Outside Verdun

^{CHAPTER ONE} The imaginings of a Jew

THE WAR HAD reached its zenith. All the omens, which thus far had favoured the Germans, turned imperceptibly. For a people who had only recently formed into a nation state, the Germans had performed miracles. With his left arm, the Teutonic giant had held off the Russians, already bleeding from multiple wounds, while attacking the two finest fighting nations of the nineteenth century with his right: the British, who had defeated Napoleon, and the French, who under that same Napoleon had been the bane of the old armies. The giant’s right foot had kicked the warlike Serbs into seemingly irreversible submission, while his left had felled the Romanians with a blow to the kneecap. He had terrorised the Romans at the battle of Teutoburg forest, and now he thought the future belonged to him and he wanted to drag it into the present. Only a handful of people on the planet knew that the giant was soft in the head under his steel helmet, quite unable to grasp contemporary realities, and that, just like in a fairy tale, he would forgo that which was within reach out of greed for some other unquantifiable treasure.

That poor feeble head… The Saxon counter-attack the night after the disaster was as ineffective as that mounted by the Silesians and Brandenburgers, because every available rifle had already been thrown into the breaches. The men didn’t show their dejection. That would have been defeatism and would have poisoned the atmosphere. And the French attack was accorded only secondary importance in the highest quarters. The staff studied their mistakes, learnt from the French that the front zone could be moved and that a closer alliance between the infantry and the batteries had advantages, and perhaps regretted the decision taken at Pierrepont. But no one suspected that the French would not be satisfied with their success. The German staff were much too proud and self-important to suspect that. And yet the French sector commander was already preparing his next attack, and this attack was also destined to succeed because it was based on clear thinking and a proper assessment of the realities. They were going to storm the Meuse heights.

But things had not yet got to that point. In a hub like Damvillers, the officers’ messes still filled with bustling gentlemen every lunchtime. Many a new face appeared among them, for example that of Captain Niggl. Captain Niggl went about his business in an unassuming manner – his battalion’s headquarters and Third Company were now stationed in Damvillers – but he was in fact labouring under the burden of fame. Captain Niggl was a hero. He had loyally held out at Douaumont until the last moment at the head of his brave Bavarian ASC men. He was sure to be awarded the Iron Cross, first class. If his king’s military cabinet consented, he might also get an early promotion to major and receive a high Bavarian honour on King Ludwig’s birthday. Bets were being laid in the officers’ mess as to whether he’d receive his Iron Cross on 18 January, the order’s anniversary, or on 27 January, the Kaiser’s birthday. Portly little Niggl wandered among his comrades with an expression of reluctant sociability on his rather sunken face, but his shrewd eyes shone in triumph. His temples had turned grey, white even, but victory had been his. He had not signed, he had not allowed himself to be cowed by a big-mouthed lieutenant, that criminal who had now disappeared. He had bent but he had not broken. His wife and children and he himself would come through this business unscathed – the same was true of Feicht and the others. He ought to reward himself with a nice holiday: Christmas at home with the children, setting up the crib with the Baby Jesus, the shepherds, the ox and the donkey, retouching the gild on the star of Bethlehem. Of course certain papers remained in that shithole of Douaumont. Well, the Frogs could wipe their arses with them. He’d been tested and had passed the test. He padded through Damvillers, which he liked enormously, even in the rain, with a friendly, somewhat battle-weary air. Those he visited felt honoured. Major Jansch felt very honoured, as he visited him quite often.

Today, Jansch sat as usual in his living room at a big desk strewn with newspapers, files and large-format maps. It was very agreeable for Major Jansch to be admired by the hero of Douaumont, and Niggl’s eyes shone with admiration for the Prussian officer.

Editor Jansch was not much liked in Damvillers on account of his being a political know-all. But retired civil servant Niggl found his views fresh and astonishingly broad. Jansch asked him if had he ever heard about the Free Masons’ conspiracy against Germany. He certainly had not. And yet the Grand Orient de France lodge had incited the world against the Reich; otherwise Romania would not have been so stupid as to start a quarrel with world war victors. And what about the role of the Jewish press in spreading enemy propaganda, eh? Jewish journalists spent every day penning poison about the German Michael, especially that Jewish press baron Lord Northcliffe whose newspapers had inundated the world with made-up stories about atrocities, particularly those supposedly committed in Belgium. The British had known what they were doing when they made that bastard a peer, and the Americans also had half a dozen such Jewish journalists, of whom Hearst was the most prominent. They were everywhere, those ink-spilling swine. He even had one in his company. He’d got himself the name of Bertin; no one knew how. He probably came from Lviv and was called IsaASCon a few years or decades ago. This Yid had now had the nerve to claim six additional days of leave that he supposedly hadn’t got in the summer. In the summer, he had in fact got married to some Sarah or other. He’d persuaded her to marry him, in that typical Jewish way, so he could exploit the regulations. He’d got his leave, but the minimum four days of course. And now he’d had the audacity to demand the missing six days under the pretext that he’d been in the field since the beginning of August. Phenomenal! Where should he have been? Instead of being grateful to the Prussian state for allowing him to wear its uniform, he pulls this trick of wanting leave twice in the same year thereby denying some comrade who hadn’t yet been home the same pleasure. Fortunately he’d come to the right man. The First Company had duly passed his request on, but with a note explaining how things stood. The little jumped-up egghead was hoping to receive his leave papers and travel pass today in the orderly room with the other men due to go on leave. No one had told him he was going to have to turn tail and march back disappointed, then go straight back on guard duty. That would give him time to ponder his insolence, because the Jews were insolent – unimaginably so. As long as those sorts of people enjoyed equal rights with their racial superiors and proper Germans, things would never improve in Germany for all her heroic deeds. This was Jansch’s confidential view, whether Comrade Niggl agreed with it or not.

Niggl had nothing against Jews. He didn’t know many, but those who lived in his area gave no cause for complaint, and the Bavarian army had never had any problems with its Jewish officers. He knew that some Prussians had a bit of a thing about them, as did the Austrians. In Bavaria, it was really only the journalist Dr Sigl who went on about the Jews, and he was actually much more vehement against the Prussians. Personally, Niggl had had much worse experiences with Protestants, but he didn’t mention that to his friend Jansch out of politeness. But what difference did it make to him if a squaddy had to march back disappointed and go back on guard duty instead of getting on the leave train? It wouldn’t do the man any harm. After all, things hadn’t been particularly pleasant for Niggl in Douaumont.

A bleak November afternoon hung over the roofs of the village of Damvillers, and drizzle fell in front of the windows of the battalion headquarters. The lamps had been on for a while in the ground floor orderly room. The personnel were eagerly awaiting the 10 men from the First Company due to go on leave, who were to be led in by Herr Bertin. But instead of Bertin, in came Corporal Niklas, who also belonged to the first. He sat down by the stove in his spruce tunic looking quietly pleased. Things had been arranged like this so that the men in Moirey, especially Bertin himself, didn’t suspect anything, because only 10 men ever went on leave, never 11. This way the joke was bound to come off. The men going on leave would definitely be there by 4pm. They would all be champing at the bit as they had to get the train in Damvillers then catch their connection to Frankfurt in Montmédy. Well, it wouldn’t hurt them to dash about a bit. They’d have 10 days to relax at home with mother afterwards, and the Prussian mindset did require that every blessing be paid for with a little hardship.

Captain Niggl started when he peered through a crack in the door and caught sight of Private Bertin, the only man who wouldn’t be going on leave but would be returning to his company. He’d seen that face before. It hadn’t been as pale as it was now in the lamplight with the weight of disappointment; it had been browner and fresher and it had been at Douaumont. This man, standing there rigid while the sergeant major drily informed him that the battalion had not authorised his request, belonged to his oppressor Kroysing’s gang. Back then, he’d run around with that little sergeant, Sußmann or Süßmann – another Jew. Perhaps there was something to this business about the Jews. Perhaps clever Herr Jansch was right about that too, and he, Niggl, the retired civil servant, had been too trusting. He’d have to think about it. In any case, this man had to go. He might know a lot, a little or nothing, but he couldn’t be allowed to wander about talking. That was the law of self-preservation, which was in fact a necessity that knew no law. Niggl would keep his eye on this man, make a note of his name. First, however, he must find out where the scoundrel in chief was. If he was still missing, as Captain Lauber had told him he was, to his genuine distress, then it was time to start clearing up and get rid of the rest of those in the know. It was quite right that this man wasn’t going on leave, and he shouldn’t go until it was his proper turn. That could be spring or it could be summer, and a lot could have happened by then. Captain Niggl, with his reluctantly sociable expression and his shrewd little eyes, had got a lot out of the spectacle that Herr Jansch had supplied; thank you, my friend. Did you notice perchance how the man swayed a little as stood there, my friend? Won’t do a stuck-up, four-eyed sort like him any harm – what was he called again? Bertin. Bertin? Was that right? Unpleasant looking chap, Herr Bertin, with his sticky-out ears. The sort you see in police mugshots. Retired civil servant Niggl had seen some criminals in his time, but he didn’t want to say anything against his friend Herr Jansch’s First Company. Perhaps the Jews really were the ones to watch. He’d mull it over before their next meeting and perhaps join the Pan-German Union, because it really had become necessary to stand up to the Free Masons and campaign for all-out U-boat warfare.

Private Bertin set off on the main road to Moirey. The dark grey around him matched how he felt inside. To his right and left stretched sodden land; inside him beat a desolate, sodden heart. The rain speckled his face, and cold water trickled down between his chin and upturned collar, soaking his neckband. It wasn’t physical exertion that had left him so tired that he thumped down on the puddle edges. He’d completed his allotted day’s work of railway construction in a swamp between Gremilly and Ornes, where new field railways were required because of the new position of the front. Warm at heart and gaily anticipating his leave, he had happily helped to bind brushwood bundles and lay a causeway through the alder wood, along which the rails would run. They’d worked up to their ankles in mud, but it hadn’t bothered him; he was going on leave and would be with Lenore the following evening and have six days of being human again in her beloved presence. He’d eaten quickly, almost without appetite, hurriedly cleaned his equipment, rolled up his blankets and buckled them on to his rucksack, which he’d packed the night before, and presented himself in the orderly room neat and clean-shaven. They’d sent him to Damvillers with the other nine men without a word of warning, although they knew what was going on. They’d even made him leader of the little detachment, responsible for answering any questions about where they were going and why from any field police conducting checks or curious officers. And then they had dropped him into the abyss. Diehl, a long-faced clerk with black eyes, had tried to warn him at battalion headquarters with much shaking of his head and closing of his eyes, but it had been in vain. They’d played this trick on him out of sheer nastiness – whoever was behind it. The decision must in any case have come from the major, Herr Jansch, that measly editor of Army and Fleet Weekly. From him had come the decree that there were to be no exceptions in the Prussian army and no one was to go on leave twice in one year. It sounded good, harsh but fair, but it was just a pretext. Anyone who knew how things worked here knew how many favoured laddies got sent home two or three times a year. It wasn’t always called leave. Usually it was called travelling on duty, helping to ensure the safe transport of boxes and cases whose contents were well-known. If only a certain Metzler, who’d helped him secure his wedding leave in the summer, had been in the orderly room. But he’d long since been drafted into the infantry. Goethe said we shouldn’t complain about villainy because the Almighty’s hand was still at work in it. And it had to be suffered through to the end. The orderly room wouldn’t bother to suppress a grin when they saw someone back from leave so soon. And one or other of his chums in the barracks would be sure to throw in a crack. He couldn’t even go to sleep and get over his grief that way; he had to go on guard duty, which meant long, hard hours walking back and forth in the night rain with lots of time to think. He was filled with grief as he trudged along the main road – the same one where the crown prince’s car had sped so elegantly past a few weeks previously— it was an impersonal kind of grief, grief at a system that had revealed its true colours to him, lonely Private Bertin, in the same way that those cigarettes chucked out of a window had shown the system’s true colours. All the suffering, privations and sacrifices that the common solder constantly had to endure were amplified by these petty slights and unnecessary humiliations. He had performed his duty faultlessly for its own sake; nothing could be said against him. Furthermore, he’d volunteered time and again for difficult duties, and, as was fitting, had kept that to himself. And if the company had refused his request point-blank, he would have been disappointed but would have accepted it in the light of the general need. But those men had staged a nasty little scene and humiliated him for their own satisfaction. He’d seen that the door leading from anteroom into the orderly room was ajar and had noticed the gap widening a little and eyes and part of a nose appearing. And that was intolerable. That was below the belt.

