Disgusted, Franck turned and looked forward. “We are still headed west, so the front has got to be straight ahead of us.”
Hans nodded. “I’m guessing that we’re still about ten miles away.”
“Is the reserve division we’re supposed to be supplying ahead of us or behind us?”
“Don’t be a dummkopf,” Hans said. “The division left before we did. I would know it if we passed a whole division. So, what do we do?”
Franck slid back in and shut the door. “I guess we keep going forward until we either find the front lines or start getting artillery down our exhaust pipe.”
• • •
About forty-five minutes later, Franck sat up straight in the seat and pointed forward. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Hans leaned forward, straining to see in the half light of morning. The rain was now just a drizzle, but the overcast sky still kept things pretty dark.
“In the road. Left side. About seventy-five yards ahead of us.” Franck was squinting to see better. “It looks like . . .” He fell back and then barked, “Stop!”
Hans had seen it too. Movement. He stomped on the brake and the truck slid to a stop in the heavy mud. He reached over the back of the seat and groped for his rifle. Franck was ahead of him. He turned around in his seat and in a moment had both of their rifles beside them. Franck checked to make sure each had a round in the chamber and then looked at Hans. “What do we do?”
Hans said nothing. He was totally focused on the movement up ahead of them. It was men; there was no question about that. And they were in two rough columns, so they were soldiers. His heart was pounding and his mouth was suddenly dry. Then Franck cried aloud, “They’re ours.”
Hans saw it at the same moment. The helmets confirmed it. He let out his breath in a long sigh of relief. Those were definitely German helmets.
“Ach, du liebe!” Franck breathed, leaning forward, peering out at the approaching columns. “Just look at them.” His voice reflected both surprise and pity at what they saw before them.
Hans shut off the truck’s engine. He took his rifle, and together he and Franck got out of the truck and started forward.
The first thing that hit them was the smell. With an open cab, the smell was not new to them, but the diesel fumes usually helped cover some of the stench of death. Now it was like a physical blow to the nose. Hans swallowed hard, feeling like he was going to retch, and raised his arm and put it across his face. Franck clamped a hand over his nose and mouth, nearly gagging. “How can those on the front stand it?”
As they moved forward, what they saw coming toward them made them forget the smell. It was a formation of soldiers, who—no, not a formation. A formation suggested some kind of order. Here there was none. It was a line of men, sometimes two abreast, sometimes three. Some men were right behind someone else; in other cases there were gaps in the line as long as twenty or thirty feet. And they came not like soldiers on the march, but like a line of skeletons—the walking dead. Their heads were down, their arms dangled at their sides, their feet shuffled along as if they were men in their nineties. Hans saw only one or two rifles in the whole group. Their uniforms were black with mud. Half were without helmets. The second man in line was barefoot. A man behind him wore only his socks and puttees.1
Hans felt a growing horror as he surveyed the oncoming men. One man had a bandage wrapped around the stump of his arm. The end of it was bright red. Another had a cloth bandage around his head that covered one eye. They walked as if they were drunk. And then Hans realized that they were drunk—drunk with exhaustion, drunk with shock, drunk with horror.
“He’s an Offizier,” Franck said in a low voice.
Hans nodded. He too had just seen the captain’s bars on the leading man’s shoulders, nearly obscured by the mud that caked his uniform. “But where’s the rest of his company? Surely this can’t be all . . .” He counted swiftly. A company was over a hundred men. With the captain, he counted eighteen.
Hans straightened and stepped forward. Franck fell in beside him. Seeing that, the officer raised a hand and shuffled to a stop. The men did the same. One or two were peering up ahead to see what it was. Most didn’t even lift their heads.
“Captain,” Hans said, snapping off a salute. “Lance Corporal Hans Otto Eckhardt, sir.” He half turned. “And this is Corporal Franck Zolger.”
