rolled up. He has washed his socks and lays them out on the grass to dry. Kat gazes at the sky, lets off a really loud one, and says dreamily by way of commentary, ‘Every little bean, my boys, makes you make a little noise.’
He and Kropp start to argue. At the same time they manage to bet a bottle of beer on the outcome of a dogfight that is going on between a couple of planes above us.
Kat will not budge from a point of view that he, old soldier that he is, sums up with a little rhyme: ‘Equal rations, equal pay, war’s forgotten in a day —’
Kropp, on the other hand, is more philosophical. He reckons that all declarations of war ought to be made into a kind of festival, with entrance tickets and music, like they have at bullfights. Then the ministers and generals of the two countries would have to come into the ring, wearing boxing shorts, and armed with rubber truncheons, and have a go at each other. Whoever is left on his feet, his country is declared the winner. That would be simpler and fairer than things are out here, where the wrong people are fighting each other.
The idea appeals to us. Then the conversation moves on to drill.
An image comes into my head. Bright midday sunshine on the parade-ground at Klosterberg barracks. The heat is hanging there and the place is quiet. The barracks seem dead. Everything is asleep. All you can hear is the drummers practising – they have set things up somewhere and are practising without much skill, monotonously, mindlessly. What a trio: midday heat, the parade-ground and drummers practising.
The barrack windows are empty and dark. Battledress trousers[78] are hanging out of a few of them, drying. You look enviously across at the barracks, where the rooms are cool —
Oh, you dark and musty platoon huts, with your iron bedsteads, chequered bedding and the tall lockers with those stools in front of them! Even you can turn into objects of longing; seen from out here, you can even take on some of the wonderful aura of home, you great rooms, so full of the smells of stale food, sleep, smoke and clothes!
Katczinsky describes them in glowing colours and with great fervour. What would we not give to be able to go back to those rooms. We don’t dare to think any further than that —
You rifle drills, first thing in the morning! ‘How do you break down a standard-issue rifle?[79]’ You PT sessions in the afternoon! ‘Fall out anyone who can play the piano! Right turn! Report to the kitchens for spud bashing[80]!’
We wallow in our memories. Then Kropp laughs suddenly and says, ‘Change at Lohne!’
That was Corporal Himmelstoss’s favourite game. Lohne is a station where you have to change trains, and so that anyone going on leave[81] did not get lost when he got there, Himmelstoss used to practise changing platforms with us in the barracks. We were supposed to learn that you reach the connecting train in Lohne by way of an underpass. Our beds represented the underpass and everyone had to stand to attention on the left-hand side. Then came the order ‘Change at Lohne!’ and everyone had to scramble as quickly as possible under the bed and out the other side. We practised that for hours on end…
Meanwhile the German plane has been shot down. It plummets, with a trail of smoke behind it like a comet. Kropp has lost a bottle of beer on it, and pays up with ill grace.
‘I’m sure Himmelstoss is quite a quiet chap as a postman,’ I say, once Kropp has got over his disappointment. ‘So how come he is such a bastard as a drill corporal?’
The question gets Kropp going again. ‘It isn’t just Himmelstoss, there are loads of them. As soon as they get a couple of stripes or a pip or two they turn into entirely different people and start behaving as if they chew iron bars for breakfast.’
‘So it’s the uniform that does that?’ I ask.
‘More or less,’ says Kat, and settles himself down to develop the point. ‘But the real reasons are a bit different. Look, if you train a dog so that it only eats potatoes, and then after a while you offer it a chunk of meat, it’ll still grab it because it’s in its nature. And if you offer a man a bit of power, the same thing happens; he’ll grab it. It’s instinctive, because when it comes down to it, a man is basically a beast, and it’s only later that a bit of decency gets smeared on top, the way you can spread dripping on your bread. The main thing about the army is that there is always somebody with the power to give orders to the rest. The bad thing is that they’ve all got far too much power: a corporal can harass a private, a lieutenant can harass an NCO or a captain can harass a lieutenant so badly that it can drive him mad. And because every one of them knows it, they all get used to the idea. Just take the simplest example: we’re on our way back from the parade-ground and we’re dog tired. Then comes the order to sing. Well, the singing isn’t too lively because we’re all happy if we can still carry our rifles without dropping them. And the next thing we know, the company is about-turned and we have an hour’s punishment drill. On the march back we get the order to sing again, and this time we sing. What’s the point of the whole thing? The man in command has got his way, because he’s got the power to do so. Nobody’s going to blame him – quite the reverse – he gets a reputation for being strict. And that’s just a trivial thing – there are plenty of other ways for them to mess you about. So I ask you: whatever a man is in civilian life, what sort of job could he possibly find where he could get away with that sort of behaviour without getting a punch on the nose for it? The only place he can do it is in the army. See what I mean – it always goes to their heads. And the less they had to say for themselves in civvy street[82], the more it goes to their heads now.’
‘They do say that discipline is necessary…’ Kropp puts in casually.
‘They can always come up with reasons,’ growls Kat. ‘And that might be true. But you mustn’t mess people about. And you just try and explain it to a locksmith, or a stable lad[83], or a labourer, try and explain it to the poor bloody infantry – they’re the majority out here, after all. All they see is that they get messed about, and then they get sent up the line, and they know perfectly well what’s necessary and what isn’t. I tell you, it’s amazing that the ordinary soldier sticks it here at the front at all. It’s amazing.’
Everyone agrees, because we all know that it is not till you are actually in the trenches that parade-ground drill disappears, and that it starts up again before you’ve gone back a mile behind the lines, no matter how big a piece of nonsense it might be, like saluting or formation marching. Because there is one unbreakable rule: a soldier has to be fully occupied all the time.
But now Tjaden turns up, red in the face. He is so worked up that he is stuttering, but he still gets the words out, grinning all over his face: ‘Himmelstoss is on his way here. He’s been sent to the front.’
Tjaden really detests Himmelstoss, because Himmelstoss decided to teach him a lesson in his own special way back in the barracks. Tjaden wets the bed – when he is asleep at night it just happens. Himmelstoss insisted that it was pure laziness, and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise, so he came up with a method of curing Tjaden that was really typical of the man.
He hunted out another bed-wetter from one of the other barracks, a man called Kindervater, and put him in with Tjaden. The barracks where we did our training had the usual arrangement of bunks, one bed above the other, with the bottom part of each bed made of wire-mesh. Himmelstoss arranged things so that the pair of them were together, one on the top and the other on the bottom bunk. The one underneath, of course, had a really raw deal
Battledress trousers – солдатские штаны
How do you break down a standard-issue rifle? – Из каких деталей состоит винтовка стандартного образца?
spud bashing – чистка картофеля
on leave – в отпуск
in civvy street – на гражданке
stable lad – батрак
