Читать книгу World War 2 Thriller Collection: Winter, The Eagle Has Flown, South by Java Head - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 26

Paul Winter had been called ‘little Pauli’ for so much of his life that, now seventeen-years old, he still thought of himself in that way. He had the cherubic face that made some lucky men youthful and attractive all their lives. Some of the others called him ‘Lucky’. So what rotten luck that a member of the Prussian Officer Corps on active service on the Western Front should be attached to this wretched Royal Bavarian infantry regiment. What was ‘little Pauli’ doing sitting in this deep dugout on the Western Front, listening to the muffled thumps of enemy shells exploding? The morning bombardment had started with the adjoining sector, but now they were landing closer and closer. He tried to push the fears out of his mind and concentrate upon writing a letter to his parents. The dugout was dark; he had only the light of one flickering candle. He used a penknife to sharpen the stub of his indelible pencil, and he gave a deep sigh.

But this introspection didn’t mean that he felt in any way sorry for himself. The last remnants of self-pity had been eliminated during his years at the cadet school. Pauli accepted life day by day as it came but that didn’t mean that he never asked himself why his life had for so long consisted of spartan food, strict discipline, and so little rest. A regime to which had lately been added gluey mud, mortal danger, and long periods of boredom. Pauli was at heart an easy-going, pleasure-loving fellow who wanted only to live and let live.

My dearest parents,

Thank you for the parcel. It arrived safely. It was so kind of Cook to knit the socks for me, but they are very big – two sizes too big. No matter, one of the other men will benefit. I shared the tin of meat with only my friend Alex but we had a little party to eat all the other food. You must not worry about me. I am many miles away from where the real fighting is taking place. Most of the time I am in Headquarters and cannot even hear the artillery fire

He stopped writing. Perhaps that was going too far. Even back in Brussels they could hear the artillery fire, and his parents might well know that. He added:

except when the wind blows from the west. Peter is coming to see me today. I will have lunch with him at Headquarters.

He wondered what to say next. Several times reduced almost to despair by the cold, filth, mud and cruel loss of friends, he’d attempted to write a letter that truthfully described what it was like here. But each time he’d abandoned the effort and scribbled the same sort of reassuring banalities that everyone else sent home to keep the family ignorant and happy. So he wrote:

The weather here is good for this time of year and the war is going well for us. I must end this letter now. It is very early in the morning and I have a lot to do.

I will write again – a longer letter – after Peter’s visit,

Your loving son,

Carefully he signed it and read it again before he put it into an envelope. He was always promising ‘a longer letter’ but he never wrote longer letters, just short thank-you notes. Though he wrote wonderful letters in his mind, he never got them on paper. He felt constantly guilty about neglecting his parents. He knew how much they liked to hear from him and how much they worried all the time. Did all sons feel such guilt about their relationship with their parents? Most specifically, did his brother, Peter, feel guilty about his relationship with them? He knew the answer to that even before asking the question. Peter didn’t neglect them. He wrote a long informative letter to them every week. Pauli had seen the letters piled up high on his father’s desk. They read them again and again. And yet he knew that they didn’t worry about Peter as they did about him, especially since Peter was taken off flying duties after the crash. Since Christmas 1916 Peter had been assigned to liaison duties in Brussels, and his life was no more dangerous than it would be at home in Berlin. Here on the front line, life was more hazardous; the regiment had lost fourteen officers in five weeks, five dead and nine wounded. From his pocket he took the postcard that Peter had sent arranging their meeting. For the thousandth time he made sure he had the date, time, and place right. He put the postcard away again with other cards from Peter that made a bundle so thick he couldn’t button his breast pocket over them. Ever since cadet school, Peter had sent postcards regularly: every two weeks, never more than three. Sometimes it was no more than a sentence – a joke, a greeting, a memory from the past, one of their nanny’s oft-repeated Scottish aphorisms. How did Peter know how important the cards were to him? Pauli never told him and never even responded to them. Peter, Peter, Peter. How he missed him.

‘Runner!’ The command was that of a Prussian officer. Pauli was always a little surprised to hear the voice coming from himself.

‘Herr Leutnant?’ The man almost fell down the steps and into the dugout. He was typical of the farm boys that made up most of the regiment. The rest of them were older men with families or physical disabilities that had kept them out of the war until last year, when the casualties meant that more and more men were needed. They were only half trained. The regiment should not be holding a section of the line: it should be at a training camp, where these fellows could learn to march and shoot. On the ranges, half of them couldn’t even hit the target, let alone score. The machine-gun teams were pitifully slow at stripping the guns or even at clearing them when they jammed. If the British infantry decided to attack on this sector, they would be able to walk through. Or at least that’s the way it appeared to those who hadn’t seen the state of the British soldiers facing them. But Pauli had spoken with enough British prisoners to know that the winter of endless rain, and the waterlogged trenches, had brought enemy morale down to a point where some Tommies were thankful for the prospect of a dry POW camp away from the fighting.

The theory held by the generals at Imperial Army HQ was that a few experienced NCOs and some trained Prussian officers for each company would work a miraculous transformation in this fighting force, but of course it wouldn’t. The ‘trained Prussian officers’ were no better than boys from cadet schools, some with less training than Pauli. And as for the experienced NCOs, they were too damned experienced. They were disillusioned veterans, many of them only recently discharged from hospital, men who had hoped to spend the rest of the war in safe jobs with training units. Now they were back in the front line, but instead of being with their comrades, they were wet-nursing this raggle-taggle bunch of stupid peasants, some of them not even Bavarians, kids with incomprehensible Austrian accents or unpronounceable Hungarian names. No wonder there were mutterings of discontent, Marxist leaflets, and every now and again, a wound that looked suspiciously like something that might have been self-inflicted.

He put the letter into an oilskin pouch to protect it from the mud, the rain and the runner’s filthy hands. ‘Take this letter to regimental Headquarters and tell the clerk to put it with the officers’ mail so that it goes off this morning. Do you understand?’ There was a crash that made the candle flicker and some dried pieces of mud fell from the lintels overhead. ‘That’s not very close: the other side of the railway lines … even farther, perhaps.’ It was an automatic reaction, done always to reassure whoever was nearby. Pauli buttoned his precious stub of indelible pencil into his jacket.

‘Yes, Herr Leutnant.’ The boy didn’t believe it, of course; the runners got about and knew what was happening. The British artillery were softening up the communications trenches so that no reserves would get here when they attacked. Rumours said that it would come in two or three days’ time. Lots of British patrolling lately – that was usually a sign of an impending attack. Pauli knew all about it because he was the only officer in the regiment who spoke fluent English. He was called upon to interrogate the prisoners or sort through the personal effects of the British dead before the things were sent back to the intelligence officers. Two days, three at the most. A sergeant from the South Wales Borderers had virtually admitted it to him.

