Sergeant Porisch’s eyes widened. ‘Are you stationed at Douaumont, Lieutenant?’ He fell back into official parlance with the shock of it. ‘Can a man survive there?’
‘As you see,’ Eberhard Kroysing replied.
‘Isn’t it under constant attack from the French?’
‘Not always,’ answered Kroysing in his deep voice.
‘But there’s a constant stream of wounded and dead there, isn’t there?’
Kroysing laughed. ‘You get used to it. Nothing’s happened to me yet.’
‘The likes of us can’t imagine what it must be like there.’
‘Not great from your point of view, wonderful from mine. A fabulous stretch of churned up wasteland and old Douaumont right in the middle like the battered carapace of a giant turtle. We sit underneath and crawl out the neck hole to play in the sand. Pretty much. Besides, you probably imagine it’s much more uncomfortable than it actually is. It’ll hold out a bit longer, old Douaumont.’
‘Under high-angle fire,’ said Porisch softly.
‘That too,’ answered Lieutenant Kroysing lightly. ‘You get used to it. But if anything serious happens to me, I’ll appoint a successor or substitute and give you his name and address. This matter certainly shouldn’t suffer because of that. Thank you, gentlemen,’ he repeated, standing up. ‘Now I have a little private war to wage in the midst of this great war. But then all of us continue to pursue our hobbies if there’s time and it doesn’t affect our duties. In the final analysis, I’ve still got to pay the Frogs back for my brother. You might almost say,’ and his long, thin lips curled in a sneer, ‘that I’m ahead of the game on that one: some little exploding mines, you know, a bit of gas, a few canister bombs and finally the blockhouses in Herbesbois that we smoked out with flame throwers. They have a lot of respect for our uniform over there. But thus far I’ve just been doing my professional duty. Now it’s a bit more personal between me and them.’ He pulled on his left glove, put on his helmet, gave the judge advocate then the NCO his bony hand, pulled on his right glove and said: ‘Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a while, gentlemen. If I don’t peg it, I’ll definitely be in touch.’ He then wished them a pleasant lunch and left.
The two men left behind looked at each other. ‘He’s quite a man,’ said Porisch, summarising both their thoughts. ‘I wouldn’t like to be in the shoes of the man who betrayed his little brother.’
Judge Advocate Mertens gave his soft, blonde, scholarly head a delicate shake. ‘Goodness gracious me,’ he said, frowning, ‘how men abuse each other.’
CHAPTER THREE
The demands of duty
LIEUTENANT KROYSING MOVED differently now on the stairs. He no longer jumped but walked, and with each step a plan took shape within him. He needed to proceed in a strictly official way, and that’s what he would do. If the demands of duty had allowed the ASC bigwigs to bring Sergeant Kroysing down, then they would allow Lieutenant Kroysing to force a confession. None of those fellows were men. They looked like men but they were hollow and made of tin. You only had to squeeze them a little and their guts came out. Lieutenant Kroysing looked very much at ease as he slammed the brown oak door shut and almost inaudibly – a sign of great contentment – hummed a tune under his breath.
A lorry carrying two leather-clad drivers braked immediately when a gaunt officer in a steel helmet raised his maroon-gloved hand. The lieutenant was in luck. The lorry was from Lieutenant Psalter’s depot at Damvillers, had delivered express goods for transport to Germany by train and was returning practically empty. Two heavily laden men returning from leave sitting on their crates hardly counted. The only problem was that they couldn’t really offer the lieutenant a seat.
‘Would you care to sit next to me for two minutes, Lieutenant?’ asked the driver, an NCO from Cologne, judging by his accent. ‘We’ve still to pick up some post bags. Then we’ll be able to offer you a nice easy chair, Lieutenant.’
‘Easy chair, that’s a good one,’ laughed Lieutenant Kroysing. ‘Be keeping mothers’ letters warm, will I?’
The driver grinned. He seemed all right to Kroysing. He certainly wasn’t stationed in Montmédy. When the post bags had been loaded, Kroysing said he preferred to stay up front. These lorry drivers went everywhere. They knew all the roads, everywhere of any importance, the approaches to the firing line. They were seasoned men, as they say at sea, and although guarded with officers they were still prepared to chat, express opinions and have a laugh and a joke, all the while keeping their eyes on the light strip of road. Eberhard Kroysing roared with laughter, sometimes grinned to himself, rubbed his hands in glee and ripped his eyes open in astonishment, saying ‘already?’ when the lorry pulled up at the farm where Captain Lauber and the division’s sapper headquarters were installed.
‘A great laugh, Sergeant,’ said Lieutenant Kroysing. ‘And now it’s back to the serious business of life.’
People knew Lieutenant Kroysing here and were impressed by him. The branches of the armed services were small worlds of their own with their own languages and secrets, living side by side in combat units. A sapper lieutenant stood out among infantrymen like a goat in a flock of sheep, but within the structure of his own branch, which started with the broad base of the frontline companies, went through battalion, brigade and division staff, and culminated in the sapper general back at St Martin, he was as much at home and in his proper place as any animal in its herd. Kroysing was hungry. He’d already accepted a sausage and pork fat sandwich from the lorry driver, and he was very happy when Captain Lauber began by inviting him to lunch. Lauber ate with his staff and a few other officers from the area, who had set up a small mess in an empty apartment. They were purely technical troops, radio operators and anti-aircraft specialists, about a dozen men, all deeply preoccupied by their work, well trained and responsible. Captain Lauber, a swarthy man from Württenberg who had served longest of any of them, had established a few house rules. Talking shop at lunchtime was forbidden, as were politics. More than half a bottle of wine was forbidden. Everything else was allowed. Differences in rank didn’t matter, good manners were taken as read, and even staff sergeants were included – even Jewish ones.
Everyone in the services knew that the sappers, artillery men and technical troops in the German army all suffered from neglect. Compared to the cavalry and the infantry they were largely left to their own devices. No princes or noblemen served with them. They always got a raw deal during manoeuvres, and in peacetime their training and upkeep were underfunded. It was only in the first two years of the war that people had started to talk about how valuable sappers were. Who threw bridges over the Meuse under enemy fire? The sappers. Who cut pathways through wire entanglements before an attack armed with nothing but pliers while enemy guns lay in wait? Who pushed the fire trenches forwards and dug out positions in impossible locations, in limestone or in swamps? Who threw hand grenades as big and round as babies’ heads? Who humped the bloody gas canisters around? Who carried still-smoking flame throwers on their backs through enemy fire, risking being burnt alive if a bullet hit them? Always the sappers. Sapper lieutenants such as Kroysing had been involved in innumerable attacks and had survived uninjured only by the grace of God. And what about the telephonists, who mended essential cables again and again under heavy French fire or serviced the listening apparatus in the forward fire trenches where the gunners slaved – until very recently they’d all been the army’s stepchildren. More recently than that in the feudal regiments, where they were still too refined to have backsides.