Outside Verdun

^{CHAPTER ONE} Pelican

THE EARTH WAS a stone disc under a sky of ice.

Winter had bitten across the whole continent and now held people and objects in its pitiless grip. In Potsdam, for example, where Frau Bertin’s parents were able to heat two rooms in their villa, the thermometer had registered 34 degrees below zero one night. But that was little help to their son-in-law. In France, particularly in the Meuse hills, the cold was less extreme: 17 degrees below, but it was still plenty. Since the beginning of January, the company’s gods and demigods had all returned from leave and been rather depressed by the reception they’d received from various quarters and by the changes that had taken place. Having already been dismantled and reinstated once, the depot was now dismantled again, this time for good. It was relocated to Mureaux Ferme wood, a dense, undamaged woodland behind a hill, which meant a new railway line was required to connect this sheltered spot to Romagne station. By the time that would have been done, the French airmen would long since have spotted, photographed and reported the clearings in the wood with predictable consequences, so that the whole facility would have to be moved again – chop, chop – this time to the gorges near the village of Etraye, but that was still some way off; work first began on the standard-gauge railway.

Under Sergeant Schwerdtlein’s reliable direction, a construction squad of heavy labourers was transferred from Romagne to work opposite the Mureaux Ferme men. He lived in a stone house and didn’t see the company on weekdays or on Sundays. At daybreak, in a heavy frost, the ASC men loaded one lorry with the heavy 6m full-size rails, another with oak sleepers and a third with loose chippings, before climbing on top of the cargo to travel to their place of work. The lorries were then unloaded – the heavy rails dug into the men’s collarbones – the ground levelled, the sleepers laid and the rails set in place. The screwing in place of the ‘joints’ with fishplates and nuts was the job of the Württemberg sappers, Landsturm men who had come from Damvillers, and they performed this duty with sober exasperation. For the greater part of the day, they all helped the Russians, who were preparing the track. The Russians? Absolutely. Russian prisoners, over 70 men in all, had been attached to the ASC men, and no one knew where they were billeted. Gaunt men in earthen coloured coats, patient and quick on the uptake, they were guarded by men from the Prussian Landsturm, if possible ones with a smattering of a Slavic language. And did we already say that Private Bertin was part of the Schwerdtlein working party too? As it was not a congenial working party, it’s hardly worth mentioning. However, there he was, more patient than ever, apathetic even, no longer hoping for an Iron Cross, but with the demeanour of a man who has escaped death twice in a row. He’d spent five days in the Karde working party, which was in charge of a small testing station in the cartridge tent for shells damaged in the bombardment. On the sixth day, he was sent to Romagne in the morning, and at midday one of the shells burst, killing his bed neighbour, Biedenkapp, a farmhand from Upper Hesse and father of three. And only two days later, an aeroplane had dropped its load on Steinbergquell depot, and although it only destroyed the officers’ latrines, the barrage of shell splinters perforated the outer wall of barracks 2 at the narrow end where only Private Bertin ever slept. Such coincidences made a man think and promoted patience, especially as rumour had it that the same aeroplane had visited Montmédy as well and taken out a high-ranking military official – or possibly several. Happy, then, was the man who could sleep safely in Romagne at night and warm himself up working with a pickaxe during the day. The frozen clay was as hard as marble and could only be broken into small fragments the size of mussel shells. In this terrible cold, the men sometimes warmed themselves by a fire, which the weakest of the Russians were allowed to tend. An undamaged copse of deciduous trees stood outlined against the sky. The new railway line’s course was marked by felled trees, blown-up roots and a levelled ridge. By the time the men had removed 10cm of frozen crust and reached the softer clay underneath, the sun would be setting. In the night, the earth froze again to a depth of 10cm, and the next day the game restarted.

But the worst job of all, feared by everyone, was unloading the loose chippings. The men stood on the trucks, almost unable to feel their feet because of the cold, ramming a broad shovel into the recalcitrant stones and then throwing them with a wide swing into the new stretches of track. Whoever was assigned to beating them flat with a mattock was lucky, because he could move and get his circulation going. No more than three men could fit on to one truck at once without getting in each other’s way.

That day Privates Lebehde, Pahl and Bertin were unloading loose chippings. Lebehde was strong enough to wield the heaving shovel without overstraining himself, but Pahl and Bertin were in agony. They had taken off their coats, canvas jackets, tunics and sweaters, and were sweating and freezing at the same time in their flannel shirts. They shovelled on in grim silence. They were friends, and Karl Lebehde wouldn’t have turned his sharp tongue on the two weaker ones if they had left the bulk of the work to him. But precisely for that reason, decency demanded they not give up. The metallic twang of the shovel and the rattling of the stones was interrupted by shouts of encouragement and cursing. Thus a whole day would pass, from sunrise to sunset, during which the men hardly thought about the task in hand. They thought instead about the unconstrained U-boat war, which was inevitable, and the declaration of war from America that would follow it, which Bertin stupidly misjudged in line with the views imposed on the newspapers by German Army Command. The three men thought about all sorts of special plans, wishes and ideas. Some of their wishes were strange. For example, Private Bertin would have been very shocked if he had realised how seriously his comrade Pahl was considering sacrificing one little bit of his fragile body in order to get the rest home safely. That was why Pahl and Lebehde had not let him in on the secret. Although they thought he was a decent man, they considered him to be a loose canon – and weak, weak. He’d recently bought a tin of fat substitute from some crooked big shot in the kitchen staff and now quietly shovelled it down without offering any to his comrades. He hadn’t been like that before, and they’d have to rub his nose in it at some point. But, as Karl Lebehde pointed out, everyone was in dire straits and men even stole food parcels from each other within the squad, so there was no point in getting too moralistic. Pahl took a dimmer view of Bertin’s conduct, because he had to overcome his disappointment. Fat substitute was a good thing, but solidarity was a better one; Bertin had taken to eating his evening meal on his bunk and no longer showed the same comradely attitude as before. Well, that would change too. As a starter punishment, they told him that he’d been overlooked for the task of caring for a certain letter, which Sergeant Süßmann, now missing, had given to Comrade Lebehde in December. Instead of getting upset or being offended, Bertin had calmly asked if the thing had been duly forwarded. He seemed not to care about things that he would have cared about three months previously. Yes, life was hard. It was no jolly jig with pancakes and New Year’s Eve punch. Pride, sensitivity and honour all got moth-eaten. The fur on the jacket of high ideals and good intentions wore thin, leaving nothing but a scabby rabbit pelt, blue and bald.

Private Bertin really was in a bad way and every day it got worse. The back-breaking work in icy conditions had used up his last reserves of strength, and the occasional pleasant interlude, of which there were some, didn’t seem to help.

One evening, when he was already dozing on his bed and the rest of Schwertlein’s squad were doing their mending and playing cards, a stout man with glasses, a flat nose and bulging eyes marched into the barracks, bringing a gust of cold air behind him. He looked around in the bright carbide light, taking in the iron stove, the long pipe with drying laundry and the bare windows, which the men had labouriously covered with newspaper to keep out the wind and cold, and wheezed out that he was looking for a certain private named Bertin who was a trainee lawyer and had obviously come to the wrong place. Nearly all of the men had stood up when he came in, as in his fur coat he looked like an officer come to carry out an inspection. But Sergeant Porisch waved this aside and said there was no need for any fuss. He saluted Sergeant Schwerdtlein, put a packet of cigarettes on the table and had everyone won over.

In the meantime, Bertin pulled himself up, looked at the stranger with sleepy eyes and said he was the man he was looking for. At that, Sergeant Porisch explained that although he was from the court martial in Montmédy, he wasn’t there to cause Bertin any trouble, but simply wanted some information for a current case. And as the main purpose of his journey was connected with a secondary purpose, he asked Bertin if he would kindly put his boots back on and accompany him to the station, where a friend of his, also a Berliner, was on duty. At the words ‘Montmédy court martial’ Bertin had brought his feet to the floor and said: ‘Aha.’ Suddenly, he was moving more confidently and within a minute he was standing at the door ready to go.