The soldier took the oilskin packet and stumbled over his rifle butt, striking his helmet against the low doorway as he hurried up the steps and out along the trench. Pauli watched him without comment: Pauli, too, was inherently clumsy. He, too, stumbled up the steps more times than not. Why were some people like that, no matter how hard they tried. Pauli would have loved to be adroit and elegant, but he couldn’t even dance without stepping upon his partner’s feet.

As the antigas flap on the door swung back, a heavy smell of fresh cordite and the stink of the latrine buckets came into the dugout. Oh well, it was a change from the steady smell of unwashed bodies and putrefaction that was the normal atmosphere down here.

‘What’s the time?’ From one of the wooden bunks built into the far wall a figure swung his legs to the floor and then slowly emerged from the blanket that cocooned him. Alex Horner – Pauli’s close friend at the cadet school – had found himself attached to the same regiment. Both boys had hoped to be assigned to one of the better Prussian units – cavalry, guards, or dragoons – instead of this collection of conscripts. But they were together, and that was the one consolation in the whole miserable, tormented existence they led.

‘Next time I’m in Wertheims department store, I’ll get you a watch with an illuminated face,’ said Pauli sarcastically.

‘Well, that might be a long time,’ said Alex. He rubbed his chin to decide whether he needed a shave badly enough for the company commander to admonish him. He decided to risk it: seventeen-year-old chins did not show much stubble per day. Leutnant Alex Horner was already acquiring the look of the Prussian officer. A duel at cadet school had left him with a sabre cut along his jaw, and the lice-infested conditions here on the front line required him to have his head almost shaved. But he was not yet the austere, unbending Prussian figure: he smiled too much, for one thing, and his nose was pert and upturned, the sort of nose more often to be seen on farmers’ daughters than on Prussian officers.

‘It’s three-thirty-two,’ said Pauli.

‘What a terrible time to be awake.’

‘Stand-to in fifteen minutes.’ At dawn the front-line trenches had to be manned, because it was the best time for the British to attack. But, since the trenches were full of infantry, it was also a good time for the British to strafe them with a barrage of mortar shells.

Alex Horner groped on the floor to find his cigarettes. Together with the matches, he found them in his steel helmet. Unlike most of the soldiers, Alex Horner couldn’t sleep with his helmet on his head. When he’d got his cigarette lit, he tied up the laces of his boots and buttoned up his woollen cardigan, his jacket, and the overcoat in which he’d been sleeping. He moved slowly, as a man does when drunk. Stress, lack of rest, and the stodgy food so lacking in protein made them all a bit robotic.

‘If only the army had not disbanded their airships…’ said Alex. He put some eau de cologne on a dirty handkerchief and wiped his face with it.

‘Well, they have,’ said Pauli, who’d heard Alex’s sad story a hundred or more times.

‘My application was completed and approved. The physical exam would have been no more than a formality. I’m a hundred per cent fit; you know that, Pauli.’

‘I know,’ said Pauli. He couldn’t be too rude to his friend; they both needed someone to complain to. In the absence of any other sympathetic friends they told each other the same stories over and over again.

‘I’d be flying by now.’

‘Perhaps you could transfer to the Naval Airship Division.’

‘They’d never allow that, you know they wouldn’t.’

‘I’ll talk to my brother when I see him. Perhaps he could arrange something for you.’

‘I even bought those books on engine repair and maintenance.’

‘Airships are dangerous. My brother, Peter, was shot down.’

‘You talk to him. Perhaps if I was prepared to go in as a midshipman…’ They both knew that there was no possible chance that he’d be permitted to transfer to the navy, but by common consent they talked of it often.

‘Have you got your pistol belt and the flashlight? It’s time to go, Alex.’

‘It’s the monotony that gets me down. We’ll stand to and freeze for an hour; then we’ll spend ages while the captain inspects every rifle barrel.’

‘Not this morning; this is Easter Saturday. Wake up, Alex! We’re assigned to check the sentries and then be at the old supply line when the wiring party returns.’

Alex nodded, but he didn’t abandon his moaning. ‘Then, when the breakfast is coming, the British will mortar the communication trenches and those fools will drop our breakfast into the mud, the way they did three times last week. On Monday I only got a bread roll and half a cup of coffee.’

‘Don’t you ever think of anything else but food and drink, Alex?’

‘What else is there?’ It was Alex’s ‘morning moan’. Pauli had got used to his friend’s bad moods, which came immediately after waking. In another hour he’d be his normal cheery self again. Until then he needed to moan. ‘I suppose the planes will come over any time now.’

‘It’s too early. The attacks last week were planes coming back from patrol. The English patrol planes go out at dawn and come back about half an hour later. Perhaps the English pilots will stay in bed for Easter.’

‘Where are our planes?’

‘The British believe they must enter our airspace every morning. They say it keeps up their fighting spirit. They send the infantry patrols over to our trenches for the same reason. They are frightened that their soldiers will lose their appetite for the war unless they are sent often to fight us.’

‘Is that what you find out when you speak with the prisoners?’

‘They make no secret of it.’

‘Is Leutnant Brand on duty this morning?’ Alex asked, making the inquiry sound as casual as possible, and yet the imminent encounter with the dreaded Leutnant Brand was uppermost in the thoughts of both young men.

‘Yes, he’s duty officer.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Alex rubbed his beard again and regretted not shaving, for Leutnant Heinrich Brand was a tyrant, a cruel man who lost no opportunity to make the lives of his junior officers a misery. Brand was thirty-two years old, the son of a baker in a village near the Austrian border. He’d entered the Bavarian cavalry as a boy and risen to the rank of Feldwebel by 1914. It was a rank beyond which he would never have been promoted except for the coming of the war. By the end of December 1914 he was a senior NCO in the regimental training camp. But it was on the Eastern Front, in the fighting of early 1915, that he saved the life of his commanding officer. Attacking Cossacks cut his cavalry regiment to pieces as they retreated through woodland that became marsh and then an open piece of ground that gave the Russian cavalry a chance to demonstrate their superior skill and reckless courage. Brand got the Iron Cross and a commission for that day’s hard fighting. But the same officers who applauded Brand’s bravery did not want to share their mess with this coarse-accented villager, and Brand soon found himself amongst strangers. And this time he was not even in the cavalry.