The hand at the man’s side lifted slightly and then dropped again. It was as if he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do with it. His eyes were glassy and had a faraway look in them. But finally he did manage, “Captain Detman Adenaur.” Then he looked past them. “Is that your truck?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you have room to give us a ride back to our unit?”
“Uh . . . no, sir. I’m sorry, sir. We have a load of supplies for the Third Division, who are coming out of reserves to help counter the French attack. You didn’t happen to see them, did you?”
Again a long pause as he tried to process that. “Yes. They came in last night. Relieved us of duty.”
“Ah, that’s good news, sir.” Then he had a thought. “We have rations on board, sir. And barrels of coffee. It’s cold, sir, but you and your men would be welcome to what you need.”
Tears sprang to the captain’s eyes. His hands trembled. And then he dropped to his knees and threw his arms around Hans’s legs and began to sob uncontrollably.
• • •
By the time Hans and Franck got the rations out and passed their own tin cups filled with coffee around from man to man, the rain had begun to turn to snow. The men didn’t seem to notice. They sat in a ragged half circle around the back of the truck and began to eat. Though Hans and Franck had not eaten since the night before, they stood back. Hans knew that with the smell in the air, the moment he opened his mouth to eat, he would lose everything.
Finally, after watching them for several minutes, Hans sat down beside Captain Adenaur. He had an open can of salted pork beside him, but at the moment he was eating his biscuit in prim, small bites. It reminded Hans of how his grandmother ate. Hans had a dozen questions he wanted to ask, but he held his tongue. He could see that the food was already having a positive effect on them.
“What unit are you from, corporal?”
Hans was surprised. Adenaur was watching him now. His eyes were clearer, but still haunted.
“Fourth Transport Brigade, Third Division, Fifth Army, sir,” Franck answered for them.
“And you, sir?” Hans asked. “Did you command a company?”
His eyes held Hans’s for a moment and then jerked away. Tears shone brightly as he choked back a sob.
“It’s all right, sir. We understand.”
He shook his head. “When I saw you two boys in your neat uniforms and your heads held high, I thought of my company. Seven days ago, I walked down this road with a hundred and twenty men.” The tears spilled over and trickled down his cheeks. “Now—” He turned and looked at the shells around him. “Now I have only twenty left. And half of those are insane.”
Eighteen, actually, counting yourself. But Hans didn’t say that aloud. “What happened?”
“The hell that is called Verdun,” he whispered. “That is what happened. Four days and four nights of continuous bombardment. Ninety-six hours. With no protection except for a narrow trench filled with mud and ice and rats. The night became as day as the shells exploded almost continuously. The earth shook like jelly. You cannot hear anything but the explosions, which seem to be inside your own head. Hour after hour. Day after day. Night after night.
“And always the mud. The interminable mud.”
Hans and Franck turned. The man who wore only muddy socks and leather puttees caked with mud had stopped eating to chime in. He raised one foot and shook it at them. “I saw you looking at my feet. You are wondering what happened to my boots, ja?”
After a moment, Hans nodded. “Yes, I guess we were.”
“When the French
attacked, they marched their artillery bombardment up the hill about a hundred and fifty yards ahead of the infantry. It was like the jaws of hell itself were opening before us. We could see it coming closer and closer, with the French troops following right behind it. So we ran. We ran for our lives.”
He looked at his feet for a moment and then back to them. “As I ran, I jumped into a shell hole filled with water. The mud on the bottom was so thick and so miry that when I jerked my feet up, my boots came off.” He shook his head grimly. “I determined that I could do without them at the moment.” He turned and looked at Hans. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pair of boots in that load of supplies, would you?”
Hans looked at him and slowly shook his head. “If we did, they would be yours.”
Suddenly the captain spoke again. “Can you smell it? The stench of death?”
“Of course we can smell it,” Franck said.
“I can’t. Not anymore. None of us can, because it’s part of us now. Not just on our clothes, but in the pores of our skin. It was in the mud we crawled in, in the water we drank, in the air we breathed. There are hundreds of unburied dead scattered across no-man’s-land. Maybe thousands. No one dares go out to retrieve their bodies.”
