No Man's Land (79 page)

‘Will these things last?'

The keen air did him good. ‘How long,' thought he, ‘shall I breathe this air?' He must try to understand how the air entered his lungs: man is blown out like a ball. He frowned, and stared steadily before him as he tried to imagine what it would be like when a man could no longer blow out this ball. After about twenty minutes he turned to Hermann Sacht, who, so as not to disturb his prisoner, was walking quietly up and down in the opposite direction; but his cloak was much thinner, he was pitiably cold, and he was burdened with a rifle weighing nine pounds, not to speak of a supply of cartridges.

‘Shall we go in?'

It was not really a question, but a kind of friendly command. Grischa was changed, though he had not noticed it. In a tone of voice that he had not used since his escape, and with the quiet assurance of a seasoned soldier, he had suggested what he knew was best for him.

Hermann Sacht looked at him doubtfully. ‘This sort of breeze takes a bit of getting used to; and you've got the right to a full hour, Russky.'

Grischa nodded. ‘I know,' he said, ‘but we'd better go in all the same.'

‘If you weren't a decent sort,' said Hermann Sacht, with a sigh of relief, as they hurried back to the building, keeping close to the wall and carefully avoiding the storm-swept yard, ‘you might have kept me hopping about here for a good forty minutes, though I want to pack up a parcel and write a letter with it. But you are a decent sort,'he reflected, as his eyes wandered over his prisoner, apparently seeking some solution; ‘a really decent sort, and yet everything goes wrong with you.'

‘Oh, what does it matter whether I'm a decent sort or not,' said Grischa, in a voice that showed his complete indifference to such distinctions. ‘When did the sentence or the order come through?'

‘Sentence?'said Hermann Sacht, as they walked through the covered passage which connected the main building and the second yard, or drill-ground, with the guardroom. ‘You've made a mistake. It hasn't come through, nor yet an order. Nothing has happened at all.'

‘Then how do you know that they are going to…'

‘Oh come, old boy,' said Hermann Sacht, meaningly, ‘it's pretty clear, isn't it? They've had their knife into you for a long time, and have made up their minds to carry the sentence out, and as soon as the General has turned his back, they lock you up. That's as plain as your face. If the Divisional Office ask for you this morning the people here will say you're ill, or they'll have the cheek to say straight out: “Nothing doing.” Meanwhile they'll telephone to Schieffenzahn. “Lychow's away,” they'll say, “shall we do it now?” What more do they want? I may be wrong, but we're both old soldiers; we've been a long time in this line of business. And, O Lord—' he suddenly stopped. ‘Here's the War going on for another winter.'

These last words were uttered in so hopeless a tone, that Grischa realized that here was a man who envied him – who would certainly sooner live than die, but if he had to die, would rather be killed now than next spring.

‘True, comrade,' he said, ‘the grave is dark but at least it's quiet,' and a wan smile flickered round the corners of their dark unshaven lips and their despairing eyes.

Arnold Zweig
was born in Glogau, Silesia (now Glogow, Poland) in 1887, the son of a Jewish saddler. At the outbreak of the war, he enlisted in the German Army. He was first sent to the Western Front (he fought at Verdun) and then served at the Army Headquarters on the Eastern Front, where he came into contact with the Jews of eastern Europe. In 1920, he published
The Face of East European Jewry
, written in an attempt to convince German Jews to empathize with their eastern European brethren. A committed Socialist Zionist, Zweig went in 1923 to Berlin to edit the
Judische Rundschau
newspaper. He began Freudian therapy and started a revealing correspondence with Freud: in a letter he told Freud: ‘I personally owe to your psychological therapy the restoration of my whole personality.' In 1927, Zweig published
The Case of Sergeant Grischa
, now a classic of war literature. Based on an actual case, it is the story of the mistaken identity of a Russian sergeant who is caught, tried and executed as a deserter from the German Army. A powerful satire on bureaucracy, the book is unusual in its sympathetic portrayal of the relationship between guards and prisoners. Witnessing in 1933 the burning of his books by the Nazis, Zweig remarked that the crowd ‘would have stared as happily into the flames if live humans were burning'. A year later, he went into voluntary exile; first in Czechoslovakia, later in Palestine, where he became disillusioned with Zionism. In 1948, he returned to the GDR. Zweig died in East Berlin in 1968.

EDLEF KÖPPEN

CAVALRY CHARGE

from
Military Communiqué

translated by Martin Chalmers

C
URTAIN UP!

Curtain up, Fricke turns away from the binocular periscope, his hand grabs Reisiger's collar: ‘Cavalry!'

Cavalry. The enemy is attacking with cavalry. Cavalry appears out of the hollow. Grey, gleaming bubbles approach: Steel helmets, a line, from Loos to the slagheap. There approach horses' heads, a nodding line, brown and black and white, from Loos to the slagheap. It comes brown and black and white, closely crowded bulk, squeezed forward without a gap from Loos to the slagheap.

It grows out of the hollow, pushed up, hastening, cavalry bounding up in unbroken rank! Up, and in full view now. And stands, pausing incomprehensibly slowly between hail and rain and thunder of the German infantry, of the German batteries.

Fricke at the binoculars: ‘There's a second line coming!' Before the naked eye the same again. Out of the hollow, behind the slow mass of pushing horse bodies, once again horses and riders. From Loos to the slagheap. ‘Lieutenant!'Aufricht has put down the telephone, is staring beside Reisiger.