It was dark and cold, and there was rain in the air. The wind was singing in the massed barbed wire that filled no-man’s-land. As Pauli and Alex plodded their way along the duckboards which made a slatted floor for the deep trench, both were thinking of Brand. The Leutnant saved his particular hatred for these two products of the Prussian army’s most exclusive officer-cadet school. Brand envied them. He would have given almost anything to have the panache, the style and the background – to say nothing of the proper Berlin accent – of the two youngsters.

‘I hate him,’ said Alex Horner as they negotiated the zigzag trenchline, the skirts of their greatcoats heavy with accumulated mud. The sky was clear with a thousand stars and a moon that was almost full and very yellow. The night was bitterly cold. Underfoot the duckboards had frozen hard into the mud, so that they didn’t sink under the boys’ weight the way they usually did in the daytime.

‘Not so loud,’ said Pauli. ‘Voices carry in the middle of the night like this. Last night I could hear the stretcherbearers taking the casualties back to the medical post near Regimental HQ, and that’s a long way away, isn’t it?’

‘What about that Englishman in no-man’s-land last week? Did you hear him sobbing?’

‘I heard him cursing,’ said Pauli. They were both speaking in whispers now as they plodded along the trench.

‘That was later,’ said Alex. ‘That was at the end.’

‘Imagine being out there with a leg shot off. Do you ever think about that, Pauli?’

‘No, I never think about it,’ said Pauli. In fact, like all the rest of them, he found that such ideas haunted his thoughts and gave him nightmares. The shouting and weeping of the mortally wounded Englishman had affected all who heard him. Even Leutnant Brand was heard to curse the dying man.

They reached the first sentry. He was standing on the fire step looking over the parapet. Even the farm boys could look heroic in such a pose, cloaked in a muddy blanket and as still as a statue. ‘Any sign of the wiring party?’ Pauli asked.

‘No, Herr Leutnant,’ the sentry answered without turning his head. Sentries soon learned how dangerous it was to make any sort of movement that might be seen by the British snipers. Twice in the last week snipers had killed sentries. Both times the casualties had been men wearing glasses. It was assumed that the moonlight – or in one case a flare – had glinted on the glass. One of the officers had suggested that men with eyeglasses be excused sentry duty, but in a second-rate unit like this, with so many men from lower medical categories, it would have been an unfair burden on the rest of them.

‘No movement anywhere, Herr Leutnant,’ said the sentry.

It was the same at the next sentry, and the next. But this didn’t mean that there was no one out there in the twisted, tangled chaos of no-man’s-land. The British patrols could move silently and swiftly. They used trench knives and clubs. More than once in the last month a British raiding party had come right over into the German front-line trenches and got out again before the alarm could be sounded. They were trying to get an officer prisoner: that was usually the reason for such raids: an officer prisoner and secret papers that might help their intelligence find the place where the German armies joined, for such a place was an ideal one to attack when the big offensive came.

‘Leutnant Brand should never have sent out a wiring party on a night like this,’ said Pauli. ‘It’s too light.’

‘The wire was broken.’

‘The wire is always broken. It’s murder to send men out to mend it on a night like this.’

They turned the corner and started down the ‘old supply line’. These trenches, captured from the British, were poorly made by German standards. The British infantry always improvised them, with only shallow dugout shelters roofed with corrugated iron sheets and none of the deep dugouts that were standard design when the German engineers constructed their front-line positions. No one liked this section of the front line. Apart from the inferior workmanship, the trench system was all the wrong way round: the old fire steps faced east and there were ‘saps’, bombing sections and machine-gun positions all on the wrong side, so that they were vulnerable to enemy gunfire. Worst of all was the smell. This section of the line was littered with ancient corpses that were integrated into the earthworks.

The much-feared Leutnant Brand was standing on the fire step in order to look across the endless shiny mud of no-man’s-land. He wasn’t using a periscope or the pierced steel that offered some protection. He liked to show how fearless he was: he liked to be thought of as brave to the point of madness. ‘Crazy Heini’, the men called him, and he was proud of that nickname – although he would have severely punished anyone heard using it.

He got down from the fire step. ‘Horner! Winter! You’re both late, you’ll go on report.’ They weren’t late of course – they were three minutes early – but there would be nothing gained from arguing with him. The major would, in any case, believe what Brand told him, or at least the major would pretend to believe it. The major was worn out; he did whatever was easiest, and arguing with Brand was heavy going. Brand knew the regulations word for word – he’d learned them when he was a junior NCO – and now the major had long since learned that he was no match for Brand’s sort of ‘lawyer’s talk’.

‘Young officers should be setting an example to the men,’ said Brand. He always said that, but each time he said it as if it was a new, fresh and original observation that should be carefully noted. ‘Horner! You haven’t shaved. You people think that you are a law unto yourselves. You think a Bavarian regiment isn’t good enough for you Prussians. Well, I’ll have to persuade you it is. And if punishment is the only way, then punishment it shall be!’ Brand did everything he could to speak like a gentleman, but when he got excited his Bavarian accent thickened.

Pauli looked at him. When he’d first heard about this Bavarian sergeant major who’d become an officer on the battlefield, he’d expected to see some red-faced, beer-bellied old fellow with a big nose and a huge moustache. But Brand was younger than the other company commanders, slim-hipped and rather handsome. His nose was thin and bony and his forehead high, with trimmed eyebrows and quick, crazy eyes. His eyes moved all the time, as if he was constantly expecting to be assaulted. When he took off his helmet, as he did when looking through the trench periscope, one could see that his hair was not cropped close to the skull in the way that he insisted all the others under his command had their hair cut. Brand’s hair was of medium length and wavy. Somehow, even here in the front line trenches, he always managed to find ways of keeping clean. He wore a long waterproof coat that he’d got from a British-officer prisoner – ‘trenchcoats’, the British called them – and under it his uniform, complete with Iron Cross medal on his pocket, was relatively clean and dry. In his hand Brand carried a riding crop with which he liked to point at people or things, prod soldiers who needed prodding, or simply slap his thigh reflectively. He slapped his thigh with it now.

‘You’re both going to work hard today, my friends. Winter will go back to the village and bring a burial party up to number-three post. It’s time we got rid of those bodies: it stinks down there.’ Slap, slap, went the riding crop against the skirt of the trenchcoat. He turned to Alex and nodded. ‘Horner! The major wants someone to supervise the detail rebuilding the long dugout. It should have been finished two days ago. Hurry them up. I’ll be along later to see what’s happening.’

Pauli said, ‘I’m going back to Divisional Headquarters today, Herr Leutnant. My brother is coming. The major gave permission.’