‘Let’s get one down us,’ wheezed Sergeant Porisch, making a drinking motion with his fist.

‘Just don’t send him back plastered,’ said Sergeant Schwerdtlein. ‘Work starts again tomorrow morning at 6am sharp,’ and the other men sniggered maliciously.

They walked carefully down the slippery, dimly lit staircase. The icy streets lay deserted in a vicious easterly wind. ‘Let’s get into the warm,’ groaned Porisch. ‘These thin shoes of mine are not suitable for polar expeditions.’

Bertin, who had completely revived in the biting night wind, laughed a little: the man was wearing nicely cut civilian shoes of fine leather. ‘Where are you actually taking me off to?’ he asked as they walked.

‘To Fürth, an old friend of mine from university,’ panted Porisch, breathing heavily through his flat nose. ‘But we’d better keep our gobs shut or we’ll freeze our throats off.’

Bertin knew Sergeant Fürth slightly, and had always taken him for a dislikeable big mouth. There were plenty of wisecracking know-alls from the city in the army, but in his own billet Sergeant Fürth made a much less offensive impression than he did outside.

He used the informal du with Sergeant Porisch and shook Bertin’s hand as warmly as if they were old drinking buddies. Two fine scars ran across his right cheek, one straight and one jagged – tiercé and quarté, thought Bertin, surprised that he hadn’t forgotten these student fencing terms from his school days. In any case, they fitted with the way Fürth had done out his billet. A huge sofa of yellowish wood upholstered in tobacco brown wool occupied the back wall. Above it Fürth had hung a sort of coat of arms painted in red, white and black diagonal stripes with ornate writing in the centre that conveyed the mysterious message: ‘To A.J.B. the banner!’ Beneath it an embroidered student cap hung from a nail, and beneath that were two crossed sabres of French origin with coloured ribbons from various academic associations woven through their hilts. To the right and left of it pictures of bearded men in drinking garb, cut from magazines, were fixed to the wall with drawing pins. Bertin realised with amazement that this had all been swept here from the forgotten world of German universities, where young men joined associations seemingly in order to drink, fence and enjoy their youth, but in fact to smooth their future career path with the connections and patronage provided by the ‘old boy network’. As the various layers of the German bourgeoisie excluded young Jewish men of similar social standing, on transparent pretexts of race or faith, they had formed their own associations, with or without Christians, unless, like Bertin, they preferred to join the army of free, self-reliant academics, where what mattered was not a man’s origins or how wealthy his father was but his abilities, commitment and personal dedication. So Bertin now stood in the billet of an A.J.B.-er, who wore colours and fought with sabres like a member of a corps or fraternity, but who, as a member of the University Jurists’ Club, had known many club mates and protégés of weighty professors from the time of that great old man, Gotthold Mertens, who for his part had first seen the light of day in a modest parsonage in Güstrow in Mecklenburg.

Tea stood steaming on the table beside a bottle of rum for grog and a box of cigars. Sergeant Fürth himself was smoking a short pipe. ‘I feel,’ he beamed, ‘as if I had a drinking jacket on and this were a house party in Munich or Freiburg. You get these kinds of Arctic nights with no snow there too. It’s very decent of you, Pogge, to come to say goodbye like this.’ Bertin guessed that Pogge was the sergeant’s drinking name – a Low German word meaning frog, which given Herr Porisch’s appearance, wasn’t at all inappropriate.

‘Hardly,’ said Porisch. ‘I came to see you and I came to see him’ – he pointed to Bertin – ‘but above all it suited me to come. Because I need to talk. Because I can’t keep the thing to myself and I know that I won’t find a single soul in Berlin who’ll believe me or understand: people don’t dare use their heads in our circles because they’re so intimidated and so patriotic. And in the War Materials Department, where I’m being shifted, I’ll obviously have to act much more stupid than elsewhere – do your walls have ears, Pelican?’

Pelican – Bertin had to laugh. Again, the name wasn’t a bad fit with Sergeant Fürth’s big nose, small, round, bird-like eyes and receding chin.

‘Pull your chairs in closer…’

‘But first let’s fortify ourselves with a slug of something to help against this polar chill,’ said Pelican.’

‘Slug is the right word,’ said Porisch, noisily blowing his nose. Was Bertin mistaken or were the fat man’s eyes a little moist?

So, Carl Georg Mertens, the erstwhile judge advocate in Montmédy, had poisoned himself. He had not, as had been reported in the papers, died in an accident, neither a car crash nor an aerial bomb. ‘It was too much for him, you see,’ snivelled Herr Porisch. ‘He wasn’t used to the brutality of this world, and so he threw in the towel so that men with thicker skins and coarser hands could pick it up – men who had a better idea how to shovel muck than him. He was a gentleman. No one apart from me realises quite what a gentleman he was. And to boot his father had equipped him rather poorly for this life – had crushed him, in fact. Being old Mertens’ son was a job in itself.’ And then Porisch unburdened himself of the pressure that had weighed on him for weeks, and the words tumbled haphazardly from his mouth, mixed with cigar smoke and interspersed with unclear insinuations and terrible jokes. He talked most about the Belgian deportations, because he had helped to collect information about them. Fürth showed himself to be much better informed about this than Private Bertin, who seldom saw a newspaper, and it was years since he had felt so keenly that he was still training to be a lawyer. He’d removed his tunic and sat in his blue sweater with his elbows on the table. Agreeable sips of grog warmed him inside. Now he understood what he’d seen around Romagne: civilians in thin, black Sunday clothes standing motionless on the road with their shovels stuck in the icy ground, not working to warm themselves up. He had been told they were Belgian civilians by the Landsturm guards, who had long since give up trying to make the Belgians work. They starved, they froze and they didn’t move a finger. It had left a deep impression on Private Bertin. It was called forcible recruitment, but that expression hid the reality. However, he had also disapproved of the fierce contempt in which the Belgians held those of their countrymen who crawled to the guards in Flemish, made fires and heated coffee for them in return for some bread. This is war, he’d thought; people shouldn’t be so sensitive and proud. The conquered had to come to terms with the conqueror and not increase their own suffering unnecessarily. Now, coloured by the outrage of the dead Mertens, these things appeared differently to Bertin.

But Porisch carried on. ‘The judge advocate was dealing with the Kroysing affair up until the end. So, this concerns you,’ he said, and his expression clouded. ‘You didn’t give a sender’s name, but your name was mentioned in an enclosure among some papers written in the hand of the elder Kroysing – that enigmatic lieutenant who remained so vivid in Mertens’ memory and in my own. He said that you, as his dead brother’s friend, would help out with your testimony if needs be. Then we heard nothing more from him. Our enquiries returned a message of ‘missing’. Then, four or five days after Mertens’ body had been transported to St Matthews churchyard in Berlin in a freight car, Kroysing got in touch from the field hospital in Dannevoux, where he was being treated for a broken shin bone, and said he wanted to pursue the matter once he’d recovered.’

‘He’s alive!’ shouted Bertin, sitting bolt upright.

‘Amazingly, yes. And now I have one question for you: are you the man whom young Kroysing got to know the day before he died?’ Bertin nodded silently, wondering what was coming next. ‘So you’re not part of his company and you didn’t actually see anything?’

‘No.’

‘Thank you,’ said Porisch wearily. ‘Then that won’t help him, for my professor’s successor is just your average circuit judge and he consigns any unnecessary bits and pieces ad acta, that’s to say to the devil. No lieutenant can fight that – not even that one. He seems to be made of iron, Kroysing, doesn’t he?’ he added, shaking his head. Bertin nodded to himself; that was definitely true, he was made of iron – and mad and obsessed to boot.

Pelican, who was in fact a lawyer called Alexander Fürth with an office on Bülowstraße and an apartment in the Wilmersdorf area of Berlin, demanded an explanation, saying he couldn’t be doing with Pogge speaking in this insider’s code. Porisch and Bertin told him what they knew and what they thought about the case. Pelican shook his head at them. ‘Just be glad this matter has been buried. What good would it do anyone if some dog came along and dug up this particular bone?’

