Cheeks flushed and still stalking up and down, Major Jansch listened to the advice coming from the empty chair. Just such a working party was about to be formed and stationed close to the left bank of the Meuse. Its task was to collect stray ammunition, duds and discarded shells, examine them and send them home. The depot had already started the work on a small scale under Sergeant Knappe, and a ghastly explosion a few days earlier had left two dead and seven wounded, among them Sergeant Karde, a decent, hard-working man and a patriot, whose left leg had unfortunately been blown off beneath the knee. This incident had left an unpleasant impression, and the depot had decided to move the operation much further forwards and put it under the command of Sergeant Barkopp from the First Company, a marked man from Serbian days. B. would fit right in there. Smiling, Herr Jansch accompanied his fictional visitor to the door and shook his imaginary right hand gratefully, feeling hugely encouraged. He even opened the door for him and shut it behind him. Then he marched back to his desk and scribbled on a scrap of paper: ‘Think about B.’ He laid the scrap of paper in an obvious position in his drawer and rang for Kuhlmann the messenger. It was dinner time. The major had worked hard and was hungry in spite all the sweets he’d eaten.
CHAPTER THREE
The purchase price
DUD IS THE term used for shells that don’t explode because of faulty manufacture or simply by accident. They lay about the country like giant, elongated Easter eggs – sometimes more in one place, sometimes fewer – waiting for whoever might be fortunate enough to find them. At certain times a lot came over, most other times hardly any. For that reason, the detachments had to spread out wide, remember or mark the places where they found a shell and then get an expert to look at each one and say whether it was safe to touch it. The shells were formed into small piles, and the small piles formed larger piles near the railway tracks. The shells were then examined thoroughly at the testing station and put in a freight car, gradually filling it. When two or three cars were full it was worth transporting them home. In the heady days of the first year of the war, looking for duds had been a private enterprise undertaken by gunners and ASC men who made all kinds of war souvenirs from the sometimes very heavy copper screw rings. The lively trade in these artefacts compensated for the risks involved in knocking off the red-gold bands. In the meantime, as is so often the case, a state monopoly had replaced individual enterprise…
Sergeant Barkopp’s ASC men spread out across the high plateau, whose craters and shell holes offered a good place to search. Admittedly, the French could see what was going on and sometimes blessed the proceedings with shrapnel or shells. Only a couple of days previously, they had found the grinning corpse of Franz Reiter, an infantryman from Aachen, lying peacefully on his back with nothing but a postcard with his name on it in his pocket and of course without boots. Lebehde, Pahl and Bertin, all members of the working party, had lingered by Herr Reiter’s corpse deep in thought, until Karl Lebehde encouraged them to move on with the melancholy observation: ‘Wherever we go, someone has always been there first. You’re out of luck Wilhelm.’ This was a reference to Wilhelm Pahl’s footwear, which had become completely useless. His boots had been with the company cobbler in Etraye for weeks but hadn’t been repaired because, like the rest of the Barkopp working party, their owner lived in a barracks at the so-called railway station of Vilosnes-East and therefore couldn’t come round to kick up a fuss. In the meantime, his lace-up shoes had worn through at least 10 days before. The soles weren’t hobnailed and the ridges and grooves of the rock-hard clay had finished them off. Pahl was now walking on the insole under the ball of his left foot and the big toe of the right. Starving as he was, he now went about his duties rather turned in on himself and didn’t seem bothered by his shoes. But appearances deceived.
