‘I would very much like to see,’ said Bertin, yawning again, ‘how the Prussian Army would resolve a case like this if the points balanced each other out.’
There was no reply; they were waiting for him to go. To fill the pause, Porisch said that there was a black notebook of his brother’s among Lieutenant Kroysing’s things, which no one could read because Mertens’ pupils were famously never allowed to learn shorthand. And they laughed together, remembering how the old bearded man at the lectern used to lose his temper with new students at the beginning of term when they tried to take notes during his lectures. He’d thunder that he hated that kind of Mephistophelian wisdom, which Goethe had put in the Devil’s mouth purely in irony. What they took home written in black and white was irrelevant; it was what stayed in their hearts that mattered and his courses were for law students not for clerks.
Bertin started, wondering what time it was. Sergeant Fürth confirmed that it was nearly curfew and he’d better hurry. He spoke gently and didn’t sound at all like the big mouth Bertin had taken him to be, telling Bertin he was welcome to warm himself up in his billet whenever he wanted, pressing a couple of cigars on him and lighting his way down stairs, after Porisch had shaken his hand sympathetically several times and said he hoped he’d make it through the winter in good shape. Pelican returned, shook some railway coal into the little stove and filled his pipe. ‘God knows he needs our good wishes. We always know what’s going to happen to those ASC men a bit before they do themselves.’
‘What is your actual job here?’ Porisch asked.
‘Theoretically, I’m a railway NCO,’ Pelican replied. ‘In practice, I’m Railway Transport Commander for Romagne and I run the show. My lieutenant drinks, lets me do the work and signs everything. It suits us both down to the ground, and I know everything and get a princely amount of leave,’ and he laughed loudly. ‘That lad and his squad are going to be relieved next week by the Fourth Company from the same battalion, then he’ll disappear from my view. They’re joining a really horrible detachment under a sergeant from Hamburg named Barkopp. How do I know that? I heard it from Barkopp himself. He was knocking back schnapps in the mess last night precisely on that account. They’re going to be trained to look for duds and may count themselves lucky.’
‘What will they be used for?’ asked Porisch, as if he had never worn a soldier’s tunic.
‘And to think that you’re going to be working in the War Materials Department, my dear Pogge!’ retorted Pelican, ‘They’re going to be used for shooting, of course, for the final victory against America and the rest of the world!’
‘Well, cheers, then,’ said Porisch.
Meanwhile, Bertin ran through the icy night, his footsteps echoing. The sharp air revived him. The tea with grog had done him good and he’d found the unusual Pelican amusing. He would nurture that relationship. In any case, he’d had the great consolation that evening of learning that Eberhard Kroysing was alive and well. Humanity was in a strange state when a serious injury was the admission price for some peace, and people were glad to pay it. He’d write to Kroysing as soon as he could. Perhaps not immediately but when he was feeling better, so he wouldn’t sound like a professional moaner. When it got a bit warmer and the work was easier and he got some of his 1917 leave, he’d take Kroysing’s advice to heart and keep his chin up. Sweating, he made his way up to the hut just before 9pm. The men were snoring peacefully inside, unaware of what was in store for them because the gods had quarrelled and cast lots over mortal men.
CHAPTER TWO
When the gods quarrel
IF LIEUTENANT VON ROGGSTROH had been an experienced officer as well as a well-meaning one, he would have checked whether Bertin’s superiors had all been furnished with sufficient medals before setting about actioning his good intentions, when he had a moment to do so. Unfortunately, he didn’t do that. His request arrived in the battalion orderly room in Damvillers shortly after New Year, via the depot orderly room, with the result that Colonel Stein and Major Jansch were informed almost simultaneously that they were to procure an Iron Cross, Second Class for Private Bertin.
The two officers, who, as we know, couldn’t stand each other, were also diametrically opposed types. An old cavalryman, Colonel Stein was stout and short-tempered but fairly good-natured; Major Jansch was a thin, bitter man and very restless, though self-controlled up to a point. Naturally, they both had the black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross, Second Class in their buttonholes. But reading the report, written by Lieutenant von Roggstroh, nephew of a influential landowner in East Prussia, setting out Private Bertin’s deeds and achievements, they both had the same thought: with careful handling it shouldn’t be too difficult to turn this into an Iron Cross, first class – and for themselves.
