There they stood, the covering loosened in one place, laying them open to the guard who was supposed to protect them. Excellent, thought Bertin, and how typical of human society. The state, which is supposed to protect the weak against the strong, comes down firmly on the side of the strong and steals from those it’s supposed to protect, but in a limited way, so that the starving don’t go too hungry, throw down their tools and band together against the thieves. Organised protest is forbidden. The weak have to present their complaints individually. I believe in organised protest and want to join cause with the weak but here I am with my pockets full of white bread for my wife, which I’ve stolen from the very weakest. Deal thy bread to the hungry, it says in the Bible. Steal thy bread from the hungry more like in wartime, and I’m cheerfully joining in. For what had actually happened? Private Werner Bertin from the ASC had just stolen eagerly awaited food from French prisoners, which had been collected for them by their wives. Despite this realisation, he made absolutely no move to put the stolen goods back. For his wife was starving too back home. Back in late summer and even at the beginning of October, he had disobeyed officers’ orders and given some of his ration bread to the Russian prisoners who at that time were doing menial jobs in the depot. He clearly remembered a gaunt soldier in an earth brown coat with earth brown skin who was scraping around on the platform outside the third platoon barracks. When he saw Bertin stop, he whispered: ‘Bread, Kamerad!’ What a look of joy had crossed that starved man’s face as he whisked the hard black bread into his coat pocket. Bertin slung his rifle back over his shoulder but put his hands behind his back and continued on his beat bent over, eyes to the ground, astonished and disgusted. Bloody hell, he thought. Bloody hell.
Far beyond the burnt, half-destroyed city of Verdun, an aeroplane was at that very moment being readied for take off. Pale in the moonlight and feeling tight round the chest, the painter Jean-François Rouard, together with the mechanics, was checking the wing struts, altitude and directional controls and bomb fixings. The bombs hung head downwards under the belly of the aeroplane like giant bats: two on the right, two on the left. These old crates always look pretty rickety, he thought. No wonder. It was not yet quite eight years since Blériot had flown across the channel. And how long was it since Pégoud had horrified the world with his loops, dives and upside down flight? With his hands in his pockets, Rouard shook his head and marvelled at people, for what had once been considered disgusting was now a wartime pilot’s bread and butter. Down with war, he thought. It’s a filthy mess, but as long as the Boche wants to trample over France, we’ll have to drop the necessary on his thick, wooden skull. And then he asked about the petrol. All being well, he hoped to be back in half an hour and he knocked three times on the leafless apple tree next to the hangar, whose branches were silhouetted like veins against the sky. From the half shadow of the nearby barn Philippe appeared, his friend and pilot. He’d been answering the call of nature before being strapped in. He was the son of a Breton fisherman and approached with a rolling stride. From his hand swung a rosary of ivory beads that he always hung on a little hook to the right of his seat at the front of the plane as a talisman. Rouard nodded to him and he nodded back. There was a calm affinity between the two friends, who had already faced death together under an aeroplane’s blazing wreckage, and no more was required.
Lieutenant Kroysing stretched his long legs over the edge of his hard-won woman’s bed, got dressed, kissed both her hands, wished her good night and hobbled the couple of steps to the room across the corridor as quietly as he could. It was completely dark, Lieutenant Flachsbauer was snoring and a similar sawing could be heard from many of the men in the ward across the corridor. Kroysing felt his way along the wall to his bed, stowed his crutch and hopped into the sack with practised ease. His heart was full of joy and a contentment as deep as the voice in his chest. He had bent fate to his will. By taking possession of that woman, he felt quite sure he had given himself a head start on all other men. Now he could become whatever he wanted: air force captain, chief engineer, the driving force at the head of a global company. That woman was now rummaging about in her tiny room, getting washed, and in a moment she would open her door warily and hurry down the corridor by the light of her pocket torch to put in a word for a friend at his request with a man of whom he was not the slightest bit jealous. Because henceforth he would just be a memory to her. That woman who had hesitated so long and laughed at him, even when he took her in his arms, would propel him on and be the wind in his wings. He couldn’t imagine a higher state of bliss. He hadn’t been able to hold Douaumont because imbeciles had intervened, but he would hold on to that woman and with her the path into the future. He closed his eyes, completely at peace, and let himself sink back with a smile. He actually wanted to stay awake so he’d hear her come back. He still felt very awake; he’d just doze for a moment. The following day she’d have to clear up the squaddies’ festering bandages again. No matter, that was part of life too. He hummed a tune in his head, a song from his student days by the poet Friedrich Schiller. It began with the words: ‘Joy, beautiful sparkle of the gods…’
As Sister Kläre walked down the long corridor in barracks 3, turned the corner and made her way down the much longer ones in barracks 2 and 1, she wondered if it had been silly of her to leave the electric light on in her room. She’d opened the window. She didn’t want to sleep in the fumes from the oil lamp and had left the room to air until she came back. She wished she could find a new way of breathing that would let her to suck the happiness she felt right down into the tips of her toes along with the God-given breath of life. She hadn’t felt as alive as this for a decade. If only she were sure she’d closed the shutter. There was enough of a draught between its wooden edge and the barracks wall. And there was no point in being too careful. Sister Kläre was an old soldier and knew you sometimes had to be careless. Nonetheless, it would be cleverer and better, more sensible and more careful to go back and turn the light out. But – and she laughed internally – we don’t always do what’s careful and sensible; we usually do what’s sensible and sometimes what’s easiest. And she was very tired and she’d need be on the ball for the conversation to come and it would probably take a while to get put through, and so she’d best save those precious minutes. And what if the shutter were gaping open? And someone went past precisely in the quarter of an hour when she was away and noticed that Sister Kläre had disobeyed the regulations and left her light on and not sealed the window? Was it that nice lad Bertin who’d told a story about seeing a general when he was on guard duty driving through an ammunitions dump with his headlights on full beam? Come on, thought Sister Kläre as she went into the telephone room, leave it. I’m so happy. I’ve got such a fine specimen for a husband. Nothing can go wrong for me now.