‘You’ll do as you’re told, Winter. I want those bodies buried tout de suite.’ Leutnant Brand liked to use French phrases; the officers in his cavalry regiment had all done so.

‘My brother is coming from Brussels. The major asked the colonel: it’s all official.’

‘The war is official, too,’ said Brand. He was enjoying himself now. He looked at both of them and gave a grim smile, as if inviting them to join in the fun. Then he slapped the skirt of his trenchcoat with the riding crop. ‘Family reunions take place with the commanding officer’s permission, but even then they are subject to the needs of the military situation. I don’t know if your brother is a slack, good-for-nothing nincompoop like you, Winter. He probably is. But unless he is a complete idiot he’ll know that the army comes first. Right, Winter? Understand now, Winter?’

Leutnant Brand was unusually agitated that morning and the reason for this became clear when the Vizefeldwebel came to report that the wiring party had still not returned. Brand went back to surveying no-man’s-land, but this time he used the trench periscope. The sky had gone blood-red and it was getting lighter every minute. If the wiring party – twelve men – were still alive somewhere out in the mud, their chances of surviving through the day were slight. The British would shoot up anything unusual out there; it was the standard practice for both sides. Anything that might be some new sort of weaponry was to be feared, ever since the tanks had appeared last year. And today the weather forecast said the wind was from the west, a light breeze, which would exactly suit the British if they decided on another gas attack. What would happen to the wiring party then? They had gone out wearing the bare minimum of equipment – some without helmets, even – and it was doubtful there would be one gas mask amongst the lot of them.

‘You two, get going!’ said Brand as he remembered that they were still waiting his orders. ‘And don’t let me see you slacking off. Remember what I said: you are going to set an example to the men.’

The Vizefeldwebel watched the exchange with a blank face, but Brand was not willing to let the old man stay out of it. As he watched the two officers hurrying back along the trench, he smiled to show that he was really a good fellow, an ex-Feldwebel who knew that young officers were lazy rogues. But the old man didn’t respond to the smile.

Once Pauli and Alex got back to where the communication trenches started, Pauli said, ‘I so wanted to see my brother. I miss him. It’s nearly a year and he’s come all the way from Brussels.’

‘Just go,’ advised Alex. He knew what the meeting meant to his friend: Pauli had been talking of little else for the last two weeks. ‘The burial party don’t need you to watch them work. They won’t slack on that detail: you can be sure of it. They’ll work to get that stinking job done as quickly as possible.’

‘They’ll need an officer to collect the identity discs from the bodies,’ said Pauli doubtfully.

‘Rubbish!’ said Alex. ‘The NCO will do that. It’s Winkel, a good fellow.’

‘Brand will find out.’

‘How will he find out? Will you tell him? Will I tell him? Winkel won’t make trouble.’

‘He’ll go and check on the burial.’

‘Not Brand. He won’t go near number three until they are all buried. Brand doesn’t like that sort of job. That’s why he always gives them to us to do: it’s the worst thing he can think of to do to us.’

‘I promised Peter….’

‘Go! Go! I told you, go.’

‘I’ll go as far as the village and talk to the NCO in charge of the burial party.’

‘I told you, Winkel is in charge. What are you going to say to him? That you’re frightened of Brand but you are going to disobey him anyway?’

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘Tell no one. Get the ration truck from the village and go to HQ. Is that where you’re meeting your brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, get going. It’s a long walk. I’ll cover for you. I’ll have plenty of opportunities to get away from the party rebuilding the long dugout. It will take them ages yet. You know the way it’s flooding. Only an idiot like Brand would make them persevere with that job.’ He slapped his friend on the arm.

‘Thanks,’ said Pauli. His fears and doubts began to fade as he hurried back along the trench towards Divisional HQ. He decided to consult his brother about dealing with Leutnant Brand. Peter would know how to handle him; Peter knew everything. The more he thought about it the happier he was. The prospect of seeing his brother again filled him with joy.

It was a long way to HQ. To start with, it was just over half a kilometre along communication trenches before the road was reached, but in the drizzling April rain it seemed much farther. At places the trench walls had collapsed and there was a constant movement of men coming the other way. Pauli had to ease his way past ration details and had to wait while reinforcements came through, so it was nearly an hour before the trenches gave way to a sunken road. The road – little more than a track in places – was unseen by even the best positioned of the British artillery observers, and safe from everything except the odd salvo of twenty-five-pounder fire that greeted any dust that was raised at the crossroads. And in this weather there was no dust.

At the crossroads were three military policemen. Two of them were squatting in a dugout shelter roofed with galvanized iron. All three were young, not much older than Pauli. Chains at their collars supported the small metal gorgets that were the badge of their trade and caused their fellow soldiers to call such unpopular men ‘chained dogs’. But theirs was an unenviable job. They were there not only to check the papers of any soldiers leaving the front-line area but also to keep the traffic moving through this place in which the British artillerymen were so interested. Such a task would produce more regular casualties than even the front-line infantry suffered. Pauli felt somewhat better to find that there were more dangerous jobs than his own.

Pauli asked one of the policemen the way. He knew the way, but he still felt nervous about deliberately disobeying Brand’s order, and talking to the military policeman was somehow reassuring. The policeman – a well-fed fellow with a pale, pocked face and a straggling moustache – welcomed a chance to talk. He was not insubordinate, nor was he properly deferential to the difference in rank. Pauli had found this same man to man attitude among some of the men in his regiment, often the older men with families. It was usually the mark of a man who has resigned himself to the inevitability of death.

‘The general found a conspicuous landmark for himself,’ said the military policeman. There was a note of derision in his remark. Conspicuous landmarks were not eagerly sought after in this wartorn terrain. ‘A chateau with two pointed towers …I was on duty there until last month. You’ll see the ruins of a church as you get into the village. Then there’s the officers’ brothel – you’ll see the signs – and then look for the sentries on the right. But it’s a long way yet.’ He didn’t ask to see Pauli’s papers. Pauli wondered if an officer could be shot for such disobedience. With Brand quoting the appropriate rules and regulations, it seemed highly likely. He wished he hadn’t come, but it was too late now.

‘You’ll get a ride on the ration wagon,’ said the policeman. ‘It will be coming back this way. Wait in the shelter, if you want to.’

‘I’ll keep going,’ said Pauli. The other two policemen might not be so negligent about his written orders, or rather, his lack of any.

‘I’m not even German,’ said the policeman. ‘I was born in Vienna.’ It was hardly necessary to say it: the man spoke with a strong nasal, Viennese accent.

‘So was I,’ said Pauli.

‘Really? I wish we were there now, don’t you?’