But Porisch blew out his cheeks. This case was the last legacy of a just man, a man with completely clean hands, and he didn’t want simply to let it disappear into the great murky heap of injustice that was growing each day.

‘Well,’ said Fürth, ‘that does change things. But we should really warn our guest,’ and he turned fleetingly to Bertin, ‘to keep his fingers out of this dodgy butter sauce in case he gets a blister. I’ve often seen you heading off in the morning and wondered why you don’t apply for a better job, but that’s another matter. For you, dear Pogge, all I can do is pass on a piece of news that may or may not help.’

‘Stop,’ interrupted Bertin, seduced by the rum and the cosy atmosphere, and transported back to a time when he felt sorry for students who belonged to fraternities, seeing them as throwbacks in human development, tattooed savages with artificial scars and garish dancing clothes. ‘The most important thing is to find out exactly where the Dannevoux field hospital is.’ Pelican glared at him, but Porisch said he was right. Fürth silently fetched a map from the cupboard and spread it out. They found Romagne, Flabas, even Crépion and Moirey, but nowhere called Dannevoux. They looked at the coloured sheet in bafflement, at the town of Verdun, Douaumont, the winding course of the Meuse, then Pelican laid the sharp tip of his pinkie nail on Dannevoux. ‘How could anyone get there?’ cried Bertin. ‘It’s on the left bank.’

It was true that the world continued on the other side of the snaking black river. But as another command started there that was of little use. Pelican leant back solemnly and folded his arms. ‘I don’t know if this is lucky or unlucky for you, Pogge, old boy. Either way, I’d best tell you that Mopsus is judge advocate over there with the Lychow Army Group. Do you know Mopsus?’

Porisch stared at him in astonishment. Of course he knew Mopsus, actually a lawyer called Posnanski, not just from the old boys’ list, but personally from the bigger club parties and from fleeting encounters in the corridors of the Berlin courts. ‘How did you find out he was over there?’ he asked, to which Pelican retorted that he perhaps didn’t read the A.J.B. newsletter as carefully as he should. Porisch said he barely glanced at it, and Pelican gloated that it was then no surprise he didn’t have a clue what was going on. ‘On the left bank,’ said Porisch pensively.

‘In Esnes or Montfaucon, I expect,’ said Pelican.

‘I don’t have much time,’ explained Porisch, ‘but I’m going to go and see this lieutenant and advise him to speak to Mopsus. If anyone can advise him, it’s Mopsus.’

‘Yes,’ Fürth confirmed. ‘He’ll advise him.’

Bertin yawned. He was getting tired. And at the end of the day, these men with their ridiculous names weren’t his concern. The next day, he’d be hauling rails about again. ‘I don’t give much for your lieutenant’s chances,’ said Pelican in the meantime. ‘I won’t hide that from you. His opponent has a head start.’

‘I would very much like to see,’ said Bertin, yawning again, ‘how the Prussian Army would resolve a case like this if the points balanced each other out.’

There was no reply; they were waiting for him to go. To fill the pause, Porisch said that there was a black notebook of his brother’s among Lieutenant Kroysing’s things, which no one could read because Mertens’ pupils were famously never allowed to learn shorthand. And they laughed together, remembering how the old bearded man at the lectern used to lose his temper with new students at the beginning of term when they tried to take notes during his lectures. He’d thunder that he hated that kind of Mephistophelian wisdom, which Goethe had put in the Devil’s mouth purely in irony. What they took home written in black and white was irrelevant; it was what stayed in their hearts that mattered and his courses were for law students not for clerks.

Bertin started, wondering what time it was. Sergeant Fürth confirmed that it was nearly curfew and he’d better hurry. He spoke gently and didn’t sound at all like the big mouth Bertin had taken him to be, telling Bertin he was welcome to warm himself up in his billet whenever he wanted, pressing a couple of cigars on him and lighting his way down stairs, after Porisch had shaken his hand sympathetically several times and said he hoped he’d make it through the winter in good shape. Pelican returned, shook some railway coal into the little stove and filled his pipe. ‘God knows he needs our good wishes. We always know what’s going to happen to those ASC men a bit before they do themselves.’

‘What is your actual job here?’ Porisch asked.

‘Theoretically, I’m a railway NCO,’ Pelican replied. ‘In practice, I’m Railway Transport Commander for Romagne and I run the show. My lieutenant drinks, lets me do the work and signs everything. It suits us both down to the ground, and I know everything and get a princely amount of leave,’ and he laughed loudly. ‘That lad and his squad are going to be relieved next week by the Fourth Company from the same battalion, then he’ll disappear from my view. They’re joining a really horrible detachment under a sergeant from Hamburg named Barkopp. How do I know that? I heard it from Barkopp himself. He was knocking back schnapps in the mess last night precisely on that account. They’re going to be trained to look for duds and may count themselves lucky.’

‘What will they be used for?’ asked Porisch, as if he had never worn a soldier’s tunic.

‘And to think that you’re going to be working in the War Materials Department, my dear Pogge!’ retorted Pelican, ‘They’re going to be used for shooting, of course, for the final victory against America and the rest of the world!’

‘Well, cheers, then,’ said Porisch.

Meanwhile, Bertin ran through the icy night, his footsteps echoing. The sharp air revived him. The tea with grog had done him good and he’d found the unusual Pelican amusing. He would nurture that relationship. In any case, he’d had the great consolation that evening of learning that Eberhard Kroysing was alive and well. Humanity was in a strange state when a serious injury was the admission price for some peace, and people were glad to pay it. He’d write to Kroysing as soon as he could. Perhaps not immediately but when he was feeling better, so he wouldn’t sound like a professional moaner. When it got a bit warmer and the work was easier and he got some of his 1917 leave, he’d take Kroysing’s advice to heart and keep his chin up. Sweating, he made his way up to the hut just before 9pm. The men were snoring peacefully inside, unaware of what was in store for them because the gods had quarrelled and cast lots over mortal men.

^{CHAPTER TWO} When the gods quarrel

IF LIEUTENANT VON ROGGSTROH had been an experienced officer as well as a well-meaning one, he would have checked whether Bertin’s superiors had all been furnished with sufficient medals before setting about actioning his good intentions, when he had a moment to do so. Unfortunately, he didn’t do that. His request arrived in the battalion orderly room in Damvillers shortly after New Year, via the depot orderly room, with the result that Colonel Stein and Major Jansch were informed almost simultaneously that they were to procure an Iron Cross, Second Class for Private Bertin.

The two officers, who, as we know, couldn’t stand each other, were also diametrically opposed types. An old cavalryman, Colonel Stein was stout and short-tempered but fairly good-natured; Major Jansch was a thin, bitter man and very restless, though self-controlled up to a point. Naturally, they both had the black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross, Second Class in their buttonholes. But reading the report, written by Lieutenant von Roggstroh, nephew of a influential landowner in East Prussia, setting out Private Bertin’s deeds and achievements, they both had the same thought: with careful handling it shouldn’t be too difficult to turn this into an Iron Cross, first class – and for themselves.

‘Look here,’ said Colonel Stein to his adviser and adjutant, ‘with all due respect to your prophetic gifts, this is impossible. It’s out of the question for some little ASC major in Damvillers to claim an Iron Cross, first class. We were at the depot. We went through the bombardment. Our ammunitions expert Sergeant Schulz issued Lieutenant von Roggstroh with 300 contact fuses and 50 time fuses. We were the most affected, and no one can take that away from us.’

We means you, thought Lieutenant Benndorf, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he said: ‘And the man whom the lieutenant expressly mentioned?’

‘Will go away empty-handed this time,’ said the colonel gruffly. ‘We come first. He’ll prefer some leave to an Iron Cross. What have those ASC men got to do with me anyway? I don’t know them, and they don’t know me, and if anyone here is to get a birdie, it’s going to be me.’

‘Hmm,’ said Lieutenant Benndorf, walking over to the window of the gloomy room where they were billeted, ‘that’s not quite true, Colonel. You do know this man.’

‘Don’t remember having the pleasure,’ muttered the colonel, whose leg was hurting him.

