Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

His thoughts came thick and fast. The street followed the Meuse, an idyllic river, lined with trees and bushes and frozen solid. From the far bank, came the occasional clear, metallic rattle of gunfire or an explosion – both far off. The left bank was known as ‘Hill 304’ and ‘Mort Homme’; on the top the French and Germans faced each other with hand grenades. However, a recent report had said that the Frogs were bombarding Romagne, as the railway station there rankled with them. Whatever, Romagne still glimmered back there somewhere, and the men from Bertin’s working party could still buy fat substitute and chocolate there. Those 30 or so men were starving, like the entire army. When the two-wheeled limbers had been blown to bits somewhere on the way to Etraye and there were dead horses lying about, infantrymen, sappers, gunners and ASC men had rushed towards their still-warm carcases from craters and dugouts all around and used knives to tear the spare flesh from their skeletons, then carried the meat triumphantly back to their small iron stoves in buckets and canteens to roast. But that paled into insignificance compared with one company excursion this side of Etraye when the occupants of the large barracks had feasted on roast meat from a forbidden and much more disgusting source. There was a knacker’s yard down there a few kilometres to the rear, which gave off a dreadful stench all day long. Long dead horses with bloated stomachs were burnt there for manure, glue and grease, and their hides were used for leather. Eating their flesh was forbidden. But, guess what, it was eaten, for the cold kindly kept it fresh and the ASC men preferred a stay in hospital with meat poisoning and attendant torments to their regular lives. Hence the bonds of comradeship had long since frayed away; anyone who got a food package now was best advised to eat it as quickly as possible, because he wouldn’t find it in his rucksack or bed or wherever he’d hidden it when he got back from work. That’s how life was now, and it somehow had to be endured. It wouldn’t last much longer though. A miracle had happened in the meantime. By all accounts, Russia was no longer heading towards a crisis; it had collapsed. The German attacks had taken their toll. The Russians had had enough. They were making democratic demands, and that was the beginning of the end. Of course pessimists such as Halezinsky, know-alls such as Lebehde and scardy cats such as good, old Pahl maintained that the French, British and Japanese military missions would now get the upper hand in Russia and step up hostilities. But the Russians wouldn’t be so stupid. They’d tell their allies to get stuffed and throw down their arms. Yes, they’d all be home by Easter, and if not by Easter then by Whitsun. Private Bertin smiled to himself thinking about it as he stumbled over the deep frozen ruts in the road.

The Meuse now lay before Bertin. He had half a mind to walk across the ice so he didn’t have to go the long way round to the bridge. Surely he’d be able to slide over very easily on his hobnailed boots. ‘Skidding’ they called it at home in Kreuzberg. Ha, ha, ha, he thought, where are Goethe and his friend Klopstock now? He really felt like putting on a pair of skates and sweeping through the meadows and alder trees, rapturously free, composing poems in praise of ice skating. The French would get a bit of a shock if someone came sweeping straight into Verdun in a great arc! Surely they’d be chivalrous enough to let him go on his way unharmed. But he walked obediently along the river’s edge to the wooden bridge and sticking close to the hand rail crossed into another command, a completely different zone. As he crossed, he tossed some twigs on to the ice, and there was a dull echo deep beneath the surface as they bounced. On the other bank, a square of ice had been cut away and you could see the black water moving past, icy and silent.

Since the dismantling of the Steinbergquell depot, Sergeant Knappe had been living in a barracks at the bottom of a gully overgrown with bare bushes and trees, and was in charge of the field gun ammunition. His eyes widened in astonishment when Private Bertin nonchalantly handed him the two explosive devices to examine. Bertin must be off his head, he muttered as he carefully carried them through to the testing tent, which was kept apart from the ammunition, telling Bertin to disappear for half an hour. Bertin longed for a heat and some hot coffee and he soon got them from Knappe’s assistants, a couple of artillerymen. Little Herr Knappe had always been thin, but his cheeks had never been as hollow as they were now, and his goatee beard had grown appreciably. They’re starving here too , thought Bertin, as he said goodbye. You can see it . But Herr Knappe’s emaciation was actually due to quite different reasons than hunger: love of his country and despair. He was an excellent design engineer and using a couple of pictures from newspapers had designed one of those all-terrain combat vehicles with caterpillar tracks instead of wheels that the Entente alliance had been using recently. He had sent the drafts to the Supreme Army Command and had received, through Colonel Stein, a scornful reply: such toys could happily be left to the enemy. Let them crawl into those iron dustbins and bring their coffins with them. German infantrymen had no need of such vehicles and the ammunitions expert should get on with his job and leave the rest to the Supreme Army Command. This grieved Herr Knappe, and ever since then he’d been sleeping badly and had lost his appetite and interest in playing chess; where would it all end?