It was at this point that Pauli felt the policeman’s familiarity had become insubordinate, but even now he didn’t want to upset the fellow. ‘Soon we will be,’ said Pauli.

‘Yes, Herr Leutnant,’ said the policeman. Sensing the young officer’s resentment, he saluted. The rain made his helmet shiny and ran down his face like tears. Of course the man didn’t believe that Pauli had been born in Vienna. Pauli had never had a Viennese accent – although he could mimic one with commendable accuracy. He’d grown up to know the voices of Berlin, and his voice, although not his manner, was that of the Officer Corps.

By the time he started walking again, it was raining heavily. He passed the bloated, rotting corpses of two huge horses. Alongside, a broken wheel stood like a grave marker. The stench was overpowering. Pauli buttoned his overcoat tight against his neck and took off his steel helmet to wipe the sweat from his head and face. To some extent he was sweating with the exertion of his walk, but he felt hot with fear, too.

Only a few hundred yards past the crossroads, he got a ride on the ration wagon that was going back to the depot empty. He sat up beside the driver – a taciturn man, thank goodness – and watched the rain-washed Zeeland horses plod along the ridged track. Their pace was little faster than he’d made on foot, but up here on the driver’s platform was better than picking his way between the submerged potholes and deep mud patches. The landscape was dull, misty and monochrome. There was little movement except for military traffic on the road and a few peasants who, despite everything, clung desperately to their patches of soil.

It was nearly 9:00 a.m. by the time he reached Divisional HQ, situated – as the policeman had promised – in a grand house. There was a large paddock and a dozen magnificent cavalry horses grazing there. They looked at Pauli as he walked past, then went back to their fodder. Clerks were bivouacked in the orchard, and there was a soup kitchen sited in what must once have been a herb garden. Pauli didn’t want to go to the officers’ canteen in case he saw someone from his regiment, so he asked the Feldwebel for something to eat and got a metal cup of hot dried-pea soup with two miserable bits of sausage floating in it. Both soup and sausage were bland and almost tasteless, but it warmed him.

In the grand, marble-paved entrance hall an NCO wearing the smart uniform of a Bavarian rifle regiment was seated at a table. Around him was a constant traffic of messengers, while noisy young staff officers were grouped at the foot of the great staircase. Their voices were not of the sort that Pauli had heard on the parade ground at Lichterfelde; they were the shrill, excited voices of wealthy young aristocrats. The NCO stared at Pauli. Men straight from the battlefield were seldom seen this far behind the lines, and the NCO clerk – who’d not been to the trenches – had never before seen an officer so dirty.

After his inquiries Pauli went up the magnificent staircase and found Peter in an upstairs room talking to an elegant-looking captain. The captain was about forty years old and wore the badges of a heavy cavalry regiment. His striped armband marked him as a staff officer from Corps HQ. Peter and the captain were laughing together as Pauli went into the office and saluted.

Peter! This was the moment he’d risked so much for. This was the meeting he’d waited for so impatiently. Peter! He wanted to throw his arms around his beloved brother and hug him, but that wasn’t something he could do in the presence of a stranger. So he stood anxiously smiling at Peter.

‘So this is the brother?’ said the captain, and both men laughed again. Pauli envied the way his elder brother could make friends so easily. Peter was able to bridge the gap that rank and age created. Peter could even laugh and joke with his father, whereas Pauli was always treated like a baby, both by family and by strangers. Whenever Pauli got away with some misdeed or other, it was always by means of his charm, but Peter talked to other men as an equal, and that was what Pauli so admired. This relaxed and sophisticated elder brother of his would never have endured the bullying of Leutnant Brand; he would have found some way of dealing with him. But God only knows how.

Peter stood up and clasped Pauli’s offered hand. ‘Pauli,’ he said, ‘Pauli.’

Without taking his eyes from his brother for more than a moment, Pauli sat down on a hard wooden chair. It always seemed strange to sit on a proper chair after a long spell in the trenches.

‘I’ll leave you together,’ said the staff officer. ‘There’s not much doing over the Easter weekend. Most of the staff are probably in Brussels on leave.’

The friendly staff officer gave Peter and Pauli the use of the little office room and even sent a soldier to serve them coffee and schnapps.

‘You’re in a terrible state,’ said Peter when they were alone together. He was staring at his younger brother’s dark-ringed eyes and shaved head and at his rain-drenched greatcoat and mud-caked boots. As Pauli loosened his collar, he caught sight of a dirty undervest, too. ‘Haven’t you had time to change into a clean uniform?’ It was the voice of the grown-up brother admonishing the baby about his gravy-stained bib, but Pauli didn’t allow the condescension to spoil things.

For a moment Pauli didn’t reply. He knew, of course, that the civilians didn’t realize that the front line was no more than a filthy ditch from which the sound of bronchial coughing could be heard across no-man’s-land, and where pneumonia was as deadly as enemy bullets and shells. But that his brother should think it was someplace where clean uniforms and pressed linen were available shocked him. ‘There was no time,’ said Pauli. He wished he could take Peter to the trenches and show him what it was like. He’d never understand otherwise. No one could visualize it. It was useless to explain.

‘It’s an officer’s first task to set an example,’ said Peter primly. ‘Surely they taught you that at cadet school.’ Oh, God, how like Leutnant Brand he sounded, thought Pauli. But Peter smiled suddenly and the mood changed. ‘You’ve grown so big, Pauli. So big across the shoulders…’ Was that Peter’s polite way of saying that Pauli had not grown much taller? Pauli had always wanted to be as tall as his brother, ever since he could remember, but now he knew he would never be tall, slim, and elegant: he’d always be short, thickset, broad, and clumsy.

‘You’re promoted,’ said Pauli. Perhaps his elder brother’s shiny new gold ring on that so very clean, neatly pressed naval uniform had gone to his head.

‘Oberleutnants are little more than office boys in Brussels, where I work,’ said Peter. But, in a gesture that belied his modesty, he brushed his sleeve self-consciously as he spoke.

‘You’re looking well, Peter.’ He made no mention of his elder brother’s mutilated hand and tried not to look at it. Peter’s injury frightened him in some way that the firing line did not. Peter was family: an injury to him injured Pauli.

‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be back on flying duties. As an Oberleutnant with my experience, I’d probably get command of one of the new high altitude zeppelins. I even tried for the High Seas Fleet. But the damned medical board won’t clear me. Sometimes I wonder whether Father hasn’t found some way of keeping me from active duty.’

‘There’s no doubt he’d try if he got the chance,’ said Pauli. They both knew that their father would have done anything to keep Pauli from the Western Front, and for Pauli his efforts had obviously failed.