Lieutenant Benndorf continued, not out of malice, but because he wanted to say something to smother the nagging pain he felt at the assumption he would step aside. ‘You’ve seen the man. You even had him punished back when that flock of Frenchmen were marched past and the ASC men gave them water. Don’t you remember, sir? There was a good-for-nothing among them with a black beard who let a Frenchman drink from his canteen without the slightest compunction. He was called Bertin.’

The colonel remembered him dimly and without rancour. ‘Oh, him,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Yes, he was a right one. But if you really think that Jansch is after the prize, I suggest we pay him a visit and talk him out of it. I’ll give him a box of chocolates, and he’ll be so thrilled he’ll forget the Kaiser and our dear Lord, never mind the Iron Cross, first class, which isn’t edible after all.’ And he laughed loudly at this notion, while Lieutenant Benndorf merely smirked and nodded. The truth about Major Jansch couldn’t be hushed up in a village such as Damvillers; he had the sweet tooth of a teenage girl, which made it easier than he realised for his enemies to manipulate him, as he was soon to learn.

When his enemy, the colonel, was announced, Major Jansch got the picture immediately. His eyes flashed like a weasel’s, and his hair almost stood on end. He had been busy drawing a map of the future German Empire for Army and Fleet Weekly, which reincorporated Lutzelburg, Nanzig and Werden into the motherland, as well as Holland, Switzerland, Milan and Lombardy, Courland, Livonia, Lithuania and Estonia as far as Tartu. Currently – and shamefully – Lutzelburg, Nanzig and Werden were called Luxembourg, Nancy and Verdun. But members of the Pan-German Union and the ‘Association against the Domination of Jewry’ felt duty bound to reintroduce the honourable old German names. He folded his map up, smoothed his Balkan moustache, straightened his Litevka and went to greet his visitor.

The major’s room was overheated, and the colonel found it stuffy. Smiling pleasantly, he asked if he might open a window. Major Jansch consented with a sour look. Now they would argue and the whole world would know about it straight away, because the colonel liked to talk in a booming voice. Well, so be it. He, Jansch, was ready and would not weaken.

Within three minutes, those two roosters were at each other, feathers flying. The colonel could not believe that the major seriously thought the medal should be bequeathed to him. Everyone knew he never left the pretty stone village of Damvillers, and no one earned an Iron Cross, first class in Damvillers. Herr Jansch’s quiet, icy retort was that every man must fight at his assigned post – not turn up in Damvillers while the ammunitions depot of which he was in charge went up in flames.

Colonel Stein clutched his stomach laughing. That was priceless! Now the major was preaching morality and criticising others for sensibly retreating, when he himself had never put his nose anywhere near a shell. It was enough to make you want to climb trees!

Major Jansch said it had nothing to do with trees. Lieutenant von Roggstroh had recommended a man from the battalion for a medal, not a man from the depot personnel. Did the depot command propose to take possession of all the medals I/X/20 had won? That would take the biscuit. He was tired of all this incessant interference and grasping. No one needed to tell him how to do his job, and he would decide who in his battalion got a medal – and no doubt about that.

‘What a pity you’re so intransigent, my dear friend,’ said Colonel Stein, staying comfortably put in his chair. ‘And I had planned a friendly swap with you for a box of chocolates. You’d have got more from that than from a medal, which after all you can’t put in your mouth.’

At that, Herr Jansch blew up. Unfortunately, Colonel Stein was sitting with his back to the window and so the large tin box of Belgian sweets sitting resplendent on the floor to the major’s right did not escape his notice. Jansch slammed the lid shut and hissed angrily: ‘Did you just come here to talk nonsense? Intransigent! Swap! Is the German language not good enough for you to say what you mean? Can’t we even manage to get rid of French muck in the middle of a world war?’

Colonel Stein turned to Lieutenant Benndorf in astonishment. ‘What does the gentlemen mean by such idiocies?’ he asked as if Herr Jansch weren’t in the room. ‘Is old sweet tooth trying to insult us? Then this little outburst of his might have some kind of meaning, because there’s only one person talking nonsense here.’

Major Jansch went pale, then red and blotchy, then pale again. He gasped for breath. He knew he was unpopular and until then he hadn’t cared a jot, because men of intelligence couldn’t avoid being disliked by fools. Now he must control himself, play for time and wait for his friend Niggl, who would shortly be returning from leave. And so he tried to be more conciliatory. The colonel already had a lot of medals, he said almost pleadingly. It wasn’t as if he were trying to rob a widow of her lamb. The man named in the communication belonged to I/X/20, and any duty station would be able to see that he had defied the shellfire not for Colonel Stein but for the honour of his company. If a gunner from the depot were to perform deeds that got noticed by officers from elsewhere, then Colonel Stein would be first in line. If this was about what was right and justice…

Colonel Stein leapt from his chair, inexplicably enraged. Only later did Lieutenant Benndorf understand why the depot boss had become so angry: he secretly recognised a kernel of truth in the drivel emanating from the small major. ‘The widow’s lamb!’ he screamed. ‘Right and justice! We’ll soon see what sort of unit you command, sir! According to right and justice, I should have had this man who’s now come to the attention of an external officer court-martialled back in July. That little traitor should have avoided coming to the attention of his own superiors and refrained from fraternising with a French prisoner and allowing the swine to drink from his canteen – in full view of the depot commanders, in full view of me, sir! In full view of hundreds of men, sir! Against my express orders! Back then Benndorf here persuaded me mercy was the better part of justice. But if you’re going to mess with me, as we say in Berlin, then I’ll hang that story from the biggest bell I can find round here. And then, my dear chap, you’ll be had up for not keeping proper discipline.’

Major Jansch turned pale again. He felt his stomach cramp in rage. What was this? Had something happened in the summer he’d not been told about? If this old lush was telling the truth, and if he used the information he’d just screamed at him, then his Iron Cross, first class would go flying out of the window. Because you didn’t mess with indiscipline and fraternisation. Jansch turned to Lieutenant Benndorf, who was leaning against the wall with his arms folded like a spectator. As they both seemed to be the calmer ones, perhaps the lieutenant could explain what had happened.

‘Nonsense,’ interrupted Colonel Stein. ‘Ask the men in your own company.’

But Lieutenant Benndorf, who wasn’t entirely happy to see matters resolved long ago being revisited like this, asked to be allowed to speak and set out the by now entirely trivial incident.

Jansch listened attentively. The matter wasn’t at all trivial, he said gravely. It should never have been kept from him, and he would ensure that it was dealt with in the proper Prussian manner. But he certainly wouldn’t be relinquishing the Iron Cross, first class on that account, and they would see how it all turned out.

Colonel Stein stood up. So we shall, he said imperiously, adding that he’d bet a tonne of chocolate against a single schnapps that he and no other would emerge from the race victorious. And then he put his cap on, saluted and left, already reproaching his adjutant in the hallway for not backing him up properly and saying they’d never sideline the old nutcracker like that. What did it matter to them if that ASC private got it in the eye? And in all sincerity he added: ‘You and your kind-heartedness, but can you please explain to me what this so-called Bertin has got to do with my Iron Cross, first class.’ And to his astonishment the lieutenant stopped on the stairs and burst out laughing. Then the colonel clapped his hand to his forehead and joined in, because of course this was his reward for that beard he’d quarrelled with Herr Jansch about.

Up in his room, Major Jansch closed his window, exhausted. Then he stuck a sweet in his mouth – a long, pink, raspberry-flavoured lozenge. He marched up and down, and the orderly room knew that boded ill. The staff sergeant had to sit and listen, as did Diehl the clerk, Behrend the post orderly and even Kuhlmann the messenger, and they all came to their own different conclusions about how best to behave. They were sitting in a nice, heated room, their feet were dry and their food was as good as it could be that winter. None of them wanted to slip up and get moved back to the bloody ASC, where the men slaved away day after day in the old shelled area. The staff sergeant and the messenger, a couple of real slaves, were ready to play along with whatever mood the major might be in. The other two just wanted to keep out of it. Because that Bertin was bad luck, and anyone who tried to help him would be marked. First, there’d been the water tap business, then the screw-up over his leave, and now there was this Iron Cross story, which would have been good news for anyone else, and the water tap business was being reheated, so to speak, in a rumpus between those two bigwigs – it was enough to finish off the strongest man.

