No Man's Land

by Pete Ayrton

  ‘Russky,’ said a voice, ‘you’re smoking. Don’t let anyone catch you; I don’t mind, but if anyone comes I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Come in, open the door, comrade,’ said Grischa, astonished. ‘What’s happening in Mervinsk?’

  ‘You may well ask,’ said the other.

  ‘It’s snowing,’ said Grischa, by way of a reply.

  ‘You may say that,’ said the other.

  ‘Is there no work to-day? Is it a holiday?’

  ‘You may say that too,’ answered the voice, gruffly. It was Arthur Polanke of the Landwehr, from the Choriner Strasse, Berlin N., who was talking to the prisoner. ‘Yes, it’s a holiday. To-day’s Reformation Day; but that means nothing to you, you’re little better than a heathen.’

  ‘It’s all so quiet,’ said Grischa. ‘I shouldn’t mind a bit of breakfast.’

  ‘Of course it’s quiet when the company’s away on duty; but you can have some coffee, though if I were you I should wait till twelve o’clock. It won’t be long; it’s nearly half-past eleven now.’

  ‘Company away on duty?’ said Grischa in astonishment. ‘Then why have I been in bed so long?’

  The man outside was silent. He seemed to be reflecting for a moment whether he should speak; then he said in a low voice:

  ‘I’ll tell you. The old man went on leave yesterday.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Grischa innocently. ‘Brett-schneider?’

  ‘Lord, no, he’s there all right. I meant your old man, Lychow. And we’ve had orders that you’re not to be let out of your cell. It’s a summer cell too, so they must have their knife into you again. And as your case isn’t settled and you haven’t got into any more trouble, you may explain it if you can, because I can’t.’

  Grischa listened, and laboriously reproduced these words and images in the terms of his own thoughts; then with a short laugh he said:

  ‘Beasts! They’re revenging themselves while the General’s away. Afterwards they’ll say it was a mistake, or somebody’s orders.’

  As the prisoner could not see him, the guard grinned ominously and muttered: ‘I’m glad you take it like that. Now I’ll open your cell, and you can clean it – that’ll let some warmth into it. There’s no work this afternoon, the stoves will all be going strong, and if the corporal on duty will look the other way, we’ll leave the door open all the afternoon, so that you’ll at least have company, and it will be nice and warm for you.’

  And Grischa thanked him.

  And when the dried vegetables and tinned beef were brought round at midday, Grischa’s mess-tin was filled very full, and he thoroughly enjoyed his dinner.

  Then he left his cell, which they had actually forgotten to lock, and went into the guardroom, where the men of the Landwehr were just lighting their pipes, and the barrack orderly was carrying off the empty mess-tins to wash them out with warm water and wood-shavings. When Grischa came in some of them glanced up from the cards which had been just dealt, others from their letters, or their books, and then turned back to what they were doing, with rather too noticeable an unconcern. Grischa filled a pannikin with hot water from the great iron cauldron on the stove, and was about to go and empty his mess-tin in the common trough outside – that invaluable trough that provided food for three pigs. And as Lychow lived near by, the men might rely on the fact that these animals would be fattened up for ham and bacon, and not wasted as mere pork, as happened to so many pigs behind the lines; strict orders were given that these valuable animals should have free access to the kitchen refuse. But when he had got to the door, Corporal Hermann Sacht walked up to Grischa and said:

  ‘Half a minute, Russky; you go and wash that out in your bucket.’

  ‘But what about the pigs?’ Grischa answered with a smile.

  ‘We won’t bother about the pigs to-day, old man,’ said the corporal very gravely. ‘You mustn’t be seen outside. You’re to exercise in the yard from two to three, with the others; you’d better curl up in your bunk.’

  From this, and from the strange deathly stillness that followed the corporal’s words, Grischa understood. He stood motionless, his mouth and eyes grew a little pale, as he looked at the man who was almost his friend.

  ‘Now you know what’s up,’ said the corporal contemptuously; but the contempt was not for Grischa.

