When he realised the conversation was going to last a while, he spread a newspaper at the foot of the palliasse and lay down for a few minutes, following the example of the Saxons outside. The way those men had looked, covered in a crust of dried sludge, flattened by exhaustion. They should be put on display in the officers’ mess at Damvillers or in a Dresden concert hall, so that people could see what war was really like. But what good would that do?

It was a strange conversation. Captain Lauber greeted Lieutenant Kroysing with overwhelming relief, delighted that he was still alive and able to report, and asked where he was speaking from. Lieutenant Kroysing told him he was speaking from a railway siding, a blockhouse in Wild Boar gorge. It was the nearest rearwards telephone station to Douaumont, and he had immediately thought that if anything had survived that bloody bombardment, it would be this. He asked if he might keep his report brief. Douaumont had taken a pasting. The French had never thrown over so much heavy stuff before. Some of the new 40cm mortars must have been in the mix. The outer works had been battered in five places. Fire had broken out in the sapper depot – those bloody flares had caught fire again and filled the place with smoke. The dressing station had been hit again with heavy losses. There was no water to put the fires out as the pipes were burst. His men had tried – and he wasn’t joking – to bring the fires under control with sparkling mineral water, which the sick no longer needed, but the carbon dioxide content was too low. The detachments in the fort had suffered substantial losses, including the ASC. This had all happened during the course of the previous afternoon and evening. Then, however – and he begged permission to express the view that this was incomprehensible – orders had been given to evacuate Douaumont.

His voice had taken on its usual deep, calm tone, but there was an undercurrent of barely suppressed anger. Captain Lauber must have asked something that betrayed his astonishment. No, Kroysing answered, he would not have issued such orders had he been in command of the fort. Only the upper casemates had been damaged by the 40cms, along with the masonry and brickwork. The concrete cellars were undamaged. The men would have been as safe in them as in bank vaults. Certainly, there was gas, smoke, nothing to drink, discomforts of every sort. But that was no reason to give up Douaumont, which had been bought and held since 25 February at the cost of 50,000 lives. Was there a risk of explosion? Yes, there was. There might be concealed mines, but that was a risk that had to be run – the Fatherland was owed that much. He had opposed the evacuation with all his might. Even when most of the garrison units were outside, he had raged and argued. It was mad to leave only Captain P and his handful of artillery observers inside. He’d always been a fan of logic. Either Douaumont was not suitable for occupation by German soldiers, including gunners, because of the explosion risk, or it was needed for strategic reasons – and then it had to be defended, for goodness’ sake! He’d talked through the night, until he was blue in the face, and finally this afternoon had succeeded in having these crazy orders withdrawn, machine guns brought up and men assembled. As soon as the French stopped shooting at 11.30am he went round to the rear with a few reliable men to bring back those who’d skedaddled, but before he’d managed to round up more than 30 or 40 men above the village, the Moroccans had slipped through the blasted fog into the fort. They’d captured that precious position without firing a single shot. (He was practically weeping with anger. Bertin watched him in shock and amazement.) He could not accept that the evacuation was meant to be final. Headquarters had reached a premature decision on the basis of inadequate information and a bit of smoke. If he might be permitted to make a request, the captain should mobilise everything he could for an immediate counter-attack. The French were not established in the fort. They’d pushed through deep into the area behind, but based on what could be heard through the fog, they had met with heavy resistance southeast of Douaumont. The artillery fire there had not abated, and machine guns could still be heard. If it hadn’t been for the fog, the barrage would not have started half an hour too late. Surely something could still be done. For his part, he intended, unless he received orders to the contrary, to take some infantrymen and sappers from the gorge here to sound out the approach to Douaumont.

His voice, so emphatic under the sounding board of the low roof, was silent for a moment. He seemed to hold his breath as he listened to the other man. ‘Thank God,’ he said in relief, and then twice in succession, ‘Thank God.’ He said he would pass this explanation on to the Saxon officers. There would definitely be pockets of resistance above the village of Douaumont, and so they should assemble to the east and to the rear. Could he pull in any ASC men he might meet? All hands would be needed to prepare the roads, clear the rubble and rebuild the dugouts. Then, in a concluding tone, he promised the captain that he would do his best and would report from somewhere should he get through. In the meantime, he thanked Captain Lauber for his help and bid him farewell. He sat motionless for a moment, then slipped the headphones off and turned in his stool to face Bertin, shoulders hunched, arms hanging between his long legs. ‘Have you got any tobacco, Bertin?’ he asked and filled his big, round pipe.