‘Look here,’ said Colonel Stein to his adviser and adjutant, ‘with all due respect to your prophetic gifts, this is impossible. It’s out of the question for some little ASC major in Damvillers to claim an Iron Cross, first class. We were at the depot. We went through the bombardment. Our ammunitions expert Sergeant Schulz issued Lieutenant von Roggstroh with 300 contact fuses and 50 time fuses. We were the most affected, and no one can take that away from us.’
We means you, thought Lieutenant Benndorf, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he said: ‘And the man whom the lieutenant expressly mentioned?’
‘Will go away empty-handed this time,’ said the colonel gruffly. ‘We come first. He’ll prefer some leave to an Iron Cross. What have those ASC men got to do with me anyway? I don’t know them, and they don’t know me, and if anyone here is to get a birdie, it’s going to be me.’
‘Hmm,’ said Lieutenant Benndorf, walking over to the window of the gloomy room where they were billeted, ‘that’s not quite true, Colonel. You do know this man.’
‘Don’t remember having the pleasure,’ muttered the colonel, whose leg was hurting him.
Lieutenant Benndorf continued, not out of malice, but because he wanted to say something to smother the nagging pain he felt at the assumption he would step aside. ‘You’ve seen the man. You even had him punished back when that flock of Frenchmen were marched past and the ASC men gave them water. Don’t you remember, sir? There was a good-for-nothing among them with a black beard who let a Frenchman drink from his canteen without the slightest compunction. He was called Bertin.’
The colonel remembered him dimly and without rancour. ‘Oh, him,’ he said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Yes, he was a right one. But if you really think that Jansch is after the prize, I suggest we pay him a visit and talk him out of it. I’ll give him a box of chocolates, and he’ll be so thrilled he’ll forget the Kaiser and our dear Lord, never mind the Iron Cross, first class, which isn’t edible after all.’ And he laughed loudly at this notion, while Lieutenant Benndorf merely smirked and nodded. The truth about Major Jansch couldn’t be hushed up in a village such as Damvillers; he had the sweet tooth of a teenage girl, which made it easier than he realised for his enemies to manipulate him, as he was soon to learn.
When his enemy, the colonel, was announced, Major Jansch got the picture immediately. His eyes flashed like a weasel’s, and his hair almost stood on end. He had been busy drawing a map of the future German Empire for Army and Fleet Weekly, which reincorporated Lutzelburg, Nanzig and Werden into the motherland, as well as Holland, Switzerland, Milan and Lombardy, Courland, Livonia, Lithuania and Estonia as far as Tartu. Currently – and shamefully – Lutzelburg, Nanzig and Werden were called Luxembourg, Nancy and Verdun. But members of the Pan-German Union and the ‘Association against the Domination of Jewry’ felt duty bound to reintroduce the honourable old German names. He folded his map up, smoothed his Balkan moustache, straightened his Litevka and went to greet his visitor.
The major’s room was overheated, and the colonel found it stuffy. Smiling pleasantly, he asked if he might open a window. Major Jansch consented with a sour look. Now they would argue and the whole world would know about it straight away, because the colon
el liked to talk in a booming voice. Well, so be it. He, Jansch, was ready and would not weaken.
Within three minutes, those two roosters were at each other, feathers flying. The colonel could not believe that the major seriously thought the medal should be bequeathed to him. Everyone knew he never left the pretty stone village of Damvillers, and no one earned an Iron Cross, first class in Damvillers. Herr Jansch’s quiet, icy retort was that every man must fight at his assigned post – not turn up in Damvillers while the ammunitions depot of which he was in charge went up in flames.
Colonel Stein clutched his stomach laughing. That was priceless! Now the major was preaching morality and criticising others for sensibly retreating, when he himself had never put his nose anywhere near a shell. It was enough to make you want to climb trees!
Major Jansch said it had nothing to do with trees. Lieutenant von Roggstroh had recommended a man from the battalion for a medal, not a man from the depot personnel. Did the depot command propose to take possession of all the medals I/X/20 had won? That would take the biscuit. He was tired of all this incessant interference and grasping. No one needed to tell him how to do his job, and he would decide who in his battalion got a medal – and no doubt about that.
