If you wanted to look south and west, you had to be prepared to take a small risk. Kroysing knew of a hole in the Ferme’s ramparts, a kind of seat, which he called his loge. It took scarcely a minute to scramble through the brickwork, but he might of course get hit. So what! He ran over and was soon squatting in his lair, where he caught his breath and laughed a little.
The vague brightness of the moonless, starry night was becoming ever more transparent, and his ear gradually adjusted to the myriad sounds of war. The gulleys towards Douaumont were under heavy attack. Rifle and machine gun fire whipped the length of the Pepper ridge. On the rubbish tip that was the village of Louvemont red flames flew up and died down, and only then did the detonation come. Out of sight down below, field kitchens were trying to come through, as were ammunition trucks and working parties with rolls of wire, posts, entrenching tools – horses, lorries, men. No, the Frogs were no longer scrimping on ammunition. In the valley to the left, dark red bushes of fire had broken out. A few hundred metres further on, where you couldn’t see anything, was a much used field track that led to Herbe Bois.
On the southern edge of Vauche wood, where the military road ran up to Douaumont, a chain of little volcanoes thundered and flared, new ones erupting all the time, and over Douaumont itself, over his brother Eberhard and his men, hung a great clinging red mist – the never-ending belching of the chimney that was Verdun. The army’s backbone was being pounded to bits there. Red and green flares flew up on the horizon, turning the infantry’s cries for help into a jaunty fireworks display. The French army’s white star shells floated slowly down, spreading a soft light – excellent for shooting each other by. Christoph Kroysing knew it all welclass="underline" the Chemin des Dames, the Loretto Heights, the sugar factory by Souchez – all the sweet things associated with the war of 1914-15 when he was still an infantryman, putting his life on the line for the Fatherland. Now he was more inclined to watch. His little, rat-infested loge here in the shattered brickwork suited him just fine. The great arc of the horizon spread out before him, flashing and flickering, lighting up like a bolt of lightning and going black again. Despite the natural dampening caused by distance, the full ferocity of the roaring and clamouring reached him, overlaid by the thunder of German guns. The Fosses wood, Chaûmes wood and Vavrille batteries were working at full strength. Half-naked gunners, support troops, observers in the trees, telephonists at their apparatus: this was the night shift. He knew them all, those bloody shell-smiths. The next day, the new battery would settle in nearby, drawing French counter-fire into this quiet valley. Shame about that scrap of wood that was still standing. Shame about all the men who would meet their end here. Shame about Christoph Kroysing himself, who, at 21, was forced to accept that man’s brutality and his instinct for survival were as vital as war and harder to escape. He leaned on a ruined wall, half crouching, half sitting, his hands cupping his lean, boyish face, which was framed by floppy hair. This is what it looks like outside Verdun, he thought. In all these weeks, things have hardly changed. The front line has been pushed forwards slightly, and we could cover the ground we’ve won with corpses. But that was what it was like at the Somme too, where the French and British were stage managing the same kind of hoax. There was a sudden boom on Hill 344. Bright lights flashed, fiery red on smouldering white. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to sit outside much longer. At least he wouldn’t go to sleep feeling as hopeless as he had the night before, haunted by the scum who snooped through his post, checking what he’d written to Mother and Father. No, he was alive again. He had his bottle back and he felt clearer in his head than ever before. They hadn’t reckoned with the camaraderie of decent men in the army. Tomorrow or the day after, his comrade Bertin would return. The letter he had written that afternoon with his trusty fountain pen was already crackling in his tunic pocket above his heart. He’d have to be very careful for a couple of days. Then a mighty hand would reach down and remove Christoph Kroysing from this rat hole. Because even if the gods had abdicated and those who ran the world seemed to have turned into clockwork maniASC, there were men everywhere in the German army, individuals and groups, who wanted to put an end to injustice, who would be incandescent with rage if it were proved to them that brutality, self-interest and treason began right behind the foremost trenches.
As he stood up, his leg muscles aching, he thought how heavily the dew was lying and how clearly the stars shone in the sky. Did the same nonsense go on up there as on Earth? You could depend on it. Same old matter and spirit up above and down below. In the half light, the rats were dashing about on the ground like thin cats; they should definitely shoot a couple of dozen of them the next day. The rats could have got much fatter nearer the front, but they never deserted the ruined stables where they were born.
Tired and heavy-headed but confident, Christoph Kroysing climbed back into the dugout where his comrades were snoring. It stank more than a little among the damp brickwork, but tender currents flowed from the letter in his breast pocket and washed away all his unease. And as he folded his tunic and laid his head on it, as he did every night, young Kroysing smiled in darkness.
In the early hours, the Frogs fired their usual morning greeting at the light railway tracks: booming bursts of shell fire, drifting splinters, crashing steel and clumps of earth. As soon as it was over, the Bavarians emerged from their rat holes to assess the damage. The bastard French had knackered two whole sections straight off, miserable gits. They created nowt but work. A French plane circled up above in the morning haze, then disappeared to the east.
A fabulous summer day, thought Christoph Kroysing. He felt good today, better than he’d felt in ages. Blue sky – air to make you feel like flying away! Perhaps he’d first pay a visit to Hundekehle station to see if they were going to send a truck today to remove the second gun. Carefully, he trotted uphill, sticking close to the sections of track or jumping from sleeper to sleeper. From time to time, the Frogs spat over a little reminder – crumps the Germans called these kinds of shots, because they were there before you heard the gun fire. This part of the valley was much too well disposed to artillery observation, but today Kroysing felt immune to danger. He had the advantage of having been in the same place for 60 days. That meant you got to know it like the back of your hand whether you wanted to or not. Also, for the first time, he noticed flowers growing again at the edges of the shell holes: purple lady’s smock, summer cornflowers, very blue, and a red poppy, like a swaying fleck of blood.
In Hundekehle, a heat haze still shimmered over the corrugated iron station building. There were no trucks there, so the second gun wouldn’t be collected today, which was a shame. On the other hand, half a dozen infantrymen and a junior MO were taking the opportunity to sit and sleep in the shade of the railway hut, backs pressed to the metal, legs stretched out in front of them, completely covered in dust and earth. Their collapsed posture spoke of a superhuman exhaustion; inside, a young lieutenant, who had to stay awake and be responsible, was nonetheless making a phone call, wanting to know how he could move two machine guns and his men’s gear to the rear. Blinking, he stepped out into the glaring sun, scrutinised the Bavarian sergeant, offered him a cigarette and asked what he was doing there. The lieutenant decided he should wake his men. Once they’d started sleeping, they wouldn’t stop in a hurry, and as long as they were hunkered down in this accursed place, they’d needed to be awake, ready to scatter and take cover if there was an armed attack, even if they were relaxing now and enjoying the quiet. They’d come from Pepper ridge and been relieved about two in the morning. Their main contingent had taken the normal route via Brabant and been scattered by gunfire. He, Lieutenant Mahnitz, and his junior MO, Dr Tichauer, had been clear from the start that it was better to stumble through shell holes and cut across country to the rear than to come under heavy fire, especially as they were already dreaming about leave. He laughed cheerfully. They’d had a terrible time, but things would calm down now. The Germans and the French were both busy with the battle at the Somme. They richly deserved some peace, and they wouldn’t say no to some hot coffee either.