The blockhouse had small windows, and it was dark inside. But Kroysing’s bright eyes still flashed in his mud-splattered face. Bertin knew that he was about to receive a private report. ‘What about Captain Niggl?’ he asked quietly.

‘Escaped,’ said Kroysing. ‘Temporarily escaped. Without signing. Imagine that.’ The flame from his lighter momentarily lit up his steely face. ‘I’m telling you, he was as small and used up as cigar ash after that last month and especially the last four days. We had a little private chat. Everything was looking good, and it seemed my family’s reputation would be restored. The blighter told me he was going grey. Gave me some sob story about his children and begged for mercy. I offered to set him free with his men as soon as the French stopped firing in return for his signature. Then came the order to evacuate, and he skedaddled. He escaped from me just as I was about to finish the business off. I don’t understand it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Did those bastard French really have to help that swine out as well as giving those numbskulls at the rear such a fright that they evacuated Douaumont? But—’ and he drew himself up to his full height, fists clenched— ‘he won’t get away from me. I’m not dropping out of the race yet. He can’t have gone far. Even if I have to grab him by the scruff of the neck, I’ll get him back. But first I have to settle some scores with those gentlemen over there who smoked me out of my own private little hell. Why did they have to fling their blasted regiments upon my domain? Well, they’ll be sorry,’ he finished, straightening the heavy pistol on his belt, ‘I’ve got a crate of hand grenades waiting for them somewhere. I’ve always wanted to get them back for killing Christoph, though obviously I’d have preferred to do it after I had the signature. Now I’ll have to change the order. Why don’t you walk towards the front with me for a bit, Bertin? Don’t you have a childhood friend there?’

Bertin stood up and scratched behind his ear. A knock at the door stopped him from answering. Two soldiers in steel helmets walked in, followed by young Süßmann, whose boots were dripping water. ‘This is the man, Lieutenant,’ he said.

‘Bit dark,’ said a young voice, which Bertin thought he’d heard before. He fetched Friedrich Strumpf’s candle and lit it: two field artillerymen, a lieutenant and a staff sergeant whom he’d seen at the depot.

‘Got it nice and comfy here, lad,’ the lieutenant said to Kroysing before realising his error. The officers then introduced themselves as if the blockhouse were a railway compartment, which one of the them had just entered. The young gunner with guard’s stripes on his uniform was looking for his guide. Kroysing laughed and said he must mean his friend Bertin who’d arrived with the artillery ammunition half an hour earlier.

‘That’s right,’ said Lieutenant von Roggstroh. ‘It’s you I’m looking for. The sergeant said you’d show us the quickest way up to a battery position: 10.5cm field howitzers. Can you do that?’

Bertin replied that he’d just been discussing it with Lieutenant Kroysing and was ready to go with them but had just received an order from his company to head back at once. He said he’d put the lieutenant through to the depot so that he could quickly explain. He plugged in and tried to get through: the equipment depot was engaged.

‘Never mind,’ said the gunner. ‘We’ll write you some bumph to take back. Is there a pen and paper here?’

The men from Baden hadn’t had much time to pack, and an unfinished letter (‘Dear Fanny’) lay in the drawer. Von Roggstroh pulled his glove off and in clear, German handwriting wrote: ‘I requisitioned the carrier as a guide.’ He signed his name and rank, and folded the ‘bumph’ up. Bertin stuck it in his cuff.

Kroysing searched Bertin’s face as he squeezed into his wet coat, fastened his buckle and got ready to go. ‘Take a look at this ASC private. We’ve been knocking around together for the past month, but I don’t seem to have rubbed off on him, do I?’

Von Roggstroh looked from one of the two entirely different men to the other. Men said a lot of things the night after a battle, even in front of strangers. ‘It takes time to rub off on someone,’ he said soothingly.

