Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

Feicht looked with deepest sympathy at the gentleman perched on the bedstead in his slippers and blue knitted waistcoat with deer antler buttons. Here was a proper compatriot who wouldn’t turn his men over to that insane, scrawny Nuremberger, that rag and bone merchant. ‘It’ll be all right, old boy, even if it is a bit of a headache,’ said Feicht. ‘Whoever puts his trust in this retired civil servant from Weilheim will always have family. And when we’re all happily back home, Feicht will know whom to thank.’

‘Off you go, Feicht.’

The sergeant major walked to the door, turned the key and clicked his heels together, every bit the soldier. They’d understood each other without speaking plainly.

When there were spoils to share out, the sergeant major kept the lion’s share and gave something to the clerk who was working on the case, as well as the postal orderly and one or two of the NCOs to whom he was well disposed. It was very painful to have to cough up gifts already received, but a wise man does not questions orders from on high and he would no doubt get his reward in due course.

All alone in the small, square room that had been assigned to him and Simmerding the company commander as a billet and office, Ludwig Emmeran Feicht busied himself with the objects that the now almost forgotten sergeant had left behind in July. The company’s list lay on the table, and the cheerful electric light was working again. The door was closed, and a tumblerful of red wine and a filled pipe sweetened the unpleasant task. A coup had failed – never mind, they hadn’t meant any harm. Now in slippers himself, the portly man moved about putting everything in order, then sat astride the stool to take stock. Every time he found something he made a cross on the list with a freshly sharpened pencil.

First a leather waistcoat, worn but still usable, and (secondly) this fountain pen with the gold lever: they had formed the clerk Dillinger’s share. He’d been wide-eyed when he handed them back but he’d understood. Funny how the whole company had grasped that something to do with dead Sergeant Kroysing was in the air when that lanky fencepost of a brother appeared. Oh, they’d gloated a bit at the beginning, the little ASC men. But not any more. They visited their comrades in the sickbay and thought bitterly about how they had Lieutenant Kroysing to thank. Perhaps one or two workers from Munich thought about it more deeply and held the orderly room responsible for the disaster. But that way of thinking had no momentum, because the French shells had so much more momentum; he who dies, dies. Nowt for it. And so the Frogs helped keep discipline, and one army supported the other.

Pipe, tobacco pouch and pocket knife; Sergeant Pangerl had obediently brought them back. The knife had a deer antler handle and was stuck in its sheath like a dirk. The lad Kroysing had hardly used the pipe, which was of the best Nuremberg workmanship, and had kept it in a leather pouch. Now it would atrophy in a drawer – what a shame. Sergeant Major Feicht looked tenderly on the broad ebonite mouthpiece, the gleaming briar wood bowl and the wide tobacco chamber fitted with an aluminium tube. He put the parts back together again, wrapped the pipe in its pouch and crossed it off the list. A wallet full of slips of paper, a notebook, a leather-bound booklet with the calendar for 1915, a narrow moleskin notebook with writing – with poems! The kinds of verses that rhymed at the end. Ludwig Feicht’s lips curled in contempt. Typical. People who wrote verses should steer clear of other activities. If things went wrong for them, they only had themselves to blame. But now the most important items: the purse, watch and ring. Shame about the ring. He’d intended to give it to his wife Theresa as a souvenir, a holiday surprise. It was set with a beautiful green stone, an emerald, and the ring itself was in the shape of snake biting its tail and was patterned with scales. He, Feicht, had wanted to wear the watch, either on his wrist or strung on a long, thin gold chain across his waistcoat. It had all gone sour.

He hadn’t done too badly in this unit, but it was nothing compared to the infantry and cavalry, who’d marched into wealthy Belgium at the beginning of the war, into Luxembourg and northern France. They had seen some loot and no mistake. The clocks of Liège, the gold of Namur, and even the small provincial towns. Of course those dirty north German rogues hadn’t let the Bavarians at it. It was the Rhinelanders and Saxons who got stuck in, by Jove it was. Had it not always been considered right and proper that soldiers who were risking their life for the Fatherland should pocket something? Did the bigwigs behave any differently when they swallowed up whole provinces – Belgium, Poland, Serbia and the beautiful stretch of countryside here that they called the Briey-Longwy iron ore basin. If you didn’t get rich at war, you’d never get rich. And what a waste it would’ve been to melt down the beautiful watches, chains, bangles, necklaces, rings and brooches when the small towns were razed to the ground because they were full of god-damned franctireurs resistance fighters. Where had he met that clever man with the travelling military field library, which had a false bottom with drawers you could pull out – nothing but Belgian watches in them? Had it been in Alsace? Yes, that man had known what was what. But the war wasn’t over yet. A lot could still happen. All of France might be up for grabs if the Germans won. And they would win and must win – or all was lost. Feicht wasn’t the only one who knew that. So he could restore this Swiss watch with its beautifully engraved gold back cover to the lucky heirs with confidence. It kept good time, he could vouch for that. The money – he counted the folded notes. Seventy-six Marks and eighty Pfennigs – ah well! He could’ve got the children new clothes with it, pleated taffeta skirts, green silk pinafores and tops. But it didn’t matter. Theresa was doing very nicely out of the starving north Germans. He’d get over it. He’d kept it safe, and there you were – he’d been right. The last item on the list was underwear. Ludwig Feicht dipped a pen in ink and wrote an asterisked note on the list, placing it so that the company commander’s signature hovered protectively below it: ‘Distributed to comrades in need, as the deceased would have wished.’ Full stop.

The pile of goods lay on the grey-painted table carefully wrapped in the leather waistcoat. Dependable Feicht now took from a box a large piece of orange-coloured oil paper reinforced with woven-in threads and wrapped the whole lot up so that the affixed address label adorned the middle. He tied it with string, took sealing wax and the company seal and sealed Sergeant Kroysing’s effects with two big red stamps. He left the address intact. It was addressed to the Third Company orderly room, and the sender was given as the Fifth Echelon Army Postal Depot. A whole stack of letters had arrived from there after the battalion had been on the move for a week, battering over from Poland to Verdun. That now proved rather handy. Ludwig Feicht filled out a small yellow slip of paper in narrow, spiky handwriting: ‘Return to sender. Address incomplete. No duplicate enclosed.’ He checked the postmark – delightfully illegible.

He would suggest to the captain that he enclose a judiciously worded covering letter, saying that the package had been correctly addressed to Councillor Kroysing, but that due to an oversight on the part of the clerk Dillinger the army postal address of the company had been given instead of the Kroysings’ address in Nuremberg: Ebensee, Schilfstraße 28. What a silly mix-up! Dillinger had been severely reprimanded and would have spent three days in prison, but they had decided to put mercy before justice as his wife had just had a baby and his thoughts were back home. If the company hadn’t been suddenly ‘transferred’, the package would have been in Nuremberg long ago. That’s how it was, Lieutenant. Did the lieutenant have any further questions? Ludwig Feicht the purser grinned quietly to himself, dipped a small brush in the glue jar, stuck the return slip on the right-hand corner of the address label and rubbed it a bit with the sole of his slipper to make it look as though it had gone through the post. He then stamped it with the company stamp in such a way that only two of the curved lines and an asterisk were visible; ink doesn’t take very well on oil paper and he’d been careful not to press the stamp in the ink pad. With his hands behind his back, he contemplated his handiwork. Excellent job. The captain would be pleased.