The wind whistled through the branches of the trees and shrubs. The road dipped and ran along the edge of a steep slope. Below was the sparsely lit train station at Moirey, and those must be the barracks to its right, black against the dark sky. He’d better pull himself together now and present an indifferent face to the world, drink the bitter dregs. What an idiot he had been back in June when he left his young wife on the nice, clean platform at Charlottenburg and got into the train that would bring him back to this camp. Back then he’d sat down in the compartment with the feeling that he was going home, back to where he belonged. Well, he’d seen through that now. Lieutenant Kroysing and Lieutenant Roggstroh had been right! He didn’t belong here, didn’t fit in with this sleazy lot. Well, he only had to apply for a transfer and new horizons would open up. But that wouldn’t do either. Even in this moment of anger and bitterness he admitted that to himself. Thick glasses are still thick glasses, and no one should throw himself into danger on a whim unless he’s prepared to die. He was and remained condemned to be in the ASC. And like a condemned man he had to cling to the railing as he climbed the slippery wooden steps that led to the orderly room. He was sweating beneath his heavy rucksack, and his neck was freezing from the rain.

The next morning he reported sick. He’d felt strange during the night, gone hot and cold and been plagued by weird thoughts. He definitely had a fever; his temperature when he was examined was 37.4 degrees. Not all that high, said the young doctor, but as Bertin was an educated man he decided he should spend a night in the infirmary, as the sickbay was called. Ah, thought Bertin, as he stood to attention, so if I were a waiter or a typesetter I’d be thrown out on my ear and sent back to work despite my disappointing temperature, and have to catch my death of cold before I’d be counted sick. Were health and sickness also class-dependent? Comrade Pahl certainly thought so.

During the whole day, which he spent relaxing, sleeping and writing – he had to explain to his wife that his request had been denied – during that whole day in the clean and peaceful domain of Schneevoigt, the hospital sergeant, it didn’t occur to him that he’d never had a thought like that before. Something had started to shift inside him – though unfortunately not quickly enough to save him from further harm. For little predatory creatures possess a good sense of smell, even in the jungle of human society, and always like to pick on wounded prey.

^{CHAPTER TWO} Rallying cries

THE INEXORABLE, WRETCHED grind outwardly continued over the next weeks. Each day, the work parties set off before dawn, damp and stiff, to build the crucial field railways in the rain: sometimes in the swampy woodland around Ornes, sometimes in the undulating country of Fosses wood. They were subject to continual harassing fire, and a smattering of shells would explode dusky red at sunrise, and it didn’t matter if there were four or eight of them, the splinters were enough to take out Private Przygulla one morning at Gremilly, slashing open his stomach not 30m from where Bertin lay flat in the mud. Then in Fosses wood a while later they witnessed a German plane above their heads roaring down in a forced landing. After a panting 10-minute run, the ASC men lifted the dying pilot, whose back was riddled with bullet holes, from his seat. Scarcely had they hidden him behind the nearest furrow along with his assistant and the most important pieces of equipment when a shell set the great rickety bird alight – exciting moments in those grey and gruesome weeks. The nights drew relentlessly in, and the bleak dark, cold and wet gripped the men, undermining their spirits – they seemed to hang like feeble flies in a powerful spiders’ web, grey on grey. When they pulled their blankets over their heads at night, because the wind whistled through the barracks and the little smoking stove, fuelled by wet wood, created more coughing than warmth, Bertin lay among them, almost indistinguishable from them, and Lebehde the inn-keeper and Pahl the typesetter no longer needed to complain that he was a stuck-up prig because he chose to shove a thing made out of meerschaum in his gob when he smoked a pipe. No, Private Bertin hadn’t smoked a meerschaum pipe for a while – metaphorically speaking. They realised that when Sergeant Kropp saw an opportunity to play the big man with him.

Since the beginning of October, the depot command had ordered the NCOs to give the men from the outside working parties a day off in rotation so that they could attend to themselves and their things and didn’t become entirely squalid. Lieutenant Benndorf had brought the measure in and enforced it strictly, much to the annoyance of the units working within the depot and their NCOs. So, when Sergeant Kropp, a bad-tempered farm boy from the Uckermark, found Private Bertin sleeping in the barracks one afternoon when everyone else was on duty, the colour rose in his sallow face and he said he was going to report him for evading duty. Bertin, knowing he was innocent, laughed and turned on to his other side as the clod Kropp marched off.

That day, 12 December, didn’t just stick in Bertin’s mind but in that of the entire world. When the army communiqué was pinned to the black tarboard wall in the orderly room after the washing-up was done, a growing group of men immediately gathered in front of it and read the badly printed text out in excited undertones: it contained the word ‘peace’. Germany was suing for peace! She had staunchly held her enemies at bay for two and a half years, and a week to 10 days previously her infantry had occupied the Romanian capital of Bucharest after bitter exchanges: no need to fear, therefore, that this salutary step would be misunderstood. Canteen in hand, Bertin peered at it myopically, listened, asked questions and just stood. This was… this was the most important day of his life. His chest heaved in a sigh of relief that was for the world. Sadly, it only lasted until he had fully understood the wording of the imperial communication. The statement lacked the key phrase by which practically any halfway grown-up person could tell whether the proposed steps were serious or not: the return of Belgium and compensation for the devastation inflicted. With a bit of goodwill, such details could be dealt with in due course. The main thing was to get the enemy to the negotiating table. Private Bertin certainly couldn’t be accused of lacking goodwill. Nonetheless, the wings of his hope shrivelled like wilted leaves and folded back in… He kept rereading the communication but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t find a single phrase which the enemy powers could respond to without humiliating themselves. After the odd enthusiastic shout of ‘Listen to that!’ or a more disgruntled ‘Hold on, Otto!’, the ASC men had nearly all slouched off, talking in undertones. A bandy-legged Bavarian gunner from the depot staff with a cigarette behind his right ear and a brimless cap tilted over his left, turned to Bertin before leaving: ‘None too keen on it, are you, comrade? Me neither.’ Then he checked there were no NCOs or clerks in the vicinity and finished by asking if anyone had any idea what kind of fresh shit those fatheads in Berlin imagined they were going to drum up with this peace initiative.

Bertin left too, feeling pensive, almost sorrowful. The white sheet of paper flashing on the orderly room wall looked stranded in the pale afternoon light. And after nightfall when his comrades from the Fosses wood party had erupted into the barracks and there had been a fierce debate about the news, they too eventually arrived at a not dissimilar position of disgust and scepticism. And Bertin, struck by this consensus among Bavarians, Berliners and Hamburgers, wondered at his initial surge of joy. He felt Pahl’s eyes on him and Karl Lebehde’s questioning looks. Hiding a certain embarrassment, he told them about Herr Kropp’s oafish behaviour and said Kropp was sure to get the brush-off from his superiors. Pahl and Lebehde exchanged a glance. It was on the tips of their tongues to tell him to deal with the report immediately and inform the depot orderly room about it, but neither of them did so. Their friend Bertin was the sort of man who only learns from experience. After all, he’d fallen for the peace initiative.

When Bertin had gone off to write another letter home, the two squaddies were left sitting opposite one another at the narrow end of their table near the window, now darkening in the early December dusk. The barracks were full of the muffled sounds of a large group of men, their tobacco smoke and murmured chat. Tunics and canvas jackets had been hung out to dry between the beds, and tarpaulins were stretched across the ventilators. A load of freshly washed handkerchiefs was drying on the long, black stove pipes that followed the angles of the walls to the windows, where, carefully sealed, they opened to the outside. Lebehde had on a brown wool tanktop and green-striped slippers, and Paul wore his grey lace-up shoes and a grey cardigan. They looked like family men determined to finish a task before home time: darning socks in Lebehde’s case and answering a letter in Pahl’s.

But Lebehde wanted to ask Pahl for advice, and as always Pahl was happy to give it. Pahl had a lot on his mind too… Lebehde said that the Böhne working party had started a new track that day, which was to lead to the ruins of Chambrettes-Ferme. (Pahl and a couple of other men had for weeks been in Corporal Näglein’s auxiliary squad in another, less exposed area among the many ravines of Fosses wood.) The idea was to hide two 15cm howitzers among the ruins and then build the crucial narrow-gauge railway. And guess who had appeared while they were working? Little Sergeant Süßmann. Today of all days, he’d come sauntering out from the emplacement behind Pepper ridge with his little monkey’s face and restless eyes. How many times had Bertin asked the sappers from Ville about him and his lieutenant, and got no information? Well, there he was, and now the game had taken a new turn; now he was asking questions and sending greetings, and telling everyone how they had survived the Douaumont debacle relatively unscathed, but had been pretty much stuck on the far right wing of Pepper ridge not far from the Meuse since then. They were cheek by jowl with the French and were pelting them with heavy mines, and all their communications to the rear had been shifted westwards and they couldn’t even get their post from Montmédy as they’d done before. Lieutenant Kroysing therefore had a favour to ask of Bertin: to forward a letter to the court martial in Montmédy and a parcel to a post office within the Reich.

‘Do you understand what that means, my son?’ said Lebehde. ‘Apparently, Herr Kroysing doesn’t want to hand over any items with the name Kroysing on them to our field post and censors. People get suspicious when they have time on their hands.’

Süßmann said that Lieutenant Kroysing would express his gratitude to Bertin in due course. ‘He may be an old devil but my lieutenant is the most decent man in the world. He wouldn’t even take a pipeful of tobacco from you without giving you something in return,’ he said, adding that he, Süßmann, would be getting his staff sergeant’s sword knot on the Kaiser’s birthday and probably some ribbons in his buttonhole too – all thanks to Kroysing. And at that he pulled two largish packages out of his haversack, a flat one and a soft, round one, and said they contained Christoph Kroysing’s last effects.

‘I don’t mind saying that made me feel a bit funny,’ said Karl Lebehde. ‘A bit horrible. Wee Sergeant Kroysing spent every day and every night of his last months at Chambrettes-Ferme. It was down on the valley floor, if you remember, over to the right where those two long goose-neck guns were dragged away – French guns or something like that – that Bertin promised to forward his letter. And now up pops Süßmann, waving Kroysing’s old gear around and wanting to bother Bertin again, although it’s perfectly clear that it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. But I’m a polite man and so of course I didn’t say no and I took the things…’

‘Where are they?’ asked Pahl.

‘Don’t get carried away and break a leg, Wilhelm. No sooner had the boy left than I started to ask myself what you would have done.’

‘Kept my hands off it.’

‘Why?’

Wilhelm Pahl pressed his chin to his chest and looked his friend in the eye. ‘Because Bertin shouldn’t be messing around with lieutenants the whole time. Because he takes every chance he gets to do something stupid.’

‘Well, here’s what I finally realised: every sausage must come to an end, and this sausage has gone on long enough. What good would the stuff in those packages do anyone? It won’t help the parents. It’ll only set their waterworks off. I can still hear the howls of an old woman I witnessed in a similar situation back in 1914. And the good people of Nuremberg won’t be any the poorer either if the stuff disappears. Army postal package gone astray – that’s that. Is it right to bolster people’s prejudices by letting them think that all they have to do is ask someone to do something, and they’ll suspend their judgement and become their postman? So I crawled down into the dugout in the old cellar at Chambrettes-Ferme. The rain had seeped in and soaked all the muck in there. It stank, Wilhelm – I take my hat off to the gunners who had to crawl about under there. And as I picked my way through the muck, I saw two eyes. Of course, I thought of young Kroysing, but only in a joking way, because I was at the back of the queue when superstitious natures were being given out. As surely as I’ve ever propped up a bar, there was a cat sitting on the upper bunk glaring at me. I checked with my torch and I was right. A great grey-striped she-cat was living there and she was either fat on rats or pregnant. Listen, kid, I said to her, just don’t make a fuss and look after this little lot for me, okay, and I shoved the soft package between the palliasse and the wall. When I was above ground again, I gulped the air down. So, now tell me: did I do the right thing?’

‘You did,’ said Wilhelm Pahl.

‘But what about the papers? Shouldn’t our post orderly perhaps…?’

Wilhelm Pahl bit his lower lip. ‘No, we’ll sort it out another way, Karl. The day after tomorrow 10 family men are going on Christmas leave.’