  ‘Yes,’ said Grischa, ‘I do.’ He cleared his throat sharply, and then, stiffly and with measured steps he crossed the room, followed by the looks of all that sat there, and passed along the dark passage to his cell; it was one of the first, on the right hand, against the outer wall. Hermann Sacht watched him go, and then went after him.

  ‘Leave the door of your cell open, Russky, you must keep warm, and if you want to smoke – well, we’re smoking, and no one will notice you.’

  And Grischa thanked him.

  About this time the snowstorm burst in full force over Mervinsk. The cell was full of smouldering twilight. Grischa stretched himself out on the bed, with his hands under his head, and covered by his two blankets. He reflected that a mattress, stuffed with wood shavings, did not give much warmth in winter. At first the shrill icy blasts of wind whistled through the window-frames, cleaving the tobacco smoke into whirling clouds, but in a few minutes that same wind had blocked up every crack with snow, and the air in the stone-paved cell gradually grew warmer.

  ‘Now it is finished,’ thought Grischa, ‘and I must g0.’

  Only a few minutes before, he had felt himself secure, sheltered by a protecting hand, and now the certainty of death was upon him, swift and inevitable, death while his limbs were strong and wholesome, and he turned over on his bed as if he felt the walls of his coffin against his body, and all were at an end. A bitter taste mounted to his palate from his throat, and he thought: ‘Well, I shan’t be sorry when it’s finished; now, at least, my troubles will be over.’

  He sank back in utter exhaustion and despair, his mouth opened suddenly and as the pipe dropped from his hand he fell into a deep sleep, though, indeed, his heavy meal and the oncoming darkness had as much to do with it as the numbness at his heart. Men who have known something of life, and have had to bear a hand in tasks that they have hated, have no great need of telegrams and official instructions in order to grasp what is going on. Grischa, who was to be shot, and the company who were presumably to shoot him, alike knew what was to happen, even before Schieffenzahn, far away at Brest, had taken down the telephone receiver to send a certain order on its way along the wire.

  Shortly before two o’clock Hermann Sacht, who had passed quietly by the open cell, said in astonishment to the corporal on duty:

  ‘Russky’s asleep; do you think we’d better leave him alone?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said the corporal, ‘but orders are orders; he must go out for exercise.’

  ‘Yes, his health is very precious,’ said Hermann Sacht, in grim irony, as he snapped the padlock on the cell door, ‘but perhaps he would like to have another look at the snow coming down, and hear the doves cooing up in the roof, and the sparrows fluttering through the drill-shed, which is the only place you get a breath of air in this sort of weather. Who do you think will have to do him in?’

  ‘We shall, of course; it’s our job.’

  ‘That’s right enough,’ said Hermann Sacht, with a laugh, as he slung his rifle over his shoulder, ‘he’ll be shot with the rifles he’s cleaned himself.’

  ‘Oh, well, he’ll be sure there’ll be no dirt on the bullets,’ said the other, nodding. ‘And we’ll have our cartridge-cases to remember the Russky by, until we throw them away.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be a good thing to dig his grave soon; if we wait till the ground freezes it will take twice as long.’

  ‘And perhaps there’ll be one of those coffins left which he and the little Jew sweated at for so long.’

  ‘Of course there will,’ said one of the company, looking up from his game of draughts; ‘there are at least five in reserve and two extra big ones. He’d certainly fit
one of those.’

  ‘Two minutes to two,’ said the other with a whistle of surprise as he glanced at his watch. ‘Wake him up, and a pleasant afternoon to you.’

  *

  Under the drill-shed, which was well enough suited for parades and physical exercises, though it was hardly large enough for drilling, the wind blew wafts of snow, tiny icy crystals, or gusts of frozen rain, right under the roof almost to the inner wall. Little spectral eddies of dust arose from the ground, twisting like dervishes till they dropped and gave up their transient ghosts. The sparrows chirped busily in every corner, pecked about for seeds, or sat, puffed out like little balls, upon the rafters. From their safe, warm lodging in the roof came the contented cooing of the doves.

