“At ease,” croaked one of the men and Herzog obeyed the order, accepting the chair he was offered. A glass was pushed towards him and he took it, sniffing the clear liquid inside. He sipped it and found that it was vodka.
“To victory,” croaked General Thurlinger and raised his glass; the others echoed his words and drank. Herzog regarded the man with impassive eyes. Slumped in his chair, the general already looked half-dead. He broke into a paroxysm of coughing and continued until his flabby face turned purple. He banged his chest with a fist and exhaled deeply.
“Private Herzog,” he began, “I have before me Sergeant Foss’s report in which, he states, you saved his life.” Herzog shrugged and the general could find no response in his clear blue eyes; he sighed. “Well, in view of your contribution to driving back the communists, Sergeant Foss and I have decided to make you corporal, active immediately.” The old man smiled, searching for some flicker of feeling within Herzog’s steel-hard features. The former sergeant nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“Thank you,” he said, quietly.
The third man spoke and Herzog could almost feel the iciness in his voice. “You were a sergeant once, were you not?”
“Yes sir.”
The captain’s top lip curled. “So why were you broken?”
“Disobeying orders.”
“That is an offence punishable by death,” snapped the captain.
Herzog shrugged. “The court took into account my service record.”
“Yes. Five years in the army, four of them in France.”
“You know a lot about me,” said the former sergeant.
The young man smiled, a smile of superiority. “I make it my business to know about things like that.”
Thurlinger chuckled. “So what do you think of my new adjutant, eh, corporal?” He began to cough again, Herzog didn’t bother to answer. He looked at the captain, who was refilling his glass. The general sat up, wheezing. “Captain Ritter has just come from Italy, he applied for his position.”
Fucking idiot, thought Herzog, sipping his drink. He glanced across at Foss who shrugged a shoulder at him. The corporal was pleased when Thurlinger dismissed them. He got to his feet and was out of the bunker like a shot. Foss joined him, shaking his legs to restore the circulation.
“You were in a bloody hurry, weren’t you?” said the sergeant.
“I don’t like officers,” explained Herzog, “and just who the hell does that fucking captain think he is?”
“You heard Thurlinger, it’s his new adjutant.”
“Rule-book soldier?” grinned the corporal.
“Looks like it. We’d better just hope that nothing happens to the old boy, because if it does Ritter takes over.”
Herzog grunted indignantly and spat into a puddle. “Italy. What the hell does he think he’s been doing there? Looking after a bunch of bloody wops.”
“Perhaps he wanted to see what soldiers could fight like when they weren’t running away.” The two men laughed and began the ascent up the slope towards the wood. Foss lit a cigarette with his silver lighter and blew out a stream of smoke.
“Nice lighter,” observed Herzog.
Foss nodded. “A present from my wife.” He smiled faintly and the corporal caught the faintest hint of moisure in his eye corner. Foss forced a grin. “She said I’d need it to light my cigars with, when I became a general.” He sighed. Herzog looked at him, at the thin face with its thick black moustache and bushy eyebrows. He felt a certain admiration for the sergeant, perhaps he envied him his happy marriage. It must have been worse for Foss, joining the army, having to leave a home and a wife. He asked how long the sergeant had been married.
“Twelve years,” said Foss, “good years. I was lucky.”
“Where did you live?”
Foss shrugged. “The house was bombed, my wife was killed.” He took a piece of paper from his tunic and held it up. “The last leter she wrote me. Two years ago.” He handed it to the corporal and Herzog read it, feeling a twinge of the emotion he thought he had lost. The words on the paper had a warmth which he could almost feel. He folded it and handed it back to Foss.
“Funny,” said Foss, “death means nothing until it touches one you know, we kill men every day and never give it a second thought, but when it comes to someone close to us we wonder if we can go on.”
Herzog smiled sympathetically. “A philosopher in a sergeant’s uniform,” he said, patting him on the shoulder.
Foss smiled. “Philosopher? I wish I was clairvoyant, then I’d know when the Russians were going to attack.”
The two of them slowed their pace as they reached the wood and strolled through it as if they had been out on a country ramble. The burial party had finished and all that remained of their presence was a mound of freshly turned earth and a row of helmets.
“At least the disposal units keep busy,” said Foss, “and I bet there’ll be plenty more work for them in the next couple of days.”
“Do you think they’ll try something?” asked Herzog.
Foss nodded. “I’m certain of it.”
“Well, when they do, let’s just hope that Ritter’s the first one to cop it.” Both men laughed and began the walk down the incline back to the trench. The anti-aircraft crew were playing cards and one of them had stretched out on a pile of sandbags to sunbathe.
“Who’d know there was a war on?” laughed Foss.
The news of Herzog’s promotion was greeted with warmth by the other men of the section. Schiller laid even money that he would be a sergeant before the month was out, Kahn gave him a bottle of vodka to celebrate with and they all drank themselves near to drunkenness. All except Gustavus.
As night fell heavily upon the land, Herzog sauntered out into the trench for his turn on guard. Synovski joined him.
The warmth of the day did not linger and there was a biting chill in the air which stung the skin and turned breath to silken clouds. The corporal pulled the greatcoat around him and stamped his feet.
“You’re not used to the cold?” observed Synovski. Herzog shivered.
“It’s a good job for you, you weren’t in Russia. It got down to forty below freezing sometimes, even the wolves were dying of it.” He smiled.
Herzog wasn’t sorry when their time came to return to the dugout. Schiller and Gustavus took their places.
It was deep into the night when Herzog awoke and lay listening to a steady rumbling coming from the direction of the Russian lines. A constant dull throbbing sound like so many powerful engines being revved.
It was a long time before he slept.
Chapter Sixteen
8.15 a.m.
The entire section was flung out of bed by the sudden ferocity of a series of powerful explosions. They shook themselves and grabbed for weapons. The field radio crackled and Ganz answered it.
“We’re under attack,” he said, flatly.
In seconds the section were out into the trench, huge explosions tearing up the ground all around them. The men hugged the wall of the trench as earth rained down upon them. It felt as if the ground was opening up, it shook violently with each fresh salvo of explosions. Entire sections were obliterated by shell blasts, just a smoking hole remaining where men once stood. The German guns fired back, adding to the deafening roar, shells arced back and forth across no-man’s-land, churning the ground into liquid mud and blasting men into atoms. Portions of shattered body were spread along the trench floor like grotesque confetti. Herzog pressed his hands to his ears as the roaring seemed to grow louder. Smoke began to blanket the battlefield rising up like black umbrellas from the foot of each detonation. The air was thick with the smell of cordite and gunpowder. Fountains of mud and fire were shot into the air as if from some giant gun, plumes of smoke and fire erupted upwards like mini-volcanoes. The trees of the wood were uprooted, blasted to matchwood as the Russian artillery poured more and more heavy shells into the pulverised German positions. Sweating like pigs the gunners pushed new shells into breeches which were already red-hot; if the shell went off in the breech, too bad. That was a chance you had to take.