Half an hour later, Private Bertin, now warmed up, reported back to him. The hand grenade was gone, but Knappe handed him the fuse by the tips of his fingers. ‘There,’ he said simply. ‘Drop it in the water from the bridge. But watch out it doesn’t turn round, lad, or you’ll have drunk your last cup of coffee on this earth.’

Somewhat sobered by the little bearded man’s stern tone and serious eyes, Bertin trotted off. On the bridge, he did as he’d been told, but as the water closed over the accursed thing, his thoughts darted off in a completely different direction. The gunners, who knew the area well, had given him a piece of news whose importance none of them could have understood. There was a relatively unscathed village on the hills above Vilosnes-East – what was it called again? It was called Dannevoux. And the barracks on the perimeter above the railway tracks, where the Barkopp working party loaded and unloaded its wagons and which you could just see from the Meuse, formed the large Dannevoux field hospital. There in the immediate vicinity lived Eberhard Kroysing. Bertin would have to go and see him, shake him by the hand and find out how much of him had emerged healthy and unbroken from the darkness of the December battle. His comrade Pahl had been sent there three days ago with blood poisoning in the foot, and that would provide a good excuse for his superiors. Visiting Pahl could easily be passed off as his soldierly duty – a duty to which Eberhard Kroysing had always attached such importance. A good day, a good walk, a welcome hand grenade, a nice chat over a cup of coffee.

THE BATTLE FOR Verdun had been fought and lost, but nobody said that. The German communiqués had revised the aims of the operation, invented the ‘battle of attrition’ and recast the truth, and there were a lot of big kids who believed this fairytale. Raw materials and supplies essential for life were stretched to the utmost, diluted and mixed with substitutes. But what had just about sufficed in the second winter of the war failed in the third. Not enough butter, not enough meat, not nearly enough bread, although it had been ‘extended’ with bran and potatoes; hardly any pulses or fresh vegetables, no ham, almost no eggs, and no noodles, millet, oatmeal or semolina delivered from abroad. Leather was running out, as were linen and woollen cloth; you only got clothes if you had a ration coupon, and they were often made with unsatisfactory new materials. When fruit and sugar disappeared into the jam factories, notices were put up encouraging children to collect fruit kernels for their oil. For the same reason, sunflowers were planted, and linseed and beechnuts crushed. Wool to darn stockings and thread to mend shirts were precious goods hunted down by anxious housewives. And just as plant compounds and chemical mixtures appeared in tins and tubes as sham food, so paper masqueraded as clothes, twine, bags and shoelaces. Newspapers and cookery books were full of recipes for conjuring up tasty dishes out of insipid mixtures of potatoes, turnips and brine. No vitamins, no carbohydrates, no protein and still fully fit for work – that’s what the physiologists and doctors preached in order to secure final victory in a war that had long since been lost. Germany was trying to triumph over the whole world, all reason and the course of history and development in the last century. That diabolical instrument of war, the British blockade, was at last being countered – so said the powers that be – with something equally effective: the torpedoing of all cargo ships on the seas. In half a year, Britain would sue for peace. And the nation believed this. Unaccustomed to measuring their rulers’ speeches against reality or demanding accountability for spilt blood and the wasted years of their lives, the people worked in the factories, fields and cities, sent their children to be soldiers, washed themselves with clay soap and paper towels, travelled in unheated railway carriages, froze in lukewarm flats, sunned themselves in the glow of future glories and unverified reports of victories, mourned their dead, spied on the healthy and patiently allowed themselves to be ridden into destruction.