Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

Behind the work party, first one then soon a second wagon were lowered in a flurry of screeching and braking. In just an hour, they had reached the guns. With much cursing, the heavy steel equipment and the barrel and mount with their wooden spars, wedges and baulks were heaved on to the groaning wagons. Then 30 straining men pulled the wagons uphill on long cables. Each man had a cable cutting into his left or right shoulder. Like Chaldean or Egyptian slaves, they panted up the hillside, heading for the far-off station, which, amusingly enough, had the same name – Hundekehle – as the tram stop for a well-known Sunday pub in the Grunewald area of Berlin. Suddenly, a lieutenant rode up with a camera. He made the struggling men stop on the hillside and took a snap of them strung out along the cables like a line of smoked fish. Then the typical builder’s call to breakfast rang out: ‘Take fifteen!’ The Nissen huts up above, which had a telephone as well as an unfortunate name, had received news that it wouldn’t be possible to supply a wagon for the second gun that day. Plenty of time, then, for a slug of water from the canteen, a piece of bread and a cigarette.

The wide hollow, yellowy green against the blue sky, was filled with a shimmering heat haze. ‘That’s Fosses wood,’ Bertin heard the young Bavarian say, as he prowled round the gun positions in search of shade, gesturing expansively with his left hand. Bertin looked down on a ragged, grey slope covered in half-uprooted tree stumps. Small green leaves still sprouted from the splintered white and ochre timbers, and some of the trees still resembled chopped-down beeches, but most were tattered stakes, scarred by bullets and shell splinters, that looked more like skeletons. Unexploded cylindrical shells lay among the plants, some with their round ends sticking up towards the light. The grey fingers of ancient root systems thrust into the massive shell holes. Huge trees had been knocked to the ground and lay rotting, their earth-covered roots rising up like umbrellas, their crowns long since trodden into the ground. The destruction was a picture painted in three colours: the white of the chalky cliffs, the dark brown of the scattered soil and the irrepressible green of the foliage. In a few months, man had eradicated what nature had taken generations to produce.

In the odd protected corner of the embankment, one or two remaining whole trees provided shade. Bertin lay under one of them, the back of his head resting on his cap, his legs in a dry, crumbling shell hole. He idly watched the wind playing in the tree’s dark, shining leaves, wondering how much longer the sun and moon would shine on this scrap of nature and creation on this slope in Fosses wood and on the smooth, green-flecked columns of beech. No doubt the new battery would see to it that the surrounding desolation of tree trunks, earth and shrubbery engulfed this last little patch of growth too. What a shame, Bertin thought, oddly not considering the people who would be destroyed along with it.

A light west wind carried on it the whip of individual shells, the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire. But for a young man like Bertin the sun, shade and landscape were more meaningful and exciting than shrapnel or Tetanus bacteria. His was an essentially musical nature, in thrall to and moved by impressions, sensuous experiences and emotions. Right then, he was playing with a roaming cat that had appeared soundlessly in a bramble bush. Her bottle-green eyes were fixed on the sausage end lying on a piece of greasy paper near Bertin’s left hand. The sausage emitted a wonderful smell of curing and select cuts of meat. Of course, a cat that knows her business needn’t starve in wartime. The place was teeming with rats, and the cat’s fur was thick and glossy across her iron muscles. But this smelt like something tasty: she could jump over and bite the man’s hand, stick a claw in the sausage tip, then bolt up the slanting beech trunk into the high-forked branches… But she was a feral house cat, who understood how the locals operated these days. They no longer threw stones. Instead, they sent something that went pop whipping through the air from sticks with sharp, shiny ends. She crouched uncertainly among the creepers and brambles, tense one minute, relaxed the next. It was a rare treat for a soldier to be alone. Bertin loved it and he loved animals even more. He eyed the cat through the rims of his glasses. How beautiful she was in her wild composure! He remembered all the cats he’d ever had and lost as a boy in Kreuzberg – you never knew how. (Silesian people considered cat skin to be the best remedy for Rheumatism.) Nonetheless, he dithered about whether he should keep the sausage end to eat himself that evening. I’ve already sunk pretty far, he thought, if I’m weighing up whether to eat the scrap of meat in this sausage end or give it to a cat. No, he decided, she’d only get the skin. He flipped the sausage paper round the end of meat. The cat jumped back in alarm and spat.