‘Goodness me. Is it that time already? Maybe peace will break out while they’re at home, and they won’t be able to get back and they’ll die from missing you and me.’

Wilhelm Pahl ignored this joke. ‘Among them is Comrade Naumann Bruno. He’s conscientious and he’ll stick the letter in the postbox at Montmédy train station. Then he’ll go on his way, and no one will know where it came from.’

Karl Lebehde reached his freckled hand out to his friend in solemn silence. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘But let’s do it straight away.’

In Naumann Bruno’s barbershop (everyone put the barber’s first name after his last to distinguish him from Naumann Ignaz, the company idiot), it was quiet, warm and light, and smelt of almond soap. On a chair sat Sergeant Karde, who’d just had his hair cut. This Leipzig bookseller, whose small publishing house currently lay idle, and who was no doubt worried about his wife and children just as the workers did, enjoyed considerable respect among discerning members of the rank and file because of his sincere, humane attitude, although politically he was closer to their opponents, the ‘German Nationals’ as they were called. As the two men walked in, Karl Lebehde cracked a couple of jokes, and Karde laughed while admiring his haircut in two mirrors. Lebehde sat down for a shave, and Karde put his belt back on, counted out 20 Pfennigs, saluted and left.

‘Close the door, Bruno,’ said Lebehde as if that were a normal thing to do. ‘I’d like to give you some concrete proof of my faith in you, and I want you to put it in the postbox at Montmédy station the day after tomorrow. I’m going to put it here in your drawer. And now show Comrade Pahl the letter from your old lady and the bit of newspaper she wrapped the badger hair brush in that she sent you. Because, in case you hadn’t noticed, Wilhelm,’ he said to the astonished Pahl, ‘surprises, like trams, always come in twos, and I’ve been holding on to this one for a day or two.’

The barber’s round, ruddy face twitched though he didn’t for one moment doubt Pahl’s reliability. He wasn’t nicknamed Liebknecht for nothing. ‘The old girl takes too many chances. I go to burn this scrap of paper every evening, and every morning I tell myself it would be a shame.’ He opened a decrepit cardboard box and took out a carefully folded letter and read from the middle of it in an undertone: ‘There’s a lot going on but not with me…’

Pahl had sat there listening carefully and wondering why this harmless letter was being read out to him. He took it from Naumann’s hand. The barber silently bent over him and drew arcs with his shaving knife connecting two pairs of words to create the words that now formed on Pahl’s lips: ‘Zimmerwald’ and ‘Kiental’. Pahl looked up with a start. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said.

Educated workers knew that the leaders of minority socialist groups from different countries had met that year and the previous year in the Swiss towns of Zimmerwald and Kiental – individuals and representatives of small groups who rejected their parties’ majority view in support of the war. Among their number had been the German member of parliament Georg Ledebour, an elderly man respected even by his political foes. The new passports had been introduced by then, and the two most dangerous malcontents, the MP Liebknecht and the writer Rosa Luxemburg, either weren’t allowed a visa or were already in prison. The meeting had already sent out an appeal to the workers of the world in 1915, saying that for them this world war was the brutal consequence of the economic tensions and conquering greed that were the very essence of the capitalist world order. German newspapers of all hues had mocked the Zimmerwalders’ obstinate refusal to face reality; all around Europe men battled for victory, something even the stupidest farm boy could understand, while these café intellectuals wafted through the storm giving lectures on why the difference between war and peace didn’t mean much to the workers. If the workers’ position vis-à-vis business was contemptible in peacetime, they said, the war only made it worse, because the fathers and sons of the working classes suffered each and every day, and so first and foremost, down with the war. ‘Tell that to the French!’ proclaimed the German papers. ‘Preach to the Germans!’ said the French. And soon the minor event to which Frau Naumann had bravely alluded was engulfed in silence. Fingers quivering, Naumann the barber now opened the drawer in the table where he kept his razors. It was lined with old newspapers. He took out a small sheet. It was slightly yellowed, highly inconspicuous and had been screwed up and flattened out again. Pahl read it:

‘Where is the prosperity you were promised at the start of the war? The real consequences of this war are already all too apparent: misery and deprivation, unemployment and death, malnourishment and disease. For years, for decades, the costs of this war will sap nations’ strength and destroy the hard-won achievements that have given your lives greater dignity. Spiritual and moral desolation, economic catastrophe and reactionary politics – those are the blessings brought by this disgusting international wrestling match, as with all those that went before…’

Pahl’s face went grey. His ugly features shone with emotion and he felt for his heart. Somewhere in the world, in free Switzerland, it was possible to think, say and print these things. Mankind was not entirely sunk in darkness. A tiny glimmer of truth still shone somewhere… Naumann, fascinated against his better judgement, had read the lines too over Pahl’s shoulder. ‘Hey, hurry up,’ he said, starting suddenly, ‘someone could come by at any minute.’

Lebehde silently tucked a towel into the neck of his jumper and wet his face. ‘Let him read it by himself, razor hands,’ he said. ‘We know what it says.’

Naumann went over to him, soaped him up and said to Pahl: ‘We must be mad. Close the drawer. Open the door and read it to yourself. Put it in the army newspaper.’

Pahl did so. The dangerous piece of paper covered the journalist Edmund Goldwasser’s report about the crown princess’s gracious visit to the Cecilia Hospital at Potsdam. He read: ‘In this intolerable position…’ He saw them sitting round the table, these representatives of the suffering nations, their brows furrowed, their faces clouded in thought, as they discussed the declaration of war for which they were prepared to go to prison. They declared war on hatred among nations, on all forms of national madness, on all those trying to prolong the war, and called for an alliance across borders, for mutual assistance among the oppressed classes. They pledged to take up the fight for peace – a peace that renounced any violation of the people’s rights and freedoms. The unshakeable foundation of their demand was the right to national self-determination, and they called on the subject classes to rescue civilisation and fight for the sacred goals of socialism in the implacable class struggle – their true purpose – with the same total fearlessness they had displayed since the outbreak of war in fighting each other.

Outside, someone was meticulously cleaning his boots, having evidently stepped off the boardwalk that made it possible to negotiate the camp into the reddish brown clabber underneath. Pahl calmly folded up the piece of newspaper and clamped it under his arm. ‘Let me take it,’ he said to Naumann. ‘I’ll look after it.’

‘You’re welcome to it,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be glad to see the back of it.’

The door opened and in came Sergeant Kropp, disgruntled to see two men ahead of him in the queue. But Pahl the typesetter kindly offered to come back later, saying that he had more time than the sergeant and tomorrow was another day. ‘You’ll find your own way back, Karl,’ he said and left. Outside he stopped, closed his eyes and breathed. He had heard a call and understood it. The stars might be covered in cloud but they were still up there. And as sure as there were stars in the sky, the triumph of reason advanced behind the struggling working classes, and the welfare of nations, understood properly, was inextricably linked to that struggle. Yes, it was time to act. If by any chance the orderly room had been telling the truth when it had reported that industrial companies at home could no longer claim men fit for service, then he would have to offer a little sacrifice and make himself unfit for service. A couple of toes or a finger – carried out with the utmost care of course on account of military prison… The laws of the ruling classes had a thousand eyes, but intelligence had more – and it had wings. Warmth flooded into him from the newspaper clipping, which he had pressed against his heart. He would have liked to dance, shout, sing: ‘So Comrades, come rally…’

When Karl Lebehde returned to the barracks a little later, smoothly shaved, he grinned and said that ass Kropp had only wanted his hair cut so he could make a good impression on the company commander the following afternoon when he brought Bertin in for punishment. Man’s stupidity was bottomless and its subtle variations were a constant source of amazement.

^{CHAPTER THREE} ‘Write!’

THINGS NOW TOOK on the hyper-reality of a fantasy, the solid outlines and soft, fluid forms. Unrest was in the air when two small groups of sinners were lined up outside Acting Lieutenant Graßnick’s hut after lunch. On the left was Sergeant Kropp with his closely cropped hair and Private Bertin, whose platoon leader, Sergeant Schwerdtlein, was planted next to him in case a character witness should be required. On the right was Sergeant Böhne, whose friend Näglein had pulled the prank of reporting two shirkers from his platoon. The deaf carpenter Karsch and little Vehse the upholsterer had sloped off into a dugout when fetching ammunition to avoid exploding shells and hadn’t rejoined their comrades until the march back. It was the second time Karsch had done this. He had an incurable fear of those wild iron birds that ripped into men’s bowels with a deafening crash. Böhne moved restlessly from one foot to the other, twirled his moustache and fumed inwardly at Näglein, who had thrown his weight around by making a report rather than letting him, Böhne, deal with the matter.

There were rumblings on the horizon all around the camp. But the disturbances were no longer coming from German guns – enemy explosions had taken their place. Something was up – nobody suspected what. It would have been a wise moment to remember the old proverb that eating stimulates the appetite. The French were thinking of replying to the Kaiser’s peace offer with the spears of their bayonets. As they were much better off in terms of ammunition and relative troop numbers than eight weeks previously, they fully expected to reach their goal – a line running from Pepper ridge through Chambrettes-Ferme to Bezonaux, that short front right across the Meuse heights, whose advantages certain gentlemen in Pierrepont belonging to the German General Staff would learn to appreciate. The attack rolled forward slowly; when it peaked the men in the barracks and among the ammunition dumps might notice something. Until then, profound peace reigned.

It must have been 2.30pm when Lieutenant Graßnick appeared in the door of his well-appointed hut, which was protected by a grey waterproof tarpaulin. Bertin studied him calmly, the warm fur waistcoat under his open tunic, which the deft company tailor Krawietz had turned out for him for next to nothing, the fashionably cut britches, the high-peaked cap, the monocle set in his fat, red face. A sideways glance and a little contented smirk revealed that ‘Panje of Vranje’ was pleased to hear that Bertin was in trouble. In the doorway the broad chest and massive legs of the company commander’s bulldog also appeared, a solemn, tan-coloured beast with a white bib, which was hated because it consumed as much meat as two men, and which for that reason was never allowed to take a walk by itself in case it disappeared into a cooking pot. The acting lieutenant was in a sunny moody. Everyone knew that he was going on leave the day after next and staying away over New Year. And for that reason he gave the two truants a dressing-down in his rasping voice, accused them of betraying their comrades and only sentenced them to a hour’s punishment drill in full equipment instead of sending them straight to the cells. Böhne radiated relief. Bertin thought: now I’m curious. As Kropp stuttered out his report, Bertin opened his mouth to explain the circumstances, but with even more of a sideways smile Graßnick lifted his hand: ‘I know what you’re going to say. You’re not guilty of course. Three days’ solitary confinement. Dismissed!’

Bertin swung round. After the officer had disappeared, Sergeant Schwerdtlein came up to him and said in a low voice, ‘You can complain, but only afterwards.’

Bertin thanked him for his advice and said he would think about it. As he had to serve his time anyway, he needn’t decide whether to complain for a couple of days. Schwerdtlein walked off, shaking his head, unable to fathom either the unjust punishment or Bertin’s equanimity.

In May or June, who knew when it had been, Bertin had done something stupid that he definitely wouldn’t do now. The acting lieutenant had deigned to play a game of chess with him, and Private Bertin had been unable to resist the temptation to put him in checkmate on his third move. He fully realised that this was against the world order but he couldn’t stop himself. This latest trick of the acting lieutenant’s had settled the account. Perhaps Graßnick thought it would be a hard blow but he was wrong. Bertin ranked the places he could be as follows: he’d rather be among the charred, wet trees of Fosses wood than in the throng of the company, and he’d rather be within the four walls of a cell than in Fosses wood.

Having poured out of the depot, the ASC men from the loading parties were gathering, tired and damp, on the ridge around the camp. The Frogs had unleashed a terrifying bombardment on the right wing from Pepper ridge to Louvemont. Now their shells were exploding on the road to Ville, on Caures wood and on the ruins of Flabas. From the camp perimeter, ghostly clouds of earth could be seen rising up as columns of smoke formed above the exploding shells. The ASC men watched unperturbed. The guns couldn’t fire any further than they were doing at the moment. They’d never reach the depot and its 40,000 assorted shells.

