Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

When the imposing folio sheet with the teal and violet seals of the two quarrelling army groups was placed in front of Major Jansch, he first removed a yellow sweet from his mouth and stuck it to the edge of a saucer on his right. When he realised that behind the polite, typewritten text lay an attempt to wrest one of his men from him, and furthermore this particular man, he gave a hiss of fury that made his clerk Diehl’s blood run cold. However, the blue-pencilled query, whose meaning Jansch immediately divined, calmed him down. ‘Take this down,’ he said to Diehl, standing up and striding round the room with his hands behind his back as Bonaparte was said to have done. Eventually, after many improvements and deletions, he dictated the following text: ‘Returned to sender with the following remarks: the battalion’s First Company occupies the area between Mureaux-Ferme and Vilsones-East, and its working parties large and small are scattered across it. The company is so weakened by casualties and illness that it cannot countenance the departure of a single healthy man fit for work if there is no replacement. The battalion proposes that Private Pahl, currently in Dannevoux field hospital, should, when recovered, be detailed for the required duty at the court martial. P., a typesetter by trade and exceptionally able, knows how to use a typewriter and is unfit for anything but office work due to the loss of a toe.’ He felt the distinguished gentlemen had miscalculated.

The clerk Diehl left the major’s room and descended the stone steps to the orderly room. As far as he was concerned, his most important duty was to get through his servile existence under that sweet-guzzling old whinger until peace came and return to his wife and child in Hamburg come what may. He felt a lot of comradely sympathy for Private Bertin and wished him well. Anything would have suited Bertin better than collecting duds with Sergeant Barkopp, and now he was going to be done out of a good opportunity in that smooth, hypocritical way that powerful men’s protégés could be pushed aside by those who were protected by equally powerful men. Diehl stopped at the landing window halfway down the stairs, looked at the court martial’s application, which he’d been the first to read that morning, and carried on out into the pale spring light gilding the streets and roofs of Damvillers. He knew nothing of the war between the two army groups, and the Eastern Group’s request seemed reasonable to him, though he spotted the guile in Jansch’s reply. It couldn’t be helped, he decided, walking on: once jinxed, always jinxed, poor lad. Even a blind man could see that he’d pulled some strings to get this transfer. It he found out quickly enough that it had been refused, then he could perhaps – perhaps – think of a way round it, though Diehl couldn’t think what that way might be. He was a primary school teacher, a man with a great deal of respect for books and writers of books, and he felt he should try to help. As he rang the doorbell and stepped into the overheated orderly room, which smelt of men and tobacco, he decided what to do. He opened the typewriter. But before slipping the folio page of the Western Group’s court martial through the roller, he laid a sheet of blue copy paper and a thin sheet of carbon paper beneath it, as was normal practice. If someone sent the carbon to Bertin at lunchtime, he would know what to expect. The typewriter tapped, tinkled and tapped again. The folio sheet was taken out and slipped into the file for signature and the thin carbon copy was placed in a drawer. Everything was going like clockwork. Diehl didn’t even notice that he was breathing more heavily than normal.

In the meantime, Major Jansch telephoned his friend Niggl. Yes, they had become friends. They had eradicated the Main frontier, and Prussia and Bavaria had risen as one empire, dedicated to the overthrow of its malign adversaries. Every morning, they congratulated each other on the recently sunk merchant tonnage and thought they heard the edifice of the British Empire cracking within its boundaries. Every morning, they agreed that French discipline was weakening, the Italian attacks were making them a laughing stock and one could only shrug at the Americans’ big talk. The Russians were on their knees and would soon vanish from the map of Europe: the revolution had finished them off. No danger of bumping into them again in the Balkans or the Near East. Victory was finally within Germany’s grasp. When the concentrated might of the German army was unleashed on the Western front and that of the Austro-Hungarians on the southern front, that would be it – and then it would be the turn of those who pulled the strings behind the scenes: Free Masons and speculators, Jesuits, socialists and Jews.

Niggl listened to his clever friend with profound admiration. He was quite right, said Niggl. You couldn’t argue with a word of what he said. And there would be a remedy that got rid of the Free Masons and Jews just as there was for everything else.

Yes, replied Herr Jansch, sounding both triumphant and concerned, but it would require quite a bit of work, because they were as thick as thieves and if you wanted to see what they could do you need look no further than the fiery warning of the Russian revolution. Jewish bankers had vowed to bring down Tsarism at the behest of the Alliance Israélite and had armed the Japanese against the mighty Russian empire 10 years previously. That time they’d failed, but they didn’t mean to fail this time.

So, asked Niggl naïvely, had Germany been doing the Jews’ work against Russia?

Major Jansch, for a moment nonplussed, said you couldn’t exactly say that. The situation did indeed shed a bright light on just how devilishly clever the Jews were, but also on their basic stupidity, because in the Germans they had finally found a superior adversary, who saw through them and would make sure they were cheated of their profits this time. That very day, he, Jansch, had, not without difficulty, repelled a Jewish attack. Some Jew, a scandal in itself, was judge advocate for Group West. No sooner had he found a little Jewish writer within the ASC than he had wanted to pick him out, probably at the expense of a decent German, and the unsuspecting army commander had given his blessing to this scheme. Jansch was vigilant, however, and Bertin, the author in question, would be blue in the face before he’d be allowed to skive off useful work and loaf about. It was the same man who’d already put on a little show for them, as his friend Niggl might remember. That time he’d wanted to go on leave; now he was trying another ruse.

At the other end of the line, Captain Niggl, soon to be Major Niggl, cleared his throat, stuttered something in reply, and asked to be excused for a moment as someone had just come in with a question. The combination of ‘Bertin’ and ‘court martial’ had momentarily taken his breath away. All too clearly did he see again the dreadful vaults of Douaumont, the gaunt figure of the dastardly Kroysing, who unfortunately hadn’t been killed but was lying in a field hospital with a harmless leg wound. Damn him, damn him , he thought. By the Holy Crucifix, may he never rise again, the miserable dog . He would donate a candle as big as his arm to the Ettal monastery or the Pilgrimage Church in Alt-Ötting if Kroysing and all his cronies came to horrible end. Then he picked up the receiver again and said he couldn’t wait to hear how his comrade had sorted the Jew out.

Moving his yellow sweet over to his left cheek, Herr Jansch described with a giggle the replacement he had generously offered – a decent man who’d been wounded, a Christian typesetter. In any case, it was well known that His Excellency Lychow was moving back to the east again. In a fortnight, or even 10 days, it would all be over.