In fact, Sergeant Barkopp’s entire working party was in a desperate state. The men’s underwear, constantly in need of darning because it was washed in caustic soap, no longer provided any warmth. Their tunics had taken on the colour of clay, and their trousers were ripped to pieces from climbing over barbed wire and had been patched with different coloured wool and twine. They now hardly bothered to fight their infestations of lice and no longer wondered what the next days might bring, for what could they bring? They didn’t read or play chess, and there was no mouth organ or accordion to create a mirage of cheerfulness when work was finished. When darkness fell, ending their work, they crawled back into the barracks together and played cards, squabbled, or wrapped some warming rags round their heads and went begging. A battalion’s rations are first sifted by the headquarters staff, then by the companies’ staffs and their favourites, then by the kitchens and the companies themselves, and what’s left wends its way over to the external working parties. This meant the men had to beg if they wanted their stomachs to be full. The stronger among them scoured the area night after night. They asked for but didn’t give information as to the whereabouts of battery field kitchens, reserve infantry companies, railway sections (they always had it best), transport depots or, best of all, field hospitals. Field hospitals were a sublime oasis and cause of delight, and no one turned his nose up at barley stew laced with scraps of beef should a comrade happen to let it fall into his canteen. Good judges of character such as Karl Lebehde soon understood what made the kitchen NCOs and their underlings tick, as well as all the kitchen high-ups in the units nearby. They knew where they could simply queue up and hold out their pots in silence, where it was better to ask nicely, where a few jokes got things moving and where you had to offer a cigarette in exchange for a meal. Bertin provided cigarettes to barter with and got a share of the food as a result. Wilhlem Pahl always got his for nothing but had to put up with Lebehde the inn-keeper watching him and making comments, which didn’t exactly cheer him up. Pahl was in the throes of a difficult decision. All the men were under pressure. They all knew the German army was starving but the end of the war was nonetheless nowhere in sight. They all felt they were in pitiless hands, and the only happy man was Naumann II, the company idiot. Yup, that poor little grinning devil, with his gigantic hands and feet, massive ears and watery blue eyes, had been shunted into the Barkopp working party too, no doubt on account of his sharp mind and skill at handling explosives… Well, the former warehouse packer from Steglitz was an idiot, and Sergeant Barkopp had clapped him good-naturedly on the shoulder, had Knappe the ammunitions expert take a photo of him grinning from ear to ear with a shell under his arm, and assigned him to barracks duty with the words: ‘Make yourself useful with the broom, my son.’ Despite the handicap of his impaired glands, Naumann II did so loyally and dutifully and with unswerving devotion to authority in the form of Sergeant Barkopp and all those whom life had treated less harshly than himself.
Barkopp, a publican at a seaport in civilian life, proved an excellent working party leader. From Sergeant Knappe he soon learnt all the signs that distinguish dangerous duds from harmless ones: open fuse holes and whether the shell is at an angle or level. His sharp eyes were everywhere, and he soon had a handful of practical-minded men trained up too. ‘Better to leave one too many lying than to pick one too many up,’ was his motto. Small fences were put round particularly dangerous ones – there were branches and rusty barbed wire everywhere – or if necessary they were sunk in flooded craters where the damned things rotted away. Because of this there had been no accidents. Emil Barkopp particularly looked out for small ammunition dumps abandoned by batteries that had retreated or been destroyed. These were sometimes found in sheltered spots in the ravines. Germany’s national wealth lay strewn across the war zone, recklessly abandoned, as if the units that had left their supplies behind wanted to give their successors something to do. Having fallen into disfavour and been transferred frequently as a result, Emil Barkopp had seen a lot; he’d seen with his own eyes how the gunners laid down a layer of shells in the mud after the first rainfall, put cartridge baskets on top, then another layer of shells, carefully defused, and ate, drank and slep
t on that. Now they had to track down that treasure. His scouts were everywhere. Where were the best spots? None of the men knew apart from him and Sergeant Knappe, a thin, pensive man with a goatee beard. None of them had maps or the skills to make an exact evaluation of the set of the sky and the ins and outs of the front. All the ASC men knew was that they were next to the Meuse and would soon shift from one bank to the other. Most of the men from I/X/20 were stationed in the gullies by the village of Etraye, where the depot command had finally established its ammunition dump. But the working parties were spread across the whole sector to the east of the Meuse, and Barkopp’s was the furthest west. Vilosnes and Sivry were connected to each other by a bridge but were otherwise cut off. The French had been firing all summer long from the right as well as from the high ground on the left bank, where the watchful enemies faced each other.