A guard locked Private Bertin in a cell with his coat and blankets, and he slept for 12 hours that evening almost without stirring. His nose stuck out sharply in his thin face, his lips were pressed in a bitter line and his small chin disappeared under his grey blanket; he had been freezing all night without noticing it; he had withdrawn into his inner life. When he awoke, his joints were stiff, but he was refreshed and in the mood for thinking. It was better to stay lying down for a bit, to freeze and think, reflect on who he was and where he was, than to get up, get washed and get involved in discussions. He was stuck here like a scrap of muck and any boot could tread on him. But if that boot belonged to the lowest of the low, then it was better to be a scrap of muck swarming with maggots in the shape of thoughts. We invite you, Herr Bertin, to turn your attention to yourself, said the cell walls, the locked lock, the hard plank bed, the pale morning light in the open sash window. The window had no glass, instead tarpaper was nailed to its frame. He would have had to get up and stand on the plank bed to prolong the welcome darkness and he didn’t feel like doing that. He didn’t intend to get up until he heard the clatter of coffee being fetched. He intended to use this spell in prison – this gift from the shabby gods who watched over white men at the end of 1916, this kind offering of injustice, revenge, cold and loneliness – to clear his head. He’d been blundering around like a carefree puppy up until now, sometimes endangering himself inadvertently, sometimes irritating others. It was time to wake up, time to keep a weather eye on the machinations of fate. Kroysing and Roggstroh had been right. This wasn’t the place for him. He’d have to change – how remained to be seen.

The tall men in the guard squad, the first squad of the first platoon, were sitting at breakfast. They invited Bertin to help himself. They looked worried. Bertin listened. The guns had not roared like this since the heavy fighting in May and June. The wild barking of enemy fire could be picked out clearly in the frantic bombardment. But fat Sergeant Büttner exuded unshakeable calm. ‘Your squad has delivered various things for you about which I know nothing,’ he said.

Under a bench stood the lid of Bertin’s canteen neatly packed with his evening rations from the day before, some butter and cheese, his writing case and black oilcloth notebook, and five cigars in a screw of paper. Ah, thought Bertin with a surge of warmth, they’re looking out for me, they’re backing me up. Sergeant Büttner said that if Bertin wanted something to read or his pipe he would turn a blind eye. Hot coffee did a person good when he’d been freezing all the night. But what did a bit of freezing matter? Thousands of men would have given years of their lives to have frozen as tranquilly as he had done in the last 12 hours. Now the heating was on, and a pleasant warmth circulated through the whole ramshackle structure of planks and pasteboard. No one made any distinction between the prisoner eating his breakfast and his jailers.

Back in his cell, he decided to smoke a cigar, and the blue smoke wafted out of the window – it was rotten weed, company weed, but still it was a cigar. There was uproar outside – people running back and forth – no one would pay any attention to the cell window. He stretched out on the plank bed, closed his eyes and took the time to breathe again as if he were alone in the world. The cause of his incarceration slipped into the shadows. Perhaps a man had to be put in solitary confinement and robbed of his freedom in this fairly mild way to find himself.

As he blinked idly into the space in front of him, a figure appeared behind his eyelids: tanned face under a peaked cap, imperious look in his dark brown eyes, shoulders bent. The figure hid his left arm; the ribbon of the Iron Cross glowed in his buttonhole as if caught in a sunbeam. The figure’s dark grey outline remained in place although the gaps in the boarding showed through it as Bertin blinked. Kroysing, Bertin said in an undertone to the spectre, which was looking at him, I did everything I could for you. I’m just a louse, as you know, a humble ASC private, and I’ve been under close observation since the incident with the water tap. I found your brother and gave him your legacy. We read your letter, and Eberhard set off at full tilt in pursuit of justice but he hasn’t got anywhere yet. You’ve got to leave me in peace now. I’m a helpless soldier if ever there was one. I can’t write to your mother, can I? That’s up to your brother, and I can’t write to your uncle either. ‘Write!’ echoed the figure silently. Tanned face, thought Bertin, somewhat drawn, narrow cheeks, a rounded forehead, straight eyebrows, long eyelashes, kind brown eyes. They’d gone after him and brought him down, and he’d been rotting in that sodden grave in the swampy wood at Billy for quite some time now – hardly a peaceful resting place. It was understandable that he should reappear. Write? Why not? He had the time. Before he’d always fashioned his torments into shapes, sculptures made with the ivory of words; there were 12 of them out there now for people to read. This ghost within him couldn’t be laid to rest until he’d captured it in words. He had a pad of writing paper with a heavy cardboard cover and a fountain pen – of thought-provoking origins – which one of his comrades, probably Strauß the shopkeeper, had wrapped in with the cigars. So that’s what I’m supposed to do with it, he thought in shock.

Bertin the writer pulled on his coat, wrapped one blanket round his body and legs and another round his shoulders, leant his back on the barracks wall, rested his feet on the plank bed and made his thighs into a desk. The cold daylight fell over his cap on to the square of his writing paper. His left hand, which was holding the paper, reached for a glove, which he put on. He began to write the story of the Kroysings. He wrote from morning until midday. His squad sent him lunch, and he hid his work. He ate his soup, washed out his canteen, was locked up again, climbed on to his bed, wrapped himself up and wrote. The glorious mercy of inspiration was upon him. Sentence after sentence slipped from his unconscious into his pen. He was warmed by that wonderful creative fever that allows individuals to expand, to leave themselves behind and become a tool of the urgent forces the spirit has laid within them. He cursed the gathering dusk; he had to write! He put his work away, his Kroysing story, which didn’t yet have a title, and knocked to be let out.

The tall blacksmith Hildebrandt came to let him out. Bertin had had some good chats in the past with the Swabian from Stuttgart, who’d been a comrade since Küstrin days. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘there’s something going on out there and no mistake.’

Bertin didn’t say that he hadn’t heard anything until just then. Until a few minutes before he’d been sunk in months gone past, beneath Chambrettes-Ferme, on the valley floor with the gun emplacement. There was much agitated talk in the guard room. It was a lucky thing that Sergeant Büttner’s large frame filled the doorway, radiating calm. The battery fire had not let up, and neither had the seething, rattling shellfire. The French were definitely going to attack, perhaps that night, perhaps not until the morning. Rumours were rife; batteries rang constantly to check the lines were still intact; some of them that had still had a connection that morning hadn’t rung since midday. Two field artillery limbers had made their way over earlier through Ville with heavy losses – two horses and three drivers – and were now loading up in the field gun depot, the deepest and most sheltered position in the whole area. Hildebrandt the Swabian had spoken to them; they were dreading the thought of taking the carts back through but they had to get through or their batteries would crumble. It was effectively a death sentence for some of them. No matter: the limbers were being loaded and were going back. The loading parties were moving out of the park in grey and reddish brown columns; it was drizzling, and they had their tarpaulins round them. Bertin was lucky to be under arrest. Escorted by Hildebrandt, he visited the latrines; you always met people there. Wild rumours about French attacks from Douaumont, the whole area under heavy fire. They were going to get a nice strip of land for themselves that day – how much, no one knew. (A lot. The whole right bank of the Meuse captured between March and September at the price of mountains of corpses, all the trashed woods and gullies: Chauffour wood, Hassoule wood, Vauche wood, the Hermitage, Caurrière wood, Hardoumont wood – everything, absolutely everything.)

Little Vehse came in as Bertin was about to leave. ‘There’s your answer to the peace initiative,’ he said dejectedly in his Hamburg accent, and his eyes revealed how strong his hope had been. He had married young and was due to go on leave in February, or perhaps the beginning of March, when he intended to wallpaper his bedroom. A few days previously he’d been asking Bertin’s advice on colours. He preferred green, but green wallpaper was often poisonous and his wife was sensitive, so it might affect her lungs.

Bertin had negotiated with Hildebrandt for a candle. He was locked up again and again he listened to the surging ocean of fire behind Caures wood, not blocking out the seething misery of the world that came from there. Then he pushed the window frame over the ventilation flap and set to work. The candle gave enough light. It would make his eyes worse, but that didn’t matter. This war was an unhealthy enterprise, and being a fraction more short-sighted could come in handy for future medical examinations. At first he faltered but then things loosened up and he found his thread. Bertin brought Kroysing, his friend of one day, back to life at least to himself in that moment. It would be painful to relive his destruction, but he wanted to get to that point that day. The next day he’d describe how delighted the sergeant, the company commander and the battalion leader had been at Kroysing’s accident. One man’s owl is another man’s nightingale, as they said in Hamburg. He’d have to invent other names for Feicht, Simmerding and Niggl, not forgetting the wonderful Glinsky. That was enough for one day. His eyes hurt, and he was starting to freeze sitting there in the damp night air. He had his dinner, smoked a cigar and lay in the dark, limbs trembling. His excitement receded, and he tried to warm himself up by taking deep breaths; and so Bertin fell asleep without noticing that the crash of the explosions was moving ever closer.

‘They’re shooting in Thil wood! ‘They’re shooting at Flabas!’ ‘They’re bombarbing Chaumont!’ ‘Soon it will be our turn!’

The guard room was full of excited voices. Bertin walked in from his cell, refreshed but freezing. He’d slept exceptionally well, dreaming of the sandpits of his youth. It was 15 December, and the rain had stopped. The sky was cloudy, presaging harder frosts in the coming days. Bertin felt the frost that day had been hard enough.

The company felt under threat, that much was clear. Because of where it lay it would make sense for the company commander to postpone his leave for a few days. He was responsible for the lives of 400 men, living without dugouts among mountains of shells and house-high piles of explosives. Unfortunately, there hadn’t yet been time to build them. For how would the carpenters and bricklayers have found time to prepare elegant billets for the orderly room gods if they’d had to install underground shelters at the depot for the men? Querfurth the bearded clerk ran past, terror in his eyes: Sergeant Büttner and his squad would have to go on guard duty again that day. They make a show of grumbling about it but were of course delighted not to have to haul shells around for another 24 hours.

‘I suggest you clear off to your cell,’ said Sergeant Büttner casually to Bertin in his boyish voice. Bertin was curious about the ordeal his company was about to face and even a little amused by it. ‘But we won’t lock you in. Who knows what’s going to happen?’

Bertin gave him a grateful, trusting glance and obeyed. As he was nodding off to sleep the night before, he’d began to wonder if the work suddenly taking shape in his head was really any good. He now flicked through the manuscript, shaking his head uneasily. He couldn’t judge something he’d created so recently, but his increasingly cramped handwriting at least showed that it had flowed. It had certainly surged up fully formed, and as he read it over he again felt the excitement of the previous day’s writing. A writer is lucky, he thought. He can set up shop anywhere in the world, put his feet under the table and write. His raw material is his own life: everything that hurts and makes him happy, his dissatisfaction with the world and himself, the restless feeling that there is a better, more meaningful way of life. Admittedly, he had to learn his trade and art.

Bertin stuck the work in progress in his coat pocket. He was powerfully attracted to the world outside that day. He climbed on to his plank bed and looked out of the small window, enjoying the spectacle outside as if he were watching from a theatre box with a restricted view. Fresh ammunition trucks seemed to have arrived, and the whole company was clattering up the wooden stairs to the depot, which extended as far as the road to Flabas. The orderly room was to his right; a little later some men came out of the open door engaged in debate, but unfortunately he couldn’t hear them. However, he understood what was happening. The company commander appeared first in his coat and cap, booted and spurred, followed by his batman, Herr Mikoleit, who was wearing a peaked cap as if he were an NCO and hauling a two-handled crate. Bertin banged his head against the window surround in astonishment: Graßnick was going on leave after all! The company commander was pursued by Staff Sergeant Susemihl, agitated and sweating. So, Susemihl asked, was he supposed to take over the company then? He was just an honest policeman from Thorn. He’d stuck it out there for 12 years to provide for his wife and child. And what was this? Was dapper Staff Sergeant Pohl also planning a trip? Wasn’t it Pohl, a teacher in civilian life, who had given them lectures in Serbia about a soldier’s responsibilities and pursuing duty to the utmost? And now he was doing a bunk? Bertin smelt a rat. Panje of Vranje, his monocle screwed firmly into his face, was waving his arms in the direction of Chaumont and Flabas, no doubt presenting Herr Susemihl and his few sergeants with a reassuring picture of the situation and telling them how safe the depot was. It was a clear case of rats fleeing a sinking ship.