‘What a pity you’re so intransigent, my dear friend,’ said Colonel Stein, staying comfortably put in his chair. ‘And I had planned a friendly swap with you for a box of chocolates. You’d have got more from that than from a medal, which after all you can’t put in your mouth.’
At that, Herr Jansch blew up. Unfortunately, Colonel Stein was sitting with his back to the window and so the large tin box of Belgian sweets sitting resplendent on the floor to the major’s right did not escape his notice. Jansch slammed the lid shut and hissed angrily: ‘Did you just come here to talk nonsense? Intransigent! Swap! Is the German language not good enough for you to say what you mean? Can’t we even manage to get rid of French muck in the middle of a world war?’
Colonel Stein turned to Lieutenant Benndorf in astonishment. ‘What does the gentlemen mean by such idiocies?’ he asked as if Herr Jansch weren’t in the room. ‘Is old sweet tooth trying to insult us? Then this little outburst of his might have some kind of meaning, because there’s only one person talking nonsense here.’
Major Jansch went pale, then red and blotchy, then pale again. He gasped for breath. He knew he was unpopular and until then he hadn’t cared a jot, because men of intelligence couldn’t avoid being disliked by fools. Now he must control himself, play for time and wait for his friend Niggl, who would shortly be returning from leave. And so he tried to be more conciliatory. The colonel already had a lot of medals, he said almost pleadingly. It wasn’t as if he were trying to rob a widow of her lamb. The man named in the communication belonged to I/X/20, and any duty station would be able to see that he had defied the shellfire not for Colonel Stein but for the honour of his company. If a gunner from the depot were to perform deeds that got noticed by officers from elsewhere, then Colonel Stein would be first in line. If this was about what was right and justice…
Colonel Stein leapt from his chair, inexplicably enraged. Only later did Lieutenant Benndorf understand why the depot boss had become so angry: he secretly recognised a kernel of truth in the drivel emanating from the small major. ‘The widow’s lamb!’ he screamed. ‘Right and justice! We’ll soon see what sort of unit you command, sir! According to right and justice, I should have had this man who’s now come to the attention of an external officer court-martialled back in July. That little traitor should have avoided coming to the attention of his own superiors and refrained from fraternising with a French prisoner and allowing the swine to drink from his canteen – in full view of the depot commanders, in full view of me, sir! In full view of hundreds of men, sir! Against my express orders! Back then Benndorf here persuaded me mercy was the better part of justice. But if you’re going to mess with me, as we say in Berlin, then I’ll hang that story from the biggest bell I can find round here. And then, my dear chap, you’ll be had up for not keeping proper discipline.’
Major Jansch turned pale again. He felt his stomach cramp in rage. What was this? Had something happened in the summer he’d not been told about? If this old lush was telling the truth, and if he used the information he’d just screamed at him, then his Iron Cross, first class would go flying out of the window. Because you didn’t mess with indiscipline and fraternisation. Jansch turned to Lieutenant Benndorf, who was leaning against the wall with his arms folded like a spectator. As they both seemed to be the calmer ones, perhaps the lieutenant could explain what had happened.
‘Nonsense,’ interrupted Colonel Stein. ‘Ask the men in your own company.’
But Lieutenant Benndorf, who wasn’t entirely happy to see matters resolved long ago being revisited like this, asked to be allowed to speak and set out the by now entirely trivial incident.
Jansch listened attentively. The matter wasn’t at all trivial, he said gravely. It should never have been kept from him, and he would ensure that it was dealt with in the proper Prussian manner. But he certainly wouldn’t be relinquishing the Iron Cross, first class on that account, and they would see how it all turned out.
