Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

Few people see the bomb that kills them before if falls, but Benedikt Lochner from the Order of St Francis, Catholic chaplain on the western front, was one of those few. A road was nearly as good a target as a railway line, and that was why the little painter Rouard yanked the lever when he got a clearer view of the area the plane was crossing. And Lochner saw it. In the beam of the searchlight he saw a bright drop detach itself from the dreadful monster, as if it were sweat or dirt, and fall. And he fell to his knees. He knelt at his horse’s feet with his hand clasped round his small silver cross. The aeroplane had long since vanished into the night. With his eyes firmly closed, while his horse Egon chewed and stretched his neck out above him, he filled the space inside his chest with prayer: that the Father in Heaven preserve him, that the Virgin take him into her gracious protection, that the Son of God, who had suffered so much, shelter and receive his soul. ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,’ cried his inaudible voice and then it spooled frantically into that great old prayer made up of snatches from the Holy Scriptures that is called ‘Our Father’. He didn’t pray in Latin, as was his habit. German words welled up inside him and drowned out the shrill approach of the falling bomb. And as he prayed, he saw pictures from his childhood of the majesty of the Trinity enthroned on painted clouds, the Father, bearded and in flowing robes, his hands spread in a blessing, to his right the Son, and above their heads doves with halos. And when he got to the line, ‘And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors’, a red blaze crashed down in front of him. A good 12m from him, Rouard’s hanging bat had burst a hole in the road surface, sending mounds of earth rolling downhill and scattering cascades of splinters all around. They hit the dead wall of the hillside with as much force as the trembling flesh of the man and the horse. Lochner was struck in the chest, the horse in the neck and leg. A scream was the last thing Lochner heard – it wasn’t clear if it came from him or the animal, which now collapsed on top of him. Their gasps and groans and blood intermingled.

The next morning infantrymen would arrive from their position nearby shaking their heads at the size of the holes an aerial bomb could make and saying, good heavens, it’s taken out a field chaplain this time. And then they would calmly get out their canteens and knifes and cut off the tenderest parts of Egon the gelding’s flesh to make a delicious roast for their evening meal.

MAJOR JANSCH PACED round his office, very pale, with slippers on his feet – thick felt slippers as there was a draught through the floor. He’d blanched in fury and hissed at his batman Kuhlmann that he was going to transfer him back to his unit because his cocoa was too hot. He’d blanched in fury and trampled on a spider because it had the temerity to cross his path. He’d blanched in fury… The orderly room beneath him was in no doubt as to his state of mind; if his friend Niggl didn’t come and mollify him no one would dare to go near him that day. No one perhaps except Corporal Diehl, the primary school teacher from Hamburg. He was in restrained high spirits for the same reason that Herr Jansch was beside himself. For Diehl had learnt that the world was not always as evil and nasty and it sometimes seemed. Even in the Kaiser’s army, the weak sometimes found succour. Such a miracle encouraged backbone. If necessary, Diehl would venture into the lion’s den.

But it wasn’t necessary. Outside the spring weather looked moody and changeable. But Herr Jansch didn’t notice. His indignation prevented him from noticing. First, there had been a dreadful air attack the night before. Damvillers station had suffered a service breakdown, and you could see why. Even in his cellar, Major Jansch had heard the two bombs crashing down. And furthermore, it had been proved that the Jews were omnipotent. Even in the Kaiser’s army. Even if they knew how to act powerless for a year or two. When it suited them, off they floated. And just when an honest German thought he’d backed them into a corner, they pressed a button and a Hohenzollern appeared through a secret door to play the rescuing angel of Judas, disappearing with his charge as the orchestra struck up the march from Handel’s Messiah : ‘Daughter of Zion, rejoice’.

Jansch pressed his chin into the collar of his Litevka, tugged at his long moustache with both hands, bit into a raspberry flavoured sweet and cut a deep shaft in his world view. He’d always known the Hohenzollerns weren’t up to much. They were erratic people, those descendants of the Burgraves of Nuremberg, and their blood was far too mixed for them to produce men of steady character, true sovereigns and rulers. Again and again, this inborn mushiness broke through the little bit of toughness and character they had painstakingly cultivated in Berlin and Brandenburg. All of them had signed despicable peace treaties, all of them had made bad bargains, and all of them had had dealings with Jews. After Frederick the Great it had got worse, not better. The Guelphic and French blood that had produced him had only really been properly felt in his descendants. Wilhelm II and especially his son, grandson of the English woman, they had been the business. When Frederick III succumbed to cancer of the throat after 99 days – his father had told him this – the citizenry mourned in its entirety, but Old Prussia secretly breathed a sigh of relief: that bearded liberal would only have let the country down. And then, barely two years later, that which ought never to have happened happened: Bismarck’s dismissal. A logical chain ran from that act of betrayal to the overthrow of the Old Prussian constitution, which, as the Pan-German Union admitted through clenched teeth, seemed inevitable now, and right in the middle of a war. A man who could chase out the Iron Chancellor as though he were a disloyal lackey deserved that Bethmann-Hollweg, that chancellor made out of philosophy papers, and the rubbish that came out of his mouth every time he opened it. So much for the father, but the son wouldn’t improve things, wouldn’t rescue the situation, however much he seemed to applaud the Old Germans. That frivolous man always did the opposite of what might have been expected, as the present example showed. Such things came back to roost. Any reasonable man could see that, even in sunglasses at midnight. Those people were played out.

Major Jansch paced round the stone walls of his room, which was hung with maps and lay in a house wrested from the conquered French. Solemn music resonated within him, based on the funeral march that tended to be played at burials, which, regrettably, had been written by a Pole, a certain Chopin. He filled up inside with sorrow at Germany’s destiny, at the decline that always threatened that which was most noble. Some lines of verse sounded within him, heroic lines from his favourite poet Dahn:

So ended the conflict between the noble Gothic nation and those sly, shifty sons of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantines. Innocence, nobility of mind and trusting heroism had no place in that world, which belonged to the descendants of dwarves. The riff-raff always triumphed because internal German discord smoothed their path.

There it lay, the document that represented the end of all hope; printed in blue on German Army notepaper, the telegram from the Commander-in-Chief of the crown prince’s Army Group, sent via his Quartermaster General, said that Private Bertin of the ASC was to be transferred forthwith from the First Company to the Lychow Army Group. Confirmation was to be telegraphed when the order had been carried out. All over, Jansch. No Iron Cross, first class will ever adorn your breast. If that Jew ever learnt of your intentions and were asked questions, he’d only have to laugh and tell stories and the game would be up… The First Company orderly room was on the line, literally a-quiver with awe and excitement. A telegram from the crown prince! The order would be carried out that day. Private Bertin would be summoned to Etraye-East that very morning. His papers had already been drawn up, and his travel documents were being prepared. He could leave that evening and then the battalion could report up that the order had been carried out.