Then Sergeant Major Pfund came out – an old regular. He’d buckled on his sabre and waxed his moustache, but in his hand he held an iron box: the cash tin containing the company’s canteen money. For nine months, the men had all been forced to contribute a couple of pennies every pay day towards supplies for the company canteen; excess profits were supposed to be paid back to the men after a certain amount of time. Sergeant Major Pfund set about distributing this money. His ruse was to go to Metz, where he was well know, buy cheap trinkets (duff knives, red-patterned hankies and ordinary lighters, as it later transpired) and pocket the rest. ‘What a fiddle,’ said Bertin to himself. ‘He’ll have got a fair bit, and no one will dare say anything, me included, although we could all do with a couple of extra Marks.’ Bertin resolved to work out later how much the orderly must’ve had in that iron box; for now he wanted to watch what was going on. (If all the men paid in just 10 Pfennigs every 10 days it came to 1,269 Marks.)

It was clearing up. Suddenly, a shaft of weak sunlight glinted off the brass sabre scabbard and Herr Graßnick’s eye glass. Herr Graßnick then made a dignified exit, for the train, small but clearly visible in the distance, was being coupled together at Moirey station from empty goods wagons and passenger cars, some with white in their windows. Bertin couldn’t discern any more details with his short-sighted eyes, which was just as well, as the white was bandages; the cars had come from Azannes and were full of wounded men. The company was to be left alone then. A thick brown cloud hung over Chaumont, which was on fire. The officers were tramping down the steps now. In a moment they’d appear on the road and pass in front of him. There they were: Acting Lieutenant Graßnick with his brown dog on a lead, Staff Sergeant Pohl with his blonde beard, Sergeant Major Pfund with his cash-box, his sabre over his coat, and Mikoleit the batman with his crate. They were joined by 20 happy ASC privates going on legitimate leave who seemed to have been waiting for them on the road. Bertin’s cell suddenly felt too small. He needed to get out, breathe the fresh air and stand in the sun for a moment. The men on guard had now calmed down. It wasn’t yet 1pm, but because men were going on leave lunch had already been served to the entire company – a festive meal of beef and haricot beans – proving that the kitchen staff could sometimes get things done on time. After lunch the guards sat in the sun with their prisoners, enjoying the faint warmth on their faces and hands. A captive balloon had gone up to the southwest – the Frogs checking the area out. The wind was blowing in from the east that day, bringing the dull clang of exploding shells and the thunder of defensive fire. Bertin decided to use the daylight to write some more. He’d been thinking and had drafted a couple of short chapters, one of which took place in the home of Kroysing’s parents, possibly in Bamberg. The home of a well-to-do official. The news arrives that the younger son has died a hero’s death. What he had to convey was their genuine pain, clouded by the inflated ideas of the time, so starkly at odds with reality. What name should he give poor Kroysing? Artistic distance and licence required that he transform his subject just as an artist would in a painting.

Back in his cell, he was puffing on a cigar, imagining he felt the warmth of the sun through the black roof, when he heard a familiar howl up above. It hurtled closer, roaring, shrieking, and shattered with a desolate crash. Bertin jumped up; it had landed in the depot. ‘How come?’ he thought. They couldn’t… a second crash, a third, then the dull roar of an explosion. One of the explosives dumps had been hit! Although Bertin could only see the street and the hollow of the valley from his window, he jumped on to the plank bed: crowds of men from the company thundered across the steps and paths. They were off. Quite right, thought Bertin. Their leaders have left, and now they’re leaving too. A fourth and fifth strike hit the depot. Now people were screaming. An unspeakably shrill howl drove him from the bed and out into the guard room. Büttner, an industrialist in civilian life, stood in the middle of the room, pale and calm. His men were yanking on their boots and screaming: ‘They’ve got us!’

The next strike crashed even nearer. ‘You’d better take your things,’ said Büttner, opening the locker. Bertin stuffed into his pockets the belongings he’d handed over two day before. While he put on his watch, the depot was emptying. Streams of grey-clad soldiers dashed into the barracks – on a cold night like that you needed a blanket. With a nod towards the open door, Büttner set his prisoner free to join the stream of fleeing men. But Bertin thanked him and declined, saying they would all be safer from shell splinters where they were. Just then Schneevoigt the medical orderly and his men, three pale Berliners and a native of Hamburg, ran out into the strike zone. It was their duty to do that – that was why they wore armbands with a red cross – but amidst the general chaos and flight it was encouraging to see men not copping out.

Huge clouds of black and white smoke billowed up from the depot; the explosives dumps were on fire. A gently sloping 12m high earthen ridge still stood between the barracks and the exploded shells. But the swathes of smoke would tell the French gunners where to aim. Standing in the doorway, Bertin was suddenly aware of two contrasting movements. Lieutenant Benndorf, the depot adjutant, was hirpling up to the orderly room with his walking stick, while Sergeant Schneevoigt, dirty and pale, was trotting down the earthen ridge followed by two of his men carrying a bulging tarpaulin between them.

‘Who’ve you got there?’ Büttner’s boyish voice soared past Bertin’s cap. Old Schneevoigt, a barber by trade, didn’t answer. He was swallowing hard, and his face was almost the same colour and as his moustache. He just shook his fist at the columns of smoke.

‘It was once little Vehse,’ said one of the stretcher bearers for him. ‘He’s gone.’

Hildebrandt the tall blacksmith had come running over in the meantime. He’d collected a few bandages from the sick room and said there were three more dead among the explosives dumps: Hein Foth, the dirtiest man in the company, and the illiterate farm labourer Wilhelm Schmidt. They’d both run right into an exploding shell. Another man by the name of Reinhold had been killed by a direct hit. Bertin started – good-natured little Otto Reinhold. ‘One of the original ones from Küstrin, if that’s who you mean,’ confirmed Hildebrandt.

A man from his own squad. And Wilhelm Schmidt and the lice-infested Foth were near neighbours of his too. No doubt he’d have been ordered out into the depot too if he hadn’t been ‘inside’. But there was no time for these deliberations now. Old Schneevoigt had found his tongue again and walked a few steps towards them. ‘Get out of here!’ he shouted. ‘There are a dozen wounded lying in the ditches by the road. Do you want to join them?’ and he trotted back into the sick bay, while another two of his men dragged over a tarpaulin, a brown one this time.

Sergeant Büttner gathered his pale lads around him. All of them were tall, but he was taller. He explained to them that the company had left, and so they were dismissed from guard duty and could leave too if they wanted. They buckled on their belts and rolled up their blankets. Bertin disappeared into his cell. While he hastily parcelled up his rations and blankets, pulled on his coat and felt in his pockets, he said his goodbyes to the slatted walls, the plank bed and the window. They’d brought him refreshment and allowed him to plunge back into an earlier existence, and he would never forget that. Now the Frogs had brought it to a premature end. In the guardroom, heavily laden men pushed towards the door. Just then another tarpaulin was carried past. Schneevoigt could be seen in the open doorway of the sick room, kneeling beside something unrecognisable and half in shadow. With an immense howl another shell crashed into the depot. Everyone ducked and pulled their heads in. Smoke billowed outside the window. Shell splinters or lumps of earth drummed against the wall. Then from the orderly room a clear voice shouted: ‘Everybody out! Firemen, fall in. Forward march to the depot. Put out those explosive dumps!’

Lieutenant Benndorf stood there, fighting with his coat. His right arm was already in the sleeve, and he pointed with his walking stick to the soaring columns of thick smoke. The men in the guardroom shrunk back the tiniest bit. They weren’t firemen, but they’d have to obey the order. Bertin in particular felt compelled to obey, though he wasn’t sure why. He was overcome by a sense of responsibility for things that had nothing to do with him, and felt an impulse to throw away his bundle of blankets and follow his officer, who would shortly disappear past the barracks into the field of fire. But what happened? The lieutenant was indeed moving, but he turned his back on the orderly room, hobbled frantically towards the road, turned at the top of the stairs and again shouted: ‘Put out the explosive dumps!’ then clattered down the steps to the road on his gammy leg. There – Bertin could hardly believe his eyes – a grey car pulled up. Colonel Stein, his red face unrecognisable against the wide back seat, was waving both his arms about like a madman, his mouth a round, shouting hole. Eventually the lieutenant flung himself on to the other seat, and before he had even slammed the door shut the car sped of towards Damvillers. Bertin stared in blank astonishment, then he slapped his thigh, burst out laughing and turned to Büttner who’d followed him outside.

‘Might as well scarper,’ he said with contempt.

‘Company to report at Gibercy!’ shouted a passing telephonist who’d just run out of the switchboard room. The next minute there was a fresh crash, this time on the earthen ridge, and shell splinters whistled over the guardroom hut. A stream of tall ASC men thundered down the steps. The remaining heroes from 1/X/20 were evacuating their depot.

^{CHAPTER FOUR} A telephone call

‘COMPANY TO REPORT at Gibercy.’ Private Bertin, in his overcoat and field cap, with his bundle under his arm, stopped halfway down the steps to the street and deliberated. He was now almost alone. There would soon be another crash behind him. He knew exactly what he was going to do. His thinking was crystal clear – he was no longer an oppressed soldier led by others. He was an educated man of 28 evaluating the situation. The village of Gibercy lay among large empty camps beyond the hills. But the road leading there crossed a broad flat hollow vulnerable to shells and to observation from the captive balloon. Where was the most secure place in the camp complex? Definitely the former mill, once a bathing station and now the field gun depot. Field gun ammunition is the most dangerous of all because it comprises cartridges and shells, and men who knew what they were doing had chosen to store it in that depot… Bertin ran. Down the stairway, along the slope of the road and the duck boards, between the grass mounds that separated the various ammunition dumps. The ammunitions expert Sergeant Schulz lived in a hut on the bank of a stream called the Theinte with two subordinates: little Strauß and stiff-legged Fannrich – just as Sergeant Knappe lived beside the siege gun ammunition in the upper park, though being a more solitary type than the lively Schulz he lived alone. The hut was empty; its occupants had fled. Never mind, thought Bertin. I’m here now: j’y suis, j’y reste. A warm stove, a camp bed and blankets, dry wood, a canteen, stores of coffee, sugar and cigars. The coffee was good enough for a family; you just had to grind it on a bit of newspaper with an empty bottle. Bertin listened uneasily to what was going on outside: dull crashing. It seemed to be following the little troop that had hurried up the hill earlier. Much better to roam round someone else’s billet with the kettle boiling. On the right was Fannrich and Strauß’s room, on the left Herr Schulz’s sanctuary, demarcated by a tarpaulin, and in the middle a little hall where a telephone sat on a small table. You could live the high life here. Nice view of the tumbling burn, afternoon sun on the windows, no men from the company, no depot commanders, nothing… They fairly skedaddled, Bertin thought, as a hiss told him the water was ready. And as he tipped the roughly ground beans into the boiling water and stirred the thick mixture with a shard of wood: they really did scarper! Be fair, he told himself, as he hung his tunic up beside his overcoat and a pleasant coffee smell mixed with the smoke from the cigar he’d pinched: be fair, man. Officer’s stripes don’t protect you from shell-fire. And Benndorf had been hit long ago, which was why he limped, and fat Stein as well, back in the days when high ups such as colonels got wounded in the field. Even Panje of Vranje had once sat bravely on his nag until the last man in the column had swung into cover. How long ago was that? Nine months? That was life behind the lines for you.

The sky had darkened in the meantime, and rain began to drum on the roof. Well, thought Bertin, that’ll put the explosives dumps out without any help from me, and then everyone will be happy. You can never have too much rain in wartime. Four dead, he thought, more than a dozen wounded, and the administrative heads are on leave and the officers have buggered off in a car – funny old world, and it certainly does make you think, though my name isn’t Pahl. They can all go to hell, as far as I’m concerned. Strauß had books, some of which Bertin had lent to him. He decided to celebrate by reading for an hour or so. He examined the bookshelf by a pile of old newspapers. He could’ve looked over his own manuscript but he wanted to steer clear of the present, and so eventually he chose The Golden Pot, magicked up by E.T.A. Hoffmann 100 years previously. It was raining outside. He savoured every mouthful of his black coffee, steeped in a timeless world of gnomes and salamanders, ghostly advisers and charming maidens, and the city of Dresden as it had never been… Then the telephone shrilled. Bertin started, torn from the waking dream Hoffmann had created. It really didn’t concern him. The three men in charge of that phone would be playing skat in a dugout somewhere on the Flabas road – God alone knew which one. But Private Bertin was at the table about to lift the receiver when the phone shrilled again.