There was no need for Jansch to wait for his friend Niggl to return. There he sat in his chair whispering urgent advice in broad Bavarian – or at least there sat a dreamt-up Niggl, or better still a remembered Niggl, which the major’s imagination had magicked up. For the major was an habitual and lavish fantasist. It was a gift – or rather an escape – he’d had since childhood. In his mind, during long day dreams, he took revenge on his enemies, generously pardoned those who’d misjudged him, gave advice to the Kaiser, which that short-sighted prince did not follow, with the result that Jansch, a humble major, had to rescue the Fatherland. He had long since worn an imaginary Pour-Le-Mérite, the highest order of the Prussian state, which he had won for an imaginary strategic masterpiece that had destroyed the Italian army – the traitors – with an aerial bombardment of poisonous gas, such that the German divisions could break into France through Turin and Savoy and were currently destroying the cities of Lyon and Avignon. Furthermore, an unknown major in the Supreme Army Command had performed the inestimable service of stirring up a revolt among the oppressed Little Russians in the Ukraine, who were now summoning the Germans as liberators. No one knew who had come up with the clever plan. Its author remained modestly anonymous, content in the knowledge that he had saved the Fatherland and performed some small service for its esteemed leaders. It didn’t bother the little man marching back and forth that reality ran alongside his dreams undeterred. For example, Colonel Stein, whom he often cursed for his disdainful conduct towards a worthy colleague (namely himself) and had reduced to the command of a punishment battalion, had in reality just left the house unmolested having spoken to him in the vilest terms. Jansch sucked honey from his fantasies and rarely set foot in the dangerous world of reality.

At that moment, he saw Private Bertin of the ASC tied to a tree for hours in a biting frost, hanging unconscious in his bonds, and gloated at his just punishment. At the same time, he envisaged that shrewd Bavarian paragon who had so easily got rid of the trouble-maker in his own battalion. Conjured up by Jansch’s imagination, Herr Niggl sat there, whether he liked it or not, the fine cloth of his tunic rubbing against the wooden chair back, modestly offering advice in his agreeable accent to his much cleverer, much more elevated comrade, the genial Major Jansch. His chubby-cheeked visitor sounded innocent as he advised Jansch to return Lieutenant von Roggstroh’s submission with the curt observation that the person in question had remained at his post in the field gun depot on the express orders of the battalion commander. He, Captain Niggl, could then duly draw attention to Major Jansch’s merits over a few beers with Group Command. But Private B. of the ASC would have to disappear into a working party near the front, one not entirely without danger. And he would have to stay there until his human vulnerability was tested. Because that Jew knew how to express himself in writing and could presumably talk too, and so, if asked, he was quite capable of spreading all kinds of plausible lies. Better he wasn’t asked then.

Cheeks flushed and still stalking up and down, Major Jansch listened to the advice coming from the empty chair. Just such a working party was about to be formed and stationed close to the left bank of the Meuse. Its task was to collect stray ammunition, duds and discarded shells, examine them and send them home. The depot had already started the work on a small scale under Sergeant Knappe, and a ghastly explosion a few days earlier had left two dead and seven wounded, among them Sergeant Karde, a decent, hard-working man and a patriot, whose left leg had unfortunately been blown off beneath the knee. This incident had left an unpleasant impression, and the depot had decided to move the operation much further forwards and put it under the command of Sergeant Barkopp from the First Company, a marked man from Serbian days. B. would fit right in there. Smiling, Herr Jansch accompanied his fictional visitor to the door and shook his imaginary right hand gratefully, feeling hugely encouraged. He even opened the door for him and shut it behind him. Then he marched back to his desk and scribbled on a scrap of paper: ‘Think about B.’ He laid the scrap of paper in an obvious position in his drawer and rang for Kuhlmann the messenger. It was dinner time. The major had worked hard and was hungry in spite all the sweets he’d eaten.

^{CHAPTER THREE} The purchase price

DUD IS THE term used for shells that don’t explode because of faulty manufacture or simply by accident. They lay about the country like giant, elongated Easter eggs – sometimes more in one place, sometimes fewer – waiting for whoever might be fortunate enough to find them. At certain times a lot came over, most other times hardly any. For that reason, the detachments had to spread out wide, remember or mark the places where they found a shell and then get an expert to look at each one and say whether it was safe to touch it. The shells were formed into small piles, and the small piles formed larger piles near the railway tracks. The shells were then examined thoroughly at the testing station and put in a freight car, gradually filling it. When two or three cars were full it was worth transporting them home. In the heady days of the first year of the war, looking for duds had been a private enterprise undertaken by gunners and ASC men who made all kinds of war souvenirs from the sometimes very heavy copper screw rings. The lively trade in these artefacts compensated for the risks involved in knocking off the red-gold bands. In the meantime, as is so often the case, a state monopoly had replaced individual enterprise…

Sergeant Barkopp’s ASC men spread out across the high plateau, whose craters and shell holes offered a good place to search. Admittedly, the French could see what was going on and sometimes blessed the proceedings with shrapnel or shells. Only a couple of days previously, they had found the grinning corpse of Franz Reiter, an infantryman from Aachen, lying peacefully on his back with nothing but a postcard with his name on it in his pocket and of course without boots. Lebehde, Pahl and Bertin, all members of the working party, had lingered by Herr Reiter’s corpse deep in thought, until Karl Lebehde encouraged them to move on with the melancholy observation: ‘Wherever we go, someone has always been there first. You’re out of luck Wilhelm.’ This was a reference to Wilhelm Pahl’s footwear, which had become completely useless. His boots had been with the company cobbler in Etraye for weeks but hadn’t been repaired because, like the rest of the Barkopp working party, their owner lived in a barracks at the so-called railway station of Vilosnes-East and therefore couldn’t come round to kick up a fuss. In the meantime, his lace-up shoes had worn through at least 10 days before. The soles weren’t hobnailed and the ridges and grooves of the rock-hard clay had finished them off. Pahl was now walking on the insole under the ball of his left foot and the big toe of the right. Starving as he was, he now went about his duties rather turned in on himself and didn’t seem bothered by his shoes. But appearances deceived.

In fact, Sergeant Barkopp’s entire working party was in a desperate state. The men’s underwear, constantly in need of darning because it was washed in caustic soap, no longer provided any warmth. Their tunics had taken on the colour of clay, and their trousers were ripped to pieces from climbing over barbed wire and had been patched with different coloured wool and twine. They now hardly bothered to fight their infestations of lice and no longer wondered what the next days might bring, for what could they bring? They didn’t read or play chess, and there was no mouth organ or accordion to create a mirage of cheerfulness when work was finished. When darkness fell, ending their work, they crawled back into the barracks together and played cards, squabbled, or wrapped some warming rags round their heads and went begging. A battalion’s rations are first sifted by the headquarters staff, then by the companies’ staffs and their favourites, then by the kitchens and the companies themselves, and what’s left wends its way over to the external working parties. This meant the men had to beg if they wanted their stomachs to be full. The stronger among them scoured the area night after night. They asked for but didn’t give information as to the whereabouts of battery field kitchens, reserve infantry companies, railway sections (they always had it best), transport depots or, best of all, field hospitals. Field hospitals were a sublime oasis and cause of delight, and no one turned his nose up at barley stew laced with scraps of beef should a comrade happen to let it fall into his canteen. Good judges of character such as Karl Lebehde soon understood what made the kitchen NCOs and their underlings tick, as well as all the kitchen high-ups in the units nearby. They knew where they could simply queue up and hold out their pots in silence, where it was better to ask nicely, where a few jokes got things moving and where you had to offer a cigarette in exchange for a meal. Bertin provided cigarettes to barter with and got a share of the food as a result. Wilhlem Pahl always got his for nothing but had to put up with Lebehde the inn-keeper watching him and making comments, which didn’t exactly cheer him up. Pahl was in the throes of a difficult decision. All the men were under pressure. They all knew the German army was starving but the end of the war was nonetheless nowhere in sight. They all felt they were in pitiless hands, and the only happy man was Naumann II, the company idiot. Yup, that poor little grinning devil, with his gigantic hands and feet, massive ears and watery blue eyes, had been shunted into the Barkopp working party too, no doubt on account of his sharp mind and skill at handling explosives… Well, the former warehouse packer from Steglitz was an idiot, and Sergeant Barkopp had clapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder, had Knappe the ammunitions expert take a photo of him grinning from ear to ear with a shell under his arm, and assigned him to barracks duty with the words: ‘Make yourself useful with the broom, my son.’ Despite the handicap of his impaired glands, Naumann II did so loyally and dutifully and with unswerving devotion to authority in the form of Sergeant Barkopp and all those whom life had treated less harshly than himself.