Suddenly he was fishing in the pockets of his uniform. He withdrew two small items, placed them on his palm, and held them out to Hans and Franck. “Here.”
“Garlic cloves?” Franck asked in astonishment as he took them from the officer.
“Yes. Put one in your nostrils. It helps you cope with the smell. I don’t need them anymore.”
_______________
Chapter Notes
A letter written from combat zones in wartime would never have been allowed to contain the kind of detailed information found in Hans Otto’s letter to his parents. Censors went through all mail and blacked out any references to locations, battles, or other aspects of the war that might be useful to the enemy. However, those details are included so that the reader might get a small glimpse of what war meant for those who were immersed in it.
The use of poison gas in the Great War, also called the World War (it wasn’t called World War I until the outbreak of World War II), is estimated to have inflicted 1.32 million casualties. The estimates of civilian casualties from gas attacks range from 100,000 to 260,000. Commanders on both sides were aware of the danger to civilians, but nevertheless continued to use gas attacks throughout the war. One British commander wrote in his dairy: “My officers and I were aware that such [a] weapon would cause harm to women and children living in nearby towns, as strong winds were common in the battlefront. However, because the weapon was to be directed against the enemy, none of us were overly concerned at all” (L. F. Haber, The Poisonous Cloud: Chemical Warfare in the First World War [Clarendon Press], 106–108; as cited in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I#Chemical_weapons_in_warfare).
Much of the description given here by the captain and the man with no boots comes from eyewitness accounts of the battle, both French and German (see http://wereldoorlog1418.nl/battleverdun/index.htm).
The Battle of Verdun, in northeast France, is the longest single battle in the history of warfare, and the costliest in terms of casualties. The Germans launched an attack on February 21, 1916. The battle raged back and forth until December 18, 1916, when the French launched a major counterattack. In preparation for the attack, the French bombarded the German lines for six days. They fired 1,169,000 shells from over 800 artillery pieces. Estimates of casualties (dead, wounded, and missing) are 714,000, with about the same number coming from both sides. That is about 70,000 casualties per month (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun#15.E2.80.9317_December_1916).
^1 A puttee is a long piece of fabric or soft leather that is wrapped around the legs from the ankle to the knee to provide support and warmth.
December 17, 1916—Verdun, France
“Corporal?”
Hans turned around, lowering his razor. A tall man in an officer’s uniform with major’s emblems on the shoulders was coming toward him. Hans snapped to attention and saluted him. He saluted back.
“This your truck, Eckhardt?” he asked, glancing at Hans’s name sewn over his right breast pocket.
“Yes, sir. My codriver and I are with the Fourth Transport Brigade, Third Division, sir. We just got in yesterday.”
He watched the man carefully. Something about the officer suggested that he came from a family of some influence. You could see it in his bearing, and Hans noticed that his uniform was tailor-made. He wore a mustache that covered his upper lip. It had obviously once been carefully trimmed and shaped, but now the mustache was ragged and unkempt. He had three days’ worth of whiskers that were almost blond, like his hair. His blue eyes were wide set and intelligent, but now darted back and forth, as if he were searching for the enemy even here in the rear echelon.
The flap to the tent opened and Franck stuck his head out. When he saw the major, he practically leaped out and saluted smartly. “Corporal Zolger, sir.”
The major came up to them, looking around. “Where are your rifles, soldiers?”
“In the tent, sir,” Hans answered.
“This is the front line, Corporal,” he snapped. “You are to have your rifles within reach at all times. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.” Hans jerked his head at Franck, who darted back into the tent and came out with their rifles.
“Where are the keys to your truck, Eckhardt?”
Puzzled, Hans fished in his pocket and held them up.
“Good. Leave them on the seat. Get your gear and be ready to leave in ten minutes.”
“Sir?” Hans asked, stunned.
