Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

‘Our ways part here,’ said Kroysing, sniffing the air with his wide nostrils. ‘It smells of winter. We’re going to have a wonderful Christmas. Did you hear that?’

Dull thuds, as though wrapped in cotton wool, could be heard coming from the dense fog that began a few paces away.

‘The bastard French are starting up again. We thought we could pull the stars down out of the sky and had victory in the bag. That’s never good. Once again, Bertin, cheerio. Chin up, my young friend,’ he added with a wave of his right hand. ‘Cheers. Happy New Year to one and all. Vive la guerre!’ He saluted, turned round and headed off, becoming more ghostly with every menacing step he took. The three men watched him until he dissolved into the fog.

‘Right, let’s go,’ said Lieutenant von Roggstroh. ‘It can’t get much darker.’

They crossed the valley on the newly erected plank bridges. Roggstroh said the bridges showed what a blessing it was to have sappers and ASC men to make sure the artillery didn’t get their legs wet before they had to. The feverish wounded shivered and groaned by the fires. As they passed them, a tall man rose and, eyes tightly closed, said: ‘Buried, Doctor. Volunteer Lobedanz, University of Heidelberg, currently in the field.’ Then he sat down again and pushed his hands against the rock behind his head as though it might collapse.

They climbed the disintegrating path that led to the battery. From time to time, the lieutenant flashed his torch. That’s how they picked out the ‘signpost’ – the dead Frenchman still standing against the beech tree, nailed in place by a shell splinter. Not for the first time, Bertin thought that he should be underground. The lieutenant said: ‘They pull some tricks round here.’

German shells swooped and groaned overhead like giant birds of the night. No one knew where they came from or where they were going. His heart thumping, Bertin thought that Lieutenant Schanz must be dead or they would have heard his howitzers firing – what he liked to call ‘giving a concert’. The howl of battle, rising every quarter of an hour, thundered across from somewhere further forward, somewhat to the left. Then a sudden burst of rifle fire: Kroysing’s men.

‘We’re holding Caillette wood,’ said the lieutenant. ‘And we’re holding Fort Vaux and Damloup, or at least we were two hours ago. Do you know what the field of fire is like? How does it lie in relation to Douaumont?’

‘Unfavourably,’ answered Bertin. ‘Douaumont dominates the whole area.’

As they came on to the top, walking in goose step and feeling a few paces in front of them with their sticks, they could hear the gun battle more clearly, though they couldn’t see anything. A figure appeared from the fog, a man, a corporal, panting and shaking with fear. A lost infantryman from one of the battalions that had lain in reserve and been called out that afternoon to clear the area leading to Douaumont of French shock troops. With him was a small group that had been on the far left wing and had got separated from the company. Lost in a wilderness of mist, craters and sodden earth, they battled the terrain, expecting to drown in a sludge-filled shell hole at any moment. Lieutenant Roggstroh decided they should take the men with them. They were from the Mark, Brandenburgers from the fifth division of the military Reserve. When they reached the advance guard a minute later, the four remaining men were waiting motionless and panic-stricken. They’d been afraid the path they were on would lead them straight into the vengeful arms of the French. Now they trotted behind the officer in relief, like children who attach themselves to someone else’s mother because they’ve lost their own in the woods. They had thought there couldn’t be a soul left alive in that wilderness. The French had taken them by surprise, suddenly appearing after the wild bombardment, but had been beaten back.

‘They’re sick to death of it too,’ said one of the four, who was exhausted and caked in sludge. ‘If you fall down wounded here you’ll drown in the sludge whether you’re French or German,’ and he made an all-embracing arc with his arms. Now the artillery sergeant, who until then had been listening and watching attentively, prodding the sodden earth with his stick, opened his mouth. ‘How are we going to get our guns forward?’ he sighed. ‘The poor old nags.’

The lieutenant didn’t answer and shrugged his shoulders. You could tell from his frown that he too loved his battery’s horses. A sudden crash and howl signalled the start of the French shrapnel fire. They heard the shells burst but saw nothing. The main valley was clearly under fire. Kroysing’s down there, thought Bertin dull. It doesn’t matter any more . Finally, a splintered tree loomed up before them and what looked like a wall of earth or a rock. Breathing heavily, Bertin said: ‘It’s downhill a bit on the right. There were no canisters or carbines here.’ He pushed forwards and disappeared from view. ‘Schanz,’ the others heard him calling. ‘Lieutenant Schanz!’

A groan seemed to answer from the void – or was it an echo? The remaining seven men entered the former battery with bated breath. They flashed their torches around, and the white beams of light pierced the fog ahead. The stone and earthworks of the shelters had been blown sky-high. Strands of barbed wire hung across the pathway from what had once been trees. The twisted corpses of dead men lay all around. A direct hit had toppled heavy gun number four and its mounting. The gunners’ dugout, which had fallen in or been torn apart, gaped like a dripstone cave. A blood-drenched swamp had formed by the entrance. The next gun seemed undamaged, though its breech mechanism was missing. The ammunition dump behind it had exploded and flattened a second dugout. The other two guns must have been engulfed in a rain of shells. Number one with its barrel lowered looked like an animal broken at the knees.

‘The French have been here,’ said the infantry corporal, flashing his torch around and lifting up a flat steel helmet.

‘So it would seem,’ said Lieutenant von Roggstroh tightly. They found gunners lying on the floor, two armed with shovels, one clutching a ramrod in his fists. ‘Where’s our guide?’

‘Here,’ called the sergeant, flashing his torch on Bertin, who was kneeling on the floor. Beside him lay an outstretched corpse, stabbed in the chest and apparently shot too, clutching a pistol in his right hand by the barrel like a club. Bertin kept feeling the man’s pulse. His soft, blonde hair still felt alive, but Lieutenant Schanz’s eyes were sightless now. Bertin peered myopically at his face. ‘Take the lamp away,’ he said. ‘I can see him without it.’

‘Not every man gets to see such a clear picture of his future,’ said Lieutenant Roggstroh.

Bertin said nothing. He closed the dead man’s eyes carefully with his fingertips, as if he might hurt him. His heart was full, but he was speechless and numb. ‘Does this make any sense?’ he wondered out loud. And inside he thought: didn’t we all believe in a father in heaven, and then when we grew up in some kind of rational conception of life? And now this? What’s the point? ‘Why did things have to turn out like this?’ he said. ‘He enjoyed life so much.’

Piercing groans came from all sides. There was a stifled scream from one of the dugouts and whimpering from the shattered gun. ‘My leg!’ someone screamed in a Silesian voice. ‘You lot are crushing my bones, goddammit.’

A man they’d taken for dead, propped against a timber near where the screams had come from, clasped his head in his hands and stuttered out a little of what had happened. He’d been hit on the head with a gun butt. Brown devils had suddenly broken in. They must have dragged their dead and wounded back with them. Even before that – the air was full of shells. The medics in their dugout had been the first to get it. The lieutenant had fought on until the end. Then the gunner had got hit on the head and that was all he remembered.