Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

A bleak November afternoon hung over the roofs of the village of Damvillers, and drizzle fell in front of the windows of the battalion headquarters. The lamps had been on for a while in the ground floor orderly room. The personnel were eagerly awaiting the 10 men from the First Company due to go on leave, who were to be led in by Herr Bertin. But instead of Bertin, in came Corporal Niklas, who also belonged to the first. He sat down by the stove in his spruce tunic looking quietly pleased. Things had been arranged like this so that the men in Moirey, especially Bertin himself, didn’t suspect anything, because only 10 men ever went on leave, never 11. This way the joke was bound to come off. The men going on leave would definitely be there by 4pm. They would all be champing at the bit as they had to get the train in Damvillers then catch their connection to Frankfurt in Montmédy. Well, it wouldn’t hurt them to dash about a bit. They’d have 10 days to relax at home with mother afterwards, and the Prussian mindset did require that every blessing be paid for with a little hardship.

Captain Niggl started when he peered through a crack in the door and caught sight of Private Bertin, the only man who wouldn’t be going on leave but would be returning to his company. He’d seen that face before. It hadn’t been as pale as it was now in the lamplight with the weight of disappointment; it had been browner and fresher and it had been at Douaumont. This man, standing there rigid while the sergeant major drily informed him that the battalion had not authorised his request, belonged to his oppressor Kroysing’s gang. Back then, he’d run around with that little sergeant, Sußmann or Süßmann – another Jew. Perhaps there was something to this business about the Jews. Perhaps clever Herr Jansch was right about that too, and he, Niggl, the retired civil servant, had been too trusting. He’d have to think about it. In any case, this man had to go. He might know a lot, a little or nothing, but he couldn’t be allowed to wander about talking. That was the law of self-preservation, which was in fact a necessity that knew no law. Niggl would keep his eye on this man, make a note of his name. First, however, he must find out where the scoundrel in chief was. If he was still missing, as Captain Lauber had told him he was, to his genuine distress, then it was time to start clearing up and get rid of the rest of those in the know. It was quite right that this man wasn’t going on leave, and he shouldn’t go until it was his proper turn. That could be spring or it could be summer, and a lot could have happened by then. Captain Niggl, with his reluctantly sociable expression and his shrewd little eyes, had got a lot out of the spectacle that Herr Jansch had supplied; thank you, my friend. Did you notice perchance how the man swayed a little as stood there, my friend? Won’t do a stuck-up, four-eyed sort like him any harm – what was he called again? Bertin. Bertin? Was that right? Unpleasant looking chap, Herr Bertin, with his sticky-out ears. The sort you see in police mugshots. Retired civil servant Niggl had seen some criminals in his time, but he didn’t want to say anything against his friend Herr Jansch’s First Company. Perhaps the Jews really were the ones to watch. He’d mull it over before their next meeting and perhaps join the Pan-German Union, because it really had become necessary to stand up to the Free Masons and campaign for all-out U-boat warfare.

Private Bertin set off on the main road to Moirey. The dark grey around him matched how he felt inside. To his right and left stretched sodden land; inside him beat a desolate, sodden heart. The rain speckled his face, and cold water trickled down between his chin and upturned collar, soaking his neckband. It wasn’t physical exertion that had left him so tired that he thumped down on the puddle edges. He’d completed his allotted day’s work of railway construction in a swamp between Gremilly and Ornes, where new field railways were required because of the new position of the front. Warm at heart and gaily anticipating his leave, he had happily helped to bind brushwood bundles and lay a causeway through the alder wood, along which the rails would run. They’d worked up to their ankles in mud, but it hadn’t bothered him; he was going on leave and would be with Lenore the following evening and have six days of being human again in her beloved presence. He’d eaten quickly, almost without appetite, hurriedly cleaned his equipment, rolled up his blankets and buckled them on to his rucksack, which he’d packed the night before, and presented himself in the orderly room neat and clean-shaven. They’d sent him to Damvillers with the other nine men without a word of warning, although they knew what was going on. They’d even made him leader of the little detachment, responsible for answering any questions about where they were going and why from any field police conducting checks or curious officers. And then they had dropped him into the abyss. Diehl, a long-faced clerk with black eyes, had tried to warn him at battalion headquarters with much shaking of his head and closing of his eyes, but it had been in vain. They’d played this trick on him out of sheer nastiness – whoever was behind it. The decision must in any case have come from the major, Herr Jansch, that measly editor of Army and Fleet Weekly . From him had come the decree that there were to be no exceptions in the Prussian army and no one was to go on leave twice in one year. It sounded good, harsh but fair, but it was just a pretext. Anyone who knew how things worked here knew how many favoured laddies got sent home two or three times a year. It wasn’t always called leave. Usually it was called travelling on duty, helping to ensure the safe transport of boxes and cases whose contents were well-known. If only a certain Metzler, who’d helped him secure his wedding leave in the summer, had been in the orderly room. But he’d long since been drafted into the infantry. Goethe said we shouldn’t complain about villainy because the Almighty’s hand was still at work in it. And it had to be suffered through to the end. The orderly room wouldn’t bother to suppress a grin when they saw someone back from leave so soon. And one or other of his chums in the barracks would be sure to throw in a crack. He couldn’t even go to sleep and get over his grief that way; he had to go on guard duty, which meant long, hard hours walking back and forth in the night rain with lots of time to think. He was filled with grief as he trudged along the main road – the same one where the crown prince’s car had sped so elegantly past a few weeks previously— it was an impersonal kind of grief, grief at a system that had revealed its true colours to him, lonely Private Bertin, in the same way that those cigarettes chucked out of a window had shown the system’s true colours. All the suffering, privations and sacrifices that the common solder constantly had to endure were amplified by these petty slights and unnecessary humiliations. He had performed his duty faultlessly for its own sake; nothing could be said against him. Furthermore, he’d volunteered time and again for difficult duties, and, as was fitting, had kept that to himself. And if the company had refused his request point-blank, he would have been disappointed but would have accepted it in the light of the general need. But those men had staged a nasty little scene and humiliated him for their own satisfaction. He’d seen that the door leading from anteroom into the orderly room was ajar and had noticed the gap widening a little and eyes and part of a nose appearing. And that was intolerable. That was below the belt.

The wind whistled through the branches of the trees and shrubs. The road dipped and ran along the edge of a steep slope. Below was the sparsely lit train station at Moirey, and those must be the barracks to its right, black against the dark sky. He’d better pull himself together now and present an indifferent face to the world, drink the bitter dregs. What an idiot he had been back in June when he left his young wife on the nice, clean platform at Charlottenburg and got into the train that would bring him back to this camp. Back then he’d sat down in the compartment with the feeling that he was going home, back to where he belonged. Well, he’d seen through that now. Lieutenant Kroysing and Lieutenant Roggstroh had been right! He didn’t belong here, didn’t fit in with this sleazy lot. Well, he only had to apply for a transfer and new horizons would open up. But that wouldn’t do either. Even in this moment of anger and bitterness he admitted that to himself. Thick glasses are still thick glasses, and no one should throw himself into danger on a whim unless he’s prepared to die. He was and remained condemned to be in the ASC. And like a condemned man he had to cling to the railing as he climbed the slippery wooden steps that led to the orderly room. He was sweating beneath his heavy rucksack, and his neck was freezing from the rain.