The major, who hadn’t given his name, stepped up and stuck his face right next to Hans. “We have four French divisions attacking on all three of our flanks,” he hissed. “You two are no longer truck drivers. You are now in the infantry.”
He walked over to where Hans had been shaving and picked up the razor. He looked in the sliver of mirror that Hans had saved from a shattered farmhouse. Leaning in closer, he rubbed his hands across the stubble on his chin. “Leave your razor and shaving gear, Eckhardt. Where you’re going, you’re not going to need it.”
January 6, 1917
Hans nudged Franck’s shoulder. “I don’t like the look of that,” he muttered under his breath.
“The look of what?” Franck turned his head toward where Hans was looking. They were sitting in the mess tent, which was barely above freezing. They were eating a breakfast of scrambled eggs that were as tasteless as putty, dark brown pumpernickel bread that tasted of mold, and cold coffee that was so bitter one could hardly gag it down. But then, there was nothing else to gag down in its place, so they kept spooning the food into their mouths and then washing it down with coffee.
Hans was looking at the far end of the mess tent, where the officers sat.
“So?” Franck said. “They have hot coffee and we don’t? Does that surprise you? Rank hath its privileges.”
“No, dummkopf,” Hans hissed. “Look at the guy sitting with his back to us. Next to Oberleutnant Habbes. Isn’t that the major that dragged us into all of this?”
Franck squinted at them. As he did so, the man turned around and waved his cup at one of the cooks. “Yeah,” he said, “and it looks like he’s still using your razor.”
“I don’t like the look of it,” Hans growled. “Oberleutnant Habbes has looked over in our direction three times now. I think they’re talking about us.”
“No!” Franck exclaimed softly. “Not another patrol. That will be our third one this week.”
They dropped their eyes as the major stood up and the three lieutenants with him got to their feet too. The major said something about the morning and walked out. The other two lieutenants followed him out, but First Lieutenant Habbes came straight toward Hans and Franck. They both stared into their coffee, pretending not to see him. It didn’t slow him down even a fraction.
> “Lance Corporal Eckhardt.”
Hans looked up, feigned surprise, and then shot to his feet and saluted. “Yes, sir!”
“We’ve just learned that our forward outposts reported movement during the night. They think French troops are moving up, possibly preparing for an assault. You will take your squad on a scouting patrol and probe their positions.”
Hans wanted to scream out at the way the army cloaked the ugliest of concepts in the most pleasant of terms. “Probe their positions” meant expose yourself to their fire and see if you can figure out how many there are. But instead he barked out, “Yes, sir, Lieutenant, sir.”
“Report at battalion headquarters for briefing at oh-nine hundred.”
“Yes, sir. How long do you expect we’ll be out, sir?” he asked, dreading the answer.
“Until you get the intelligence the major needs. Take a bedroll and enough rations for overnight.”
“Yes, sir.” He saluted again, but the lieutenant had already turned away and was headed for the door.
“A bedroll?” Franck exclaimed. “In this kind of weather? That’s insane.”
“No, that’s the army.”
January 7, 1917
Ignoring the cold that was seeping through his overcoat and uniform and turning his belly to ice, Hans slowly swept the stark landscape below them with the binoculars. Nothing. Even the birds had better sense than to be down in no-man’s-land. There was no movement. No sound. Just the eerie silence of the battlefield. He rolled on his side and handed the field glasses to Franck. “Nothing. You take a look.”
Frank sat up, pulled his knees up, and propped his elbows on them as he put the glasses to his eyes. “Stupid forward observers,” he muttered. “Seeing ghosts in the night. Too scared to go down and take a look themselves, so they call on us grunts.” He made a wide sweep and then lowered the glasses. “I say we pack it in and head back. We’re freezing our tails off out here.”
“You know that those same observers are watching us right now, Franck. And if we go back without going down there, they’ll report that, and that major will cut our tails off.”
Fire and Steel, Volume 1 Page 20
