Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

Where was he now? Low pine trees, greyish green under the dull blue Brandenburg sky. The clearing between Wilkersdorf and Tamsel. Yellow sand and fields waist-high in rye. He was in the uniform of a warrior, which he’d been wearing for three months by then, and he had to prove his manhood because she’d refused him under that clear sky. He’d gone for her and pressed her down into the moss by the shoulders. She struggled furiously. He’d forced himself on her and frightened her as he’d earlier frightened a boy who’d tried to follow them. Had that rape, and all the misery, pain and unpleasantness that followed, been a manly act? No, it had been the act of a sergeant major. Crushing someone instead of winning them over, throwing them down instead of seducing them, ordering them about rather than persuading them – that was how a sergeant major behaved. Tons of steel, volleys of explosions, desolate swathes of poisonous smoke, careening mounds of earth, cracking joists, howling and whistling bursts of splinters and shells: they were all the result of a kind of exasperated weakness. Anyone could press a button. On 14 July, he, Bertin, had not pressed the button. But on 15 July, do truth the honour…

Bertin clung to the dugout post. Suddenly he felt sick and dizzy. The outlines of the wagons standing calmly on the tracks not 40m away, treacherously quiet in the treacherous moonlight, swam in circles before him. But before the sergeant could ask him what was wrong, a dull thud shook the hill above their heads, then a second. Splinters of stone fell from roof. The anti-aircraft fire doubled in intensity. The machine guns grew frantic. But the roar of the propeller was still there, though more distant. The railwaymen sat against the wall, and the ASC men further forward in the darkness. Bertin the sentry, suddenly completely exhausted, crouched beside them on the wooden edge of the wire bed. Excited chattering until the conclusion was finally drawn that it had been a lot of noise about nothing. He’d missed the ammunitions wagons and been disorientated by the counter fire. He must’ve dropped his bombs somewhere on the ridge behind or in front of Dannevoux. From the sound of it, the second bomb had probably ripped a hole in the hill path.

Bertin stretched his aching knees slowly. Only half an hour more of sentry duty and he could go to bed and spend four hours wrapped up in his blankets like a chrysalis undergoing metamorphosis. His second round from 4am to 6am might be restorative, with bird song, sunrise and a chance to pull himself together. But this last half hour would be hard. His limbs were trembling. He hurriedly lit his pipe and felt better, letting the men’s talk wash over him. Sergeant Barkopp pushed off to bed: tomorrow was another day – and an off-duty one at that. Bertin carried on smoking, in contravention of the rules, as he made his way out of the shelter with Karl Lebehde and Hildebrandt, who was on sentry duty after him, and stumbled across the rails past the ammunitions wagons towards the middle of the valley. Karl Lebehde stopped, turned and peered up at the hillside. A flickering red glow. An old barn or pile of wood was burning up there, said the tall Swabian. A bomb must have hit it. Karl Lebehde said nothing, wagged his head on his short neck, looked round again and finally went to bed. Bertin shivered. His musket suddenly felt like it weighed nine pounds. It had been a long, exciting day, and around midnight nature said: enough! But he was still on duty. That couldn’t be helped. His bulging pockets dragged at this shoulders.

LIEUTENANT KROYSING, IN bed by the outer wall of his room, was already fast asleep. Only a tiny spark of consciousness connected him to the earth’s surface; his reality in that moment was that of a dream. He was flying, he, Flight Lieutenant Kroysing, was flying over the Channel. He was surrounded by roaring: from the sea, the wind and the thrum of his engine. The North Sea heaved beneath him. But its waves couldn’t hurt him and neither could the long-range guns on the ships below: their shells fell back down, yelping and powerless. In his dream, the missiles climbed towards him, pointed end first, hovered for a moment, bowed before him and hurtled back down. The cheeky little machine gun bullets were another matter. They flew up at him like bees and settled on his wings, making curves and star shapes, and transforming his plane into a butterfly. But it wasn’t like other butterflies. It was a huge death’s head moth, a bomber that threatened cities. Beneath him lay an English city full of English people, with a layout similar to Nuremberg. There was the castle where Alfred the Great had lived with Christopher Columbus – they were going to drop a bomb on its chimney. His hand was already reaching for the bomb release handle. Then a shell burst beside that hand and with a start Eberhard Kroysing woke up.

Noise filled the lieutenants’ ward. It seemed that an aircraft was actually paying a visit to the station down below. For all the batteries and M.G.’s in the area were letting rip at it. At first he wanted to jump out of bed and alert the barracks. But then he felt ashamed of that impulse, for this was a hospital not a… He couldn’t follow this thought to its conclusion. Sitting bolt upright, all ears, he tried to imagine the enemy – the enemy, who was really a comrade. Just you wait, old chap , he thought. In three months, I’ll knock you out of the sky and pay you back for this night-time visit with pleasure .

Through all the noise he heard the engine approaching in the darkness, despite Lieutenant Flachsbauer’s snoring. (The poor man wrapped himself up in sleep as though it were a thick quilt. His bride was seriously ill with septic appendicitis. It was an almost hopeless case, and he’d become suspicious, as soldiers do in hospital, and thought it wasn’t her appendix but septicaemia in another organ.) What a healthy racket the anti-aircraft guns were making! Out of bed. Yank the window open; white ribbons streaking across the night sky. Flashes as the anti-aircraft guns opened fire. A black-red puff of bursting shrapnel, then a second. He heard the aircraft engine very clearly through the frantic rattle of the machine guns. Kroysing peered up, half leaning out of the window; nothing but sky, ribbons of light and a couple of stars. A figure almost as tall as himself ran past underneath and returned a couple of seconds later. A muffled voice almost as deep as his own cried out to him: ‘Kamerad, take cover!’ And the man disappeared. Kroysing paid him no mind. This visit would be on little Bertin’s watch. Wasn’t he on guard duty? Of course he was. It was nearly 11pm, and he had number two. Well, that boy had a cool head. Kroysing had seen how he handled different kinds of situations. He would wake the barracks up.

But hadn’t the sound above him changed? It certainly had. It was fractionally louder and getting closer. He couldn’t see much out of this bloody window, which faced Dannevoux. And was it appropriate for an old soldier with an injured leg to go running out into the night against doctor’s orders? A little sobered, Kroysing straightened his pyjamas and was about to go back into the room. But what was that? That guy up there just kept heading downwards. Was he still dreaming or what? Had his dream spooled on and flipped over, as sometimes happens? This is a field hospital , a voice screamed inside him. You can’t drop your bomb on our beds .

He listened intently and suddenly the realisation struck him like a bullet to the heart that the guy must have made a mistake. He was going to blow the field hospital to pieces by accident and it would happen any second now if the anti-aircraft guns didn’t take him out.