Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

‘To be blunt,’ said Kroysing eventually, ‘I don’t believe a word you’ve said, sir. Not that I think you’re lying. But Christoph was an unreliable witness. He had an over-active imagination. He was a lyrical soul, you know, a poet.’

‘A poet?’ repeated Bertin, taken aback.

‘So to speak,’ confirmed Kroysing. ‘He wrote verse, pretty verse, and he was working on a play, a drama, he called it, a tragedy — what do I know? Such people quickly become obsessed by inconsequential things. Prejudices. Suspicions. But I, my dear chap, am a man of fact. My subject was engineering, and that precludes such fantasies.’

Bertin scrutinised his companion. He found it perplexing that Kroysing was so sceptical about someone whose personality and tone Bertin had immediately found convincing.

‘I don’t mean,’ continued Kroysing, ‘that my little brother was an idiot or a blabbermouth. But you men in the rank and file are prone to persecution complexes. You fancy everyone is bad and wants to make things difficult for you. You’d have to come up with some proof, young man.’

Bertin considered. ‘Would a letter from your brother count as proof, Lieutenant? A letter that my wife was supposed to send to your mother? A letter in which the case is set out, so that your uncle in Metz may finally intervene?’

Eberhard Kroysing looked up, fixing his hard eyes on Bertin. ‘And what is my Uncle Franz’s involvement to be in this matter about which you’re so well informed?’

‘Set the wheels in motion for a court martial and cite Christoph at the hearing.’

‘And how long was the boy in the cellar at Chambrettes-Ferme?’

‘Over two months with no break and no let-up.’

Eberhard Kroysing drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Give me the letter,’ he said.

‘It’s in my haversack,’ said Bertin. ‘I couldn’t know that I’d meet you here, Lieutenant.’

Eberhard Kroysing smiled grimly. ‘You were right to doubt it. The news came to me indirectly from our battalion headquarters, and if the Frogs hadn’t been unusually quiet, I might have missed my connection. But either way, I must have the letter.’

Bertin hesitated. ‘There’s something I must tell you. The letter was in his pocket when he was hit. It’s soaked in blood and unreadable.’

‘His blood,’ said Eberhard Kroysing. ‘So there’s still something left of him above ground. But that doesn’t matter. There are simple chemical processes that can deal with that. My sergeant Süßmann can do them in his sleep. It would seem,’ he said, and his brow darkened, ‘that I didn’t look after the little one as well as I should have done. Damn it,’ he shouted, suddenly angry, ‘I had other concerns. I thought the court martial had given its opinion long ago and put everything in order. The idea that brothers look out for each other is just a fairytale. Often they fight and hate each other. Or have you had a different experience?’

Bertin thought for a moment then said no, his experience was no different. He usually only had news of his brother Fritz from his parents. The boy had been serving the whole time with the 57s, first in Flanders then in Lens, in the Carpathians and on the Hartmannsweilerkopf, and now, more was the pity, in the worst part of the Somme battle. Who knew if he was still alive? Brotherly love was just an ingrained figure of speech. Brothers had always fought for favour and position in the family, from Cain and Abel to Romulus and Remus, to say nothing of German royalty, who enjoyed blinding, murdering and exiling each other to monasteries.

‘Let’s go,’ said Kroysing. ‘The drivers here have organised a car for me, so I’ll be back in my hellish cellar by tonight. We’ll go via your park. And if I get the proof I need, then I’ll put it before the court martial. And then we’ll see. I’m not vengeful. But if those gentleman really did spirit little Christel away from my mother in order that he should end up awaiting resurrection on the third shelf of that grave, then it’s time they made my acquaintance.’

They waited for the car in front of the mess. Above the hills towards Romagne, known as the Morimont, the sky was a diaphanous green. Bertin was hungry. He was counting on someone from his platoon having kept some dinner for him. If not, a ration of dry bread was enough for a man who had furthered a dead friend’s cause. No one was better placed than Eberhard Kroysing to bring those responsible for his brother’s murder to account.

The army driver in his leather jacket drove the open car over the white roads like a man possessed because he wanted to reach the firing zone, where he had to drive without lights, before dark. Less than half an hour later they pulled up by the water troughs at the Steinbergquell barracks. Bertin ran over and came back a short time later. He handed the lieutenant what looked to be a piece of stiff cardboard, wrapped in white paper. Eberhard Kroysing clasped it carefully in his hand.

A few nights later, Private Bertin had a remarkable experience, which he only believed the following noon when he saw the evidence with his own eyes.

Like many short-sighted people, Bertin relied on his hearing to interpret the blurry, threatening world around him. As people also hear when they are asleep because from the time of the glaciers and forest swamps danger has approached by night, he’d had some difficulty adjusting to communal sleeping. It was a sweltering July night in the valley, which cut between Moirey and Chaumont like a butcher’s trough and was permanently filled with swamp fog from the Theinte. The moon was nearly full, and in its pale, milky glow the night seem deceptively clear. Nice weather for flying. The wakeful would do well to keep watch.

Shortly after one, the machine guns at the Cape camp began to rattle furiously a few kilometres beyond Thil wood; anti-aircraft guns croaked red sparking shrapnel up into the air. They were coming! It wasn’t unexpected. Men of a very cautious disposition – a couple of gunners and a few ASC men, including Pahl the typesetter – had been sleeping in the old dugouts by the roadside for a week. The phone at Moirey shrilled with calls from the Cape camp. The Frogs wouldn’t be flying over at one in the morning to distribute biscuits. One of the telephonists at Steinbergquell sped over to see the on-duty sergeant. A bomb attack on a depot currently holding 30,000 shells of which 5,000 were gas shells – and the company was asleep in its barracks! The sentries rushed around, while from the south (the ammunitions depot was at the north end of the encampment) the gentle mosquito drone of the French engines began to build in the dormitories: ‘Air attack! Everyone outside with gas masks! Lights out! Assemble behind the kitchen hut!’ Behind the kitchen hut, the ground fell gradually away so that a flat mound of earth curved up between it and the dangerous ammunition.

A lot of ASC men slept in their lace-ups; no one needed more than a couple of seconds to wake up, slip into their boots, coat or tunic, and underpants or trousers, and leap on to the wooden floor with a crash. The barracks stood open and empty in the pale grey of the night. The clatter of hobnailed boots was drowned out by defensive fire from the MGs and the artillery. The white antennae of searchlights slunk across the sky to help drag down the mosquito swarm: three planes, or maybe five. They were flying so high! Spread out along the damp grass and hard, clayey soil of the southern slope, the defenceless ASC men listened breathlessly and looked up to the sky where the storm would soon start. Yes, they were for it. A fine whistle was unleashed up above, two-voiced, many-voiced, getting stronger, and then the valley filled with flashing and roaring, and a dull thunder crashed. For a second, the Earth’s fiery interior seemed to gape open were the bombs had hit; then the valley was engulfed in black. The valley roared under fire nine times; then the French had flown the loop that allowed them to escape the anti-aircraft fire; the planes flew off to the west, perhaps to launch a further attack on the other side of the Meuse.