The minutes passed. The men in the trenches stared ahead, eyes popping. Surely they’d advance from over there, there in front. Could they hear them now? See them? Was there any point in waiting to be slaughtered with no artillery and the heavy weapons beyond use? The Fatherland couldn’t expect any more of them than what they’d already withstood. Singly and in groups they threw their rifles away and waded out into the sludge and fog, into the shredded, blown-down barbed wire entanglements, slithering and stumbling in the shell holes, hands as far as possible raised above their heads. ‘Kamerad,’ they shouted into the fog. ‘Kamerad!’
Kamerad – that word would be understood. He who shouts ‘Kamerad’ and raises his hands is surrendering and will be spared. He who abuses the word consigns himself and many of his fellows to death. Kamerad – now they appeared from the fog in their sky blue coats, slithering and stumbling, with assault packs and bayonets. Under their steel helmets, their faces were black, coffee-coloured, light brown: France’s colonial regiments from Senegal, the Somali coast and Morocco. And elsewhere were the Bretons, the southern French, the Parisians from the boulevards, the farmers from Touraine. France was mother to them all. They all knew they would be defending basic freedoms if they liberated French soil from the invaders. In no sense did they play the part of dashing warriors as they climbed out of their storm positions cursing and laughing, teeth darkly clenched, pale with determination. But they were fully engaged in the task ahead, these intelligent soldiers of France. They too had been told: just one more push and that’ll be it. They let the German prisoners through in silence and pushed them back towards the reserves at the rear, and then they crossed the German line and advanced on their objectives, with Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux at the centre. They pushed into all the valleys and overran the wooded slopes from Lauffée to Chapître wood, from the Thiaumont line to Ravin de la Dame, from Nawe wood to the stone quarries of Haudraumont. On the German’s left wing, the trench systems named after Generals Klausewitz, Seidlitz, Steinmetz and Kluck were lost, in the centre the Adalbert line and everything that had once been called Thiaumont, and on the right wing the ravines, positions and remnants of woodland between the village of Douaumont and Pepper ridge. The three French divisions pushed deep into the land, stormed the German military Reserve’s dugouts and positions, lashed out at the batteries with bare steel, finally exacting revenge for months of shell raids and shrapnel rain. The question was: would they succeed in breaking right through the German defences?
The front held at several places in the sector. On the escarpment north of the village of Douaumant, in Caillette wood, east of Fumin and in the Vaux hills the German clung to their ground and threw themselves at the French with hand grenades and such machine guns as were undamaged. The fighting lasted all day, then night fell. The German’s resistance boosted their prestige, but it made no sense. The next morning the French artillery restarted their terrible games, and the Germans had nothing to set against them. Two days previously the French had been fewer in number than the German artillery; now they dominated the field, placed their long-range guns on Douaumont’s eastern slope and decimated the casemates of Vaux with wild salvoes. They combed Caillette wood with fire, clearing gateways for their infantry, and smashed the fortifying outworks of Vaux. The field batteries advanced on the German flank, obtaining a foothold on Douaumont’s steep eastern slope and cutting all rearward communications in much the same way that a doctor amputates a smashed arm hanging by strands of muscle and skin. Go back, German soldiers, you’ve done enough. In some places it took the French just two hours to conquer what they’d planned to take in four, in others it took four days. They took 7,000 German soldiers prisoner and killed and wounded three times that many. You have done enough for your 53 Pfennigs a day, German soldiers, and for the Briey-Longway iron ore basin. In the impenetrable fog, you gave the last of your strength to fulfil orders, not questioning whether they made sense or not. Men from Poznan, Lower Silesia, the Mark, Westphalia, Pomerania or Saxony: peace is all you need and now you have it – the peace of the dead. Protestants, free thinkers, Catholics, Jews: your bloated corpses will surface in the clay and fog of Verdun and then disappear again into our national pasts. You’ll be ungratefully forgotten, and the memories of those who were once your comrades will hardly be disturbed by even the palest reflection of your suffering. But what was to become of Douaumont?
Since the 23rd a column of smoke from the shell explosions had been hanging over Douaumont like a large black flag.
CHAPTER TWO
Breakthrough
IN THE DAYS before the decisive move, the Fosses wood detachment marched out in the morning and back in the afternoon with the regularity of a pendulum. To stop the mud getting into their boots, the men tied their bootlegs closed with string and so managed to march with confidence. Relaying railway sleepers higher up isn’t the most pleasant work in the world but it isn’t the dirtiest either, not by a long shot. And the lack of visibility took the danger out of it. Now that the air had turned to milky soup, the Frogs sensibly refrained from peppering it with shrapnel. A certain someone had predicted what a hard blow the transfer from Wild Boar gorge back to Steinbergquell depot would be for Bertin. You could see how disgruntled the men were by their puckered brows and tightly drawn lips, and by the way they stared straight ahead while their legs wrestled through the thick mush on the roads. It squelched and sucked, crackled and gurgled, and squirted up past the ASC men’s knees if they were too lost in thought to test the ground with their sticks and carelessly stepped into a sludge-covered hole. For days the pendulum swung undisturbed. But that day… They were already at Ville height when a dull rumble wafted over to them. Far behind, out of sight, a really heavy gun had bellowed after weeks of deceptive silence. While they were still listening and looking at one another, something started up behind, battering down like rain on a wooden roof, faraway and frightful: a barrage from Verdun just like in the worst months of summer – the French! They set off apprehensively on the march home. The air seethed and clamoured behind the horizon as they entered the barracks. The noise followed them into the kitchen, and they listened to it as they washed their canteens and hours later at their evening meal. At bedtime, Private Bertin thought about Kroysing, Süßmann, that poor, pitiable scoundrel Niggl, and the Saxons in their water-logged trenches, and he sighed heavily and turned over.