Barkopp, a publican at a seaport in civilian life, proved an excellent working party leader. From Sergeant Knappe he soon learnt all the signs that distinguish dangerous duds from harmless ones: open fuse holes and whether the shell is at an angle or level. His sharp eyes were everywhere, and he soon had a handful of practical-minded men trained up too. ‘Better to leave one too many lying than to pick one too many up,’ was his motto. Small fences were put round particularly dangerous ones – there were branches and rusty barbed wire everywhere – or if necessary they were sunk in flooded craters where the damned things rotted away. Because of this there had been no accidents. Emil Barkopp particularly looked out for small ammunition dumps abandoned by batteries that had retreated or been destroyed. These were sometimes found in sheltered spots in the ravines. Germany’s national wealth lay strewn across the war zone, recklessly abandoned, as if the units that had left their supplies behind wanted to give their successors something to do. Having fallen into disfavour and been transferred frequently as a result, Emil Barkopp had seen a lot; he’d seen with his own eyes how the gunners laid down a layer of shells in the mud after the first rainfall, put cartridge baskets on top, then another layer of shells, carefully defused, and ate, drank and slept on that. Now they had to track down that treasure. His scouts were everywhere. Where were the best spots? None of the men knew apart from him and Sergeant Knappe, a thin, pensive man with a goatee beard. None of them had maps or the skills to make an exact evaluation of the set of the sky and the ins and outs of the front. All the ASC men knew was that they were next to the Meuse and would soon shift from one bank to the other. Most of the men from I/X/20 were stationed in the gullies by the village of Etraye, where the depot command had finally established its ammunition dump. But the working parties were spread across the whole sector to the east of the Meuse, and Barkopp’s was the furthest west. Vilosnes and Sivry were connected to each other by a bridge but were otherwise cut off. The French had been firing all summer long from the right as well as from the high ground on the left bank, where the watchful enemies faced each other.

Pale ochre light suffused the high plateau. Private Bertin had strayed too far on his search, and it would soon be nightfall. He trotted on, jumping back and forth, then found a path and continued slowly, catching his breath. But the French batteries in the former German positions knew the path and before it was completely dark they flung a few well-meaning shells in his direction. In the deathly cold air, he heard the discharge at once. By the time the shell had exploded, Private Bertin was pressed to the ground, flat as an insect. But as the splinters from the explosion flew over him with the muffled drone of a giant beetle, a mighty battle was going on within him. Why was he taking cover in this idiotic way? What was the point of extending his life from one incident to the next? Wouldn’t it be as well to help fate remove him from here, never mind to where, by sticking his backside in the air so that one of the splinters might tear into his flesh? He’d often considered letting his foot be crushed under a wagon but hadn’t been able to resolve to do it. But if things continued as they were for another couple of months, there was no telling what he might do. For now, however, he pressed himself into the earth and clung to life. Then the evening blessing was over. He knocked the dirt from his clothes, pulled his cap down over his woollen head protector and trotted off for dinner and some warmth. He hadn’t realised it yet himself, but there was no denying that in his overall demeanour the one he resembled most of all his comrades was that poor idiot Naumann, Ignaz.

An icy wind from the northern glaciers and eastern plains whistled across the churned-up land. Every gust cut across the area, whining and crashing against tree stumps, howling upwards then whooshing on. Between the dun-coloured earth and the ceiling of uniform grey cloud, the wind held sway. Harried and tormented, it lacerated its airy body against the rusty teeth of the barbed wire in a morbid frenzy. There were 10,000 km of barbed between the stormy English Channel and the leaden stone walls of Switzerland, leaving plenty of scope for the wind to whip itself up against the the barbed wire spikes, and this it did. It cut against the knife-sharp edges of old food tins, moaning there. It couldn’t stop – it was in too much of a hurry to reach the warmer climes of the western ocean – but it pulled at every scrap of rotting cloth, chased pieces of paper into the bottoms of shell holes, not caring about the rats that peered restlessly out of their holes and were starving because the whole world had suddenly turned to stone, and rampaged on over the plains, through the narrow gorges, magnificent as an heir squandering the last of his inheritance, knowing it will soon be over.

Two ASC privates had sought refuge from the wind and found it in the bottom of very large and deep shell crater. They thought they were sitting on a thick sheet of ice but they were wrong. They were in fact sitting on the bottom of an ice cone that pointed downwards to the centre of the earth, and frozen within it, like an embryo in the womb, lay a dead German solider, waiting for the midsummer thaw. Then he’d be discovered, earth would be thrown over his fleshless bones and the rags of his uniform, and a wooden cross would be erected over him reading: ‘Here lies a brave German soldier’. That’s if anyone went to so much trouble, for by that time the first tank squadrons would be appearing on the horizon, the first American air squadrons would have relieved the French and things would be looking quite a lot livelier in the western theatre of war. But the two ASC men knew nothing of this as they spread out their legs, trusting their thick layers of clothing to protect them from the ice. To be absolutely sure, one of them, Karl Lebehde, had brought some newspapers with him, which he shared with his friend. As all beggars know, newspaper protects against the sharpest frost and the iciest of seats thanks to the gauze-thin layers of air between the sheets. And the two muddy, unwashed men bundled up in grey clothes looked like beggars, with their frozen faces poking out from their dark grey head protectors, their bluish noses and reddened eyes.

Wilhelm Pahl and Karl Lebehde were speaking to each other in hushed tones – not whispering exactly but speaking in such a way that no one outside could hear their voices. The tension in their faces and their quick, furtive movements suggested they were doing something untoward. Karl Lebehde had a sharp, rusty tool in his hand – a filed nail, which must have lain about in the damp for several days after it was filed, for the point was covered in rust too.

‘Jesus, Karl,’ groaned Pahl. ‘If only I wasn’t so bloody scared. First there’s the pain, and I don’t have a high pain threshold. Then there’s the hospital, and if they have to amputate, they probably won’t have any chloroform to spare. That means more pain. And then who knows if you can walk about or stand at a type case with a missing toe?’

‘Listen, lad,’ replied Karl Lebehde, ‘if you want to buy something, you have to pay the price. There’s no other way. Come on now, son, give me your foot and we’ll give it a wee tickle.’

‘Shout a bit louder, why don’t you?’ said Pahl. ‘Then we’ll have Barkopp or old Knappe over here watching you operate on me.’

Karl Lebehde knew neither Barkopp nor Knappe nor anyone else was nearby. But since mutilations such as the one he was about to carry out at his friend’s request were the only really effective way to escape the vengeance of the class state, the bourgeois Prussian Army pursued those who performed them with blood-thirsty rancour, and so he stood up, clambered up the sloping earthen wall, set his face to the wind and looked around. It was 9.30am, and there was no one around to see his head and freckled hands suddenly appear. Reassured, he slid back down. ‘I don’t know why I always fall for your tricks. You just wanted to put if off, didn’t you, old pal?’

‘Yes, I did. I’m scared stiff. God knows how this’ll all end.’