‘No one there,’ Bertin heard the voice on the line say.

‘Hello, hello,’ he said quickly. ‘Steinbergquell field gun depot.’

‘They’re there now, Lieutenant,’ the voice said.

‘Hello, you’ve not been flattened then? We heard you were on fire.’

‘We’re fine,’ Bertin replied. ‘There was quite a bit of smoke, but we’re still here.’

‘Can we stock up with you, then?’

‘Depends on the calibre,’ Bertin replied.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ came the angry reply. ‘Have you just fallen from the moon? Which bore do you think a German field gun has?’

So the telephonists had faithfully plugged the connection before clearing off. This really was a field gun battery on the line. Now he could hear someone else chipping in, an officer. Where do I know that voice from? he wondered. Have I done something stupid? Then he gave the required information. The bombardment had caused severe damage to the heavy ammunition. The company had departed and the depot commanders had withdrawn, presumably to Damvillers.

‘Withdrawn – hmm. And how come you’re answering the telephone?’

‘Coincidence, Lieutenant,’ Bertin replied in embarrassment, unable to think of anything better on the spur of the moment. How could he have known he was speaking to the field guns? He couldn’t have. But where do I know that voice from, he wondered again.

‘A happy coincidence,’ said the other man. ‘In any case, you obviously haven’t “departed”. That shouldn’t be forgotten. We’ll be there about five, five thirty – as soon as we can. We’re going to hold on here,’ Bertin heard him shouting to his men. ‘God preserve me but one of the lads has kept his head. Tell me,’ he said, reverting to Bertin, ‘haven’t we spoken before? Aren’t you that lad with the glasses from Wild Boar gorge, who in October… what’s your name again?’

Bertin had a flash of illumination. ‘Am I speaking to Lieutenant von Roggstroh?’ he asked.

‘Ah, you see,’ said the lieutenant with satisfaction, ‘you haven’t forgotten me. But now you must tell me your name.’ Bertin told him and asked to be excused if he had done anything wrong, explaining that he really was in the field gun depot by chance and didn’t know how it operated. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ said the lieutenant. ‘You’re the last of the Mohicans, and I’m going to put you in for an Iron Cross just as surely as we were together in that dreadful howitzer emplacement on the Mort Homme. I always knew you weren’t really cut out for the ASC.’ Bertin flushed and protested nervously that the field gun depot had simply struck him as the safest place and he didn’t deserve a medal for being there. ‘Of course,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Exactly. Have you ever heard of anyone getting an Iron Cross because he deserved it? Goodbye, my young hero. See you at five or half past.’ Thinking he might now venture a question of his own, Bertin asked if the French had advanced very far. ‘They got what they needed,’ said the lieutenant evenly. ‘We’ll take a look at the damage tomorrow. See you later.’ And he hung up.

Bertin sat there for a moment, dazed, then he replaced the receiver. Had the black coffee agitated his system or was he trembling with joy? He had thought the mean spiritedness that pervaded the battalion had extinguished any spark in him. But it must simply have hidden it, for he was alight now. What would the battery have done if he had fled too? Four guns with no ammunition were about as much use as four sewing machines. They’d have had to be hauled out of their emplacements and sent back, assuming the horses could manage it, and would’ve been no use that night, the next day or perhaps forever. He had prevented that, and it hadn’t just been chance and because he wanted a comfortable billet; it was also down to clear thinking on his part. Bertin strutted round the room in grim elation. He was master of an entire ammunitions depot, of all the shrapnel, cartridges and shells, of the telephone, grassy mounds and burn, and he’d just helped hold the front. Everyone did things their own way. They’re welcome to give me the Iron Cross, he thought. The war won’t be over tomorrow. What had poor Vehse said just 24 hours before he was hauled away in that blood-soaked tarpaulin? ‘That’s your answer to the peace initiative…’ Yes, it seemed the French didn’t go a bundle on imperial pronouncements… But happily there were lieutenants who held firm, and their words carried weight. No sense hiding your light under a bushel. On 27 January, the Kaiser’s birthday, Herr Graßnick would have to call Private Bertin out of the line again, but this time he’d be rasping out a congratulatory speech. Pretty good going for a skilled craftsman from Kreuzberg to have two sons in the newspapers because they’d got the Iron Cross.

At nightfall, Sergeant Schultz opened the hut door and walked in with Privates Strauß and Fannrich to find Private Bertin cosied up by the stove, puffing on his pipe.

‘You’ve certainly made yourself at home,’ marvelled Strauß.

‘What the hell are you doing in my den?’ asked Schulz in amazement.

‘I thought it was the safest place,’ said Bertin confidently. ‘They can’t drop shells here.’

Schulz took off his coat. ‘Oh, can’t they,’ he joked. ‘My dear man, if they had raised that damned long-range gun over there, which gave us such an untimely pounding today, just a fraction higher, you and the whole kit and kaboodle would have been blown to kingdom come.’

Bertin sat down on a bunk, nonplussed. ‘Really?’ he said.

Fannrich nodded, pouring fresh water on the coffee grounds. ‘You can depend on it,’ he said.

Crestfallen, Bertin tried to defend himself by saying he’d made himself useful.

‘By making coffee,’ said Strauß.

‘By negotiating with field gunners,’ countered Bertin.

Schulz swung round to interrogate him about what had happened. ‘Thank God you kept your head,’ he said, relieved. ‘Who knows what would have happened to me. But you’ll have to report at Gibercy now. If Susemihl gives you any trouble, put him on to me.’

Bertin gave the moustachioed technician a disappointed look. He would’ve liked to stay. ‘Herr Susemihl won’t give me any trouble,’ Bertin snapped. ‘Lieutenant von Roggstroh from the Royal Guard Artillery will see to that. By the way, if he asks for me, please explain why I left.’

‘Why would he do that?’ said Schulz impatiently. ‘Did you find some rum or something?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Bertin, standing up. ‘Why, have you got some?’

‘Get a move on, man, or it’ll be dark before you’re back with your company.’

Despite Bertin’s confidence, it soon became clear that the ammunitions expert with the little twirly moustache knew the world better than he did. When he finally pitched up at Gibercy, Susemihl, who was in charge, gave him a bit of a ticking off. Bertin defended himself calmly, and his composure and the lieutenant’s name did make some impression. But the elation he’d felt as he made his way back home in the dark to the massive troop tents of the camp evaporated. Nothing in particular happened, but his elation shrivelled up to be replaced by a terrible exhaustion. Perhaps he’d expected too much, and that was why he was disappointed. Or perhaps the constant confusion within the company – the familiar traffic of countermanded orders and revoked decisions – weighed on his soul.

They buried the dead at Gibercy, with a fifth coffin added to the previous four – the salesman Dagener had died of his wounds. In the murk of the shortest day, battered by wind and rain, the column trudged over to Damvillers, received orders from the battalion issued by a sallow and angry Major Jansch, and marched back to Moirey to dismantle the Steinbergquell depot. At the depot, the men piled ammunition, planks, trench props, barbed wire and tarpaulins, all dripping with icy sludge, on to lorries and took them back to Damvillers. They stayed there for a day in draughty huts, before driving the same heavily laden lorries back to Moirey to carry out orders to set the depot back up on exactly the same spot as before. Out of the muck, into the muck, muttered the ASC men bitterly. And so it was that they spent Christmas and New Year in the same barracks they’d been chased out of with so many casualties. At Christmas, Herr Susemihl gave a speech under a tree covered in lights, stuttering on about the peace the enemy didn’t want. And then Herr Pfund distributed the Christmas presents he’d procured in Metz – blunt pocket knives, hankies with red borders, apples, nuts and a little tobacco – and the deceit radiating from his shining eyes and from the gifts themselves gave the more discerning men the creeps. And if the crown prince hadn’t given each of his brave Verdun campaigners a curved steel case filled with cigarettes or cigars, which fitted comfortably into the pocket and was enamelled in black and adorned with the donor’s portrait, it might have been a pretty miserable Christmas. But that all paled into insignificance when they returned to the half-empty barracks where the second half of the company including Bertin’s squad was now billeted. A couple of candles burned in canteen lids, and the men lay around in silence or talking quietly. Quite a number of comrades were missing, and unlike the ones who’d left before because they were reassessed for active service or had been claimed for work at home, these ones wouldn’t be heard from again. They’d been part of the men’s lives. They’d argued with them and made up again, and now little Vehse, poor Przygulla and that kindly soul Otto Reinhold lay buried in French soil and would be replaced in the New Year, this time from Metz. But they couldn’t be replaced, and their ghosts slid invisibly among their comrades and fellow skat players, evaporating only very slowly. And yet no one spoke of them, just as no one spoke of the daily routine unless something irksome or funny happened. Everything the men had experienced, and that the world had experienced during this war, slid beneath the layers of their consciousness into the deeper chambers of the mind, where sooner or later it would spit and rage. But the men needed to concentrate in order to deal with the demands placed on them each day and on the surface they showed only the usual permitted feelings and emotions, above all affection for their families. If they felt sorry for themselves or mourned their dead comrades, they did so obliquely in the general gloom. It was with such nuances of feeling that Halezinsky the gas worker looked at a picture of his wife and children with tears rolling down his Slavic face from his brown eyes. Only Lebehde the inn keeper carried on making punch cheerfully on his own from rum, tea and sugar, and its spicy aroma soon filled the room.

‘It’s all very sad,’ he said to Bertin, ‘but what can you do? We were obviously meant to smoke Willy the Eldest’s cigarettes.’ And he sat down on the bunk next to where Bertin was lying, pulled out the iron box inscribed on the back with ‘Fifth Army, Christmas 1916’, awarded himself a cigarette and adeptly removed the portrait of the crown prince from its embossed setting with his new pocket knife. It was easily done. ‘It looks better without it,’ he said. ‘Where all is love, Don Carlos cannot hate,’ he added. He didn’t know where the lines were from, but Bertin recognised them as Schiller’s Don Carlos. ‘Listen to the peace and goodwill outside,’ he supplied.

Outside the guns were thundering. It was Christmas night, an emotional time for the Germans, but they thought they’d best dilute such indulgent emotions with a dose of virile brutality. The German guns distributed steel Christmas presents, and the French replied in kind. Peace on Earth, sang the gospel. War on Earth, thundered reality. And so it went on as the year lurched to a close. Under beetle-brow heavens the wind blew ever colder, and weather pundits predicted frosts from the east, heavy cloud and starless nights. When Private Bertin took his evening stroll before bedtime and looked up at the sky with his myopic eyes, he could find no hope of an early peace reflected there no matter how hard he tried. In a couple of days they’d be writing 1917. The war was approaching its fourth year. He’d heard nothing further from Kroysing or about his Iron Cross from Lieutenant von Roggstroh – only depressing news from his wife and parents. There was no pleasure in living any more or in being a soldier. It was just a question of getting through, of curling up into a small, ugly ball in the hope of going unnoticed. Shoulders bent, he made his way back to the refuge of his comrades. Human warmth still came free.

^{CHAPTER FIVE} Professor Mertens resigns

A SNOWLESS NEW YEAR’S EVE afternoon, short and bleak, weighed on the streets of Montmédy. The French prepared for the celebrations and did their shopping furtively and without pleasure, making the bustle in the officers’ messes and soldiers’ billets seem all the more cheerful. Candles would burn once more on the Christmas trees from the Argonne, a great deal of diluted alcohol would be served and men would sit round tables singing stirring, sentimental songs. The year 1916 must be brought to a close befitting the heroic status it was sure to enjoy in the annals of the German nation.

That’s what was going through Sergeant Porisch’s mind, as he stood in his braided Litevka looking down with almost maternal concern on the gaunt, lined face of his superior. The judge advocate lay on the sofa with a blanket pulled up round his chin, and as Porisch took his leave of him with a file of papers under his arm, he said: ‘Can I help you with anything else, Judge?’

‘Yes, Porisch, you can. Please give my excuses for tonight to the officers’ mess. I’d just be in the way. And I’d be grateful if the doctor, Herr Koschmieder, would look in on me again tomorrow about noon after everyone has slept it off.’

Porisch nodded, satisfied. He almost congratulated his superior on his sensible behaviour. Instead he tapped the orange folder on the table. ‘Should I take this away with me?’