Kroysing examined his torch. ‘Too long,’ he muttered. ‘In due course, he should be taking the kind of orders my brother took.’

‘That’s just a whim of yours,’ countered Bertin.

‘Ah.’ Roggstroh looked up. ‘Do you mean your friend should register for further training?’

‘Exactly.’ Kroysing stared absently past Erich Süßmann’s reproachful face to the corrugated iron roof.

Bertin had a creepy feeling. Was he to stand in for Christoph Kroysing, then? ‘Are you serious?’ he asked.

Kroysing stared at him and shrugged. Then on the threshold, he turned. ‘What I mean is that you owe it to the Prussian state,’ and he pushed open the door, which creaked on its hinges.

They all stepped out into the cold, damp air of the gorge where a fire burned on the left bank. Bertin saw indistinct shadows pass and the outlines of men crouching and warming themselves. The three Saxon officers were no longer lying on the ground; they sat on the broken branches smoking and shivering. Kroysing, hand on his helmet, went over and negotiated with them. Then whistle blasts rang out and soldiers ran over and gathered in groups on the right bank of the stream. Kroysing returned relieved and with renewed drive. ‘The officers have decided to reconnoitre towards Douaumont with my sappers, clear things up in the great hollow if necessary and try to make contact with the ridge,’ he told Roggstroh. ‘They have over 100 rifles. We can get somewhere with that. I have one request for you, comrade: if you find a gun intact, let it loose on Douaumont. It doesn’t matter if the range is 1,500m, 1,700m or 2,000m – whatever’s possible. Imagine if we could get the old shack back!’

‘Do you think that’s possible?’ asked Roggstroh.

‘Anything is possible,’ said Kroysing, ‘with a bit of courage and a lot of luck. On you go, Süßmann,’ and he turned to the wee lad. ‘You know the lay of the land. You lead – taking all due care, of course.’

Süßmann made as if to click his heels. ‘Cheerio, Bertin,’ he a said, extending his hand. ‘I wonder where we’ll meet again. I’m going to bestow this pot on you as a parting gift,’ and he took off his helmet, held in the tips of his fingers, placed it on Bertin’s head and shoved Bertin’s oil-cloth cap under his arm. ‘I’ll have plenty of helmets to choose from up front – and you need to preserve that brain of yours.’ And off he walked, looking very boyish with his short hair.

‘Our ways part here,’ said Kroysing, sniffing the air with his wide nostrils. ‘It smells of winter. We’re going to have a wonderful Christmas. Did you hear that?’

Dull thuds, as though wrapped in cotton wool, could be heard coming from the dense fog that began a few paces away.

‘The bastard French are starting up again. We thought we could pull the stars down out of the sky and had victory in the bag. That’s never good. Once again, Bertin, cheerio. Chin up, my young friend,’ he added with a wave of his right hand. ‘Cheers. Happy New Year to one and all. Vive la guerre!’ He saluted, turned round and headed off, becoming more ghostly with every menacing step he took. The three men watched him until he dissolved into the fog.

‘Right, let’s go,’ said Lieutenant von Roggstroh. ‘It can’t get much darker.’

They crossed the valley on the newly erected plank bridges. Roggstroh said the bridges showed what a blessing it was to have sappers and ASC men to make sure the artillery didn’t get their legs wet before they had to. The feverish wounded shivered and groaned by the fires. As they passed them, a tall man rose and, eyes tightly closed, said: ‘Buried, Doctor. Volunteer Lobedanz, University of Heidelberg, currently in the field.’ Then he sat down again and pushed his hands against the rock behind his head as though it might collapse.

They climbed the disintegrating path that led to the battery. From time to time, the lieutenant flashed his torch. That’s how they picked out the ‘signpost’ – the dead Frenchman still standing against the beech tree, nailed in place by a shell splinter. Not for the first time, Bertin thought that he should be underground. The lieutenant said: ‘They pull some tricks round here.’

German shells swooped and groaned overhead like giant birds of the night. No one knew where they came from or where they were going. His heart thumping, Bertin thought that Lieutenant Schanz must be dead or they would have heard his howitzers firing – what he liked to call ‘giving a concert’. The howl of battle, rising every quarter of an hour, thundered across from somewhere further forward, somewhat to the left. Then a sudden burst of rifle fire: Kroysing’s men.