‘Now that the army have stopped using airships, Father probably has less influence with them. But the navy still listen to him.’

‘When did you last see him?’ asked Pauli. He scratched himself. Fleas were a fact of life in the trenches – and lice, too – but Pauli noticed his brother’s look of horror as he realized he was lousy.

‘Christmas. I got seven days’ leave. Everyone hoped that you’d come home too.’

‘Training. I got a twenty-four-hour pass for Christmas. No one was permitted to leave the barracks. Even the colonel stayed.’

‘The infantry are winning the war,’ said Peter.

‘We’re not winning the war,’ said Pauli. ‘We’re being shot at, and we’re shooting back. We are not winning the war. We will win it, of course – no one doubts that – but for the time being it’s a sort of stalemate. Neither side advances more than a few metres, and the English leave battalions of dead on the barbed wire.’

‘At least the Russians are kaputt,’ said Peter.

‘We don’t get much news where we are.’

‘It started in March; there were food riots in Petrograd, and when the troops were called out they shot their officers and joined the mob.’

‘My God!’

‘You didn’t hear?’

‘Only that the Tsar abdicated and a provisional government was formed. The troops joined in? It’s true?’

‘Including the Imperial Guard. Some say it started in the Imperial Guard but even in Brussels it’s difficult to get reliable news. Each newspaper story contradicts the one before. A fellow I know on the Supreme Command at Spa told me the little I know.’

‘What will happen now?’

‘The Russians can’t go on fighting much longer. In Berlin there are rumours that the Kaiser has arranged for Marxist revolutionaries to be given safe passage across Germany to return home to Russia.’

‘The Kaiser would allow such a thing? Never!’

‘The revolutionaries have always been opposed to the war – the world brotherhood of man, and so on. So if they took power in Petrograd, they would immediately order a cease-fire. If we have no enemy to fight in the East, all our divisions would be turned to face the French and the British. The war could end within the month.’

‘It sounds too good to be true.’

Peter nodded his agreement and said, ‘What will you do when it ends, Pauli? Will you stay in the army?’

‘What else am I fit for? I have no head for banking or business and even if I did have, I’m not sure that I’d get along well enough with Father to be working alongside him every day. What about you?’

‘No more piano playing.’ He held up his gloved hand. ‘I’ll go to college. If Father wants me to study law, I’ll do it. Then, if I don’t get along with him, I can go into a law practice somewhere.’

‘Tell me about dear Mama…. It’s such a long time.’

‘She still has the awful American accent, but her German is much better now. She found people would be rude to her, thinking she was British. It made her improve her German in a way that nothing else ever did.’

‘Rude to Mama? Who would be rude to her?’

‘People standing in the food lines.’

‘Mama standing in the food lines?’

‘Mother has changed, Pauli. Just as the Jews have become so determined to prove their patriotism, so Mama and other foreign-born Germans feel that they must outdo everyone else in the struggle to win the war. She helps the wounded soldiers to write letters home, she rolls bandages, and even makes speeches at War Loans rallies.’

‘But she was so sick.’

‘Then the war has cured her sickness. When you go back to Berlin, you will not recognize her, Pauli.’

‘And what of Father?’

‘Work, work, work. Did you hear that Hauser joined the army?’

‘Old Hauser? Father’s valet? But he must be at least forty years old.’

‘Thirty-eight years old. I’m surprised they took him, but he shaved off that awful beard and gave a false age to the recruiting officer. He’s now a driving instructor at a transport school in Frankfurt. And from what I hear from Father, he’s lording it with stories about how he used to drive Papa’s old Itala.’

‘How does Father manage without him?’

‘It’s amazing. Father drives himself almost everywhere.’

‘And women?’

His brother hesitated. It was a taboo subject, or had been until now. ‘He goes to Vienna a great deal,’ said Peter finally.

‘I thought that was finished.’

‘So did poor Mama, I think.’

‘I wish Father could see how ridiculous it makes him look,’ said Pauli. He loved his father and respected him to the point of reverence, but now he’d reached the age at which he judged him, too.

‘Does it make him look ridiculous? Most of his friends seem to admire and envy him. We are the only ones who think him ridiculous, and that’s just because we feel sorry for Mama.’

‘Perhaps she would have been happier with the Englishman.’

‘Which Englishman?’

‘Surely you guessed that the Englishman, Piper, wanted her to go away with him.’

‘Mama?’

‘Mama had a love affair with the Englishman. At Travemünde, when we lost the Valhalla.’

‘Are you crazy, Pauli?’

‘It took me a long time to understand what had happened between them. But now I look back at it, I can see how desperately unhappy she was for years afterwards.’

‘The Englishman? The spy?’

‘He was no spy. That was just Papa’s way of attacking him.’

‘Are you saying that Mama had a love affair with the Englishman and that Papa knew about it?’

‘I found his wristwatch under Mama’s bed….’ There, he’d said it. A thousand times it had been on the tip of Pauli’s tongue to reveal the secret, but now he’d said it. And now he regretted it.

Peter closed his eyes. ‘It’s incredible,’ he said at last.

‘Incredible or not, it’s true. I think Mama was afraid I would blurt out something that would betray her secret.’

‘But you never did?’

‘I didn’t understand the significance of finding the watch there until years later. But then, when Mama took the chloroform in the summer of 1914, and Frau Wisliceny came round to look after her…That night, when I went in to kiss Papa good night, I noticed that he was piecing together torn fragments of a letter. It must have been a letter to Mama from the Englishman.’

‘I wish you hadn’t told me,’ said Peter. ‘I feel besmirched by it.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ said Pauli. ‘Does Mama have no right to be with someone who loves her?’

‘She has Father.’

‘And Father has half a dozen other women. He has no real, deep love for Mama. Sometimes I think he might have married her only for the Rensselaer money.’

Peter was affronted. He could hardly believe that Pauli had changed so much. Pauli had always been in awe of father. ‘If you were not my brother I’d call you out for saying that.’

‘A duel?’ Pauli laughed. ‘You think I’d care about losing my life in a duel? Where I am, I see men maimed and dying every day. I stood next to a sentry last week while a shell splinter trepanned him. His brains spattered into my face. You complain about my dirty uniform. Do you know what the stains on my jacket are? Blood; the blood of boys who forget to lower their head at the right time, or make too much noise mending the wire at night. Would you like to know about the stains on my trousers, Peter? Faeces! I shit myself with fear every time I hear the whistle of a mortar bomb or shell, or hear at night the movement of a few rats, which might in reality be a British raiding party coming to bury a trench knife in my throat. It’s quick and quiet, the throat, you see. You learn how to cut a man’s throat while holding a hand very tightly over his mouth so that he doesn’t scream.’