‘Leave it there, Porisch. I may have another look. Will there be much gunfire at midnight?’

Porisch blew out his cheeks. ‘The inspector general has expressly forbidden it, because it’s a waste of ammunition, but if I know the Bavarians they’ll fire a few blank cartridges. After all, it’s their custom, and you can’t change people with an order.’

Mertens closed his eyes in silent agreement, then he looked up at his subordinate, pulled his arm out from under the blanket and gave him his hand. ‘Quite right, Porisch. People don’t change or if they do it’s so slow the likes of us can’t wait that long. In any case, thank you for your help and I wish you as good a New Year as possible under the circumstances.’

Porisch thanked him, feeling almost moved, returned his good wishes and left. Afterwards, he’d maintain he could still feel Mertens’ small-boned scholarly hand in his great mitt years later.

As the door clicked shut behind Porisch, Mertens breathed a sigh of relief and his dark-ringed eyes lit up for a moment. Porisch was a decent man who meant well, but he was a human being, and Professor Mertens had had enough of that species. That particular animal’s flat, flesh-coloured face with its holes leading behind the mask to the inside gave him the creeps: the mouth cavity, the nose vents, the wedge-shaped depths from which the eyes stared – to say nothing of the ears, receivers of noise but never of understanding. It was a wretched thing when a man had so completely lost respect for his own species that he no longer saw any point in life – his own or other people’s. What was he to do then?

A new year was beginning – what a gruesome prospect. He’d seen in 1914 and 1915 in an orderly manner with his Landwehr company in northern Poland, surrounded by sparkling snow, full of hope for an early peace, believing in a vastly improved post-war Europe. The following year he’d been home on leave, and there had been much solemn debate over punch and pancakes in the quiet, candlelit home of Herr Stahr, a king’s counsel and his father’s last surviving boyhood friend. The house had already experienced death, as the youngest son had just been killed. And the composure with which the family bore their pain, the dignity they drew from their terrible loss, afforded a glimpse of the enormous obligation the heroic deaths of this generation of young men would place on those left behind. ‘So many noble dead dug into the foundations of this new Reich,’ said the tipsy, white-haired old man as the New Year bells rang out from the cathedral, the Memorial church, St Matthew’s and St Ludwig’s – all the churches of western Berlin. ‘They’ll have a job proving themselves worthy of it.’ And they drank to the freer, less prejudiced Germany they were sure would be the reward for the terrible sacrifices the nation had made. And Professor Mertens had believed it all.

He shivered and pulled his father’s long-fringed travel rug back up under his chin. The deep green hues of the soft Scottish wool merged with the sleepy cosiness of the twilit room. He no longer had beliefs or hopes. During the past year, all his illusions had been shattered; the whole beautiful sham, so wonderfully embellished by poets and so pitilessly blasted by the philosopher Schopenhauer, to reveal the agonised world underneath, was gone. If Schopenhauer himself, son of a Danzig salesman, hadn’t been such a nagging old woman, filled with unbridled hate of everything he was not, he could have been a great source of comfort. As it was, he was no use to anyone; his gifts sparkled and faded into the night like the fireworks the Bavarians lit on New Year’s Eve, and his wonderful phrases left nothing behind but emptiness and the desolate night.

Mertens sat up. His eyes, seeking the light switch, glided over the orange folder, a splash of light on the black table. His eyelids twitched, and there was an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He sank back. It was that business there that had started it all. The pathetic little case of Sergeant Kroysing had been the catalyst, a minor catalyst but enough for someone like Mertens, who perhaps already harboured concerns. But now it wasn’t about individual cases. Man’s whole dubious existence stood ready to be sentenced before the spiritual jury of a man who, guided by his father, had spent his first four decades searching for truth and justice. Things had become so bad that he couldn’t hear certain words without coughing and feeling sick, above all the German word for nation: Volk. If you said the word Volk over and over to yourself – Volk, Volk, follow, follow, follow – you ended up with nothing but herds following. You should follow, you must follow, and never mind whom. Aristotle had known that, and Plato had known it even better. People were zoon politikon, political animals: what else could that definition mean but that they were condemned forever to wretched dependency? Except that for the two Greeks and their scholars in Europe this fact of nature laid a great moral imperative upon individuals and intellectuals to improve this deplorable state of affairs, to create balance through wisdom and insight, to convert and reform humanity through moral duty and kindness, patience and self-control. Churches and intellectuals worldwide had ceaselessly tried to fulfil this duty since the renaissance of reason in the Italy of Lorenzo the Magnificent, triggering religions, reformations, revolutions – with the result that in this war the pinnacle of our development had become blindingly clear. The spirit of Europe was prancing about in uniforms, and there were only nations, peoples, Völker, standing there in the scarlet, black and white of their sacred egomanias, and civilisation served at best as a technology for killing, a means of whitewashing, as a phrase to justify the conquering zeal that had rendered the world too small for Alexander the Great. At least the Romans had paid for their conquests with a paltry 500 years of peace and a world civilisation. How would they pay? With goods and lies.

Carl Georg Mertens’ heart felt like a soft clump hanging in his chest. He threw the blanket back and, shivering slightly, walked through his rooms, which had been put at his disposal by headquarters after expelling the owner. How long had this house been here? More than 100 years for sure. When it was new the names of Goethe, Beethoven and Hegel had shone over Germany, and Europe stood in the shadow of Napoleon I, who had at least atoned for the devastation caused by his campaigns through comprehensive political and legal reforms. Now, 100 years later, conquests brought nothing but moral disintegration, obliteration of all individual values, an ardent wearing down of the moral culture that had revived since the Thirty Years’ War. He wondered what his father would have made of this war, of its unanimous glorification by Germany’s intellectuals – a war they knew nothing about but that they were all resolved to whitewash and falsify, to distort until it fitted with their view of the world. Lawyers and theologians, philosophers and doctors, economists and history teachers, and above all poets, thinkers and writers, spread deceit among the people with every word they said and wrote in the newspapers. They rushed to confirm that which was not and disputed that which was, were naïve and ignorant, putrid with self-assurance, and didn’t make the slightest attempt to establish the facts before giving the benefit of their views.

Professor Mertens was a short-sighted man but he could see well in the dark. He went to his wardrobe and put on a warm dressing gown and slippers, then he wandered through the three rooms that until now had been his billet, opening and closing drawers. He searched his desk for a particular object, eventually found it and put it to one side, looked in the bedroom for things he might need and laid them out. There was no point in maintaining illusions in the last hours of a year when his eyes had been opened, even with regard to his dearest and most firmly held values, for example about his father. Would the venerable Gotthold Mertens, descendant of protestant pastors and Mecklenburg officials, have rejected the illusions established by the Fatherland to conceal and justify all the horrors brought by its lust to conquer? Of course not. Let’s not kid ourselves. At the outbreak of war, the great man would have rallied the young men and sent them into battle. Throughout the first year of the war, operating from a deep sense of justice, he would have championed Germany’s actions as a necessary mission. In the second year, he would have invoked his country’s destiny, called for stout hearts and endurance in the face of a holy necessity, certain that he was fulfilling his duty, dealing with reality and promoting the survival of the nation. And if his son, who now knew how things stood, had then set out what he knew, what was the best Gotthold Mertens might have done? Said nothing in public and approached his former pupil the Imperial Chancellor in private. Then he would have given up in the face of the Army Command, taken comfort from past glories and dark allusions to the spirit of European legal history, whose aim was to tame the passions, establish inalienable civil rights, provide peaceful citizens with security, improve public morals, and promote intellectual enlightenment and the cultural heritage that alone made life worth living. But he, his son, no longer believed in all these wonderful claims and illusions. A sapper lieutenant had opened his eyes. During the past half year, he’d learnt to look more closely, and his suspicions had grown. And now he knew more: the gaps had been filled in by that same sapper lieutenant and by his murdered brother in the shape of two brief reports.

When he looked back on that whole period, he realised that, oddly enough, his art books had helped to sharpen his sense of the authentic. Painters’ creations don’t lie. Their absolute devotion to what is real, their powerful desire to reveal form, in the landscape as much as in figures, had simply made him more sensitive to the embellishments, calculated lies and biased quarter truths that people made do with day after day, month after month, in politics as in the army bulletins. But he could no longer make do with that. Faced with the incredible he had begun to investigate. And once his eyes had been ripped open he couldn’t shut them again. Until he reached a point where it became blindingly clear to him that he couldn’t go on. Until his disgust with the whole business knocked him over – literally. His life did not have many roots. He had no interest in women or the usual male enjoyments and distractions. His father had both replaced such pleasures for him and devalued them. He had loved travelling, but after the destruction of this war there wouldn’t be many places a German could go without feeling ashamed. He had thought himself to be in the service of the intellect and truth but had seen them abused and defiled. Only music remained to him, and that tragic existential force was no longer enough to keep him going. Beyond the soft lit walls of the concert hall, a world of barbarism began; beneath the alluring strains of 50 violins and cellos echoed the groans of the exiled, the slain and the dispossessed, and he would never again be able to look at a conductor’s raised baton without thinking of all the compliant minds that studiously marched in time with the lies fed to the public, all those who heard the beat and followed. Followed, followed, Volk, follow, follow.

When Sergeant Kroysing’s case first came before him, he was initially surprised, then scandalised. He wasn’t deterred by its difficulties. He believed amends could be made; it would be difficult, but not impossible. For about a fortnight now, he’d known it wouldn’t be possible. The letters forwarded by the sapper lieutenant hadn’t given him the necessary leverage, and then he vanished after the fall of Douaumont. His unit provisionally reported him missing, as the fort’s garrison had been blown to bits in October. Subsequent weeks of searching ended hopefully: Lieutenant Kroysing was alive. There had been a confirmed sighting in a dugout in the Pepper ridge lines. The sapper commander had received Kroysing’s report and knew where he was. Until a fortnight previously when those German lines also fell in the fresh French attack. Since then there had been no sign of him. The last news of him had come from one of his NCOs, who had seen him disappearing into an ice-covered shell hole during a French bombardment. Lieutenant Kroysing was again missing, but this time the tone was hopeless. Hard to see how he could have reached safety in an area under continual French machine-gun fire. No, the Kroysing brothers were dead, and justice was unattainable even for an individual within his own nation. What hope was there then among nations? None. ‘None,’ said Judge Advocate Mertens under his breath in the darkening room, and he heard the strings of his piano vibrate slightly with the echo of that terrible word.

Yes, C.G. Mertens had grown ears. He no longer believed people’s claims or their denials. They did not give the complete picture. No one cares to admit that a loved one’s case is hopeless – not metaphorically but literally. And this wasn’t about a beloved person but about the prerequisite for all that one loved: the homeland, the land of one’s birth, the Fatherland, Germany.

This clean-shaven man, with his scholarly head and fine gold-rimmed spectacles, shivered. Headquarters had installed an ugly but efficient little coal stove in the black and white stone fireplace, the same sort as currently heated many a German home. Mertens pulled his armchair nearer to the reddish glow flickering through the vents in the nickel-plated door, sat down and warmed his splayed hands. He relaxed back into the low padded chair. Meaningless scraps of verse ran through his mind from poets who were still alive or whose work has been much discussed when, as a young student, he began to suck up the joys of knowledge and intellectual life: ‘…it will not be long/Till neither moon nor stars/But only black night stands above us in the sky… The crows are cawing/And flapping homewards towards the town/The snow is near at hand / Happy is he that has a home still… We listen gratefully to the rustle of the wind/Gleams of sunlight flicker through the leaves/And we look up and listen as one by one/The ripe fruits patter to the ground…’

He didn’t have a home any more. Why kid himself? He could have chosen another day to resign once and for all. But now was as good a time as any. No one would disturb him until midday tomorrow. And if the officers went on the lash, as they usually did, probably not then either. Koschmieder, the doctor, was fond of saying that a man who really needs a doctor will send for him two or even three times. As there was no need to worry about medical bills behind the lines, officers became ill just to pass the time. He’d have time to consider his options and reach a decision.