Colonel Stein stood up. So we shall, he said imperiously, adding that he’d bet a tonne of chocolate against a single schnapps that he and no other would emerge from the race victorious. And then he put his cap on, saluted and left, already reproaching his adjutant in the hallway for not backing him up properly and saying they’d never sideline the old nutcracker like that. What did it matter to them if that ASC private got it in the eye? And in all sincerity he added: ‘You and your kind-heartedness, but can you please explain to me what this so-called Bertin has got to do with my Iron Cross, first class.’ And to his astonishment the lieutenant stopped on the stairs and burst out laughing. Then the colonel clapped his hand to his forehead and joined in, because of course this was his reward for that beard he’d quarrelled with Herr Jansch about.
Up in his room, Major Jansch closed his window, exhausted. Then he stuck a sweet in his mouth – a long, pink, raspberry-flavoured lozenge. He marched up and down, and the orderly room knew that boded ill. The staff sergeant had to sit and listen, as did Diehl the clerk, Behrend the post orderly and even Kuhlmann the messenger, and they all came to their own different conclusions about how best to behave. They were sitting in a nice, heated room, their feet were dry and their food was as good as it could be that winter. None of them wanted to slip up and get moved back to the bloody ASC, where the men slaved away day after day in the old shelled area. The staff sergeant and the messenger, a couple of real slaves, were ready to play along with whatever mood the major might be in. The other two just wanted to keep out of it. Because that Bertin was bad luck, and anyone who tried to help him would be marked. First, there’d been the water tap business, then the screw-up over his leave, and now there was this Iron Cross story, which would have been good news for anyone else, and the water tap business was being reheated, so to speak, in a rumpus between those two bigwigs – it was enough to finish off the strongest man.
There was no need for Jansch to wait for his friend Niggl to return. There he sat in his chair whispering urgent advice in broad Bavarian – or at least there sat a dreamt-up Niggl, or better still a remembered Niggl, which the major’s imagination had magicked up. For the major was an habitual and lavish fantasist. It was a gift – or rather an escape – he’d had since childhood. In his mind, during long day dreams, he took revenge on his enemies, generously pardoned those who’d misjudged him, gave advice to the Kaiser, which that short-sighted prince did not follow, with the result that Jansch, a humble major, had to rescue the Fatherland. He had long since worn an imaginary Pour-Le-Mérite, the highest order of the Prussian state, which he had won for an imaginary strategic masterpiece that had destroyed the Italian army – the traitors – with an aerial bombardment of poisonous gas, such that the German divisions could break into France through Turin and Savoy and were currently d
estroying the cities of Lyon and Avignon. Furthermore, an unknown major in the Supreme Army Command had performed the inestimable service of stirring up a revolt among the oppressed Little Russians in the Ukraine, who were now summoning the Germans as liberators. No one knew who had come up with the clever plan. Its author remained modestly anonymous, content in the knowledge that he had saved the Fatherland and performed some small service for its esteemed leaders. It didn’t bother the little man marching back and forth that reality ran alongside his dreams undeterred. For example, Colonel Stein, whom he often cursed for his disdainful conduct towards a worthy colleague (namely himself) and had reduced to the command of a punishment battalion, had in reality just left the house unmolested having spoken to him in the vilest terms. Jansch sucked honey from his fantasies and rarely set foot in the dangerous world of reality.
At that moment, he saw Private Bertin of the ASC tied to a tree for hours in a biting frost, hanging unconscious in his bonds, and gloated at his just punishment. At the same time, he envisaged that shrewd Bavarian paragon who had so easily got rid of the trouble-maker in his own battalion. Conjured up by Jansch’s imagination, Herr Niggl sat there, whether he liked it or not, the fine cloth of his tunic rubbing against the wooden chair back, modestly offering advice in his agreeable accent to his much cleverer, much more elevated comrade, the genial Major Jansch. His chubby-cheeked visitor sounded innocent as he advised Jansch to return Lieutenant von Roggstroh’s submission with the curt observation that the person in question had remained at his post in the field gun depot on the express orders of the battalion commander. He, Captain Niggl, could then duly draw attention to Major Jansch’s merits over a few beers with Group Command. But Private B. of the ASC would have to disappear into a working party near the front, one not entirely without danger. And he would have to stay there until his human vulnerability was tested. Because that Jew knew how to express himself in writing and could presumably talk too, and so, if asked, he was quite capable of spreading all kinds of plausible lies. Better he wasn’t asked then.
Outside Verdun Page 33