‘You did this, Pauli?’ His elder brother’s eyes were wide and his face had gone pale. ‘Killed with a knife?’

‘Half a dozen times. I have a superior officer – a contemptible cad – who thinks young Lichterfelde graduates like me should be exposed to maximum danger. He tells us that. He also told me that I mustn’t come here today. I suppose that shocks you, too. I came here today – in this dirty uniform of which you so disapprove – having defied the lawful orders of a superior officer. And I shall do it again whenever it suits me.’

‘You are insane, Pauli.’

‘No, I’m not insane, but sometimes I think His Majesty must be insane to continue with this mad war.’

‘Pauli, you must see a doctor. You are insane.’ Peter looked round fearfully, astounded to hear such treasonable talk from his young brother.

‘Perhaps you’re right. Then come to the front line with me, Peter, and perhaps you’ll become insane, too. But I promise that you’ll lose all fears of death, disgrace or anything else that fate has waiting for us.’ Pauli reached forward to take the glass of schnapps that the captain had sent to them, and he downed it in one swallow.

When Peter spoke again, his voice was soft and low, his tone more conciliatory. ‘Whatever may be the truth of it, Pauli, I beg you, for your own sake and for that of the family, to leave such thoughts unspoken. It can be very dangerous. People might even think you are mixed up with these crackpot radical groups who are so outspoken against the war.’

‘After this war I want things to be different, very different, but I’m not a Spartacist, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I know you’re not. That man Liebknecht is a traitor and a swine. It’s a good thing he’s gone to prison. But now the Tsar’s been deposed, everyone who says anything against the war is lumped together with the revolutionaries. In the North Sea Fleet we have already had some serious insubordination, bordering on mutiny. The admiral jumped on it vigorously, I’m glad to say. I was sent to Wilhelmshaven with the legal team. Do you know who I saw there? Fritz Esser.’

‘Fritz? That rogue.’ Pauli laughed. ‘Was he the ringleader? With all his hero-worshipping talk about his precious Karl Liebknecht, I wonder how the navy ever accepted him.’

‘If he was the ringleader he was too cunning to be caught. He’s found himself some soft job in the supply branch and is already a petty officer.’

‘A petty officer. I thought he was illiterate.’

‘Esser? Of course not, Pauli. Can’t you remember all those books and pamphlets he’d read about the coming revolution?’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

‘You thought the world of him.’

‘We both did,’ said Pauli, ‘but we laughed at him too.’

‘I’m not laughing now, Pauli. Esser and his ilk are dangerous men. Make no mistake, Germany has many such uneducated, treacherous fools, who will sell out their country if they get the chance.’

‘Sell out their country? To what?’

‘I don’t know…they don’t know, either …some fantasy about a world revolution and the brotherhood of mankind. They want power, Pauli. I saw these people at close hand when we were preparing the court-martial evidence in Wilhelmshaven. Many of them were simple men – stokers mostly – but among them were some trained agitators, well equipped to argue their crackpot political theory with lawyers, or anyone else.’

‘It’s all finished now?’

Peter glanced round nervously. ‘No, it’s not finished, I’m afraid. We put a few troublemakers behind bars, but there are too many Essers at large. Back home, civilians are working regular twelve-hour days and food is very short, thanks to the British naval blockade. So many tired and hungry workers provide opportunities for rabble-rousers. Unless conditions improve soon, I’m afraid we’ll see more and more trouble from servicemen and civilians.’

‘I’ve never heard anything of this before, Peter.’

‘I didn’t intend to talk about it.’

‘We don’t hear anything at the front.’

‘This revolution in Russia will give Liebknecht and the Rosa Luxemburg woman encouragement to renew their efforts. The radicals will bide their time, and when they make their bid for power they’ll be ready to spill blood. Not only their own blood, either!’

The two of them sat for several minutes, looking at each other and drinking the delicious coffee that was available to these lucky men who fought their war behind desks. Then there were loud voices in the corridor, the sort of anxious exchanges seldom heard in these quiet corridors. Suddenly the door opened and the staff captain came in, looking agitated. With no more than a nod to the two officers, he grabbed papers from a tray on his desk and retrieved others from the top of a cabinet. ‘The Americans have declared war,’ he said over his shoulder as he sorted through his papers.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Peter. It was impossible to take in. America was thousands of miles away, and their army was negligible. Even if their army was enlarged, the U boats would make sure the Americans never got to Europe.

‘The American Congress ratified it yesterday. What a thing to happen at Eastertime!’ He threw papers into a file. ‘Do you realize what it means?’

‘Will they send armies to Europe?’ said Pauli. Already they were stretched to the limit to hold the front.

The captain said, ‘We must disengage from the Russians and crush the French with one quick, massive offensive before the Americans arrive.’ It sounded like something he’d been told.

‘Is such a thing possible?’ said Peter.

‘We will discover in good time,’ said the captain. He dropped a handful of papers against the desktop to get them straightened. ‘If we haven’t won the war by Christmas, it will be the end of the Fatherland. The end of everything we’re fighting for.’ Peter looked at the staff officer and was disturbed by his demeanour. Perhaps the Americans would make a difference. There were so many of them, and their resources were limitless.

As the captain went out through the door, Pauli could see, at the top of the grand staircase, the general who commanded the division and two aides. They were magnificently attired: swords, Pickelhauben, gleaming boots, and chestfuls of orders and decorations. He got only the briefest glimpse of the three men, but all his life Pauli remembered the scene in every small detail, even the way in which the general was holding his Turkish cigarette in a jade holder.

The two brothers had not resumed their conversation when they heard the distant explosion of an enemy shell. The rumble of gunfire had been a background to their talk, but this one was nearer, about three miles away. They went to the window in time to see the plume of brown smoke that marked its fall. By that time another shellburst shook the glass. The second round landed only slightly closer.

Peter said, ‘It’s the first time I’ve been on the receiving end of it.’

‘A heavy-calibre gun,’ said Pauli. ‘Somewhere up there a couple of men in an observation plane are trying to locate us. I don’t know why they find it so difficult: a big mansion like this with two big spires.’

‘It’s not so easy when you are up there,’ said Peter. ‘In this sort of poor light, through the overcast, it all looks grey. In evening or morning sunlight the shadows make it easier.’

‘Then why do they always come over in such bad weather?’ said Pauli.

