Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

The following morning, the milky dawn air breathed cold and damp across the barracks and ammunition dumps of the depot; the sun would not show itself there that day. From a few metres away, the cooks dispensing morning coffee looked like pale and shadowy demons in the steam from their kettles, bestowing a ladleful of the River Lethe on the souls of the dead. Then the working parties disappeared: the Orne valley commando, the commando for hill 310, the Chaume wood commando, the Fosses wood commando. But in barely two hours they were all back. All hell had been let loose in front. No one could get where they were going. The immobile wall of fog, thick as cotton wool, that hung over the camp dampened all sound, turning the depot into an island. The ASC men were delighted to be ordered to stay in their barracks and rest. The depot commander, First Lieutenant Benndorf, knew what had been required of them the night before and would be required of them again that night. Suddenly, around midnight, the rumour spread that the French had broken through, Douaumont had fallen, there was a gap in the front line. Within quarter of an hour, most of the men were in the grip of a vague anxiety. The NCOs were called out; they and the other trained men returned pale and silent. They had received ammunition, live cartridges and carbines, and in half an hour shooting would begin. This was no laughing matter for the ASC men. If things had got to the point where their peaceable NCOs were being called upon to fight, then they and the recruits from the depots in Crépion and Flabas would be thrown into the gap the French were meant to have torn in the front line too, wielding picks and shovels. Everyone agreed with Halezinsky the gas worker when he said: ‘Wow, if they haven’t got anyone better than the likes of us, they should sue for peace.’

But after lunch, the atmosphere lightened again, and this, oddly enough, was partly due to the men being completely cut off from the world, which gave them a deceptive sense of security. At 2.30pm they were assigned duties as usual; before that everyone who knew their way around at the front had been ordered to report to the field gun depot. Bertin joined them, though he didn’t know if he was supposed to, as he’d never had anything to do with field guns. But he knew his way around at the front, no doubt about that, and information was probably what was wanted.

Guides were required. NCOs and field artillery officers crowded round the map in chief ammunitions officer Schulz’s hut, while some ammunition was packed into the gun carts and some stowed in the small dump cars dotted around the depot. Fresh batteries were being brought in, some from the practice grounds at the rear, some from the other side of the Meuse. A carrier pigeon and a couple of runners had brought news; this was a black day. Sergeant Schulz assigned Bertin to the gunners who were to take ammunition up ahead on the narrow-gauge railway – the very line that led to the telephone hut in Wild Boar gorge. At the words ‘Wild Boar gorge’ something sparked in Bertin’s soul: Kroysing! Süßmann! If they had escaped, they would have gone there. He hurried back to the barracks to get his coat, gas mask, tarpaulin and haversack, and his gloves – it would be easier to push and brake the trucks with those on. Before leaving, he was also told to call the depot from the switchboard at the halt station to check if the line was working. The station wasn’t currently answering.

The gunners, strangers to Bertin with braid on their collars, said they were attached to the Guard Reserve Division. Big men from Pomerania, they spoke to each other in rapid Plattdeutsch. In the trucks lay the field shells in their long cases like cartridges for an enormous gun. Creaking and bumping, the long, low-slung ammunitions train pushed off into the void. Bertin had never had such a strong sense of confronting the unknown as he did then, clinging on to the front wagon as he left the familiar area behind in the half-light. Nothing to his right, nothing to his left, in front of him 1.5m of track, behind him two clearly visible wagons and one he couldn’t make out, two gunners beside him, further back noise and confusion. Otherwise all was quiet. The fog was so dense their heads seemed to touch the clouds. Their feet, the feet of seasoned soldiers, jumped automatically from sleeper to sleeper and over the boards laid by the track as a walkway. Not a shot was heard. The Germans didn’t know where the remnants of their infantry had assembled or where the French were gathering. All that was certain was that Douaumont was lost and that the corps would, if possible, mount a counter-attack to support the artillery. Bertin had heard this when he was in the ammunitions expert’s hut. But he had also heard – and this filled him with hope – that Douaumont had been voluntarily evacuated during the night. Voluntarily – that could cover a multitude of sins. At the same time, a thought that had flickered within him earlier resurfaced: a man like Kroysing wouldn’t go further from his post than was absolutely necessary. Was it 3pm or 5pm? Time was dissolving in clouds just as space was dissolving in the yellowish mist.

Wild Boar gorge… could this really be it? Calls, cries, curses, questions: ‘Fourth Company!’ ‘Where in God’s name is my platoon?’ ‘Paramedic, paramedic!’ ‘Second battalion – what’s left of it.’ ‘Sergeants, sergeants stand by for orders!’

The lovely autumn quiet of the valley, that paradise of beech and rowan trees, was getting its fair share this time. The ravaged wood teemed with a confused throng of grey tunics. The little stream was blocked by fallen tree trunks and had overflowed. The tatters of tree stumps, lopped beech trees and far-flung treetops emerged as Bertin left the main line to climb the familiar path. Men stood in the water trying to clear the stream, free twisted rails and make a bridge out of planks. Sappers, ASC men and Saxon infantrymen worked at it together, and among them, issuing instructions, Bertin thought he heard a familiar voice. On the steep side of the valley, a number of undamaged trees still offered cover. There exhausted, grey-faced men, thick bandages round their heads or arms, sat, crouched or slept. Ripped tunics; ragged trousers; men who looked like they’d been pulled from the mud; big dark patches of blood. The small man directing the work, his left hand in a sling made of haversack straps, really was Sergeant Süßmann. He was having a siding cleared, which the blocked stream had covered in mud and slush. ‘Good heavens,’ he said when Bertin called to him, ‘it’s like being on Savignyplatz in Berlin.’ His eyes were no longer restless – to the contrary, they were very clear – but his hair was singed and his face was black from smoke.

Without asking what had happened to him, Bertin said: ‘Where’s the lieutenant?’

‘Inside,’ answered Süßmann, nodding in the direction of the railway hut. ‘Telephoning.’

‘I’m supposed to call my depot to check the line.’ Bertin was still looking at Süßmann, his mouth half open in shock.

‘When the egg is laid, the hen clucks. Go on in. We fixed it a few minutes ago.’

Half a beech tree, its crown still covered in yellow leaves, was propped against the hut’s corrugated iron roof. In a tangle of similar felled treetops next to the hut, three figures lay on a tarpaulin, covered in mud from head to foot, an encrusted layer of clay on their coats. Something about the cut of their clothes said they were officers. They were resting on the natural spring mattress created by the branches. Because their eyes were closed, their haggard faces – one of them a boy’s face – looked oddly like dirty plaster casts of death masks. But these death masks were talking to each other languidly in Saxon dialect, their faces expressionless.