He hadn’t done too badly in this unit, but it was nothing compared to the infantry and cavalry, who’d marched into wealthy Belgium at the beginning of the war, into Luxembourg and northern France. They had seen some loot and no mistake. The clocks of Liège, the gold of Namur, and even the small provincial towns. Of course those dirty north German rogues hadn’t let the Bavarians at it. It was the Rhinelanders and Saxons who got stuck in, by Jove it was. Had it not always been considered right and proper that soldiers who were risking their life for the Fatherland should pocket something? Did the bigwigs behave any differently when they swallowed up whole provinces – Belgium, Poland, Serbia and the beautiful stretch of countryside here that they called the Briey-Longwy iron ore basin. If you didn’t get rich at war, you’d never get rich. And what a waste it would’ve been to melt down the beautiful watches, chains, bangles, necklaces, rings and brooches when the small towns were razed to the ground because they were full of god-damned franctireurs resistance fighters. Where had he met that clever man with the travelling military field library, which had a false bottom with drawers you could pull out – nothing but Belgian watches in them? Had it been in Alsace? Yes, that man had known what was what. But the war wasn’t over yet. A lot could still happen. All of France might be up for grabs if the Germans won. And they would win and must win – or all was lost. Feicht wasn’t the only one who knew that. So he could restore this Swiss watch with its beautifully engraved gold back cover to the lucky heirs with confidence. It kept good time, he could vouch for that. The money – he counted the folded notes. Seventy-six Marks and eighty Pfennigs – ah well! He could’ve got the children new clothes with it, pleated taffeta skirts, green silk pinafores and tops. But it didn’t matter. Theresa was doing very nicely out of the starving north Germans. He’d get over it. He’d kept it safe, and there you were – he’d been right. The last item on the list was underwear. Ludwig Feicht dipped a pen in ink and wrote an asterisked note on the list, placing it so that the company commander’s signature hovered protectively below it: ‘Distributed to comrades in need, as the deceased would have wished.’ Full stop.
The pile of goods lay on the grey-painted table carefully wrapped in the leather waistcoat. Dependable Feicht now took from a box a large piece of orange-coloured oil paper reinforced with woven-in threads and wrapped the whole lot up so that the affixed address label adorned the middle. He tied it with string, took sealing wax and the company seal and sealed Sergeant Kroysing’s effects with two big red stamps. He left the address intact. It was addressed to the Third Company orderly room, and the sender was given as the Fifth Echelon Army Postal Depot. A whole stack of letters had arrived from there after the battalion had been on the move for a week, battering over from Poland to Verdun. That now proved rather handy. Ludwig Feicht filled out a small yellow slip of paper in narrow, spiky handwriting: ‘Return to sender. Address incomplete. No duplicate enclosed.’ He checked the postmark – delightfully illegible.
He would suggest to the captain that he enclose a judiciously worded covering letter, saying that the package had been correctly addressed to Councillor Kroysing, but that due to an oversight on the part of the clerk Dillinger the army postal address of the company had been given instead of the Kroysings’ address in Nuremberg: Ebensee, Schilfstraße 28. What a silly mix-up! Dillinger had been severely reprimanded and would have spent three days in prison, but they had decided to put mercy before justice as his wife had just had a baby and his thoughts were back home. If the company hadn’t been suddenly ‘transferred’, the package would have been in Nuremberg long ago. That’s how it was, Lieutenant. Did the lieutenant have any further questions? Ludwig Feicht the purser grinned quietly to himself, dipped a small brush in the glue jar, stuck the return slip on the right-hand corner of the address label and rubbed it a bit with the sole of his slipper to make it look as though it had gone through the post. He then stamped it with the company stamp in such a way that only two of the curved lines and an asterisk were visible; ink doesn’t take very well on oil paper and he’d been careful not to press the stamp in the ink pad. With his hands behind his back, he contemplated his handiwork. Excellent job. The captain would be pleased.
As the men marched out that night in the deepest gloaming, Herr Simmerding and Herr Niggl met at the back of the column. Although Captain Niggl was a half bottle of Bordeaux to the good, he found the reek of alcohol off his company commander discomfiting. It wasn’t that he disapproved of Dutch courage. He drank himself and so did everyone in the army. They tramped along beside each other in virtual silence. Eventually, Niggl began to feel sorry for the other man with his hunched shoulders and pinched neck. They too were close compatriots. The Simmerding family lived all along the north shore of the lake. And so, in an undertone, he asked how he was doing after the shock earlier at midday. Fine, grunted Simmerding. Niggl said that was good, because he had every reason to feel fine. Sergeant Major Feicht had now sorted out the unpleasantness to do with young Kroysing’s effects.
‘Really,’ said Simmerding, with a wild, fleeting glance at the man on his right. ‘Sorted it out, has he? Ha, ha! Has Feicht brought young Kroysing back to life then? Got him out of his coffin, blown new air into him and put him back in the ranks? Because that man in there will be satisfied with nothing less.’
‘Simmerding,’ said Niggl soothingly, not allowing Feicht’s anxious tone get to him, ‘pull yourself together. All is by no means lost.’
Simmdering came to a halt. His clenched fists stuck out from the wide arms of his coat. ‘All is not lost! All has long since been lost! I’m sick of this whole business with Christoph Kroysing, if you really want to know! Sick to here—’ he raised his hand to his mouth. ‘I could kick myself for having got caught up in sending him to Chambrettes and that game with the files – your game.’
‘No one forced you, Acting Lieutenant Simmerding,’ said Niggl coolly. ‘Make sure you don’t fall too far behind your company. And say a couple of Ave Marias during the night.’
What a lily-livered specimen, he thought contemptuously.
Passed down from the front, the same warning resounded over and over again: ‘Watch out, wire below. Watch out, wire above.’
CHAPTER SIX
Snatched booty
WHEN LIEUTENANT KROYSING came home that night and turned on the light, his whistling abruptly stopped. He was always happy to get back to the welcoming vaults of the fort – welcoming vaults! He laughed to himself at the expression. He appreciated its irony, which came from the extent to which the world was distorted. The hours spent on the winding uphill route from the infantry positions, the rude presence of mind, born of repeated experience, needed to evade the French shells – it all meant he felt positively happy as soon as he heard his steps echoing off the stone walls. That’s why Lieutenant Kroysing was whistling. He broke off in the middle of the most beautiful part of the Meistersinger overture. Kroysing looked in astonishment at the surprising postal gift on his table and the folded note between the oil paper and the string. Uh-huh, he thought scornfully, who goes there?
He swung his steel helmet on to the coat stand, carefully hung his cape and gas mask under it, threw his belt with his dirk and heavy pistol and his torch on to the bed and sat down beside them to take off his puttees and mud-caked shoes. In other circumstances, he’d have rung and woken his batman, sleepy Sapper Dickmann, who only had one virtue: he could fry schnitzel and make coffee like no one else. But he wanted to be alone with this package. While he was bent over undoing his laces and putting on his house shoes, he didn’t let it out his sight for a second, as if it might disappear just as suddenly and magically as it had wafted in. Yes, he thought, this was a victory. Victory number two, won by fearlessly advancing, constantly upping the ante and exploiting the enemy’s weakness – precise knowledge of the terrain. The tactical instructions applied to Lieutenant Kroysing’s private war with Captain Niggl were bearing fruit. Funny, he pondered, I never for one moment thought that this could be one of the welcome packages from home that sporadically reach us. I’ve got my teeth some way into Captain Niggl.