Pale ochre light suffused the high plateau. Private Bertin had strayed too far on his search, and it would soon be nightfall. He trotted on, jumping back and forth, then found a path and continued slowly, catching his breath. But the French batteries in the former German positions knew the path and before it was completely dark they flung a few well-meaning shells in his direction. In the deathly cold air, he heard the discharge at once. By the time the shell had exploded, Private Bertin was pressed to the ground, flat as an insect. But as the splinters from the explosion flew over him with the muffled drone of a giant beetle, a mighty battle was going on within him. Why was he taking cover in this idiotic way? What was the point of extending his life from one incident to the next? Wouldn’t it be as well to help fate remove him from here, never mind to where, by sticking his backside in the air so that one of the splinters might tear into his flesh? He’d often considered letting his foot be crushed under a wagon but hadn’t been able to resolve to do it. But if things continued as they were for another couple of months, there was no telling what he might do. For now, however, he pressed himself into the earth and clung to life. Then the evening blessing was over. He knocked the dirt from his clothes, pulled his cap down over his woollen head protector and trotted off for dinner and some warmth. He hadn’t realised it yet himself, but there was no denying that in his overall demeanour the one he resembled most of all his comrades was that poor idiot Naumann, Ignaz.
An icy wind from the northern glaciers and eastern plains whistled across the churned-up land. Every gust cut across the area, whining and crashing against tree stumps, howling upwards then whooshing on. Between the dun-coloured earth and the ceiling of uniform grey cloud, the wind held sway. Harried and tormented, it lacerated its airy body against the rusty teeth of the barbed wire in a morbid frenzy. There were 10,000 km of barbed between the stormy English Channel and the leaden stone walls of Switzerland, leaving plenty of scope for the wind to whip itself up against the the barbed wire spikes, and this it did. It cut against the knife-sharp edges of old food tins, moaning there. It couldn’t stop – it was in too much of a hurry to reach the warmer climes of the western ocean – but it pulled at every scrap of rotting cloth, chased pieces of paper into the bottoms of shell holes, not caring about the rats that peered restlessly out of their holes and were starving because the whole world had suddenly turned to stone, and rampaged on over the plains, through the narrow gorges, magnificent as an heir squandering the last of his inheritance, knowing it will soon be over.
Two ASC privates had sought refuge from the wind and found it in the bottom of very large and deep shell crater. They thought they were sitting on a thick sheet of ice but they were wrong. They were in fact sitting on the bottom of an ice cone that pointed downwards to the centre of the earth, and frozen within it, like an embryo in the womb, lay a dead German solider, waiting for the midsummer thaw. Then he’d be discovered, earth would be thrown over his fleshless bones and the rags of his uniform, and a wooden cross would be erected over him reading: ‘Here lies a brave German soldier’. That’s if anyone went to so much trouble, for by that time the first tank squadrons would be appearing on the horizon, the first American air squadrons would have relieved the French and things would be looking quite a lot livelier in the western theatre of war. But the two ASC men knew nothing of this as they spread out their legs, trusting their thick layers of clothing to protect them from the ice. To be absolutely sure, one of them, Karl Lebehde, had brought some newspapers with him, which he shared with his friend. As all beggars know, newspaper protects against the sharpest frost and the iciest of seats thanks to the gauze-thin layers of air between the sheets. And the two muddy, unwashed men bundled up in grey clothes looked like beggars, with their frozen faces poking out from their dark grey head protectors, their bluish noses and reddened eyes.
Wilhelm Pahl and Karl Lebehde were speaking to each other in hushed tones – not whispering exactly but speaking in such a way that no one outside could hear their voices. The tension in their faces and their quick, furtive movements suggested they were doing something untoward. Karl Lebehde had a sharp, rusty tool in his hand – a filed nail, which must have lain about in the damp for several days after it was filed, for the point was covered in rust too.
