Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

‘He’s lying there now,’ said Lieutenant von Roggstroh. ‘What a lovely night it’s going to be.’ Then he ordered his men to gather up the dead and help the wounded as far as possible. ‘We’d better set up here,’ he said.

Bertin was suddenly freezing. ‘I think,’ he said hesitantly, ‘that I’d best get back now.’

The lieutenant looked at him. ‘What do you actually do in the ASC? That sapper was right. You should apply for a transfer. You could make something of yourself with us.’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever voluntarily apply for anything again,’ said Bertin. ‘You shouldn’t kick against the pricks.’

‘So, you’re a Bible reader,’ said the lieutenant with a hint of contempt. ‘Well, make sure you get home safely. You certainly shouldn’t get lost.’ Bertin hesitated. He wanted this young man’s approval, and so he said that an ASC man’s lot was not an easy one. ‘I know,’ said the lieutenant, ‘but men like you need to take responsibility rather than disappearing into the masses.’

Bertin wanted to say that he had taken on a great responsibility, but it was impossible to explain this to the lieutenant in the short time available. He went to have a final look at his neighbour Schanz. His chest was riddled with black holes, but his blonde head lay upon the earth like that of a man asleep. ‘I’ll remember your face, Paul Schanz,’ he whispered to him. He remained by his side for a few silent moments, arms hanging. Then he pulled himself away, told the lieutenant he was ready to leave, was dismissed, about turned, climbed carefully over the dead and pushed off into the fog. In 20 minutes, the engulfing fog had wiped out the world, isolating any human figure. Bertin shuddered. He was cut off from where he’d been and where he was going. As he trudged on, bent over like an old man, using his torch sparingly, he felt exhausted, near the end of his strength. He’d had enough. He must put in for leave. He could claim 10 days. He’d taken four days in June, and so the battalion owed him six. Tomorrow, or the day after at the latest, he’d put in a request. From time to time, he stopped, cupped his hand round his ear and listened to the dull thuds from the area around the Vaux ridge, Hardaumont and the Hassoule ravine.

There is a natural human tendency to drift to the left when finding their way in the dark or blindfold. The detachment of 100 rifles quickly succumbed to this law as it made its way out of Wild Boar gorge on to open ground, marching in single file in a long column, sappers at the front. Those with the longest legs inevitably ended up at the head of the column. And in the impetuous heart of one of those tall men burnt the desire to lay his hands on his goal – whether that was the fort or the man who’d escaped from it, he didn’t yet know. It wasn’t long before Lieutenant Kroysing was all alone. He hadn’t noticed that the column of men behind him had lost its way and drifted to the left; and to the left of Wild Boar gorge lay not Douaumont but the rear. He, Eberhard Kroysing had an internal guide and one in front of him too: the schoolboy Süßmann, who, having travelled back and forth between the fort and the construction squad, knew the hollow and the surrounding area like his way to school. Kroysing could barely see him but he constantly heard him rattling his equipment or shouting out: ‘Shell hole on the left!’, ‘Watch out, railway lines!’, ‘Dud on the right!’, ‘Look out, stakes!’, ‘Shell hole on the right!’, ‘Firm ground half right!’ The wee man splashed on, and Kroysing waded after him, his eyes boring into the impenetrable yellow-grey fog that grew darker with each passing moment. His hand was clenched round the butt of his pistol. His senses ran ahead of him, ripping aside the accursed blanket of fog, and his heart thumped as he imagined tearing it to shreds and sinking his clenched teeth into that which eluded him: all the forces of resistance. This mad world had conspired against him. The phrase ‘we thought we could pull the stars down out of the sky’ came back to him. He didn’t know what had first made him think of it, but it was true – or perhaps more correctly false. They should have pulled the stars down out of the sky, along with all its ghosts of superstition and residual spirituality. This blanket of cloud, which had left them high and dry at the crucial moment, proved it. To the devil with you, he thought, as he listened out for Süßmann and at the same time turned to catch the clatter of the Saxons behind. They’d achieved nothing. It was all a pile of shit. If you couldn’t command the weather, couldn’t devise some instrument to blow away this kind of spray and achieve visibility, then you were nothing and you shouldn’t start a war. Certainly, people knew how to create fog, but clearing it was another matter. Could he hear the Saxons or couldn’t he? Was this silence an hallucination? Would the bloody French batteries over there in Caillette wood defeat this final desperate attempt as well?

Sweat poured over his eyes and down to the corners of this mouth. ‘Süßmann,’ he called imperiously. ‘Süßmann.’ He was up to his knees in a muddy hole. He had to push his stick deep into the soggy ground, hold his pistol up high with his left hand and wrestle himself upright in order not to fall over. ‘Süßmann!’ Nothing. He groaned in anger, wiped the splatters of mud from his mouth with the back of his hand and listened. Was that a clattering he could hear far behind him? Was that someone calling way over there to the right? He realised that his undertaking had already failed. It had been madness to start it. The Saxons had been right. Now he was going to pay the price and come to a miserable end in a shell hole somewhere. And, bang, there was a crash above and a whistling cacophony descended: shrapnel. He couldn’t see it, thank God. It’s hailing, he thought with malicious enjoyment. Turn your collar up, Herr Kroysing! Yes, it was hailing. Thankfully, not in his immediate vicinity. Who could tell whether the French were firing too long or too short. Who indeed? An airman, of course. Airmen could tell. Airmen can do anything. They’re superior to their enemies, set above them, beings of a higher order, a step forward in the sluggish development of the vertebrate known as man. And as he stood there, literally rooted to the spot – for where should he go to escape the lead balls, as he couldn’t see them and could only hear their hissing and howling, their snapping and bursting – as his ankles were sucked deeper into the earth’s grip, the point of his walking stick became ever more embedded in the ground, water filled his shoes but didn’t quite penetrate his puttees, as he stood there like that, bent and tense like a pine marten about to jump, enlightenment filled his heart; the heavens weren’t the problem, it was the ground, the earth, this muck we’re born on and condemned to roam upon until we die and are reabsorbed by it. No, my love, he thought as he struggled to free his feet at all costs and trudge on. Do you know the only thing you’re good for? As a springboard, nothing else. We should kick you in the face and fly away. What a bit of luck that we invented the internal combustion engine, we masters of fire and explosions! And in that moment he reached a firm decision: he’d become an airman. Just wait until this mess was over and everything was cleared up, until an iron fist had knocked the French flat for daring to stick their nose into German territory, and a certain someone would throw in this sapper business and join the air force. Crawling around in the dirt was good enough for the likes of Süßmann and Bertin, men with no fighting instinct, no fire in their punches, old men. He, however, would metamorphose into a stone dragon with claws, a tail and fiery breath, which smoked little critters out of their hideaways – all the Niggls and other such creatures. He’d have a fragile box beneath him, two broad wings and a whirling propeller, and hey ho, up above the clouds he’d soar like a Sunday lark – admittedly not to sing songs but to drop bombs on the people crawling around below, to splatter them with gas and bullets as part of a duel from which only one person returns. He stretched up to his full height, grabbed his pistol in his fist and shook it at the air from which the shrapnel was hissing down.