Peter gave a grim smile. It seemed so safe and simple to those who stayed on the ground. ‘The poor devils want to disappear into the clouds if our fighters get near them or the anti-aircraft fire does.’ As he said it, small black puffs of flak appeared in the sky to the south, but they could see no sign of the artillery-spotting plane.

‘The fliers won’t hang around long,’ said Pauli. ‘And these long-range guns can fire only a few rounds at a time. Then the barrels are worn out. War is a damned expensive business, as the taxpayers are discovering.’

‘When we win, the French will pay reparations, as they did last time.’

‘Ah! When we win,’ said Pauli.

They stood in silence, looking at the shattered landscape. The grounds of the château had been beautifully cultivated for a couple of hundred years, but now the whole place had been ravaged by the soldiers. The orchard was no more than tree stumps, the lawn a camp, and everywhere a quagmire. Farther away, the woodland had been scavenged for firewood through three winters of war; and the country roads, built for carts and carriages, were churned by endless divisional horse-drawn traffic and the occasional staff car and truck.

‘Was it terrible?’ asked Pauli, still staring out the window. ‘The zeppelin flights, the raids over England, and the crash: was it terrible?’

‘The raids were all right. I didn’t realize what danger we were in until, on the final one, I saw an airship burn in the sky.’ Peter’s voice was different now: the voice Pauli remembered from when they’d exchanged confidences in the darkness of the nursery. ‘I was so frightened, Pauli, that my hands were shaking. She was gone…. The whole airship was gone in a few seconds. So many friends…’

‘And you crashed.’

‘That wasn’t so bad but they operated on my hand three times and I was convinced that I would relive my fears … scream or reveal my cowardice under the anaesthetic.’

‘And did you?’

‘God knows.’

‘Papa told me that most of your crew were killed.’

‘We were hit over the English coast – gunfire – the control gondola was damaged and we lost some of the officers. We limped back across the North Sea, sinking lower all the time. I thought we’d get home in one piece, but it was not to be. Most of the casualties came when we hit the trees. The observation officer, an elderly chap named Hildmann – the staff captain just now put me in mind of him – was killed. While he was alive I didn’t ever give Hildmann a thought, but after he was dead I realized how much I owed to him. He’d looked after me right through all the training flights and on our first war missions over England. After a man is dead you can’t say thank you.’

‘And Hennig was with you?’

‘He survived, the insolent little swine.’

‘And he’s married Lisl Wisliceny, I hear.’

‘Yes, a flashy ceremony – Frau Wisliceny arranged it all, of course – and a big reception in the Adlon afterwards.’

‘Mama wrote me a letter.’

‘Mama had to go: Frau Wisliceny is her best friend. She’s a fine woman. Yes, Mama went, but Papa was in Friedrichshafen with the airship people.’ Peter said it with satisfaction. He was pleased that his father had found a reason to stay away from the wedding of the hateful Hennig.

‘Did you want to marry her?’

‘Lisl? Yes, once I did. Or at least I thought I did. But then, as I realized the way in which she was playing a game with me and Hennig – playing us off one against the other – I didn’t love her any more.’

‘They’re all pretty girls, the Wislicenys.’

‘I was close to Inge once…’ He turned suddenly. ‘By God! I’ve just thought of something. If America has declared war, Mama is an enemy alien. They might make us resign our commissions, Pauli.’

‘You’re a selfish pig, Peter. Instead of worrying about your commission you should be worrying about poor Mama. She must be feeling terrible about it. Let’s pray she’ll not be sent to an internment camp like the English civilians have been.’

‘Yes, of course, you’re right. I should have been thinking of her. But it will affect us, too, Pauli. It could make things very difficult for both of us.’

A light tap came and the office door opened immediately. A man stepped inside, a formidable figure, a captain, fortyish, with hard grey eyes and a mouth like a rat trap. He nodded to Peter and without any preliminaries asked Pauli for his papers. Pauli knew it was the end for him as soon as he saw the metal gorget at his neck. A Feldgendarmerie officer complete with Bavarian-style shako, and sword hung with ornamental knot. ‘You are absent without leave, Leutnant Winter. You have absented yourself from your post while on active service. From the front line …It’s a death-penalty offence. I suppose you know that?’ A slight Bavarian accent: it wasn’t the voice or the manner of a career soldier, but there was that touch of informality that professional policemen use to make apprehended men amenable. Pauli guessed that he’d once been a senior police officer in Munich or some such town.

Pauli didn’t reply. He knew what was expected of a Prussian officer. He stood rigidly at attention, as he’d stood for so many hours on the parade ground at Lichterfelde. He’d known, deep down, that it was going to happen, and now it had happened. His guts were churning, but in some ways it was a relief. Now all he had to do was face his punishment. He’d always been better able to face the consequences than to worry about them.

He had plenty of time to think about what he’d done. He was held for two nights in the cells at Divisional HQ before facing his court-martial. But for his colonel, Pauli would probably have faced a firing squad. It was the colonel – prematurely aged from sending so many youngsters into battle – who gave such a glowing account of Pauli’s bravery and devotion to duty. It was the colonel who put such emphasis on Pauli’s extreme youth, and it was the colonel who arranged that Leutnant Brand did not appear in person.

But Brand’s written deposition was carefully worded. He must have spent many hours upon the document, and he covered every eventuality, even to the extent of finding the military policeman with whom Pauli had spoken at the crossroads.

The verdict was inescapable.

The sentence came like a slap in the face, but Pauli didn’t flinch. Six months with a Punishment Battalion. Everyone knew that a spell with a Punishment Battalion was intended as a deferred death sentence. Such units were used only where the fighting was most bitter and the personnel were considered expendable. But the one consolation was that his Field Post Office address didn’t reveal what had happened, so his parents believed he was simply transferred to another regular infantry regiment.

And thus it was that Pauli endured the worst of the fighting of that year, so that afterwards some men did not believe that he could be a veteran of so many infamous fields of battle. But he did not survive the year unharmed. Though his skin was intact, his soul was hardened – ‘as hard as Krupp steel,’ he sometimes claimed after a few drinks. He had learned to suffer without complaint, to hurt without whimpering, and to kill without emotion.

And yet, paradoxically, there were aspects of him that stayed unchanged. Outwardly he remained genial, careless, clumsy Pauli. He was too anxious to please ever to become really sophisticated. And now more than ever he relished the simple pleasures of life. Unlike his brother, Peter – who was austere, cultivated and brimful of ambition – Pauli served his sentence and went back to active duty asking no more than to sit down now and again to a big bowl of beef stew, smoke twenty cigarettes a day and have an extra half-hour in bed on Sunday morning.