Fricke: ‘Let them, let them, they have to come closer.'

He says it hoarsely, strangely, bawling. – ‘They have to come closer.' Reisiger's knees are shaking: ‘There!'

As yet no artillery round falls in the waiting, the rising phalanx of horsemen.

And Reisiger, his arm suddenly under the lieutenant's arm: ‘They're charging!'

They're charging. The first wave briefly rises. Sinks back. Rises. Down. Up, down, up, down, up. Trotting. Behind it the second rank, up, down, up, trotting, two ranks simultaneously, close together, trotting. And trotting. And, at one bound, the whole front jumps forward, horses' legs lengthening their stride, hooves stretching into the air, and up and stretched, and down and gallop, and their stomachs on the ground, heads forward, full gallop! Nearer, two rows, towards the trenches. And the riders, lances still at shoulder-height, and now couched, nearer, full gallop.

There an animal falls, there one goes down on its front legs, there one rears up, there a rider rolls off, there one is dragged along by the stirrup.

Full gallop forward.

There a gap tears open, four horses wide, in the first rank. There six, eight, nine topple sideward and twitch in a struggling heap. Unchecked, irreversible, unstoppable living force, gallop. Closer, nearer, closer. Over the top of the English infantry positions, further, closer, nearer. – The three observing from the chimney panting. Their eyes back and forward, first rank, second rank, back and forward, riders, horses, first rank, second rank nearer, nearer, gallop.

And—

Open fire between the lines!

How many telephones buzz at this moment?

How many voices shout: ‘Cavalry between the trenches'?

How many commands, hard, metallic in tone, call a halt, reduce range, bring the barrage back just in front of the German positions as a curtain of leaping flames.

‘Cavalry between the trenches!' Each leap means coming closer by three yards. Closer, gallop—

And that's where it comes to a stop.

The Germans forget everything, out of holes and trenches, up out of cover, standing and firing, gaze burning in horses' eyes, in horsemen's eyes, blood-red flickering pupils looking straight at them. In their sights – Fire! Light machine-guns, heavy machine-guns, Fire! Field artillery, Fire!

And all of it biting greedily, biting into the dully groaning thick mass of the thundering cavalry charge.

The three on the factory chimney, command gasped out, hoarsely passed on, and now hanging over the edge.

This drama on the most tremendous scale! The first rank, the second rank, no longer separate now, embroiled, already in trouble, already only one rank, already too close to the intended movement. And there's a sawing and stamping and crushing and wallowing and biting in.

Machine-guns in among the kicking horses' legs, the jagged stumps scuff over the ground, shrapnel bursts at their chests, shells below their stomachs, bundled sulphur-yellow tongues of flame, columns of brown smoke, jets of blood and entrails as thick as an arm, limbs and rumps of animals and men hurled up. All that as far as the massif stretches, from Loos to the slagheap.

The whole now collapses into squares, gaps between them. The squares now ponderously pressing forward, break, pile up in a mass, detach themselves, so that everywhere something jumps up, up, sinks down, thrashes about, lies. All that: crushed horses, crushed riders from Loos to the slagheap.

And still no end. One group tries to turn the horses' heads around, away, back! And there something dashes away. And there something crawls with fluttering movements.

Fricke, shrilly: ‘There, Reisiger – they want to break away, there—' And even more shrilly: ‘Battery rapid fire, a hundred yards forward!' How many commands have raced down the telephone lines? Rapid fire! Let no one get away!

Rapid fire. How can even one rider escape?

Madness is quick, the final fear, the most terrifying terror. Not one horse turns. Even the dead still presses only forward.

All the batteries and every rifle remain right in front of their noses. Hundreds crash down again and again, hundreds try to scramble up again and again. All batteries, all rifles against it.

Even the dead is torn to pieces again and again, again and again.

Hands are raised out of the tenacious, blood-streaming rampart; faces, unrecognisable, rise, gestures flutter.

Standing, in the open, the German infantry brings to bear its coups de grâce. Until everything suffocates inertly in the bloody pulp.

And the English infantry behind that, in their trench, separated from the Germans only by this steaming rampart? Have they had to look on, destruction of their people, death of their brothers down to the last man? Have they fled?

The three on the chimney, greedy for more hits: ‘Where is the English infantry?'

The telephone buzzes. Aufricht picks up. ‘Our infantry will mount an attack on the lost positions in four minutes. All batteries heavy barrage.'

Fricke, calmly: ‘Increase the range, old target!'

How many wires give the same order at the same moment? – All the artillery of the section puts down a heavy barrage on the English infantry.

Fricke: ‘How many minutes left?'

Aufricht: ‘The attack begins in one minute.'

The English trenches are ploughed by the annihilatory barrage. And now the German infantry jumps up, forward, certain, wades through the bloody swamp, up to their waists in slippery corpses.

Is the enemy firing?

Some raise their rifles to their cheek, no more than one every ten yards, and are cut to pieces by shells. No machine-guns, artillery quite tentative, only shrapnel and the rounds much too high to hold the attacker.

And the Germans, as their artillery, precise to the second, lifts the curtain of fire, safely down into the trenches, into the old position.

Whatever raises its arms is cut down with the bayonet. With hand grenades whatever tries to come up the steps of the dugouts in surprise. ‘The operation,' say the telephone lines in the Loos–slagheap section, ‘has been carried out in accordance with orders.' The three on the chimney are relieved around midday. The firing position and the streets of Lens are quiet.