Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

Cheeks flushed and still stalking up and down, Major Jansch listened to the advice coming from the empty chair. Just such a working party was about to be formed and stationed close to the left bank of the Meuse. Its task was to collect stray ammunition, duds and discarded shells, examine them and send them home. The depot had already started the work on a small scale under Sergeant Knappe, and a ghastly explosion a few days earlier had left two dead and seven wounded, among them Sergeant Karde, a decent, hard-working man and a patriot, whose left leg had unfortunately been blown off beneath the knee. This incident had left an unpleasant impression, and the depot had decided to move the operation much further forwards and put it under the command of Sergeant Barkopp from the First Company, a marked man from Serbian days. B. would fit right in there. Smiling, Herr Jansch accompanied his fictional visitor to the door and shook his imaginary right hand gratefully, feeling hugely encouraged. He even opened the door for him and shut it behind him. Then he marched back to his desk and scribbled on a scrap of paper: ‘Think about B.’ He laid the scrap of paper in an obvious position in his drawer and rang for Kuhlmann the messenger. It was dinner time. The major had worked hard and was hungry in spite all the sweets he’d eaten.

DUD IS THE term used for shells that don’t explode because of faulty manufacture or simply by accident. They lay about the country like giant, elongated Easter eggs – sometimes more in one place, sometimes fewer – waiting for whoever might be fortunate enough to find them. At certain times a lot came over, most other times hardly any. For that reason, the detachments had to spread out wide, remember or mark the places where they found a shell and then get an expert to look at each one and say whether it was safe to touch it. The shells were formed into small piles, and the small piles formed larger piles near the railway tracks. The shells were then examined thoroughly at the testing station and put in a freight car, gradually filling it. When two or three cars were full it was worth transporting them home. In the heady days of the first year of the war, looking for duds had been a private enterprise undertaken by gunners and ASC men who made all kinds of war souvenirs from the sometimes very heavy copper screw rings. The lively trade in these artefacts compensated for the risks involved in knocking off the red-gold bands. In the meantime, as is so often the case, a state monopoly had replaced individual enterprise…

Sergeant Barkopp’s ASC men spread out across the high plateau, whose craters and shell holes offered a good place to search. Admittedly, the French could see what was going on and sometimes blessed the proceedings with shrapnel or shells. Only a couple of days previously, they had found the grinning corpse of Franz Reiter, an infantryman from Aachen, lying peacefully on his back with nothing but a postcard with his name on it in his pocket and of course without boots. Lebehde, Pahl and Bertin, all members of the working party, had lingered by Herr Reiter’s corpse deep in thought, until Karl Lebehde encouraged them to move on with the melancholy observation: ‘Wherever we go, someone has always been there first. You’re out of luck Wilhelm.’ This was a reference to Wilhelm Pahl’s footwear, which had become completely useless. His boots had been with the company cobbler in Etraye for weeks but hadn’t been repaired because, like the rest of the Barkopp working party, their owner lived in a barracks at the so-called railway station of Vilosnes-East and therefore couldn’t come round to kick up a fuss. In the meantime, his lace-up shoes had worn through at least 10 days before. The soles weren’t hobnailed and the ridges and grooves of the rock-hard clay had finished them off. Pahl was now walking on the insole under the ball of his left foot and the big toe of the right. Starving as he was, he now went about his duties rather turned in on himself and didn’t seem bothered by his shoes. But appearances deceived.

