Sergeant Knappe, a thin, hollow-cheeked men with a straggly, blonde beard, was extremely conscientious and reliable, the sort who usually makes it to 80 although he looks like a consumptive. Lebehde the inn-keeper was a well-known figure. Until his death by a Reichswehr bullet in the desperate workers’ uprising of 1919 in the Holzmarkstraße-Jannowitzbrücke area of Berlin, he would use his energy and powers of persuasion to pursue what he thought was right, a benevolent smile always crinkling the corners of his eyes. Przygulla the farm labourer, a neglected child from a family of nine or 10, might have turned out differently and had a livelier intelligence if the growths behind his nose had been removed when they should have been. As it was, his thick lips hung open because he had trouble breathing, which made him look stupid. Otto Reinhold, finally, was pleasantness itself. His friendly face, toothless smile and bluish eyes might have lent him a spinsterish air, but a carefully trimmed moustache asserted his virility. He was also a respected master plumber from Turmstraße in Berlin-Moabit.
Private Bertin had changed a lot since he’d been ‘up front’. Everyone said so. He couldn’t forget the Saxons’ haggard faces, their worn skin and sleepless eyes – couldn’t forget that it had now been raining in those trenches for a month, that the men ‘up front’ scarcely saw hot food and were surrounded by a layer of sludge, which covered their hands, clothes and boots. Their dugouts were irretrievably swamped, and their every step took them through slippery, squishing mud. All the shell holes were now flooded pools, and the roads, pathways and traverses had been impassable for ages. It was inhuman, which was why Bertin had volunteered to do overtime that day. He’d explained this to his comrade Pahl, but Pahl was having none of it – he said it was for those at the front to think about the causes and consequences of their situation.
The four men were tired and hungry. They wished they had something to smoke and longed to remove their wet things by a warm stove. It was between 4pm and 5pm, and the damp air made the early dusk even darker. It happened not to be raining at that moment, but just wait until evening.
At the end of the road, along which those French prisoners had once marched, a car appeared. It approached quickly with its lights off as regulations required. Karl Lebehde studied the approaching vehicle, his hand under the peak of his cap. ‘Blimey,’ he said to Przygulla the farm labourer, ‘take a look at that. Looks like that chap’s hung a cloth over his headlights.’
Meanwhile, the ‘chap’ had drawn considerably closer, and the cloth was revealed to be a square black and white pennant with a red border. The large dun-coloured saloon with two officers in the back was hurtling towards them. ‘Lads,’ shouted Przygulla the farm labourer. ‘Line up! The crown prince!’
The regulation salute for members of the imperial family was for the men to stand stock still at the side of the road and follow the passing vehicle with their eyes. The four weary men now did this. They stood in the clabber, pressed their hands to their sides and awaited the inevitable muddy spray from the vehicle. The driver, who was probably a common soldier like them, would not be allowed to slow down just to save four ASC privates in grey oil-cloth caps an hour cleaning their uniforms. Splat! The vehicle sped past. But then something remarkable happened. As a slim man with his chin wrapped in a fur collar lifted his glove in the direction of his cap, the other man in the back of the car lent out of the window and threw something. It landed some way back due to the speed at which the vehicle was travelling. The speeding car disappeared into the distance, and it was all over.
Well, not quite all. Some small, square packages lay on the muddy road – four paper packets, undoubtedly cigarettes, which the lofty gentleman must have brought to distribute to the men and which his adjutant had thrown at these ones. The four men stood on the road digesting what had just happened, still taken aback, looking after the car then at the surprising gift. What was the crown prince doing here? What business had he at the front? People said he looked after his troops. But the army just shrugged its shoulders over him, because people knew only too well how little the fact of the battle of Verdun had disturbed his princely way of life. While the German tribes had been spilling their blood for him at the front for seven months, he’d been playing around with his greyhounds, with pretty French girls, nurses and tennis partners. But now he’d been here bestowing cigarettes, and if they didn’t pick them up soon they’d be soaked and spoilt. Otto Reinhold was already bending over, grunting happily, prepared to get his fingers dirty for all of them.
Someone grabbed his wrist. ‘Leave them,’ Lebehde the inn-keeper commanded in an undertone. ‘There’s nowt for us there. Anyone wants to give us a present, they can give it to us properly.’
Reinhold, shocked and ashamed, looked into Karl Lebehde’s fleshy, freckled inn-keeper’s face, at his compressed lips and angry eyes. Lebehde ground the nearest packet of cigarettes to a pulp with his boot, then he carried on up the stairs that led past the water troughs to the barracks. Bertin and Przygulla the farm labourer followed him wordlessly, and so, with a murmur of regret, did good-natured little Otto Reinhold. Three pale, abandoned packets were left shining on the muddy road: 30 cigarettes.
Bloody hell, thought Bertin, that was something else. That Lebehde can handle himself. No one complained; we all obeyed. Maybe Przygulla the farm labourer or Reinhold the master plumber would creep back out of the barracks quickly later – but that would be it. As they climbed the steps, Bertin caught himself wondering what he would have done if Karl Lebehde hadn’t been there. He’d laughed in a superior, philosophical way when the gifts came flying out of the car. And besides he wasn’t bothered about cigarettes. But he was honest enough to admit to himself that he would definitely have picked them up so as not to waste them. The crown prince had driven past – a strange experience. He’d probably been distributing a load of Iron Crosses and was now hurrying back to Charleville, little suspecting that Lebehde the inn-keeper had condemned his behaviour.
The crown prince travelled through the dusk, his lips pinched. He was deeply dissatisfied with circumstances, which were stronger than him, and with himself, who was weaker than circumstances. He had not in fact been distributing decorations. He had travelled to the front to ascertain that he had once again been right, though he had not prevailed, that he had been overruled and had once again not had the guts to stand up to the All Highest, stop the truck and get out. It was a seductively commodious truck, splendidly upholstered with every comfort. But what good did that do him if incorrect military decisions were being taken in his name that would ultimately be attributed to him by history? Two days previously in Pierrepont, on the railway line from Longuyon to Metz, the Kaiser had chaired a meeting of the generals together with representatives of the Supreme Army Command, which had inveigled its way into the whole business since the end of August. The alarming situation outside Verdun and what to do about it was the topic. The day was marked by a refreshing openness, and he, Friedrich Wilhelm, crown prince of Germany and Supreme General of the Prussian army, heard his most secret convictions vindicated – all his complaints and grievances. First, the attack was on too narrow a front, and secondly, reinforcements had been promised but not sent when the first thrust proved inadequate. Many a mother’s son had died a hero’s death for nothing because the attack had not from the beginning been launched on both banks of the Meuse simultaneously with double the troops. The strength of the French resistance had also been underestimated. The French did yield but they always fought back again, so that the exhausted Reserves could advance no further than Douaumont. Then, all of a sudden, enough troops were deployed to conquer tiny strips of land at a terrible cost of lives – advances that did nothing to prevent the French from preparing and launching their attack on the Somme. And so now a decision had to be faced: admit bankruptcy outside Verdun and preserve the lives and health of tens of thousands of young German men, or maintain the façade, keep up appearances, prolong their suffering and fill the hospitals with casualties.