Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

And then the small railway followed the course of the Theinte, and to its right disappeared the road to Ville and the approach to the ravines of Fosses wood. From the left above Chaumont little Sergeant Süßmann nodded, no longer a sergeant, his clever monkey’s eyes shining in his singed face, and then the puffing locomotive came upon Artillery Lieutenant von Roggstroh wafting past with his boyish face and short, straight nose; and Bertin suddenly understood that he too must have been killed, which was hardly surprising. But rising above the hills like a gigantic pillar of smoke, lit by a reddish glow, was the figure of Sergeant Christoph Kroysing, waving from Chambrettes-Ferme where the French had long since installed themselves. God, God , thought Bertin, snuggling into the crates of explosives and wondering why young Kroysing had that strange form, like a candle flame, sharp and snapped off at the top. Of course – he recalled the balloon observers who’d been shot down and the two columns of smoke that had then unravelled against the sky. Then a ghostly aeroplane crossed the sky, the pilot’s back covered in a handful of dark bullet holes. Poor young lad with his handsome tanned face.

On the right, they’d reached some ruined trees with disintegrating tops – what was called Thil wood. Suddenly, shells were exploding among them. Dark red flames, yellow lighting. Bertin got a real shock. He had slept through the gunfire. But before he could jump down from his crates of explosives, the sapper on the wagon furthest back reassured him that the gunfire was 150m to the right and would stay there. The Frogs couldn’t get any closer however hard they tried – God damn them.

Still feeling somewhat wary, Bertin remained present and alert, but only a couple of rounds of machine gun fire broke the silence and the even chug-chug-chug of the doughty locomotive. He leaned back again and surveyed the black bulk of the land stretching off to his right. Over there was the road to Azannes and Gremilly. There by a fire that didn’t really exist, a red shell flame, crouched the young farmworker Przygulla, blowing on the flames and warming his hands. His mouth hung open as always because of the growths in his nasal cavity, and his fish eyes looked questioningly at clever Herr Bertin, who proved so much more stupid than Przygulla, when his belly was slit open and Private Schamm carried him into the medical dugout dying like a little child. Yes, said, Lieutenant Schanz, we lads from the Prussian school have to go through some pretty stiff tests before we see sense.

Bertin shuddered, buttoned his coat tighter and put his collar up.

The train stopped for a moment. The line branched off here to Romagne in a continuation of the section that the Schwerdtlein party had constructed with the Russian prisoners during the Great Cold. The sapper had to carry on alone with his wagons into unpleasant territory. The front part of the train, with Bertin and his four wagons, went round the corner into the darkness.

Bertin looked back at the three sapper wagons. Stalking over to meet them was a tall, lean figure in breeches and puttees, who revealed his wolf’s teeth as he laughed and waved his long hand in goodbye. In the end, thought Bertin, he really did choose to haunt Douaumont. ‘Not as unpleasant as you might think, my new state,’ he heard Eberhard Kroysing’s deep voice purr from the distance. ‘I decided to skip the whole air force bigwig business and go straight for that pile of rubble. You won’t forget me, will you, my little joker?’ No fear of that , thought Bertin.

Then he jumped up as the train braked with a jolt. From a dugout cut into the hillside a railwayman appeared and took Bertin’s papers. He said the dugout was called Romagne-West and that Bertin could wait in the warm and cruise back to his depot around 5pm with the empty wagons. Below, in the harsh light of an acetylene lamp, a little stove pumped out heat and there was the smell of coffee. Bertin was handed a mugful. He asked how long this new system had been needed. Since the French had gradually shot the old train station at Romagne to pieces, came the reply. During one of their fireworks displays that big-nosed Berliner had been taken out, that capable sergeant from the Railway Transport Office: had Bertin known him? Of course, replied Bertin. Anyone who had anything to do with the railway had known him. He was the soul of the whole operation and the railway transport officer’s right-hand man. So he was gone? Poor Pelican! That night seemed to belong to the dead. It would be better not to ask after anyone else, for example Friedrich Strumpf. It felt bloody spooky to be leaving this place alive.

And so goodnight.

About 8am, freshly shaved and having shared a good breakfast with little Strauß, Private Bertin of the ASC finally received his travel papers in the orderly room: railway warrants, ration card, delousing warrants, identity card. In his identity card it said that he was to report for duty with the court martial of the Lychow division at Mervinsk. He would find out where Mervinsk was – and how to get there – at the Schlesischer train station in Berlin. Because it was a long journey, he was even authorised to take an express train. The arrears of his wages and his ration money, calculated exactly, were handed over to him in brand new five and ten mark notes; he waived his share of the accumulated canteen money and donated it to the gas worker Halezinsky. The clerk Querfurth with his goatee beard made a note of this. Then they shook hands. ‘All the best, Kamerad,’ said Querfurth. ‘Look after yourselves,’ replied Bertin. And he was amazed to find he had a lump in his throat. It had been a lousy company. For nearly two years he’d been drilled and treated in an increasingly unjust and malicious way, but nonetheless it was his company, a surrogate mother and father, wife and work, home and university. It had fed and clothed him, instructed him and brought him up, it had been a second parental home where the state was the father and Germania the mother, and now he had to leave it and go out into an unknown, uncertain world. A man’s eyes might almost fill with tears at the thought. Main thing was nobody saw.

Nobody did see. And when, half an hour later, the shoogly little train on the Meuse line set off taking him to Montmédy, a tanned ASC man stuck his head out of the window and watched the land behind him, which had shaped him in sunshine and rain, summer and winter, day and night, becoming smaller and smaller. What had little Süßmann’s last words been before he died? ‘To my parents: it was worth it. To Lieutenant Kroysing: it wasn’t.’ The truth lay somewhere between those two poles, but as a wise man had once noted, not in the middle.

IT WAS THE height of June, and the suburb of Ebensee near Nuremberg sparkled in the glow of summer. Here the city touched the old pine and beech woods at the foot of the Franconian part of the Jura hills. Schilfstraße in Ebensee was lined with small villas. From a nearby café came the sound of dance music, modern American tunes called things like the foxtrot or the shimmy.

Two young people strolled along like lovers by the white fence that separated the pavement from the front gardens. The young man was wearing a slightly worn summer suit in a blue-grey material of a cut from before the war. His neck with its prominent Adam’s apple rose up from the open collar of a white shirt. His thin cheekbones, slightly sticky out ears and longish hair looked much less out of place in a conventional suit than in uniform. His small eyes peered searchingly through the thick lenses of his new, stronger spectacles. ‘Number 26,’ he read from the fence opposite. ‘It’s 28 so it must be the next one. Lene, I’m frightened. I’m not sure I can go in.’