‘We’re holding Caillette wood,’ said the lieutenant. ‘And we’re holding Fort Vaux and Damloup, or at least we were two hours ago. Do you know what the field of fire is like? How does it lie in relation to Douaumont?’

‘Unfavourably,’ answered Bertin. ‘Douaumont dominates the whole area.’

As they came on to the top, walking in goose step and feeling a few paces in front of them with their sticks, they could hear the gun battle more clearly, though they couldn’t see anything. A figure appeared from the fog, a man, a corporal, panting and shaking with fear. A lost infantryman from one of the battalions that had lain in reserve and been called out that afternoon to clear the area leading to Douaumont of French shock troops. With him was a small group that had been on the far left wing and had got separated from the company. Lost in a wilderness of mist, craters and sodden earth, they battled the terrain, expecting to drown in a sludge-filled shell hole at any moment. Lieutenant Roggstroh decided they should take the men with them. They were from the Mark, Brandenburgers from the fifth division of the military Reserve. When they reached the advance guard a minute later, the four remaining men were waiting motionless and panic-stricken. They’d been afraid the path they were on would lead them straight into the vengeful arms of the French. Now they trotted behind the officer in relief, like children who attach themselves to someone else’s mother because they’ve lost their own in the woods. They had thought there couldn’t be a soul left alive in that wilderness. The French had taken them by surprise, suddenly appearing after the wild bombardment, but had been beaten back.

‘They’re sick to death of it too,’ said one of the four, who was exhausted and caked in sludge. ‘If you fall down wounded here you’ll drown in the sludge whether you’re French or German,’ and he made an all-embracing arc with his arms. Now the artillery sergeant, who until then had been listening and watching attentively, prodding the sodden earth with his stick, opened his mouth. ‘How are we going to get our guns forward?’ he sighed. ‘The poor old nags.’

The lieutenant didn’t answer and shrugged his shoulders. You could tell from his frown that he too loved his battery’s horses. A sudden crash and howl signalled the start of the French shrapnel fire. They heard the shells burst but saw nothing. The main valley was clearly under fire. Kroysing’s down there, thought Bertin dull. It doesn’t matter any more. Finally, a splintered tree loomed up before them and what looked like a wall of earth or a rock. Breathing heavily, Bertin said: ‘It’s downhill a bit on the right. There were no canisters or carbines here.’ He pushed forwards and disappeared from view. ‘Schanz,’ the others heard him calling. ‘Lieutenant Schanz!’

A groan seemed to answer from the void – or was it an echo? The remaining seven men entered the former battery with bated breath. They flashed their torches around, and the white beams of light pierced the fog ahead. The stone and earthworks of the shelters had been blown sky-high. Strands of barbed wire hung across the pathway from what had once been trees. The twisted corpses of dead men lay all around. A direct hit had toppled heavy gun number four and its mounting. The gunners’ dugout, which had fallen in or been torn apart, gaped like a dripstone cave. A blood-drenched swamp had formed by the entrance. The next gun seemed undamaged, though its breech mechanism was missing. The ammunition dump behind it had exploded and flattened a second dugout. The other two guns must have been engulfed in a rain of shells. Number one with its barrel lowered looked like an animal broken at the knees.

‘The French have been here,’ said the infantry corporal, flashing his torch around and lifting up a flat steel helmet.

‘So it would seem,’ said Lieutenant von Roggstroh tightly. They found gunners lying on the floor, two armed with shovels, one clutching a ramrod in his fists. ‘Where’s our guide?’

‘Here,’ called the sergeant, flashing his torch on Bertin, who was kneeling on the floor. Beside him lay an outstretched corpse, stabbed in the chest and apparently shot too, clutching a pistol in his right hand by the barrel like a club. Bertin kept feeling the man’s pulse. His soft, blonde hair still felt alive, but Lieutenant Schanz’s eyes were sightless now. Bertin peered myopically at his face. ‘Take the lamp away,’ he said. ‘I can see him without it.’