For obvious reasons, the Dannevoux field hospital telephone exchange was located in that part of the large barracks complex closest to the approach from the village. It was operated by severely disabled soldiers with eye injuries; before this war they would have been called blind men. One of them could made out a certain amount of light and shade, the second only had the use of part of his left eye and the third could only see things on the edges of his field of vision – everything in front of him dissolved into darkness. The medical officer had selected these three almost blind men from among his patients and made them telephonists. They were happy with their work and accommodation. All three had been cavalrymen: an Uhlan from Magdeburg, a cuirassier from Schwedt and a dragoon from Allenstein. None of them wanted to go back to Germany and tap around as blind men, and they had all easily mastered the tasks associated with their new work. Their hearing had sharpened and their memories had improved. The telephone service in Dannevoux field hospital functioned smoothly. When Sister Kläre opened the door, the room reeked of smoke from the men’s tobacco. By the faint light of the lamp she saw Keller the cuirassier sitting knitting – a sense of touch was more important for that than sight. He recognis
ed her by her voice and was surprised and pleased to have her visit at this late hour. As he’d been working at this job for while, he often made the connection Sister Kläre requested and as usual he said: ‘Sit yourself down, sister. It might take a while.’ Then he began to negotiate with people far away. He’d never seen them but was on highly confidential terms with them. Discretion is part of a telephonist’s job.
In the circle of light from the small lamp, Sister Kläre waited to hear the results of his efforts. With her arms propped on the table and her slim wrists either side of her chin, she watched him. She felt for her cigarette case, pulled out a cigarette and began to smoke. She smiled as her eye lit upon a small monogram on the hammered metal with a tiny coronet under it. That golden thing was quite appropriate here; the man who gave it to her would soon be on the other end of the line.
The crown prince of the German Reich was a particularly genial host and that evening he was in radiant mood. He’d had a Swiss military author to dinner, and they’d enjoyed a long, technical chat about the movements of the 5th Army during the last days of the Battle of the Marne – a discussion that would one day bear fruit. Also at the small, round table were a war correspondent and an artist, both from German newspapers. The crown prince’s personal adjutant completed the company. There were no women. When an orderly entered and whispered something to the adjutant, and he turned to his host and said, with a particular emphasis that remained opaque to the guests, that there was an official telephone call for him, the slim gentleman leapt up, excused himself with a few polite words and hurried into the room next door. He didn’t know exactly who might be calling him, but it couldn’t be anything unpleasant. Perhaps it was the crown princess, perhaps one of his boys, but before he’d sat down at the writing table with the telephone on it, his adjutant caught up with him, said two words to him and disappeared again. ‘But how delightful,’ were therefore the first words he spoke into the telephone.
No woman is immune to such graciousness, especially not a German woman, since German women are not very spoiled in that department. Therefore, Sister Kläre immediately made a joke and said he should find out who was on the line before squandering his charm like that.
He laughed softly calling her by a pet name he had for her, seemingly unaware that they hadn’t seen each other for nine months. He asked if she couldn’t come over for a little while. He had some good friends round, unfortunately there were as usual no ladies present and a car could be on its way to Dannevoux in two minutes.
Sister Kläre laughed. The blind telephonist was beside her, but he got up and went out to look at the stars. She could then speak more freely and assure the crown prince that while he might be a great general he clearly had no idea what it was like to work with her boss. She’d be delighted if one of his cars came by one day, but she’d expect his Imperial Highness to be inside it on a benevolent visit to the field hospital. Then she’d be able to introduce him to an officer, a sapper lieutenant, who could tell him the most amazing things about the last days at Douaumont.