‘Jesus, Karl,’ groaned Pahl. ‘If only I wasn’t so bloody scared. First there’s the pain, and I don’t have a high pain threshold. Then there’s the hospital, and if they have to amputate, they probably won’t have any chloroform to spare. That means more pain. And then who knows if you can walk about or stand at a type case with a missing toe?’
‘Listen, lad,’ replied Karl Lebehde, ‘if you want to buy something, you have to pay the price. There’s no other way. Come on now, son, give me your foot and we’ll give it a wee tickle.’
‘Shout a bit louder, why don’t you?’ said Pahl. ‘Then we’ll have Barkopp or old Knappe over here watching you operate on me.’
Karl Lebehde knew neither Barkopp nor Knappe nor anyone else was nearby. But since mutilations such as the one he was about to carry out at his friend’s request were the only really effective way to escape the vengeance of the class state, the bourgeois Prussian Army pursued those who performed them with blood-thirsty rancour, and so he stood up, clambered up the sloping earthen wall, set his face to the wind and looked around. It was 9.30am, and there was no one around to see his head and freckled hands suddenly appear. Reassured, he slid back down. ‘I don’t know why I always fall for your tricks. You just wanted to put if off, didn’t you, old pal?’
‘Yes, I did. I’m scared stiff. God knows how this’ll all end.’
Karl Lebehde’s voice took on the reassuring tone of a mother persuading her child to go to the dentist with her: ‘Listen, Wilhelm, you’re welcome to forget it as far I’m concerned. I don’t fancy your chances or have any faith in the stuff you talked about during those long winter nights. You think the German workers are too dozy, but it takes someone like me who was brought up behind a bar listening to the rubbish they talk year in, year out to know just how dozy they are.’
‘You can’t say nowt against the Berlin workers, Karl.’
‘Yes, you can, Wilhelm. Yes, indeed. Our Party Comrades are all right, and the Comrades in Hamburg are all right. The core is very capable – nothing against them. And they’re probably in high dudgeon at the moment because their stomachs are empty, and so they’ll listen to you and the couple of men working back at home, and maybe they’ll walk out and jack in work and demand peace. And what will happen then? They won’t be put up against the wall. Thousands will be called up, 80 or 90 will end up in the nick and the rest will get bigger rations with a bit of ham thrown in now and then for heavy labour – and that’ll be the end of it.’
‘So you think the German workers don’t know the score and are going to let themselves be given a showing up by the Russians? If the papers are to be believed, they’ve put a bit of a bomb under their Duma with those massive strikes and hunger riots outside bakeries.’
‘Yes, I do think that.’ (Karl Lebehde tried to be as verbose as possible in order to distract Pahl.) ‘I know as little about th
e Comrades in Russia as you do. But what I do know, my dear Wilhelm, is that unless the Party newspaper Vorwärts had been making things up, there are a few little differences between us and them. For example, things were always worse in Russia than at home, they faced starvation, Siberia was just around the corner, the bourgeoisie had had enough of Tsarism and world opinion was against it too. Then there were those spectacular defeats by the Japanese in 1905. And clear distinctions between the classes provide an excellent training for class war: we’re here and you’re there with no bridge between us. But everything has always been hunky dory at home. Socialists were only persecuted a little bit under Bismarck and that’s long since been forgotten, and the labour movement was so full of victories and dreams of the future state it didn’t realise that a proletarian on Sunday still stands a bit lower than a bourgeois on a weekday. And when the men in standy-up collars started talking the red, white and black of the flag, the proletariat couldn’t afford to ignore it and no less a man than August Bebel bust a gut to demonstrate his patriotism, shouldered a musket and marched against Russia, and the men in standy-up collars just laughed. But why did they laugh? He was speaking the truth. And that was in peacetime when we had a small, modest army, and the Party’s coffers were full to busting. That’s the difference, do you see? From nowt comes nowt.’
Outside Verdun Page 34
