They buried the dead at Gibercy, with a fifth coffin added to the previous four – the salesman Dagener had died of his wounds. In the murk of the shortest day, battered by wind and rain, the column trudged over to Damvillers, received orders from the battalion issued by a sallow and angry Major Jansch, and marched back to Moirey to dismantle the Steinbergquell depot. At the depot, the men piled ammunition, planks, trench props, barbed wire and tarpaulins, all dripping with icy sludge, on to lorries and took them back to Damvillers. They stayed there for a day in draughty huts, before driving the same heavily laden lorries back to Moirey to carry out orders to set the depot back up on exactly the same spot as before. Out of the muck, into the muck, muttered the ASC men bitterly. And so it was that they spent Christmas and New Year in the same barracks they’d been chased out of with so many casualties. At Christmas, Herr Susemihl gave a speech under a tree covered in lights, stuttering on about the peace the enemy didn’t want. And then Herr Pfund distributed the Christmas presents he’d procured in Metz – blunt pocket knives, hankies with red borders, apples, nuts and a little tobacco – and the deceit radiating from his shining eyes and from the gifts themselves gave the more discerning men the creeps. And if the crown prince hadn’t given each of his brave Verdun campaigners a curved steel case filled with cigarettes or cigars, which fitted comfortably into the pocket and was enamelled in black and adorned with the donor’s portrait, it might have been a pretty miserable Christmas. But that all paled into insignificance when they returned to the half-empty barracks where the second half of the company including Bertin’s squad was now billeted. A couple of candles burned in canteen lids, and the men lay around in silence or talking quietly. Quite a number of comrades were missing, and unlike the ones who’d left before because they were reassessed for active service or had been claimed for work at home, these ones wouldn’t be heard from again. They’d been part of the men’s lives. They’d argued with them and made up again, and now little Vehse, poor Przygulla and that kindly soul Otto Reinhold lay buried in French soil and would be replaced in the New Year, this time from Metz. But they couldn’t be replaced, and their ghosts slid invisibly among their comrades and fellow skat players, evaporating only very slowly. And yet no one spoke of them, just as no one spoke of the daily routine unless something irksome or funny happened. Everything the men had experienced, and that the world had experienced during this war, slid beneath the layers of their consciousness into the deeper chambers of the mind, where sooner or later it would spit and rage. But the men needed to concentrate in order to deal with the demands placed on them each day and on the surface they showed only the usual permitted feelings and emotions, above all affection for their families. If they felt sorry for themselves or mourned their dead comrades, they did so obliquely in the general gloom. It was with such nuances of feeling that Halezinsky the gas worker looked at a picture of his wife and children with tears rolling down his Slavic face from his brown eyes. Only Lebehde the inn keeper carried on making punch cheerfully on his own from rum, tea and sugar, and its spicy aroma soon filled the room.
‘It’s all very sad,’ he said to Bertin, ‘but what can you do? We were obviously meant to smoke Willy the Eldest’s cigarettes.’ And he sat down on the bunk next to where Bertin was lying, pulled out the iron box inscribed on the back with ‘Fifth Army, Christmas 1916’, awarded himself a cigarette and adeptly removed the portrait of the crown prince from its embossed setting with his new pocket knife. It was easily done. ‘It looks better without it,’ he said. ‘Where all is love, Don Carlos cannot hate,’ he added. He didn’t know where the lines were from, but Bertin recognised them as Schiller’s Don Carlos. ‘Listen to the peace and goodwill outside,’ he supplied.
Outside the guns were thundering. It was Christmas night, an emotional time for the Germans, but they thought they’d best dilute such indulgent emotions with a dose of virile brutality. The German guns distributed steel Christmas presents, and the French replied in kind. Peace on Earth, sang the gospel. War on Earth, thundered reality. And so it went on as the year lurched to a close. Under beetle-brow heavens the wind blew ever colder, and weather pundits predicted frosts from the east, heavy cloud and starless nights. When Private Bertin took his evening stroll before bedtime and looked up at the sky with his myopic eyes, he could find no hope of an early peace reflected there no matter how hard he tried. In a couple of days they’d be writing 1917. The war was approaching its fourth year. He’d heard nothing further from Kroysing or about his Iron Cross from Lieutenant von Roggstroh – only depressing news from his wife and parents. There was no pleasure in living any more or in being a soldier. It was just a question of getting through, of curling up into a small, ugly ball in the hope of going unnoticed. Shoulders bent, he made his way back to the refuge of his comrades. Human warmth still came free.
CHAPTER FIVE
Professor Mertens resigns
A SNOWLESS NEW YEAR’S EVE afternoon, short and bleak, weighed on the streets of Montmédy. The French prepared for the celebrations and did their shopping furtively and without pleasure, making the bustle in the officers’ messes and soldiers’ billets seem all the more cheerful. Candles would burn once more on the Christmas trees from the Argonne, a great deal of diluted alcohol would be served and men would sit round tables singing stirring, sentimental songs. The year 1916 must be brought to a close befitting the heroic status it was sure to enjoy in the annals of the German nation.
That’s what was going through Sergeant Porisch’s mind, as he stood in his braided Litevka looking down with almost maternal concern on the gaunt, lined face of his superior. The judge advocate lay on the sofa with a blanket pulled up round his chin, and as Porisch took his leave of him with a file of papers under his arm, he said: ‘Can I help you with anything else, Judge?’
‘Yes, Porisch, you can. Please give my excuses for tonight to the officers’ mess. I’d just be in the way. And I’d be grateful if the doctor, Herr Koschmieder, would look in on me again tomorrow about noon after everyone has slept it off.’
Porisch nodded, satisfied. He almost congratulated his superior on his sensible behaviour. Instead he tapped the orange folder on the table. ‘Should I take this away with me?’
‘Leave it there, Porisch. I may have another look. Will there be much gunfire at midnight?’
Porisch blew out his cheeks. ‘The inspector general has expressly forbidden it, because it’s a waste of ammunition, but if I know the Bavarians they’ll fire a few blank cartridges. After all, it’s their custom, and you can’t change people with an order.’
Mertens closed his eyes in silent agreement, then he looked up at his subordinate, pulled his arm out from under the blanket and gave him his hand. ‘Quite right, Porisch. People don’t change or if they do it’s so slow the likes of us can’t wait that long. In any case, thank you for your help and I wish you as good a New Year as possible under the circumstances.’