The crown prince asked teasingly if Sister Kläre had a personal attachment to this gentleman and received a scornful rebuff. He couldn’t see her blush. Then he asked after Colonel Schwersenz – was there anything he could do for him? – and heard with regret that there was nothing new to report or to be expected as long as the war continued. Sister Kläre then said that she had rung up to ask a favour – not for one her intimates but for a man of intrinsic worth. And in her charming Rhenish accent she described the whole situation with Bertin the author and lawyer, his major and the court martial at Lychow, which needed a replacement for a man who’d been transferred to active service.
The crown prince was overcome with liking for the woman on the other end of the line, whom he could visualise very clearly. With his mouth very close to the receiver he said he wished she would think of him again with such warmth and eloquence. Anyone who didn’t know Sister Kläre very well might imagine all kinds of silly things about her.
Oh, Sister Kläre replied innocently, in a field hospital where there were so many ‘departures’ at certain times you learnt to have more regard for the individual than did the authors of war reports. (In the heartless language of the doctors, departures always meant deaths.)
The crown prince pretended to be shocked by Sister Kläre’s vehemence but said that doing something for an author fitted in very well with his plans that evening as he happened to have three newspaper men to dinner, and he noted Private Bertin’s name and unit on his writing pad.
Pleased to have got to that point, Sister Kläre now metamorphosed into a charming but bossy governess. He mustn’t dawdle over it as was unfortunately his wont. He must get on to it straight away, brook no refusal and remind the major who was actually in charge of the 5th Army.
The crown prince was tickled; she really was a clever woman. He’d arrange to see her again in the next couple of days, visit Dannevoux field hospital and look up the sapper lieutenant. And he’d put the telegram through to the labour company that night. As he told her this, speaking in a warm, endearing way, he remembered his guests. He stood up and leaning over the telephone began to bring the conversation to a close, saying he would visit the following Sunday, and then he heard Sister Kläre’s calm voice thanking him repeatedly and asking to be excused: she’d have to hang up as the line was urgently required on account of an air raid warning.
Somewhat startled, the crown prince said he hoped the anti-aircraft batteries and M.G.’s would give the blasted Frogs hell and hung up. He lit a cigarette and, deep in thought, wandered back to the small, atmospherically lit dining table where the Sekt glasses were being filled. These air attacks were making the war ever more unfair.
For the last few seconds, Keller the almost blind cuirassier had been standing beside Sister Kläre pointing to the light for the second line, which had suddenly lit up. Discretion aside, it had been the whinny of a horse that had drawn him outside earlier. Horses were his passion, and it was a source of great regret to him that there were no riding horses in the hospital stables. He’d recognised the whinny. It was a chestnut called Egon, an average gelding, well kept though undernourished, upon whose back the field chaplain with the lanced boil came and went. Keller wondered if he might perhaps get a chance to hold the chestnut by its curb strap for a minute, stroke its soft fur and breathe in the warm odour that every rider knows and loves. And sure enough, there was Pechler the bath orderly leading the horse, which was looking forward to getting back to its own stable, through the pale moonlight. Father Lochner, meanwhile, was warmly shaking the medical officer by both hands, saying how much those hands had helped him, and heaping blessings and prosperity upon the doctor and his admirable institution. Then, despite his bulk, he swung himself nimbly from the stirrup into the saddle. He looked like a cowboy now protected against the night air by a riding coat, his wide-brimmed hat cocked at a jaunty angle. And off he rode towards Dannevoux where he was to spend the night. The Sauterne wine had been splendid, and they’d had a stimulating discussion about the deeply sceptical views on the value of life the doctor had expressed at the bedside of that ugly but rather bright typesetter – what was he called again? Pahl, that was it. Yes, when you had to abstain for a couple of weeks even the smallest amount of wine went straight to your head. But it gladdened the heart, as the Holy Scriptures said, comforted those who mourned, gave hope to the lame and helped the righteous to a gentle sleep. And furthermore 20 minutes’ slow riding – it was nearly 11pm – should be enough to ensure a good night’s sleep. The moon shone so beautifully. Up ahead the road forked into two shining bands that stretched into the distance: one towards Dannevoux and the other downhill to Vilosnes-East on the right. Dr Münnich, now in a Litevka and looking more like a major than a surgeon, watched the peaceable rider’s bold silhouette for a moment; then he sent his men back inside and went in after them. And still smiling to himself at the contrast between the dashing figure the good father cut on his horse
and the silver cross around his neck, he didn’t notice how hastily Keller opened his office door and pulled it shut behind him.
Keller really was in a hurry. He’d already heard the phone’s urgent ring from outside. He pushed the plug in impatiently and received a report from further up the line via the switchboard at Esnes that an aeroplane was approaching and to pass the news on. When telephonists and sentries received air-raid reports, they passed them on to the nearest exchange.
Outside Verdun Page 47