‘Not every man gets to see such a clear picture of his future,’ said Lieutenant Roggstroh.

Bertin said nothing. He closed the dead man’s eyes carefully with his fingertips, as if he might hurt him. His heart was full, but he was speechless and numb. ‘Does this make any sense?’ he wondered out loud. And inside he thought: didn’t we all believe in a father in heaven, and then when we grew up in some kind of rational conception of life? And now this? What’s the point? ‘Why did things have to turn out like this?’ he said. ‘He enjoyed life so much.’

Piercing groans came from all sides. There was a stifled scream from one of the dugouts and whimpering from the shattered gun. ‘My leg!’ someone screamed in a Silesian voice. ‘You lot are crushing my bones, goddammit.’

A man they’d taken for dead, propped against a timber near where the screams had come from, clasped his head in his hands and stuttered out a little of what had happened. He’d been hit on the head with a gun butt. Brown devils had suddenly broken in. They must have dragged their dead and wounded back with them. Even before that – the air was full of shells. The medics in their dugout had been the first to get it. The lieutenant had fought on until the end. Then the gunner had got hit on the head and that was all he remembered.

‘He’s lying there now,’ said Lieutenant von Roggstroh. ‘What a lovely night it’s going to be.’ Then he ordered his men to gather up the dead and help the wounded as far as possible. ‘We’d better set up here,’ he said.

Bertin was suddenly freezing. ‘I think,’ he said hesitantly, ‘that I’d best get back now.’

The lieutenant looked at him. ‘What do you actually do in the ASC? That sapper was right. You should apply for a transfer. You could make something of yourself with us.’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever voluntarily apply for anything again,’ said Bertin. ‘You shouldn’t kick against the pricks.’

‘So, you’re a Bible reader,’ said the lieutenant with a hint of contempt. ‘Well, make sure you get home safely. You certainly shouldn’t get lost.’ Bertin hesitated. He wanted this young man’s approval, and so he said that an ASC man’s lot was not an easy one. ‘I know,’ said the lieutenant, ‘but men like you need to take responsibility rather than disappearing into the masses.’

Bertin wanted to say that he had taken on a great responsibility, but it was impossible to explain this to the lieutenant in the short time available. He went to have a final look at his neighbour Schanz. His chest was riddled with black holes, but his blonde head lay upon the earth like that of a man asleep. ‘I’ll remember your face, Paul Schanz,’ he whispered to him. He remained by his side for a few silent moments, arms hanging. Then he pulled himself away, told the lieutenant he was ready to leave, was dismissed, about turned, climbed carefully over the dead and pushed off into the fog. In 20 minutes, the engulfing fog had wiped out the world, isolating any human figure. Bertin shuddered. He was cut off from where he’d been and where he was going. As he trudged on, bent over like an old man, using his torch sparingly, he felt exhausted, near the end of his strength. He’d had enough. He must put in for leave. He could claim 10 days. He’d taken four days in June, and so the battalion owed him six. Tomorrow, or the day after at the latest, he’d put in a request. From time to time, he stopped, cupped his hand round his ear and listened to the dull thuds from the area around the Vaux ridge, Hardaumont and the Hassoule ravine.