  ‘It’s hardly weather for a walk even here,’ thought Hermann Sacht as he stamped about patiently by the side of Grischa whose hands were thrust deep in his overcoat pockets. His woolly, khaki-coloured overcoat (one of those which Sluschin & Co. did so well over), and his German boots which did not match, kept him warm. He tramped along, inside the row of wooden roof supports, from one end to the other of the shed, ninety-three paces in all, and back again. And Hermann Sacht saw that he was thinking. But he was not exactly thinking: as he walked up and down, he watched the snow in the air, his eyes wandered over the dust on the ground, the wooden beams, the nails, the nests in their several corners, the dark nooks where the beams joined the rafters, the spiders’ webs, and the fluffy little sparrows; and he listened to the cooing of the doves and the creaking of his guard’s leather belt. As he took all these things in, he asked himself:

  ‘Will these things last?’

  The keen air did him good. ‘How long,’ thought he, ‘shall I breathe this air?’ He must try to understand how the air entered his lungs: man is blown out like a ball. He frowned, and stared steadily before him as he tried to imagine what it would be like when a man could no longer blow out this ball. After about twenty minutes he turned to Hermann Sacht, who, so as not to disturb his prisoner, was walking quietly up and down in the opposite direction; but his cloak was much thinner, he was pitiably cold, and he was burdened with a rifle weighing nine pounds, not to speak of a supply of cartridges.

  ‘Shall we go in?’

  It was not really a question, but a kind of friendly command. Grischa was changed, though he had not noticed it. In a tone of voice that he had not used since his escape, and with the quiet assurance of a seasoned soldier, he had suggested what he knew was best for him.

  Hermann Sacht looked at him doubtfully. ‘This sort of breeze takes a bit of getting used to; and you’ve got the right to a full hour, Russky.’

  Grischa nodded. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but we’d better go in all the same.’

  ‘If you weren’t a decent sort,’ said Hermann Sacht, with a sigh of relief, as they hurried back to the building, keeping close to the wall and carefully avoiding the storm-swept yard, ‘you might have kept me hopping about here for a good forty minutes, though I want to pack up a parcel and write a letter with it. But you are a decent sort,’he reflected, as his eyes wandered over his prisoner, apparently seeking some solution; ‘a really decent sort, and yet everything goes wrong with you.’

  ‘Oh, what does it matter whether I’m a decent sort or not,’ said Grischa, in a voice that showed his complete indifference to such distinctions. ‘When did the sentence or the order come through?’

  ‘Sentence?’said Hermann Sacht, as they walked through the covered passage which connected the main building and the second yard, or drill-ground, with the guardroom. ‘You’ve made a mistake. It hasn’t come through, nor yet an order. Nothing has happened at all.’

  ‘Then how do you know that they are going to…’

  ‘Oh come, old boy,’ said Hermann Sacht, meaningly, ‘it’s pretty clear, isn’t it? They’ve had their knife into you for a long time, and have made up their minds to carry the sentence out, and as soon as the General has turned his back, they lock you up. That’s as plain as your face. If the Divisional Office ask for you this morning the people here will say you’re ill, or they’ll have the cheek to say straight out: “Nothing doing.” Meanwhile they’ll telephone to Schieffenzahn. “Lychow’s away,” they’ll say, “shall we do it now?” What more do they want? I may be wrong, but we’re both old soldiers; we’ve been a long time in this line of business. And, O Lord—’ he suddenly stopped. ‘Here’s the War going on for another winter.’

  These last words were uttered in so hopeless a tone, that Grischa realized that here was a man who envied him – who would certainly sooner live than die, but if he had to die, would rather be killed now than next spring.

  ‘True, comrade,’ he said, ‘the grave is dark but at least it’s quiet,’ and a wan smile flickered round the corners of their dark unshaven lips and their despairing eyes.

