Keller really was in a hurry. He’d already heard the phone’s urgent ring from outside. He pushed the plug in impatiently and received a report from further up the line via the switchboard at Esnes that an aeroplane was approaching and to pass the news on. When telephonists and sentries received air-raid reports, they passed them on to the nearest exchange.
Meanwhile, the telephone was also buzzing in the shed that served as a station building at nearby Vilosnes-East. It was definitely buzzing, but no one heard it. After an exhausting day’s work, the railwaymen who ran it by, older men from the Landwehr, were sleeping the sleep of the righteous. They had a sort of arrangement with the ASC men that their sentries would wake them if anything happened. But did the ASC sentries hear the desperate clamouring of the old telephone? No one was sleeping nearby. The railwaymen liked to be comfortable. Both they and the ASC men preferred the roomy barracks on the other side of the station. There were dugouts in the hillside to be used in case of air raids, but the men had to be woken in plenty of time to reach them. The telephone buzzed and squawked. Where the hell was the sentry from Barkopp’s working party? Did he want to consign his sleeping comrades to eternity if that bloody aeroplane did fly over?
Bertin, with his rifle, was still between the tracks deep in thought – not so far away that he couldn’t hear, but too distracted to be alarmed. He was full of self-pity in that moment. If he’d had any sense, he have been like the other grown-ups in the company and wouldn’t have trusted the sergeant major back in the barracks yard in Küstrin. He’d have let himself be transferred to the east rather than insisting on making a voluntary pilgrimage west. That way he’d have remained the decent lad he used to be and he’d have been able to do his duty just as well in the east. But he’d been afraid of the east, hadn’t he? In the east there was the threat of lice, snow and cold, uncivilised towns, horribly degraded roads, and in the towns lots of Jews – Eastern European Jews with nasty habits, steeped in an embarrassing, over-the-top kind of Judaism designed to make him, Bertin, feel as uncomfortable as possible. He’d been honest enough to admit that to himself and he admitted it now too. He just felt the punishment was a bit harsh for such a small misdemeanour. Why should a Jew not be able to admit that he didn’t like certain other Jews, but did very much like the Prussian military: its discipline and order, its spruceness and drills, its warrior dress and spirit, the military might of its proud traditions and its invincible strike power? Hadn’t he been brought up to feel like that?
And now, after two years of service, here he stood a miserable thief of bread for the hungry. In such circumstances a Berliner would joke that something was a bit fishy. A lot of things had been revealed as a hoax in the last two years, for example the idea that it was sweet and honourable to die for the Fatherland. Well no, actually, it was always nasty and awful to sacrifice a young life before it had come to anything. But sometimes, by God, it was necessary. You couldn’t just leave women, children and old men to be overrun by brown barbarian hordes, such as the Mongols and Tartars who had repeatedly attacked the his Silesian homeland. Well, Mr Bertin, he told himself, you’ve been a sheep with your Prussian patriotism, you’ve behaved like a wee laddie going off on an adventure and failed to noticed that you were in fact in the service – and in the noose – of the enemy of all people: naked force, the adversary incarnate. It was a bit late to be discovering this. In the meantime, he’d sunk to the level of the plundering Bashkir nomads held up in horror in the history books of his childhood. For they had only plundered food from the Silesian peasants and townspeople because they were hungry and needed to put food on their own tables. Bertin Bashkir – what a slap in the face!
And then he heard the ringing. He jolted awake and was back in the present. Pushed the shed door open, flashed his torch around: no one there. Grabbed the receiver from its cradle and listened: air raid alarm, pass it on! A sudden, glaring memory of the five wagons of explosives. Fifty living men dependent on his watchfulness. Get a move on!
Bertin bounded like a hare over the rails and sleepers. Shoving his gun aside, he stormed into the railwaymen’s barracks. ‘Get out! Air raid alarm!’ He left the door open so the air would help to rouse the sleeping men and rushed out again to wake his comrades. He had no fear for himself. He was alive with sensations, engulfed in the excitement of this extraordinary night. He stood in the doorway, heard Sergeant Barkopp curse the draught and banged on the floorboards with the butt of his musket, cruelly driving out the last vestiges of sleep: there was a reason why a certain private had once blissfully slept through an air raid alarm. Back then, there had been 150m between the men and the ammunition; now there were just 30m.
He looked to the sky and listened. A very faint singing could be heard, unmistakable and evil. A searchlight had already swung upwards from the Sivry area, its chameleon tongue, broader at the top, licking for insects. A second joined it, apparently from behind the main railway station at Vilosnes, then a third from Dannevoux. And then the anti-aircraft guns started yelping. They boomed out from behind the hill on the other side of the railway, and heavy machine gun fire clattered from the side of the hill. Shafts of light swung across the sky. Dark puffs of red shrapnel burst around the plane and bullets ripped towards it. Watch out, Froggie! We’ll punch holes in your wings or arms, engine or heart, petrol tank or lungs – it’s all one to us. You must be brought down before those terrible Easter eggs of yours can be sent crashing to earth. A flock of inadequately clothed ASC men trotted past in the moonlight towards the dark hollows of the dugouts. Most of them tried to push through to the back where it was safest, but the railwaymen were already there, smoking cigarettes. The ASC men had to take cover further forwards.
One man stayed outside: Bertin. He had to stay and see what happened. Sergeant Barkopp barked at him good-naturedly to come inside as it was about to rain. Bertin, shading the visor of his cap with hand, stayed where he was, saying there was time yet. Where was the Frenchman? Had he cleared off to Stenay, where the crown prince was supposed to have his headquarters? Woe betide you, Frenchie, if you take out a certain someone before he has arranged my transfer to the Lychow divison court martial.