Karl Lebehde’s voice took on the reassuring tone of a mother persuading her child to go to the dentist with her: ‘Listen, Wilhelm, you’re welcome to forget it as far I’m concerned. I don’t fancy your chances or have any faith in the stuff you talked about during those long winter nights. You think the German workers are too dozy, but it takes someone like me who was brought up behind a bar listening to the rubbish they talk year in, year out to know just how dozy they are.’

‘You can’t say nowt against the Berlin workers, Karl.’

‘Yes, you can, Wilhelm. Yes, indeed. Our Party Comrades are all right, and the Comrades in Hamburg are all right. The core is very capable – nothing against them. And they’re probably in high dudgeon at the moment because their stomachs are empty, and so they’ll listen to you and the couple of men working back at home, and maybe they’ll walk out and jack in work and demand peace. And what will happen then? They won’t be put up against the wall. Thousands will be called up, 80 or 90 will end up in the nick and the rest will get bigger rations with a bit of ham thrown in now and then for heavy labour – and that’ll be the end of it.’

‘So you think the German workers don’t know the score and are going to let themselves be given a showing up by the Russians? If the papers are to be believed, they’ve put a bit of a bomb under their Duma with those massive strikes and hunger riots outside bakeries.’

‘Yes, I do think that.’ (Karl Lebehde tried to be as verbose as possible in order to distract Pahl.) ‘I know as little about the Comrades in Russia as you do. But what I do know, my dear Wilhelm, is that unless the Party newspaper Vorwärts had been making things up, there are a few little differences between us and them. For example, things were always worse in Russia than at home, they faced starvation, Siberia was just around the corner, the bourgeoisie had had enough of Tsarism and world opinion was against it too. Then there were those spectacular defeats by the Japanese in 1905. And clear distinctions between the classes provide an excellent training for class war: we’re here and you’re there with no bridge between us. But everything has always been hunky dory at home. Socialists were only persecuted a little bit under Bismarck and that’s long since been forgotten, and the labour movement was so full of victories and dreams of the future state it didn’t realise that a proletarian on Sunday still stands a bit lower than a bourgeois on a weekday. And when the men in standy-up collars started talking the red, white and black of the flag, the proletariat couldn’t afford to ignore it and no less a man than August Bebel bust a gut to demonstrate his patriotism, shouldered a musket and marched against Russia, and the men in standy-up collars just laughed. But why did they laugh? He was speaking the truth. And that was in peacetime when we had a small, modest army, and the Party’s coffers were full to busting. That’s the difference, do you see? From nowt comes nowt.’

Wilhelm Pahl had been listening carefully, both legs stretched out, thankful for the delay. The tear in his sole under the ball of his left foot gaped, and the right sole was worn through under his big toe. Convinced he’d distracted his friend, Karl Lebehde surveyed the bald patches with his small, glittering eyes. Surreptitiously, he took hold of the rusty nail. Early that morning he’d attached a wooded handle to it made from an elder branch.

‘From nowt comes nowt,’ repeated Pahl meanwhile. ‘That’s why I’ve got to get going and come to the aid of the Party Comrades at home. The signs from Russia says it’s time, which is why I asked you to do this to me. I thought it would be easy. But when I first tried to step on some rusty barbed wire, I noticed immediately that the first step is the hardest. I just didn’t realise how hard. Laugh if you like, Karl, but I’m starting to wonder if it wouldn’t be better if I did it myself after all. It’s like shaving. If someone else cuts you, it hurts more.’

Karl Lebehde smiled. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Do it yourself if you want.’

Wilhelm Pahl sat hanging his head with his back to the wall of the shell crater wearing an agonised expression that made his friend feel very sorry for him. ‘We’re so weakened,’ he said. ‘No fat on our bodies, and the constant cold and stupor, and the lice don’t let you sleep at night, and there’s no hot water to do washing in – it’s a pile of shit, Karl.’ He closed his eyes. ‘If it weren’t for you doing the rounds of the field kitchens I wouldn’t have had the strength to get up in the morning for ages now. Ow!’ he screamed suddenly, ripping his eyes open. ‘What are you doing?’

Karl Lebehde pointed to the spike in Pahl’s shoe. ‘It’s all over,’ he said gently. ‘It’s a good centimetre inside you, my son. Don’t move for the next five minutes. The rest is in the hands of the dear Lord, who created blood circulation.’

Pahl went belatedly pale and shuddered. ‘Good that it’s over,’ he said. ‘You handled that well. I feel a bit funny, but it had to be done. I’d thought it through and… People who find it easy don’t really know what they’re letting themselves in for. At the same time it was really nothing. The cause of the proletariat is worth a bigger sacrifice than that.’

‘The colour’s coming back to your face, Wilhelm. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is not cheap,’ Lebehde joked. ‘And tonight you’ll tell old Barkopp you stepped on some barbed wire…’

‘I asked him for new shoes or boots the other day for the third or fourth time. He just grinned. “New boots.”’

‘And if you can’t walk tomorrow morning, you’ll be put on barracks duty and you’ll have to scour the muck out of that lice-infested hut with Naumann II.’

‘I will be able to walk tomorrow. It doesn’t hurt that much any more. Do you think it’s bad enough?’

‘Don’t worry about that. It’ll start to fester like nobody’s business in two or three days’ time. And if the doctor tells you off for not reporting sick earlier, Barkopp will have to explain that we men in the working parties are such orphans we don’t even have a paramedic to look after us. And that’s nothing but the truth. Besides you don’t feel much pain in your toes if they’re nearly freezing off.’ And he yanked the nail out of the wound, looked at it, threw away the elder wood shaft and hammered the iron spike into the splintering ice sheet with his heel. ‘Don’t you betray us now, little fella,’ he murmured.

Wilhelm Pahl’s normal colour was returning. His face was still grey but not quite as bloodless as before. Cautiously, he tried to get up and walk; he could. He’d hobble a little, partly from the wound and partly for the benefit of the sergeant and later the doctor. The two men climbed out of the shell crater, shivered in the wind and tramped off to look for shells.

‘And you really do want to take Bertin back to Germany with you?’

Pahl nodded. He had to grind his teeth as a twinge of pain ran through him. ‘Haven’t you noticed how he’s slowly going to pieces? He can’t take much more. And I’ll eat the sole of my shoe if he doesn’t make a very useful Comrade when he’s awoken from his stupor.’

‘Hold on for a bit, Wilhelm, and you won’t have to eat any shoe soles, neither roasted nor boiled, because you’ll be living it up. Apparently, there’s a really good leg doctor at the field hospital in Dannevoux. I’m a regular at the kitchen back door there, and if I let the kitchen NCO know that you’re a friend of mine, they’ll feed you up good and proper.’

An aeroplane sped eastwards above them, braving the bitter cold. A young French sergeant, bent over the cockpit with his camera ready, peered through the dry morning light. He didn’t miss the two ants trudging across the abandoned field; he could’ve taken them out with a rifle. But his remit for that day was to photograph Vilosnes-East station, which was being used for ammunitions transport. Of course that was only part of his remit and it would take him further afield. The loops of the Meuse, and the slopes and valleys of the hills also repaid photographing – and later bombing based on the photographs. Jean-François Rouard, a young painter, was in no sense a bloodthirsty person. He would have much preferred to be sitting in a well heated atelier in Montparnasse or Montmartre, helping the further development of French painting, which had gone in new directions since Picasso and Bracque. But as he was now a soldier he had to make the most of these barren war years. Even once pull a bomb release handle and hear and see freight cars blown to bits. Below was his target for that day. He sighted it with his sharp eyes, clicked the shutter and the plates, adequately exposed, fell into the container. The line of Dannevoux roofs up against the tiny wagons on the railway track would look quite odd in the picture. That was because of the perspective in aerial photography, which had its own rules, as yet untested, and offered great possibilities to cartographers. Painting wouldn’t benefit. He knew that. But from a military and aeronautical point of view, the Sivry-Vilosnes-Dannevoux triangle, with the loops of the Meuse and its bridges, was a tough nut to crack. The airman given the job of torpedoing the ammunitions train at night would have to bloody well watch out.