‘That was a nasty shock for her,’ said a voice from above, an agreeable young voice that Bertin already knew, and two legs in grey-green puttees dangled into the shell hole opposite Bertin’s legs. Instinctively, he straightened up, because a sergeant is still a sergeant and deserves respect, even in the lunch break. According to the clock it was 11am, according to the sun midday, and you could feel that. The two young men seemed to be the only sentient beings hereabouts. The cat crouched three paces away, invisible between two roots as thick as arms that had the same grey-on-grey flecks as she did. The two young men scrutinised each other and liked what they saw. The sergeant asked if Bertin wouldn’t rather lie back down, and Bertin said no. You could sleep anywhere. He wanted to feel alive here, to open his eyes and smoke his after-lunch pipe. From his haversack he pulled a delicate pipe, which was made of meerschaum and amber and was already filled. The Bavarian shielded the sputtering lighter with his cap – a special cap, nicely worked. Bertin saw the letters CK embossed on the leather edging. Yes, this young person came from a good home. His neatly parted hair, broad forehead, and narrow wrists and fingers gave the game away. The Bavarian asked the Berliner how he had come to be here, lighting a cigarette himself. Bertin didn’t understand the question.

‘I’m on duty,’ he answered, surprised.

‘What? Just like anyone? Couldn’t they find a better use for you?’

‘I don’t like the air in the orderly room,’ Bertin replied with a smile.

‘I see. You’d rather work outside and be photographed,’ the Bavarian smiled back.

‘Exactly so,’ said Bertin, and the acquaintance was made. They exchanged names. The sergeant was called Christoph Kroysing and came from Nuremberg. His lively eyes scrutinised Bertin’s face, almost sucking information from it. For a moment, they were silent. A couple of metallic strikes – did they come from Hill 300 or 378? – reminded them what time and space meant. Then young Kroysing shook himself. In a neutral undertone, he asked Bertin if he would like to do him a favour.

Nobody in the vicinity paid any attention to the two men. The root system of an enormous Beech, knocked over as if by a lightning strike, reared up to shield them. Neither of them even noticed how the cat, familiar with the ways of brainless bipeds, sloped off with the precious sausage end and paper in her teeth.

Christoph Kroysing told his story. For nine weeks, he and his men had been living in the cellars at Chambrettes-Ferme, and if it was up to retired civil servant Niggl and his orderly room, he would remain there for the rest of his days. He had committed an act of gross stupidity. He explained that he had joined the war during his first university term, been quite seriously wounded and then promoted. He’d been sent out with the Reserve division for now because they needed every educated man they could get, but he was due to start officer training in the autumn and should get his commission next spring. However, he had the bad luck not to be able to tolerate the way the NCOs abused the men’s rights. The NCOs had set up their own kitchen where they scoffed the best bits from the men’s rations: fresh meat and butter, sugar and potatoes, and above all beer. Meanwhile, thin noodles, dried vegetables and tinned meat were considered good enough for the men, who did heavy work on niggardly leave. This stuck in his craw, said Kroysing, due to family tradition. For a century, his forefathers had supplied the state of Bavaria with high-ranking officials and judiciary. Where there was a Kroysing, there was justice and fairness. And so he was stupid enough to write a long letter full of grievances to his Uncle Franz, a big noise at the Military Railway Administration (MRA) in Metz. The censors were naturally very concerned about what a sergeant said to the MRA head. The letter was sent back to the battalion with an order to court-martial its author. When Kroysing heard about it, he laughed. They only had to ask and he would talk, and he certainly wasn’t short of witnesses. However, his brother Eberhard, who was at Douaumont with his sappers, took a different view. He came and gave him a hard time about his youthful folly, and said no one would speak up for him if the court martial got to them first. In any case, he’d said before he left, he wouldn’t be able to do anything for Christoph. Everyone had to make their own bed, and now Eberhard’s post would also be gone through with a magnifying glass.