There is a natural human tendency to drift to the left when finding their way in the dark or blindfold. The detachment of 100 rifles quickly succumbed to this law as it made its way out of Wild Boar gorge on to open ground, marching in single file in a long column, sappers at the front. Those with the longest legs inevitably ended up at the head of the column. And in the impetuous heart of one of those tall men burnt the desire to lay his hands on his goal – whether that was the fort or the man who’d escaped from it, he didn’t yet know. It wasn’t long before Lieutenant Kroysing was all alone. He hadn’t noticed that the column of men behind him had lost its way and drifted to the left; and to the left of Wild Boar gorge lay not Douaumont but the rear. He, Eberhard Kroysing had an internal guide and one in front of him too: the schoolboy Süßmann, who, having travelled back and forth between the fort and the construction squad, knew the hollow and the surrounding area like his way to school. Kroysing could barely see him but he constantly heard him rattling his equipment or shouting out: ‘Shell hole on the left!’, ‘Watch out, railway lines!’, ‘Dud on the right!’, ‘Look out, stakes!’, ‘Shell hole on the right!’, ‘Firm ground half right!’ The wee man splashed on, and Kroysing waded after him, his eyes boring into the impenetrable yellow-grey fog that grew darker with each passing moment. His hand was clenched round the butt of his pistol. His senses ran ahead of him, ripping aside the accursed blanket of fog, and his heart thumped as he imagined tearing it to shreds and sinking his clenched teeth into that which eluded him: all the forces of resistance. This mad world had conspired against him. The phrase ‘we thought we could pull the stars down out of the sky’ came back to him. He didn’t know what had first made him think of it, but it was true – or perhaps more correctly false. They should have pulled the stars down out of the sky, along with all its ghosts of superstition and residual spirituality. This blanket of cloud, which had left them high and dry at the crucial moment, proved it. To the devil with you, he thought, as he listened out for Süßmann and at the same time turned to catch the clatter of the Saxons behind. They’d achieved nothing. It was all a pile of shit. If you couldn’t command the weather, couldn’t devise some instrument to blow away this kind of spray and achieve visibility, then you were nothing and you shouldn’t start a war. Certainly, people knew how to create fog, but clearing it was another matter. Could he hear the Saxons or couldn’t he? Was this silence an hallucination? Would the bloody French batteries over there in Caillette wood defeat this final desperate attempt as well?

Sweat poured over his eyes and down to the corners of this mouth. ‘Süßmann,’ he called imperiously. ‘Süßmann.’ He was up to his knees in a muddy hole. He had to push his stick deep into the soggy ground, hold his pistol up high with his left hand and wrestle himself upright in order not to fall over. ‘Süßmann!’ Nothing. He groaned in anger, wiped the splatters of mud from his mouth with the back of his hand and listened. Was that a clattering he could hear far behind him? Was that someone calling way over there to the right? He realised that his undertaking had already failed. It had been madness to start it. The Saxons had been right. Now he was going to pay the price and come to a miserable end in a shell hole somewhere. And, bang, there was a crash above and a whistling cacophony descended: shrapnel. He couldn’t see it, thank God. It’s hailing, he thought with malicious enjoyment. Turn your collar up, Herr Kroysing! Yes, it was hailing. Thankfully, not in his immediate vicinity. Who could tell whether the French were firing too long or too short. Who indeed? An airman, of course. Airmen could tell. Airmen can do anything. They’re superior to their enemies, set above them, beings of a higher order, a step forward in the sluggish development of the vertebrate known as man. And as he stood there, literally rooted to the spot – for where should he go to escape the lead balls, as he couldn’t see them and could only hear their hissing and howling, their snapping and bursting – as his ankles were sucked deeper into the earth’s grip, the point of his walking stick became ever more embedded in the ground, water filled his shoes but didn’t quite penetrate his puttees, as he stood there like that, bent and tense like a pine marten about to jump, enlightenment filled his heart; the heavens weren’t the problem, it was the ground, the earth, this muck we’re born on and condemned to roam upon until we die and are reabsorbed by it. No, my love, he thought as he struggled to free his feet at all costs and trudge on. Do you know the only thing you’re good for? As a springboard, nothing else. We should kick you in the face and fly away. What a bit of luck that we invented the internal combustion engine, we masters of fire and explosions! And in that moment he reached a firm decision: he’d become an airman. Just wait until this mess was over and everything was cleared up, until an iron fist had knocked the French flat for daring to stick their nose into German territory, and a certain someone would throw in this sapper business and join the air force. Crawling around in the dirt was good enough for the likes of Süßmann and Bertin, men with no fighting instinct, no fire in their punches, old men. He, however, would metamorphose into a stone dragon with claws, a tail and fiery breath, which smoked little critters out of their hideaways – all the Niggls and other such creatures. He’d have a fragile box beneath him, two broad wings and a whirling propeller, and hey ho, up above the clouds he’d soar like a Sunday lark – admittedly not to sing songs but to drop bombs on the people crawling around below, to splatter them with gas and bullets as part of a duel from which only one person returns. He stretched up to his full height, grabbed his pistol in his fist and shook it at the air from which the shrapnel was hissing down.