We could already see the light reflected off his belt-buckle. Himmelstoss seemed to be a bit tipsy and he was singing. He went past without noticing a thing.
We got a firm grip on the quilt-cover, moved forward quietly, slipped it over his head from behind and pulled it downwards, so that he stood there as if in a white sack, unable to move his arms. The singing died away.
The next moment Haie Westhus was there. He pushed us aside with his arms spread out, just so that he could have the first go. With great delight he took up a stance, raised his arm like a railway signal, his hand as big as a shovel, and gave the white sack a wallop that would have felled an ox.
Himmelstoss lost his balance, rolled half-a-dozen yards and started to yell. We’d thought of that as well, and brought a pillow with us. Haie squatted down, put the pillow on his knee, grabbed at where he guessed Himmelstoss’s head to be and shoved it into the pillow. The noise was stifled right away. Haie let him take a breath from time to time, and what came from his throat then was a wonderful, high-pitched shriek that soon got cut off.
Now Tjaden unbuttoned Himmelstoss’s braces and pulled his trousers down. Meanwhile, he held a cane carpet-beater[85] between his teeth. Then he stood up and moved into action.
It was a wonderful sight: Himmelstoss on the ground, Haie bending over him, holding the man’s head on his knees, with a fiendish grin on his face, his mouth wide open with delight, and then the twitching striped underpants, and the knock-kneed pair of legs which, trousers around the ankles, were performing spectacular movements with every blow that fell; and Tjaden, who showed no signs of tiring, standing over him like a woodcutter. In the end we literally had to pull him away, so that we could have our turns.
At last Haie pulled Himmelstoss to his feet again, and gave a private performance as the final act. He drew his right arm so far back before clouting him that it looked as if he was trying to pluck stars out of the night sky. Himmelstoss went down. Haie picked him up again, lined him up and gave him a second magnificently aimed wallop with his left hand. Himmelstoss howled, and fled on all fours. His striped postman’s backside shone in the moonlight.
We made ourselves scarce[86] as fast as we could.
Haie looked around, and said with an air of grim satisfaction, though a bit oddly, ‘Revenge is as good as a feast.’
In fact Himmelstoss should have been pleased: his principle, that we should train each other, had borne fruit[87] – when we used it on him. We had been dutiful pupils, quick to pick up his methods.
He never found out whom he had to thank for the whole thing. Anyway, he got a quilt-cover out of it; when we went back half an hour later to look for it again it was nowhere to be found.
That night was the reason that on the following morning we were able to set off in a reasonably cheerful state of mind. And because of that, some old goat was so moved that he referred to us as ‘young heroes’.
IV
We’ve been ordered up the line on wiring duty. The trucks turn up for us as soon as it starts to get dark. We scramble aboard. It is a warm evening, the twilight is like a blanket wrapped around us, and we feel comforted by this protection. It brings us closer together; even Tjaden, who is usually a bit stingy, gives me a cigarette and lights it for me.
We stand next to one another, packed tighty[88], and no one can sit down. We aren’t used to sitting down anyway. At last Muller is in a good mood again; he is wearing his new boots.
The engines rev up, the trucks rattle and clatter. The road surfaces are worn out and full of holes. No lights are allowed, and so we run into the holes and nearly get thrown out of the truck. That possibility doesn’t bother us much. What would it matter – a broken arm is better than a hole through the belly, and plenty of us would actually welcome a chance like that to get sent home.
Alongside us, long columns of munition trucks are moving up. They are in a hurry and keep on overtaking us. We shout out jokes to the men and they answer us.
We make out a wall, which belongs to a house set a little way back from the road. Suddenly I prick up my ears. Can it be true? Then I hear it again, perfectly clearly. Geese! A glance towards Katczinsky; a glance back from him; we understand each other.
‘Kat, I think I can hear a candidate for the cooking-pot —’
He nods. ‘We’ll do it when we get back. I know my way around here.’
Of course Kat knows his way around. I bet he knows every drumstick on every goose for miles.
The trucks reach the firing area. The gun emplacements are camouflaged with greenery against air reconnaissance[89], and it all looks like a military version of that Jewish festival where they build little huts outdoors. These leafy bowers would look peaceful and cheerful if they didn’t have guns inside them.
The air is getting hazy with smoke from the guns and fog. The cordite tastes bitter on the tongue. The thunder of the artillery fire makes our truck shake, the echo rolls on after the firing and everything shudders. Our faces change imperceptibly. We don’t have to go into the trenches, just on wiring duty, but you can read it on every face: this is the front, we’re within reach of the front.
It isn’t fear, not yet. Anyone who has been at the front as often as we have gets thick-skinned about it. Only the young recruits are jumpy. Kat gives them a lesson. ‘That was a twelve-inch. You can hear that from the report – you’ll hear the burst in a minute.’
But the dull thud of the shell-bursts can’t be heard at this distance. Everything is swallowed up in the rumble of the front. Kat listens carefully. ‘There’ll be a show tonight.’
We all listen. The front is restless. ‘Tommy’s[90] already firing,’ says Kropp.
You can hear the guns clearly. It is the British batteries, to the right of our sector. They are starting an hour early. Ours never start until ten on the dot[91].
‘What’s up with them?’ calls out Muller. ‘Are their watches fast or something?’
‘There’ll be a show, I tell you. I can feel it in my bones.’ Kat shrugs his shoulders.
Three guns thunder out just beside us. The gun flash shoots away diagonally into the mist, the artillery roars and rumbles. We shiver, happy that we’ll be back in camp by tomorrow morning.
Our faces are no more flushed and no paler than they usually are; they are neither more alert nor more relaxed, and yet they are different. We feel as if something inside us, in our blood, has been switched on. That’s not just a phrase – it is a fact. It is the front, the awareness of the front, that has made that electrical contact. The moment we hear the whistle of the first shells, or when the air is torn by artillery fire, a tense expectancy suddenly gets into our veins, our hands and our eyes, a readiness, a heightened wakefulness, a strange suppleness of the senses. All at once the body is completely ready.
It often seems to me as if it is the disturbed and vibrating air that suddenly comes over us with silent force; or as if the front itself is sending out its own electricity to put those unconscious nerve endings on to the alert.
It is the same every time. When we set out we are just soldiers – we might be grumbling or we might be cheerful; and then we get to the first gun emplacements, and every single word that we utter takes on a new sound.
If Kat stands in front of the huts and says ‘There’s going to be a show’ then that is his own opinion, nothing else. But if he says it out here, then the same words are as sharp as a bayonet on a moonlit night, cutting straight through the normal workings of the brain, more immediate, and speaking directly to that unknown element that has grown inside us with a dark significance – ‘There’s going to be a show’. Perhaps it is our innermost and most secret life that gives a shudder, and then prepares to defend itself.