Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

There was still a last streak of smoky red in the evening sky, as Bertin climbed up to Dannevoux field hospital, with Sergeant Barkopp’s permission, to find out how Pahl was getting on (but above all to see Eberhard Kroysing again). From the rear, a minor road wound up the hill to the plateau, then past some barbed wire and wooden fencing to the hospital offices. Several wings enclosed a large open square, and the barracks loomed like a headland above a plain. It was outside visiting hours, and Bertin was greeted curtly and told he should kindly keep to the prescribed times displayed on the gate. After much explaining and a bit of toing and froing he was finally admitted through a back door at the top of a small wooden staircase. It led into a white corridor that clearly went through the section for seriously ill patients. Bertin’s heart contorted with anxiety, and the groaning he heard pierced his thin layer of self-protection. The smell of iodoform and lysol wafted towards him. When a nurse squeezed past him with a covered bucket, the sudden proximity of pus and rancid bodily fluids nearly made him sick. Through an open door, he glimpsed thick, white bandages, a row of beds, a leg suspended in a pulley, the backs of two nurses. He might have grasped then the full terrible significance of it all, but instead he closed up like a mussel caught in an unwelcome current of water and carried on looking for men’s ward 3, which he found at the end of the second long corridor on the left, and on the right room 19.

Eberhard Kroysing greeted Bertin, who looked shy and unkempt, with undisguised joy. Kroysing sat up in his bed beaming and stretched out his powerful arm to Bertin, letting the ASC man’s hand disappear in his. Kroysing’s deep voice filled the room. ‘Wow!’ he exclaimed. ‘Bertin! This is definitely your best deed of this fine New Year, and you’ll be richly rewarded for it in heaven, which, like the rest of us, you seem to have to dodged so far. Now get some of those layers off, you old grey onion. Hang that lice-infested gear in the corridor. There’s a coat stand on the right outside the door.’ When Bertin asked suspiciously if things didn’t get stolen even here, there was a roar of laughter from all three beds; he could still hear it through the closed door. Obediently, he took off his head protector, coat and canvas jacket, returning in his tunic.

The room smelt of bandages and wounds, cigarettes and soap. But it was warm, light and clean – to Bertin it seemed like an enviable, heavenly existence. He might easily have thought that the times must be pretty crazy if pain, blood and wounds were the price to be paid for such modest comforts. But he had no such thoughts; he was much too steeped in the world of war with its twisted values. Besides, Kroysing immediately commanded his attention. He told him to sit on the bed, introduced him to the two lieutenants, Mettner and Flachsbauer, as a friend he’d inherited from his late brother, failing to notice that Bertin was starving, freezing and miserable. Bertin asked Kroysing how he was – ‘Great, of course,’ he replied – and to tell his story, but he was reluctant. Storytelling wasn’t his game. It was Bertin’s game, and everyone should stick to what they knew. The last time they’d met had been on the other side of Wild Boar gorge. Since then, he’d been in the thick of it. They hadn’t got Douaumont back, but they had dug themselves in quite nicely up on Pepper ridge and laid a load of mines, but just as they were about to let the Frogs have it, that 15 December business started, putting a stop to their fun. He, Kroysing, must have spent too much time sitting in the fort and the trenches because he’d lost the knack of doing a break in a field battle or he wouldn’t have had the misfortune to throw himself into a hole that was much too shallow when the advancing battery’s damned shells reached him. The shell hole had been deep and steep enough in itself but it was frozen and full of ice, and so Kroysing ended up with his great knuckle of a right leg sticking up in the air and it was caught by a shell splinter that sliced right through his puttee and shin bone, though it didn’t bisect his calf bone. He’d hobbled over to the dressing station on his stick like some demented grasshopper and had passed out there. Well, now he’d paid his debts to the French in full and could relax. He had an excellent doctor here in the hospital, and the care was first-class. For now, he wanted for nothing. The bone was healing nicely, and a piece of ivory had been inserted to replace some damaged fragments – as he’d said, the head physician was a hot shot and had worked miracles. He’d not yet decided what to do when he was better – there was still plenty of time to think about it. And now it was time to hear Bertin’s news. He must have a lot to tell too. Above all, how was Kroysing’s old friend, Captain Niggl? Here they were under the Western Group Command – west of the Meuse – and heard about as much about the eastern sector than they did about Honolulu, although they hadn’t crossed the river, geographically speaking.

There was indeed a lot to tell, said Bertin, and he began with Captain Niggl’s advancement and the great fame he’d acquired.

‘The Iron Cross, first class!’ shrieked Kroysing. ‘That cowardly swine! That shuddering pile of dirt!’ And he burst into a fit of laughter, then nearly coughed his eyes out from choking.

Someone yanked open the door, and a forehead and a couple of strands of blonde hair appeared. In a pleasant Rhenish accent a voice said: ‘Boys, keep the noise down, would you? The boss will have a fit.’

‘Sister Kläre,’ cried Kroysing. ‘Stay here! Listen to this!’

The nurse waved a hand and said, ‘Maybe later.’

Kroysing sat in bed, pale and wild-eyed. ‘I’ll be hanged if I’m going to put my dog tag back on after this,’ he said. And he described to his two room mates, battle-hardened front-line soldiers like himself, how he had ensnared the ASC captain at Douaumont – a man who’d have done a bunk if he could have and would never have gone near the front of his own free will.

The two lieutenants jeered at his fury. ‘You’re so provincial,’ said Lieutenant Mettner equably. ‘I always suspected as much. Instead of being upset because some squit is getting a medal, you should be amazed you managed an Iron Cross.’ Kroysing’s caustic reply was that he wasn’t yet as philosophical as that but would no doubt learn to be in due course.

Bertin sat on the edge of the bed, silent and gaunt. With a smile he told them what had happened when Lieutenant von Roggstroh made a recommendation on his behalf. Kroysing was only half listening. ‘So that thing is to be promoted to major as well?’ he asked wearily. ‘And there’s nothing we can do about it? Just wait!’ And he clenched his fist. ‘And you, my dear chap, have only got what you deserved. Why are you still hanging around with those lousy ASC men? When will you realise that His Majesty’s sappers need new blood, leadership material, officers? Aren’t you ashamed to stick at that job, sir, as if your being in the ASC was God’s will rather than a temporary measure? No, I’ve no sympathy for you, my dear chap. You could be out of it in five minutes. All you have to do is apply to my esteemed regiment, formerly battalion, in Brandenburg an der Havel, and I’ll take care of the rest. Then you’ll have a lovely spell near Berlin first of all, which, if I’m not mistaken, will please your young wife. You’ll get a nice new tunic and leave as a sergeant. After all, you’ve already been at the front for 12 months.’

‘Fifteen,’ corrected Bertin. ‘If you include the Lille forts.’

‘And the next time we see each other, you’ll be wearing a sword knot like your friend Süßmann… Sergeant Major Bertin, soon Lieutenant Bertin. Have some sense, man! Take stock!’