Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

‘Kroysing?’ he repeated in a questioning tone.

The tall lieutenant bowed in confirmation. ‘Exactly so. You know the name.’

‘We had an NCO in the Third Company—’

‘That was my brother,’ the lieutenant broke in.

Sadly, sadly, death always takes the best ones, said Captain Niggl sympathetically. Sergeant Kroysing had been a model of conscientiousness who would have been a credit to the officer corps. He’d only have had to hold out for another couple of months, and the worst would have been over. He would have got home leave and then gone to officer training and everything would have turned out well. Wasn’t it just like the thing that the Frogs had got him just before?

The lieutenant bowed in thanks. Yes, war didn’t pick and choose, and his parents would slowly get over it. His brother had implied something about a court martial procedure the last time they spoke. But that had been at the end of April or beginning of May, if memory served, soon after the dreadful explosion at any rate and during the heavy fighting towards Thiaumont-Fleury, and he really hadn’t had time to deal with it. He’d only spoken to his brother for about 20 minutes. What had the whole thing been about?

Captain Niggl began by asking how the lieutenant had come to serve in a Prussian unit when the Kroysings were a good Bavarian family, Franconian if he wasn’t mistaken, from Nuremberg. The lieutenant explained that he had been drafted into the Mark sappers as a staff sergeant in the military Reserve immediately after the end of term at the Technical University in Charlottenburg and had remained there as a lieutenant. This was a reflection of the unity of the German Reich that their grandfathers had talked so much about and that their fathers had fought for in 1870. But to get back to the court martial procedure: what was it really about?

Nothing, said Herr Niggl. Or as good as nothing. The army postal censor was overly nervous, and honest young Sergeant Kroysing had unfortunately written a couple of injudicious phrases to a high-ranking military official. He really couldn’t remember anything more specific at the moment. He’d been terribly annoyed to have to investigate such a good soldier for something like that. But it wasn’t up to him, and besides young Kroysing would definitely have emerged from the investigation untarnished. Alas, everyone underestimated the dangers the ASC men faced. Had the lieutenant heard that two of his men had been blown to bits only yesterday morning, just as Christoph had been a couple of months before?

The lieutenant made a mental note that Niggl had said ‘Christoph’. His expression remained unchanged. He too was sure that the court martial would have rehabilitated his brother, he said. But where were the files? Whom should he approach to get the process underway? Herr Niggl said he didn’t know. The files had gone through official channels, the way of all flesh. Perhaps the Third Company’s Sergeant Major Feicht could provide some information. Sergeant Major Feicht, the lieutenant repeated, noting the name down. And what about his brother’s effects? There were all sorts of valuable items, some from the time of their great-grandfather, Judge Kroysing in the Royal Bavarian Court, and personal things that might console their mother. And papers, maybe sketches or poems. Christoph had written some now and then. Their mother would probably want to pull together a small memorial booklet for relatives and friends. In short, where were these things?

Captain Niggl was taken aback and said that they had remained at the military hospital, which had sent them home as it was obliged to do. No, said Lieutenant Kroysing, that was not the case. On the day of the funeral, the military hospital had told him that the company had claimed the effects straight away in order to send them home itself. Ah yes, said the captain, it just showed how faithfully the Third Company’s orderly room looked after its men. The items must have been sent to Nuremberg immediately. Hmm, said Lieutenant Kroysing, then all that remained was for him to express his thanks. With the captain’s permission he would ask at home if the effects had arrived in the meantime and report back. But now he wouldn’t encroach on his time any longer. He’d interrupted him about a purely private matter when he was in the middle of writing a letter. Just one more question, this time of an official nature, and with this he stood up: in order to encourage his men, might the captain occasionally like to accompany the early-morning bomb disposal units or the night-time construction parties? It would definitely make a good impression and help the captain with the commanding officers. Danger lurked both inside and out. With that, he bowed and took leave of the higher-ranked, senior officer with the prescribed salute: heels together, finger to his cap. He didn’t give him his hand.

Niggl the retired civil servant from Weilheim sat there gazing after him as he wiped the sweat from his brow. He suddenly realised that he was being held prisoner here in this vault, that it was like a trap, perhaps even a grave. Why had that idiot Sergeant Kroysing not looked more like his brother – as dangerous as him? Why had he had such a harmless, boyish face and behaved like a fool? God help the man who came under the scrutiny of the brother’s eyes, into his hands. Only a bonehead could believe it was a coincidence that he and his Third Company – they and no other – had ended up here. That man knew something – what remained to be seen. Now he even wanted to send him, Niggl, out on official business into that bloody awful shell-cratered world, where a man could so easily be taken out by a shell splinter or a bullet. He would have to write to Captain Lauber immediately, or better still telephone him – immediately. Someone had deceived Captain Lauber: this was private revenge through official means. He and his ASC men were out of place here; he’d surely see that. Or should he first inform Simmdering and Feicht? What had happened to Kroysing’s effects? Were they still lying about in company storage because no one had found the time to read through the lad’s scribbles? Had the foxes been at them? No, there was no rush. He’d be able to take advice long before Kroysing had an answer from home. The most urgent matter was to discover the enemy’s intentions and find out what he knew.

Most urgent of all was that he keep his head. That he’d lost his nerve so suddenly was simply down to this dung heap, Douaumont. He’d allowed himself to be too impressed by the word. It looked almost exactly the same here as in the cellars of Ettal Abbey or Starnberg Castle. If he were sitting there he wouldn’t feel like giving up just because a man with whom he had to work was the brother of another man with whom he’d worked before. He sat there eyeing the white-washed wall in front of him. When he examined the whole discussion, it really hadn’t been so suspicious after all. He alone had ascribed a vengeful role to his visitor; he alone, persuaded by the fact that this stupid pile of bricks wasn’t called Ettal Abbey or Starnberg Castle but Douaumont, had given the situation sinister connotations. If you looked at it soberly, nothing could be proved. The question about the files was as natural as the one about the effects. The fact that a Lieutenant Kroysing was in charge of the sapper depot was as harmless as his brother being an NCO in the ASC. The lieutenant hadn’t really looked after his younger brother. And now he was meant to have had his brother’s company and battalion commander transferred in order to exact revenge. Rubbish! Preposterous nonsense! Young Kroysing was dead and couldn’t say anything. There were always ASC companies pottering around in Douaumont. If this wasn’t a coincidence, then there was no such thing as coincidences, and the Holy Father was right to believe in a jealous God sitting above the world observing wrong-doers and protecting the innocent. And it wasn’t hard to deal with the Lord God. You went to confession and did what the priest told you. Then you put one over on the devil – and his envoy, this lanky bloody Prussian, who wasn’t even a real Prussian but a Nuremberg imitation. Nothing’s up, Niggl. Write your letter home and don’t let on to the wife and kids.