The noise swelled during the night rather than slackening off, and a wild clanging cascade was hammering down behind the hills by the following morning. The men heard it as they marched out and the German reply: a shot every two minutes. There were no shells. They shook their heads as they went about their work in the morning but found themselves back in the barracks before lunchtime. There was almost a sigh of relief in the ranks when the order came in the early afternoon: all working parties suspended, all men to stand by to unload ammunition. Naturally, the company had to wait a good two hours to be assigned its task. The men chatted and exchanged thoughts, and then finally two engines shunted a line of wagons up the track, maybe 40, maybe 50 – the ASC men lost count. The men spat into their hands as they were split into groups and set to it. Men who knew the ropes climbed into the open wagons and with a practised grip lifted on to their shoulders a wicker basket from which either a long or a squat 15cm shell stuck out like a bundle of spears in a quiver. Carefully balancing the unaccustomed weight, the men from the working parties trudged along the slippery boarded walkways. They groaned as they heaved the shells down from their shoulders and stacked them between grassy hillocks – the heaviest of them weighed 85 pounds. They recovered on the way back, rubbing their joints in preparation for the next steel load. Even before night fell, miners’ lamps were hung in the wagons, and their dim glow illuminated from below the faces of the three men between the sliding doors. And as they bent and lifted, while a constant stream of men passed them, presenting their shoulders to receive their loaded baskets, carrying on and then disappearing into the gathering twilight, the
y looked to Bertin like the labourers of destiny doling out to mortal men their allotted burdens. Men were just a number here, a shoulder and two legs. The tramp of hobnailed boots banished any thoughts coursing through their minds. When the last wagon had been emptied at almost 11pm, sturdy Karl Lebehde had carried exactly the same as Bertin who was much less strong and Pahl who was almost a hunchback.
The following morning, the milky dawn air breathed cold and damp across the barracks and ammunition dumps of the depot; the sun would not show itself there that day. From a few metres away, the cooks dispensing morning coffee looked like pale and shadowy demons in the steam from their kettles, bestowing a ladleful of the River Lethe on the souls of the dead. Then the working parties disappeared: the Orne valley commando, the commando for hill 310, the Chaume wood commando, the Fosses wood commando. But in barely two hours they were all back. All hell had been let loose in front. No one could get where they were going. The immobile wall of fog, thick as cotton wool, that hung over the camp dampened all sound, turning the depot into an island. The ASC men were delighted to be ordered to stay in their barracks and rest. The depot commander, First Lieutenant Benndorf, knew what had been required of them the night before and would be required of them again that night. Suddenly, around midnight, the rumour spread that the French had broken through, Douaumont had fallen, there was a gap in the front line. Within quarter of an hour, most of the men were in the grip of a vague anxiety. The NCOs were called out; they and the other trained men returned pale and silent. They had received ammunition, live cartridges and carbines, and in half an hour shooting would begin. This was no laughing matter for the ASC men. If things had got to the point where their peaceable NCOs were being called upon to fight, then they and the recruits from the depots in Crépion and Flabas would be thrown into the gap the French were meant to have torn in the front line too, wielding picks and shovels. Everyone agreed with Halezinsky the gas worker when he said: ‘Wow, if they haven’t got anyone better than the likes of us, they should sue for peace.’
But after lunch, the atmosphere lightened again, and this, oddly enough, was partly due to the men being completely cut off from the world, which gave them a deceptive sense of security. At 2.30pm they were assigned duties as usual; before that everyone who knew their way around at the front had been ordered to report to the field gun depot. Bertin joined them, though he didn’t know if he was supposed to, as he’d never had anything to do with field guns. But he knew his way around at the front, no doubt about that, and information was probably what was wanted.
Guides were required. NCOs and field artillery officers crowded round the map in chief ammunitions officer Schulz’s hut, while some ammunition was packed into the gun carts and some stowed in the small dump cars dotted around the depot. Fresh batteries were being brought in, some from the practice grounds at the rear, some from the other side of the Meuse. A carrier pigeon and a couple of runners had brought news; this was a black day. Sergeant Schulz assigned Bertin to the gunners who were to take ammunition up ahead on the narrow-gauge railway – the very line that led to the telephone hut in Wild Boar gorge. At the words ‘Wild Boar gorge’ something sparked in Bertin’s soul: Kroysing! Süßmann! If they had escaped, they would have gone there. He hurried back to the barracks to get his coat, gas mask, tarpaulin and haversack, and his gloves – it would be easier to push and brake the trucks with those on. Before leaving, he was also told to call the depot from the switchboard at the halt station to check if the line was working. The station wasn’t currently answering.