The Kroysing case had opened his eyes. Then from somewhere or other he’d heard a report – disputed and denied – that the Germans had also committed arson and murder when they invaded defenceless little Luxembourg, which had almost been an ally. This news had awakened the historian in C.G. Merten, who doesn’t believe any statement until he has checked his sources. Luxembourg was close by and he had the use of an official car. He’d spent many Sundays and weekdays in the areas of Luxembourg where the Germans had broken through, first in uniform and then in civilian clothes. At first he only saw ruins and rubble, which could have been caused by military action. But he began to find the iron silence of the local mayors and residents disturbing. They obviously thought he was a spy. But he found the information he sought among the crude ironwork crosses in the churchyard, adorned with offensively ugly porcelain medallions of the departed created from photographs. A great many of these worthless memorials were from August and September 1914… In Arlon he had finally met a reasonably friendly American professor, who was travelling through the ravaged area, escorted by an officer, as a delegate of the American Red Cross. His job was to collect information to counteract the incredibly skilful horror stories with which Reuters and the British press were bombarding right-thinking American citizens, in particular American Jews who were fond of Germany. It took Professor Mertens four hours, from 9pm until 1am, to convince Professor Mac Corvin that unlike other German scholars he’d remained loyal to the truth. Then Professor Corvin opened his heart. In Luxembourg alone over 1,350 houses had been burnt to the ground and at least 800 people shot. In Belgium and northern France, the same methods had brought much worse results. The newspaper correspondents might have exaggerated certain details, but the reports were basically true.

Still in deep shock from this, Professor Mertens then had to deal with the case of Corporal Himmke from the Montmédy field bakery, which seemed to confirm his worst fears. While drunk, the man had boasted about his heroic conduct during the battle of the Marne when the village of Sommeilles was burnt down. He and two comrades had burnt six people alive, a grandmother, mother and four grandchildren, who had taken refuge in the cellar of their house. In his naïvety, this blabbermouth had thought it would help if he could prove that what he’d said was true and call witnesses to show that the men had been ordered to burn the village in terms that put little value on the lives of the peasants and their womenfolk. Judge Advocate Mertens saw it that way too and conducted the investigation with a certain hidden fervour. But the officers from Himmke’s unit who were to attend the court martial saw things quite differently, and the communications inspectorate, as the highest authority, backed them up. The man wasn’t to be punished because he’d committed a crime, though they did condemn his crime, but because he’d boasted about it, with the result that the unsavoury matter became widely known, bringing Germany’s conduct of the war into disrepute.

‘We all know that all kinds of unpleasant things went on,’ said one officer privately, ‘but that that bastard should talk about it – he definitely deserves a good thumping for that.’ And a couple of days later when Himmke was collecting the rest of his things from the bakery at nightfall, he was taken from his Landsturm escort by some unknown cavalrymen, and the following day he appeared in the Montmédy garrison hospital having been beaten to a pulp. What was that? It was war. From the point of view of legal history – and at this Mertens, who was warmer now, smiled to himself – there were two strands to justice: inviolate legal certainty, which came from outside, and the laws of revenge and retribution, based on the best interests of a given fighting unit or group. The two were cunningly interwoven such that to the outside world a façade of European civilisation was formally maintained, while behind it raged the impulses and passions that the process of civilisation was intended to control. The Bible and the human conscience demanded one sort of justice. Several other sorts were permitted by contemporary professors and current conditions. Elements of legal practice that countries had surreptitiously allowed before 1914, but had been ashamed of and disclaimed, now shamelessly reigned, though they were still disclaimed, and there seemed to be no restraining power to punish the abuses and put a stop to them. There was gruesome evidence of this in the story of the Belgian deportations, which had upset the European public in recent months, and Judge Advocate Mertens with them, in the punishment camp in Montmédy citadel, the Kroysing case, the submarine war – everything. Hundreds of thousands of civilians arbitrarily removed to Germany to provide slave labour for the law and peace breaker. Hopeless protests from neutral states against these abductions, conducted in the style of Arab slave traders or African rulers, designed to benefit German industrialists and army units short of men. Dark rumours about hundreds of deaths caused by shell fire, malnutrition and disease in the concentration camps. Was that commendable? How could you square that with German culture, with the polished performances of classical dramas put on in the theatres of Berlin, Dresden and Munich?

Well, you could square anything, it seemed. Fur coats and no knickers, his Auntie Lottchen used to say when she saw her little nephew’s neat desk, then pulled out his messy desk drawer. The punishment camp in the citadel had been set up in retaliation for the abuse of German prisoners of war that certain correspondents were supposed to have observed in France and as a way of applying counter pressure. The French government had denied the reports, and the German military administration had believed the reports blindly and ordered one of the courtyards in Montmédy citadel, which was about three-quarters the height of a man, to be covered over with barbed wire and used for French prisoners. They had to bend over double to move about. It was unwatchable.

Mertens, who as a judge advocate was not without influence, had tried to have the camp closed down, but in vain. First, he was told, the French must learn how to treat Germans properly. The idea that information should be checked had entirely disappeared. When he asked if there was any proof, they just shook their heads. With his Moltke-like face, he was seen as an old traditionalist who was obviously overworked and had better grab some leave. No worries, he was going to grab some— the only question was how. The world exuded horror and could only become more horrific, because it no longer contained any cleansing, atoning force: no church, no prophets, no reflection or repentance – and no notion that such things were needed. The world was inordinately proud of its own existence, and it would remain so in peacetime, if peace ever came. He, Mertens, had to go. He was a stain on this world that was so gloriously in agreement with itself. There was a level of shame that was deadly, because it didn’t come from one event or action, but from the very source of one’s existence: the era, the nation, the race – call it what you will. Plenty of people would pass from life to death in cities large and small this New Year’s Eve in the normal course of things – why not him too? There was no shame in standing and falling for the civilisation you loved, silently and with no fuss. He just wasn’t sure how to do it.

He stood up, feeling better now. He was a man who needed clarity. He lit the shaded lamps, the candles on the piano and the night light. He drank a glass of the French liqueur he kept for visitors, then a second. It tasted good. He collected together the things he’d laid out earlier. He took his matt black service revolver, a modern pistol, from his open desk drawer and placed it on a silver platter beside the poisonous sleeping pills he’d gradually accumulated. In Germany, you could only get them with a doctor’s prescription. Citizens had more freedom in France, even when it came to death. As a Prussian officer, it was his duty to choose the weapon. If he was going to die, he should do it properly. But as an intellectual man, averse to violence and destruction, he preferred poison. As his father’s son, he had paid his father far too much regard while he was alive, silently conforming to his wishes. Should he pay him regard one last time and do as convention demanded? Or should he perform this last of all human actions as he saw fit? To ask the question was to answer it. If he had paid his father less regard, been less the well-behaved son, been less sensitive to the rough and tumble of life, had engaged with the world as vigorously as many of his boyhood friends had done, then who knew what his life might have been like and if he would now be facing the silence of eternal rest. Great was Diana of the Ephesians and Cybele the Great Mother, but great too was the consolation provided by music, the mysterious source of existence that was expressed both in the remarkable ratios of planetary orbits and in the simple metrics and proportions of harmonies, through which the unknown could be measured. Vibration and gradation were all. Physicists said everything could be reduced to movements in the unknown ether, in its force fields, which themselves could transform masses and solids into pulsating, substanceless and therefore spiritual matter. Then why not into something akin to music? Why not into music itself? Wasn’t there something in those remarkable sequences of resonant air, vibrating strings and complex interrelationships that went beyond noise and air? Didn’t we see behind the secrets of advanced mathematics when we lost ourselves in music? Physics had a great future, he sensed, though he understood little of it. The physicist Einstein, raised in Switzerland but whom he’d known in Berlin, had changed our world view, freeing it from the physical and introducing with his spiritual concepts a new way of thinking, akin to that of Husserl in Göttingen. And he loved music. Perhaps music and the solace it provided led us to an existence more real than our earthly existence of flesh and nerves, making us aware, through the physical instrument of the ear, of a wider universe, the other stars and better worlds that Shakespeare, pointing to the night sky, had described as ‘patines of bright gold’ that move ‘like an angel sings’. Be that as it may, he knew how he was going to move: while making music. He would put a sleeping draught on the piano and drink it when he felt like it. It would be a sort of deathly refreshment, and then he would pass into a world of unknown consonances and harmonies, through the portal of those he loved the most, because they were dark and ambivalent, but also modern and glorious: Brahms’ quartet in A minor.

The piano they’d put in the house for him came from Paris. It was old and some notes were a little tinny but on the whole the sound was soft and warm. He made his drink with hot water from a vacuum flask, stirring it slowly as he thought about his nephew, to whom he’d bequeathed most of his worldly goods, and about the humble library in a small university at the foot of a little visited range of hills where he’d spent some happy months, which was about to become an important seat of learning for legal history and the development of legal theory through the priceless bequest of the Mertens library. A lot of other things went through his mind too, for example that with a little more knowledge and skill he could have rigged up the stove to give off carbon monoxide, removing any need for action on his part. Next time, he smiled. Then he opened the piano score for the Brahms quartet and began to play. The music echoed softly in the quiet house and out through its rustic windows, and a passer-by occasionally looked up or stopped for a moment before the damp, icy weather drove them on.

Mertens’ fingers flew over the keys, a blissful smile lit his face and he moved his head, his whole body, in time to the rhythms of the overture. His heart filled with inexpressible joy. The man who had brought these sounds into being, before they were inked on the page, was a stout, long-haired cigar smoker with a beard and a snub nose, but an angel had clearly possessed him – for this to have sounded within him, his soul must have been lovelier than Rembrandt’s or Grünewald’s most splendid creations. It was indescribable, other-worldly, the highest joy, a revelation scribbled down for 16 strings of gut stretched on a hollow wooden frame – a dance of blessed spirits performed by 10 fingers that soon would hang rigid and numb. But for now they played. All the sweetness of a spring breeze rippling over a meadow of flowers was there in those notes, as well as the dark, putrid source from which the flowers, like the soul, sprang. This music was the world all over again, but better, flawless, free from the terrible savage urges of our animal nature, which smother everything that is light and pure. How good it felt to bring it to an end, to leave and go through the unknown portal into the unknown land on the wings of the only joy that had never let him down. He drank from his glass, to which he’d added a sweet liqueur, and began the second movement. The deep solemnity of farewell… his fingers slid lightly over the keys, his ear caught every note, his mouth was set and grave. The earth curved away from him; all the people and trees rose up from a mountaintop, but he didn’t see them. Swaddled in the swirling atmosphere, he saw himself on the edge of space, which began above his head and stretched unbroken to the planets. A musician sensed such things. Writers, too, had a sense for what was behind their backs, above their heads and beneath their feet. Had he ever heard as clearly as today? And then the master, in the midst of his wonderful art, bowed before the genius of a young Austrian named Franz Schubert, quoting one of his songs entitled ‘Numbness’: ‘I search the snow in vain/For the trace of her steps…’ Which trace of which steps did a man seek when, the numbness finally over, he softly opened that last of all doors and set upon a new path, leading to new meadows and new towns built of spiritual materials by unknown residents, of gratitude, service and kindness, of valiant solitude, genial companionship and the joy of giving – everything that was great and noble in the human soul and that might just as well, or even better, exist within a Negro savage as within the emperor Napoleon or the philosopher Nietzsche? It felt good to be tired, tired of life and death, tired of being and not being, tired of what lay above and what lay below, tired of colour and the absence of colour… The opening of the minuet required a certain effort from the player, but then a threshold was crossed and the dance of the ghost-lit sylphs was consummated. It didn’t matter if the player’s fingers obeyed him in the allegro. The meaning was clear before the notes were struck, before the opening and progression. But it seemed only natural that Maestro Brahms, pot-bellied with a cigar butt in the corner of his mouth, should come to the aid of his pupil and passionate admirer C.G. Mertens, take a seat at the piano in his black frock coat and apply his soft hands to playing his own music as it was meant to be played, while Mertens rested for a moment. Was it any different from Socrates sitting and drinking with his friends? A solemn sweetness surrounded Mertens’ heart. The spirits of the strings danced a silver, moonlit minuet, caressed by a night breeze, on a hilltop, scented by seaside pines. Foothills and coves swayed before him… ‘and their heads began to sink onto the upholstery/a young man came – I can remember…’ He walked, grave and lovely, from behind the gathered bedroom curtain supported by two slender, flute-playing women, and Maestro Brahms looked at him questioningly and said in Latin: ‘You have loved justice and hated iniquity and so…’ What does he mean? thought Mertens in alarm. I’m not dying in exile! No one could fall asleep more blissfully than I am doing in this armchair.