Work Text:
It is late in September 1918; barely a month has passed since Kat took a splinter to the temple, and I have been sent back to the Front after two weeks of rest. It seems that every time a man goes on leave he returns to an entirely different platoon, our losses are so great. There are so few of us old hands left that the thirty-second company no longer looks familiar.
The only face I recognise is Tjaden’s and he stands to greet me. “Paul, it’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too.” He puts an arm out and we embrace.
As I follow Tjaden back to where he was sitting with a group, he asks about my leave. I avoid the question and am grateful when he doesn’t push any further. Tjaden spends his leave bedding as many women as are willing and forgetting about the war. The few days that I spent at home only served to show how frail mother has become and to reinforce how much this war has changed me. They trained us, ‘The Iron Youth’, to be soldiers and it has been so long that I have forgotten how to be anything else.
I join the circle and Tjaden deals me into the next round. They’re playing skat and Tjaden already has a tidy pile of cigarettes stacked beside him. The new recruits haven’t yet learned that Tjaden is rarely beaten at this game. They will, if they survive for long enough.
After he deals, Tjaden plucks one of the cigarettes from the pile and lights it. He takes a long draw and then offers it to me. I accept it eagerly, breathing deeply and letting the smoke settle before exhaling. It is my first smoke since I’d been sent home on leave, since mother does not approve of it. She worries that it will make me ill, but out here there are far greater dangers than smoking. She will never understand how it can help calm a man’s nerves during a bombing raid and I can never explain it to her. Any damage caused by cigarettes will be far outstripped by the English guns.
I belatedly realise that it is my turn to bid and that I have yet to look at my cards. I push all thoughts of home out of my head - there is no use for them here - and play my turn.
Tjaden watches me thoughtfully for a moment and then places his bid. “It is good that you are back, Paul,” he says as he lays down his cards. “Now I don’t have to play at being nursemaid anymore.”
I look up from my hand at his comment and turn to regard the new recruits that we are playing with. Neither looks like they have reached adulthood and a quick scrutiny of the rest of the company shows that we are no longer fighting with men. These are all still boys.
It seems that Kat was right; this war has emptied Germany of all its men. We were sent to fight for our country and most of us will never return. Even those that escape the shells and make it home will have been destroyed by the war. But the armistice has not yet come, and Germany still needs to fight. So, now that they have run out of men, they are sending children. If peace does not come soon will they start sending out the women to fight?
*
I pull my coat tighter around me to give some meagre protection against the bite of the wind. My watch does not begin for a few more hours but the sound of the English bombardment overhead prevents us from sleeping.
Lighting a cigarette to warm my fingers, I lean against the side of the trench and listen to the earth explode. The men all talk of peace and returning home, but until that day comes the fighting will continue. The rulers that make war and their generals that plan battle campaigns don’t care that in the time they spend deliberating over the armistice, even more of us will be lost to this war. They don’t care that Behm hadn’t wanted to enlist or that Detering was only desperate to see his farm again. To the officials they were just numbers on a page, lost in long lists of the dead, missing and wounded.
There is a break in the bombardment and our section of trench is calm again. Grateful for the short reprieve, I take a drink from my water bottle and try to ignore my growling, empty stomach. Food is becoming ever scarcer and the rations that make it to the front line are never enough to satisfy a man.
In the quiet I can hear someone near to me crying. I look around to see one of the recruits from the game of skat. His blue eyes lock with mine and I can see the raw terror that lies within them. I want to say something to comfort him, maybe speak of peace and the prospect of going home soon. Or tell him of my first bombardment, more than three years ago now, and how I cried as the bombs landed around us. Kat had been there for me then and I wished dearly that he were here now. Kat was a natural leader and I saw him calm even the most terrified of soldiers. He would know what to say to the boy crying in front of me.
I can not think of what to say to him. I can talk of peace and of home, but in the dark of the trench with the constant threat of the English guns, that would be little comfort.
Instead, I offer him my cigarette. His hand is shaking as he grasps it from my fingers and takes a deep draw from it.
The bombardment starts up again in earnest. I look up at the sky and watch the fireworks caused by the bombing. My companion inches closer to me; I remember feeling the way that he does, but this war has caused me to grow so weary that the sound of the guns no longer frightens me. It dawns on me that I have watched so many of my comrades die that a part of me is just waiting for my turn.
I look down at my companion. I don’t share these thoughts with him but as we wait out the bombardment, I hope for his sake that peace comes soon and he can go home and forget about this war. It is too late for us, but there still has to be hope.
Otherwise, what were we fighting for?