In fact, Sergeant Barkopp’s entire working party was in a desperate state. The men’s underwear, constantly in need of darning because it was washed in caustic soap, no longer provided any warmth. Their tunics had taken on the colour of clay, and their trousers were ripped to pieces from climbing over barbed wire and had been patched with different coloured wool and twine. They now hardly bothered to fight their infestations of lice and no longer wondered what the next days might bring, for what could they bring? They didn’t read or play chess, and there was no mouth organ or accordion to create a mirage of cheerfulness when work was finished. When darkness fell, ending their work, they crawled back into the barracks together and played cards, squabbled, or wrapped some warming rags round their heads and went begging. A battalion’s rations are first sifted by the headquarters staff, then by the companies’ staffs and their favourites, then by the kitchens and the companies themselves, and what’s left wends its way over to the external working parties. This meant the men had to beg if they wanted their stomachs to be full. The stronger among them scoured the area night after night. They asked for but didn’t give information as to the whereabouts of battery field kitchens, reserve infantry companies, railway sections (they always had it best), transport depots or, best of all, field hospitals. Field hospitals were a sublime oasis and cause of delight, and no one turned his nose up at barley stew laced with scraps of beef should a comrade happen to let it fall into his canteen. Good judges of character such as Karl Lebehde soon understood what made the kitchen NCOs and their underlings tick, as well as all the kitchen high-ups in the units nearby. They knew where they could simply queue up and hold out their pots in silence, where it was better to ask nicely, where a few jokes got things moving and where you had to offer a cigarette in exchange for a meal. Bertin provided cigarettes to barter with and got a share of the food as a result. Wilhlem Pahl always got his for nothing but had to put up with Lebehde the inn-keeper watching him and making comments, which didn’t exactly cheer him up. Pahl was in the throes of a difficult decision. All the men were under pressure. They all knew the German army was starving but the end of the war was nonetheless nowhere in sight. They all felt they were in pitiless hands, and the only happy man was Naumann II, the company idiot. Yup, that poor little grinning devil, with his gigantic hands and feet, massive ears and watery blue eyes, had been shunted into the Barkopp working party too, no doubt on account of his sharp mind and skill at handling explosives… Well, the former warehouse packer from Steglitz was an idiot, and Sergeant Barkopp had clapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder, had Knappe the ammunitions expert take a photo of him grinning from ear to ear with a shell under his arm, and assigned him to barracks duty with the words: ‘Make yourself useful with the broom, my son.’ Despite the handicap of his impaired glands, Naumann II did so loyally and dutifully and with unswerving devotion to authority in the form of Sergeant Barkopp and all those whom life had treated less harshly than himself.

Barkopp, a publican at a seaport in civilian life, proved an excellent working party leader. From Sergeant Knappe he soon learnt all the signs that distinguish dangerous duds from harmless ones: open fuse holes and whether the shell is at an angle or level. His sharp eyes were everywhere, and he soon had a handful of practical-minded men trained up too. ‘Better to leave one too many lying than to pick one too many up,’ was his motto. Small fences were put round particularly dangerous ones – there were branches and rusty barbed wire everywhere – or if necessary they were sunk in flooded craters where the damned things rotted away. Because of this there had been no accidents. Emil Barkopp particularly looked out for small ammunition dumps abandoned by batteries that had retreated or been destroyed. These were sometimes found in sheltered spots in the ravines. Germany’s national wealth lay strewn across the war zone, recklessly abandoned, as if the units that had left their supplies behind wanted to give their successors something to do. Having fallen into disfavour and been transferred frequently as a result, Emil Barkopp had seen a lot; he’d seen with his own eyes how the gunners laid down a layer of shells in the mud after the first rainfall, put cartridge baskets on top, then another layer of shells, carefully defused, and ate, drank and slept on that. Now they had to track down that treasure. His scouts were everywhere. Where were the best spots? None of the men knew apart from him and Sergeant Knappe, a thin, pensive man with a goatee beard. None of them had maps or the skills to make an exact evaluation of the set of the sky and the ins and outs of the front. All the ASC men knew was that they were next to the Meuse and would soon shift from one bank to the other. Most of the men from I/X/20 were stationed in the gullies by the village of Etraye, where the depot command had finally established its ammunition dump. But the working parties were spread across the whole sector to the east of the Meuse, and Barkopp’s was the furthest west. Vilosnes and Sivry were connected to each other by a bridge but were otherwise cut off. The French had been firing all summer long from the right as well as from the high ground on the left bank, where the watchful enemies faced each other.