  Arnold Zweig was born in Glogau, Silesia (now Glogow, Poland) in 1887, the son of a Jewish saddler. At the outbreak of the war, he enlisted in the German Army. He was first sent to the Western Front (he fought at Verdun) and then served at the Army Headquarters on the Eastern Front, where he came into contact with the Jews of eastern Europe. In 1920, he published The Face of East European Jewry, written in an attempt to convince German Jews to empathize with their eastern European brethren. A committed Socialist Zionist, Zweig went in 1923 to Berlin to edit the Judische Rundschau newspaper. He began Freudian therapy and started a revealing correspondence with Freud: in a letter he told Freud: ‘I personally owe to your psychological therapy the restoration of my whole personality.’ In 1927, Zweig published The Case of Sergeant Grischa, now a classic of war literature. Based on an actual case, it is the story of the mistaken identity of a Russian sergeant who is caught, tried and executed as a deserter from the German Army. A powerful satire on bureaucracy, the book is unusual in its sympathetic portrayal of the relationship between guards and prisoners. Witnessing in 1933 the burning of his books by the Nazis, Zweig remarked that the crowd ‘would have stared as happily into the flames if live humans were burning’. A year later, he went into voluntary exile; first in Czechoslovakia, later in Palestine, where he became disillusioned with Zionism. In 1948, he returned to the GDR. Zweig died in East Berlin in 1968.

  EDLEF KÖPPEN

  CAVALRY CHARGE

  from Military Communiqué

  translated by Martin Chalmers

  CURTAIN UP!

  Curtain up, Fricke turns away from the binocular periscope, his hand grabs Reisiger’s collar: ‘Cavalry!’

  Cavalry. The enemy is attacking with cavalry. Cavalry appears out of the hollow. Grey, gleaming bubbles approach: Steel helmets, a line, from Loos to the slagheap. There approach horses’ heads, a nodding line, brown and black and white, from Loos to the slagheap. It comes brown and black and white, closely crowded bulk, squeezed forward without a gap from Loos to the slagheap.

  It grows out of the hollow, pushed up, hastening, cavalry bounding up in unbroken rank! Up, and in full view now. And stands, pausing incomprehensibly slowly between hail and rain and thunder of the German infantry, of the German batteries.

  Fricke at the binoculars: ‘There’s a second line coming!’ Before the naked eye the same again. Out of the hollow, behind the slow mass of pushing horse bodies, once again horses and riders. From Loos to the slagheap. ‘Lieutenant!’Aufricht has put down the telephone, is staring beside Reisiger.

  Fricke: ‘Let them, let them, they have to come closer.’

  He says it hoarsely, strangely, bawling. – ‘They have to come closer.’ Reisiger’s knees are shaking: ‘There!’

  As yet no artillery round falls in the waiting, the rising phalanx of horsemen.

  And Reisiger, his arm suddenly under the lieutenant’s arm: ‘They’re charging!’

  They’re charging. The first wave briefly rises. Sinks back. Rises. Down. Up, down, up, down, up. Trotting. Behind it the second rank, up, down, up, trotting, two ranks simultaneously, close together, trotting. And trotting. And, at one bound, the wh
ole front jumps forward, horses’ legs lengthening their stride, hooves stretching into the air, and up and stretched, and down and gallop, and their stomachs on the ground, heads forward, full gallop! Nearer, two rows, towards the trenches. And the riders, lances still at shoulder-height, and now couched, nearer, full gallop.

  There an animal falls, there one goes down on its front legs, there one rears up, there a rider rolls off, there one is dragged along by the stirrup.

  Full gallop forward.

  There a gap tears open, four horses wide, in the first rank. There six, eight, nine topple sideward and twitch in a struggling heap. Unchecked, irreversible, unstoppable living force, gallop. Closer, nearer, closer. Over the top of the English infantry positions, further, closer, nearer. – The three observing from the chimney panting. Their eyes back and forward, first rank, second rank, back and forward, riders, horses, first rank, second rank nearer, nearer, gallop.

  And—

  Open fire between the lines!

  How many telephones buzz at this moment?

  How many voices shout: ‘Cavalry between the trenches’?

  How many commands, hard, metallic in tone, call a halt, reduce range, bring the barrage back just in front of the German positions as a curtain of leaping flames.