The feeling that everything was repeating itself reached its zenith in the orderly room when Sergeant Major Duhn informed him rather drily that he was to go to Romagne-West that night with four wagons of explosives, picking up three wagons of flares and light ammunition from Damvillers sapper depot on the way. That meant he had the right to sleep through the afternoon if he wanted, and that’s what he did after he’d had a look round the depot and camp. The Etraye depot, which was built into the valley in tiers, was a lot more difficult to run than old ‘Steinbergquell’ on the road to Moirey, but it was also harder to shoot to pieces. Bertin bumped into a lot of old acquaintances; one minute he was shaking Halezinsky’s hand, the next Sergeant Böhne’s. In the field gun ammunition section, he looked for Strauß, that clever little lad from the Mosel valley, and when he found him, Strauß, who was deeply depressed by the long winter and the seeming impossibility of peace, squealed with delight and congratulations. Bertin had a refreshing three hours’ sleep on Strauß’s bed, ate a dinner of roast horse meat from the private kitchen of the moustachioed ammunitions expert Schulz, borrowed a coat so that he didn’t have to unbuckle his beautifully rolled up coat, and reported to the orderly room and then at the depot.
The moon was in a completely different position in the sky to the day before when the little narrow-gauge train moved off. Strauß had also pressed a blanket on Bertin. He sat on a sort of recliner made of smoothly planed crates of explosives, with his cold meerschaum pipe between his teeth. Almost in dismay, he felt the helix come full circle: the narrow-gauge railway ran through the sheltered terrain to Damvillers, where the sappers attached their wagons. And then, metre by metre, rail by rail, the train slid back into the past, into what was dead and gone, taking with it a man bundled in blankets, who no longer knew if he was awake or asleep, who kept forcing his eyes open only for them to close again. Bertin had stumbled down this road in October when Major Jansch cancelled his six days’ leave. This was where the crown prince’s car had taken the bend and disappeared from view. Wilhelm Pahl, earmarked to die in a bomb raid, had spent the night in those dugouts when air raids made the camp unsafe in July and August. Wasn’t that him stepping out of the dark and bowing, his hands crossed over his chest, a spectre made of smoke, smiling wryly because he was now under ground? All around ghosts wafted up, whitish trails of smoke, the souls of dead men. Poor little Vehse, good-natured little Otto Reinhold, Wilhelm Schmidt, the illiterate farmhand from the Polish borderlands, and Hein Foth, the ship’s stoker from Hamburg who had such terrible lice. Over there had stood the cartridge tent where they’d worked so hard and argued so vociferously. It wasn’t there any more, but the ghost of it was, built of grey air against the dark grey sky. Above it a pennant made of Sergeant Karde’s blown-off leg fluttered merrily and a couple of dead ASC men formed a grinning guard of honour by the door, because the inspection tent for damaged ammunition had later stood on the same spot awaiting the blast that destroyed it. Up on the right the abandoned camp’s barracks still loomed against the night sky. But where was the field gun depot and the bubbling brook that flowed through it? There was a pond there now, and the new barracks of a delousing station or laundry crouched in the valley.
And then the small railway followed the course of the Theinte, and to its right disappeared the road to Ville and the approach to the ravines of Fosses wood. From the left above Chaumont little Sergeant Süßmann nodded, no longer a sergeant, his clever monkey’s eyes shining in his singed face, and then the puffing locomotive came upon Artillery Lieutenant von Roggstroh wafting past with his boyish face and short, straight nose; and Bertin suddenly understood that he too must have been killed, which was hardly surprising. But rising above the hills like a gigantic pillar of smoke, lit by a reddish glow, was the figure of Sergeant Christoph Kroysing, waving from Chambrettes-Ferme where the French had long since installed themselves. God, God, thought Bertin, snuggling into the crates of explosives and wondering why young Kroysing had that strange form, like a candle flame, sharp and snapped off at the top. Of course – he recalled the balloon observers who’d been shot down and the two columns of smoke that had then unravelled against the sky. Then a ghostly aeroplane crossed the sky, the pilot’s back covered in a handful of dark bullet holes. Poor young lad with his handsome tanned face.
On the right, they’d reached some ruined trees with disintegrating tops – what was called Thil wood. Suddenly, shells were exploding among them. Dark red flames, yellow lighting. Bertin got a real shock. He had slept through the gunfire. But before he could jump down from his crates of explosives, the sapper on the wagon furthest back reassured him that the gunfire was 150m to the right and would stay there. The Frogs couldn’t get any closer however hard they tried – God damn them.
Still feeling somewhat wary, Bertin remained present and alert, but only a couple of rounds of machine gun fire broke the silence and the even chug-chug-chug of the doughty locomotive. He leaned back again and surveyed the black bulk of the land stretching off to his right. Over there was the road to Azannes and Gremilly. There by a fire that didn’t really exist, a red shell flame, crouched the young farmworker Przygulla, blowing on the flames and warming his hands. His mouth hung open as always because of the growths in his nasal cavity, and his fish eyes looked questioningly at clever Herr Bertin, who proved so much more stupid than Przygulla, when his belly was slit open and Private Schamm carried him into the medical dugout dying like a little child. Yes, said, Lieutenant Schanz, we lads from the Prussian school have to go through some pretty stiff tests before we see sense.
Bertin shuddered, buttoned his coat tighter and put his collar up.
The train stopped for a moment. The line branched off here to Romagne in a continuation of the section that the Schwerdtlein party had constructed with the Russian prisoners during the Great Cold. The sapper had to carry on alone with his wagons into unpleasant territory. The front part of the train, with Bertin and his four wagons, went round the corner into the darkness.
Bertin looked back at the three sapper wagons. Stalking over to meet them was a tall, lean figure in breeches and puttees, who revealed his wolf’s teeth as he laughed and waved his long hand in goodbye. In the end, thought Bertin, he really did choose to haunt Douaumont. ‘Not as unpleasant as you might think, my new state,’ he heard Eberhard Kroysing’s deep voice purr from the distance. ‘I decided to skip the whole air force bigwig business and go straight for that pile of rubble. You won’t forget me, will you, my little joker?’ No fear of that, thought Bertin.
Then he jumped up as the train braked with a jolt. From a dugout cut into the hillside a railwayman appeared and took Bertin’s papers. He said the dugout was called Romagne-West and that Bertin could wait in the warm and cruise back to his depot around 5pm with the empty wagons. Below, in the harsh light of an acetylene lamp, a little stove pumped out heat and there was the smell of coffee. Bertin was handed a mugful. He asked how long this new system had been needed. Since the French had gradually shot the old train station at Romagne to pieces, came the reply. During one of their fireworks displays that big-nosed Berliner had been taken out, that capable sergeant from the Railway Transport Office: had Bertin known him? Of course, replied Bertin. Anyone who had anything to do with the railway had known him. He was the soul of the whole operation and the railway transport officer’s right-hand man. So he was gone? Poor Pelican! That night seemed to belong to the dead. It would be better not to ask after anyone else, for example Friedrich Strumpf. It felt bloody spooky to be leaving this place alive.