The gunners, strangers to Bertin with braid on their collars, said they were attached to the Guard Reserve Division. Big men from Pomerania, they spoke to each other in rapid Plattdeutsch. In the trucks lay the field shells in their long cases like cartridges for an enormous gun. Creaking and bumping, the long, low-slung ammunitions train pushed off into the void. Bertin had never had such a strong sense of confronting the unknown as he did then, clinging on to the front wagon as he left the familiar area behind in the half-light. Nothing to his right, nothing to his left, in front of him 1.5m of track, behind him two clearly visible wagons and one he couldn’t make out, two gunners beside him, further back noise and confusion. Otherwise all was quiet. The fog was so dense their heads seemed to touch the clouds. Their feet, the feet of seasoned soldiers, jumped automatically from sleeper to sleeper and over the boards laid by the track as a walkway. Not a shot was heard. The Germans didn’t know where the remnants of their infantry had assembled or where the French were gathering. All that was certain was that Douaumont was lost and that the corps would, if possible, mount a counter-attack to support the artillery. Bertin had heard this when he was in the ammunitions expert’s hut. But he had also heard – and this filled him with hope – that Douaumont had been voluntarily evacuated during the night. Voluntarily – that could cover a multitude of sins. At the same time, a thought that had flickered within him earlier resurfaced: a man like Kroysing wouldn’t go further from his post than was absolutely necessary. Was it 3pm or 5pm? Time was dissolving in clouds just as space was dissolving in the yellowish mist.
Wild Boar gorge… could this really be it? Calls, cries, curses, questions: ‘Fourth Company!’ ‘Where in God’s name is my platoon?’ ‘Paramedic, paramedic!’ ‘Second battalion – what’s left of it.’ ‘Sergeants, sergeants stand by for orders!’
The lovely autumn quiet of the valley, that paradise of beech and rowan trees, was getting its fair share this time. The ravaged wood teemed with a confused throng of grey tunics. The little stream was blocked by fallen tree trunks and had overflowed. The tatters of tree stumps, lopped beech trees and far-flung treetops emerged as Bertin left the main line to climb the familiar path. Men stood in the water trying to clear the stream, free twisted rails and make a bridge out of planks. Sappers, ASC men and Saxon infantrymen worked at it together, and among them, issuing instructions, Bertin thought he heard a familiar voice. On the steep side of the valley, a number of undamaged trees still offered cover. There exhausted, grey-faced men, thick bandages round their heads or arms, sat, crouched or slept. Ripped tunics; ragged trousers; men who looked like they’d been pulled from the mud; big dark patches of blood. The small man directing the work, his left hand in a sling made of haversack straps, really was Sergeant Süßmann. He was having a siding cleared, which the blocked stream had covered in mud and slush. ‘Good heavens,’ he said when Bertin called to him, ‘it’s like being on Savignyplatz in Berlin.’ His eyes were no longer restless – to the contrary, they were very clear – but his hair was singed and his face was black from smoke.
Without asking what had happened to him, Bertin said: ‘Where’s the lieutenant?’
‘Inside,’ answered Süßmann, nodding in the direction of the railway hut. ‘Telephoning.’
‘I’m supposed to call my depot to check the line.’ Bertin was still looking at Süßmann, his mouth half open in shock.
‘When the egg is laid, the hen clucks. Go on in. We fixed it a few minutes ago.’
Half a beech tree, its crown still covered in yellow leaves, was propped against the hut’s corrugated iron roof. In a tangle of similar felled treetops next to the hut, three figures lay on a tarpaulin, covered in mud from head to foot, an encrusted layer of clay on their coats. Something about the cut of their clothes said they were officers. They were resting on the natural spring mattress created by the branches. Because their eyes were closed, their haggard faces – one of them a boy’s face – looked oddly like dirty plaster casts of death masks. But these death masks were talking to each other languidly in Saxon dialect, their faces expressionless.
‘If that mad sapper in there—’
‘Do you think he’s mad?’
‘Of course. Those eyes. And the way he bares his teeth. Recapture Douaumont…’
‘Straight out of a padded cell,’ giggled the one with the boy’s face.
The one in the middle chipped in again: ‘If that madman in there gets orders to r
ecapture Douaumont, will you go along with it?’
The oldest one, whose chin was covered in brown stubble, didn’t reply for a while. On the gorge floor, the blocked stream had been cleared and was gushing along its old course. Finally, he said: ‘Of course he’s mad. Of course it would be pointless. But would you want to take responsibility for it all going wrong because you refused to take part? Because a surprise attack could miraculously succeed in this bloody fog.’
‘Three to 100 it’ll fail.’
‘Three to 100, of course. One to 50 even. Different matter if the ground were firm underfoot, but in these conditions…’
‘And as all three of us think it’s mad, all three of us will go along with it and drag our men into the shambles with us, because we’re worried about responsibility.’
Outside Verdun Page 23