^{CHAPTER FOUR} A winter walk

A MAN’S POWERS of resistance are limited. However, it often takes a while for him to realise that; others usually notice first. Certain types who retain a sort of nostalgia for suffering from their childhood sometimes astonish the world with their martyrdom and heroic endurance. When they break, however, they break completely – it comes as a surprise because their intellectual and spiritual capabilities have been eroding away imperceptibly.

A man was strolling along the road from Vilosnes to Sivry, enjoying the soft of golden light of a late February noontime. He grinned quietly to himself and whistled along with the sparrows, yellowhammers and tits. He had a job to do of course; he wasn’t just walking about enjoying the charms of nature. It was too cold for that, for the frost was relentless. The nature of this happy man’s business was clear from the objects in his right hand: an oval French hand grenade and a long, mushroom-shaped shell fuse of pure brass. ‘Take these to Herr Knappe,’ the bewhiskered Sergeant Barkopp had told Private Bertin. ‘He can have a sniff at them. Mind you hold them up the way I’ve given them to you. You know why.’ Private Bertin did know why. The fuses were awkward customers. They’d explode on you if you changed their position such that the needle inside fell forwards or backwards of the angle at which the damned thing had lain since it was fired or thrown. At first, Private Bertin walked along with the two deadly objects in his right hand. The frost bit into his immobile fingers, and a glove was no help. After a while, Private Bertin started to think this was stupid. Besides, he wanted to be able to swing his arms and jot down any ideas or lines of poetry that might occur to him on such a lovely, clear day. Suddenly, he decided to shove the two explosive machines in his trouser pockets, one in the right and one in the left, making sure that up stayed up and down down. But what if he slipped and fell? The road beside the Meuse was frozen solid and icy, making a slip possible. And he had to cross the river at Sivry on a long wooden bridge, a pontoon bridge to be precise, resting on boats and often pretty slippery. But what the heck? Private Bertin wanted to have warm hands and to feel free and to be as comfortable as possible. Between leaving Sergeant Barkopp and reaching Sergeant Knappe he wanted to open up as a private person. It was a wonderful thing to be alone. All a person needed was to be able to walk and dream.

His thoughts came thick and fast. The street followed the Meuse, an idyllic river, lined with trees and bushes and frozen solid. From the far bank, came the occasional clear, metallic rattle of gunfire or an explosion – both far off. The left bank was known as ‘Hill 304’ and ‘Mort Homme’; on the top the French and Germans faced each other with hand grenades. However, a recent report had said that the Frogs were bombarding Romagne, as the railway station there rankled with them. Whatever, Romagne still glimmered back there somewhere, and the men from Bertin’s working party could still buy fat substitute and chocolate there. Those 30 or so men were starving, like the entire army. When the two-wheeled limbers had been blown to bits somewhere on the way to Etraye and there were dead horses lying about, infantrymen, sappers, gunners and ASC men had rushed towards their still-warm carcases from craters and dugouts all around and used knives to tear the spare flesh from their skeletons, then carried the meat triumphantly back to their small iron stoves in buckets and canteens to roast. But that paled into insignificance compared with one company excursion this side of Etraye when the occupants of the large barracks had feasted on roast meat from a forbidden and much more disgusting source. There was a knacker’s yard down there a few kilometres to the rear, which gave off a dreadful stench all day long. Long dead horses with bloated stomachs were burnt there for manure, glue and grease, and their hides were used for leather. Eating their flesh was forbidden. But, guess what, it was eaten, for the cold kindly kept it fresh and the ASC men preferred a stay in hospital with meat poisoning and attendant torments to their regular lives. Hence the bonds of comradeship had long since frayed away; anyone who got a food package now was best advised to eat it as quickly as possible, because he wouldn’t find it in his rucksack or bed or wherever he’d hidden it when he got back from work. That’s how life was now, and it somehow had to be endured. It wouldn’t last much longer though. A miracle had happened in the meantime. By all accounts, Russia was no longer heading towards a crisis; it had collapsed. The German attacks had taken their toll. The Russians had had enough. They were making democratic demands, and that was the beginning of the end. Of course pessimists such as Halezinsky, know-alls such as Lebehde and scardy cats such as good, old Pahl maintained that the French, British and Japanese military missions would now get the upper hand in Russia and step up hostilities. But the Russians wouldn’t be so stupid. They’d tell their allies to get stuffed and throw down their arms. Yes, they’d all be home by Easter, and if not by Easter then by Whitsun. Private Bertin smiled to himself thinking about it as he stumbled over the deep frozen ruts in the road.

The Meuse now lay before Bertin. He had half a mind to walk across the ice so he didn’t have to go the long way round to the bridge. Surely he’d be able to slide over very easily on his hobnailed boots. ‘Skidding’ they called it at home in Kreuzberg. Ha, ha, ha, he thought, where are Goethe and his friend Klopstock now? He really felt like putting on a pair of skates and sweeping through the meadows and alder trees, rapturously free, composing poems in praise of ice skating. The French would get a bit of a shock if someone came sweeping straight into Verdun in a great arc! Surely they’d be chivalrous enough to let him go on his way unharmed. But he walked obediently along the river’s edge to the wooden bridge and sticking close to the hand rail crossed into another command, a completely different zone. As he crossed, he tossed some twigs on to the ice, and there was a dull echo deep beneath the surface as they bounced. On the other bank, a square of ice had been cut away and you could see the black water moving past, icy and silent.

Since the dismantling of the Steinbergquell depot, Sergeant Knappe had been living in a barracks at the bottom of a gully overgrown with bare bushes and trees, and was in charge of the field gun ammunition. His eyes widened in astonishment when Private Bertin nonchalantly handed him the two explosive devices to examine. Bertin must be off his head, he muttered as he carefully carried them through to the testing tent, which was kept apart from the ammunition, telling Bertin to disappear for half an hour. Bertin longed for a heat and some hot coffee and he soon got them from Knappe’s assistants, a couple of artillerymen. Little Herr Knappe had always been thin, but his cheeks had never been as hollow as they were now, and his goatee beard had grown appreciably. They’re starving here too, thought Bertin, as he said goodbye. You can see it. But Herr Knappe’s emaciation was actually due to quite different reasons than hunger: love of his country and despair. He was an excellent design engineer and using a couple of pictures from newspapers had designed one of those all-terrain combat vehicles with caterpillar tracks instead of wheels that the Entente alliance had been using recently. He had sent the drafts to the Supreme Army Command and had received, through Colonel Stein, a scornful reply: such toys could happily be left to the enemy. Let them crawl into those iron dustbins and bring their coffins with them. German infantrymen had no need of such vehicles and the ammunitions expert should get on with his job and leave the rest to the Supreme Army Command. This grieved Herr Knappe, and ever since then he’d been sleeping badly and had lost his appetite and interest in playing chess; where would it all end?

Half an hour later, Private Bertin, now warmed up, reported back to him. The hand grenade was gone, but Knappe handed him the fuse by the tips of his fingers. ‘There,’ he said simply. ‘Drop it in the water from the bridge. But watch out it doesn’t turn round, lad, or you’ll have drunk your last cup of coffee on this earth.’

Somewhat sobered by the little bearded man’s stern tone and serious eyes, Bertin trotted off. On the bridge, he did as he’d been told, but as the water closed over the accursed thing, his thoughts darted off in a completely different direction. The gunners, who knew the area well, had given him a piece of news whose importance none of them could have understood. There was a relatively unscathed village on the hills above Vilosnes-East – what was it called again? It was called Dannevoux. And the barracks on the perimeter above the railway tracks, where the Barkopp working party loaded and unloaded its wagons and which you could just see from the Meuse, formed the large Dannevoux field hospital. There in the immediate vicinity lived Eberhard Kroysing. Bertin would have to go and see him, shake him by the hand and find out how much of him had emerged healthy and unbroken from the darkness of the December battle. His comrade Pahl had been sent there three days ago with blood poisoning in the foot, and that would provide a good excuse for his superiors. Visiting Pahl could easily be passed off as his soldierly duty – a duty to which Eberhard Kroysing had always attached such importance. A good day, a good walk, a welcome hand grenade, a nice chat over a cup of coffee.