KRIEG (War) Read online

  Krieg

  (War)

  Ludwig Renn

  Translated from the German by

  Michael L. Sanders, Sr.

  Publication of the

  FRANKFURTER SOCIETAETS-DRUCKEREI G. M. B. H.

  ABTEILUNG BUCHVERLAG, FRANKFURT AM MAIN

  Copyright 1929 by

  FRANKFURTER SOCIETAETS-DRUCKEREI G.M.B.H.

  Krieg

  (War)

  Ludwig Renn

  Translated from the German by

  Michael L. Sanders, Sr.

  Publication of the

  FRANKFURTER SOCIETAETS -DRUCKEREI G.M.B.H.

  ABTEILUNG BUCHVERLAG, FRANKFURT AM MAIN

  Copyright 1929 by

  FRANKFURTER SOCIETAETS-DRUCKEREI G.M.B.H.

  Translation copyright Michael Sanders 2009. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the copyright holder.

  Foreword

  It was nearly a century ago that Europe marched off to fight the Great War. They called it that because the world had never seen anything like it and had no idea that worse was to come before the century was even half over. Today that seems like ancient history to the generations born since the mid-twentieth century. To many of those in the later generations it hardly rates as a modern war; horse power was provided mostly by real horses, and even what might have passed for modern engines of war---airplanes, trucks, motorcycles and tanks---clattered along like things in strange dreams.

  The generation of a century ago marched off into early graves by the millions; at first patriotic and determined, then confused and grim. They could not know that they were participating in the lethal transition from one world to another. The Europe of their fathers was dying and the war they fought in the trenches of France and Belgium and the plains of Eastern Europe was the harbinger of things undreamed of.

  Their war was the last fought for national honor and territorial acquisition alone. Those that followed were fought in the lockstep of doctrinaire sloganeering and philosophies. Indeed, some future historian may well look back at the string of conflicts that began in 1914 as a modern “Hundred Years War.”

  That war fought so long ago in many ways laid the foundations of the modern world in which we live. Schoolchildren stare at photographic images of that war as if they are the stilted photos of Matthew Brady and his colleagues from the American Civil War. Yet one thing in those images, and in the narrative recollections of those wars, remains the same: Real people fought and died on those long-ago battlefields. The crosses and grave markers are still there stretching out over acres of verdant fields that might still be farms and villages had the ravages of war not snuffed out so many lives.

  Renn’s novel Krieg is based on his experiences in the German army from 1914 through 1918. While All Quiet on the Western Front comes readily to mind as the definitive World War I novel, Krieg should be read for its uncompromising look at German soldiers in the trench war on the western front. Like Remarque’s work, Krieg gives us real characters living and fighting in a real war on the edge of historical fiction. Though the characters in Renn’s novel wear a different uniform, speak a different language, and are motivated in the service of another cause, they are nonetheless the anonymous young men of all wars.

  Renn shows his readers the real face of Krieg as only one who lived through it can. This new translation by Michael Sanders, himself a career soldier, expands the opportunity for readers interested in war, and World War I in particular, to understand the men who fought there and their times. The German soldier of World War I is yesterday’s enemy, but he is a member of that great and timeless society of warriors whose story has altered and illuminated the great sweep of history.

  Krieg is recommended as must reading as a companion piece to Erich Maria Remarque’s honored novel of the German soldier in World War I. This new translation should give Renn’s work the place IT deserves in the literature of the Great War.

  ---Daniel Foxx

  Professor of History Emeritus

  Ottawa University

  Contents

  Advance 8

  Trench War 110

  Battle of the Somme 141

  Wounded 172

  Battle of Aisne-Champagne 1917 191

  Trench War 1917/18 261

  The March Offensives 1918 279

  Collapse 297

  Advance

  Preparations

  I became a corporal on the day of the mobilization. I wasn’t allowed to visit my mother and so I wrote saying farewell. On the day we marched I received her answer:

  My boy! Remain true and stay proper, that is all that I can write to you. We have a lot to do here. Your brother has also been called up and we two women have to do everything alone. I don’t know how we will cope with the grandchildren. I am sending you a pair of warm socks. Farewell!

  Your Mother

  I stuck the letter in my wallet and went to the canteen to get some more stationery. People were moving along the walkways. In the canteen they were lined up at the counter.

  “Hi, Ludwig!” Ziesche, grinning, shoved me a Schnapps glass. “To the first Russians!”

  I joined Ziesche.

  Max Domsky, known as Perle, sat on a table and swung his legs back and forth. He looked from one to the other and was happy.

  In the background a bearded, fat corporal was giving a speech: “They’re going to find out what German blows are, the dogs!”

  It excited him. “I know that bunch. I wasn’t in Paris for three years for nothing. When one German trooper comes they will run away!”

  I bought my stationery and walked out. Perle followed me. I didn’t look at him.

  “Are you not happy?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said frostily.

  “Why didn’t you stay down there?”

  “I just can’t suffer that right now.”

  He was silent. I noticed that he wanted to say something to me. When we got to our room I sat down on a footstool and asked, “What’s bothering you?”

  He sat on the table and looked at me as if he was expecting something from me. It seemed that my question appeared to him to have not been a question at all.

  “Are you afraid of the war?” I asked. “Everyone is so happy about it.”

  I considered it. Surely whatever was bothering him was concerned with the war and the fear of death.

  “Ludwig!”

  I was startled. He had never called me Ludwig before.

  “I have no father.” He said it like you would give someone a piece of bread. What was I supposed to do?—Shake his hand?—This person was not even emotional.

  “Max,” I said, “you have, however, a brother.” I was embarrassed.

  He looked at me very calmly. He had understood me! And so often he didn’t understand the simplest things.

  He showed no joy. He didn’t say anything either, but began preparing to fall in. I took the heavy pack on my back. I didn’t expect anything else from him. Some of the others came bouncing in. I went to the latrine one more time and then went down the steps to fall in. I had the feeling that my eyes were outside of me looking around while I was inside myself. My legs moved, the pack was heavy, but that had nothing to do with me.

  Train Trip

  We assembled on the courtyard. Behind us the wagons were hitched up. Lieutenant Fabian came along contentedly, a small, black, lacquered pack like a school satchel on his broad shoulders. He stood before us and said, “I don’t need to make a speech to you. We are a family! And thank God we have a Pearl in our family!”

  We laughed. That was good, I thought. Now the reservists also know what kind of person our lieutenant is. Almost everyone liked Perle, even if he was considered to be an idiot.

  “Third co
mpany—Attention!—In squads, right flank—March! —Halt!—Company—March!” The music began. The tempo rumbled off the barracks walls.

  I marched in the front squad. Outside the barracks gate a crowd of people built up and made room for us to pass.

  “Make it good, Emil!” called someone.

  “Hurrah!” yelled a couple of boys.

  “Like 1870!” I heard someone say quietly, and encountered an old man’s face, out of which two friendly, gray eyes stared at me. “This is how I left back then,” he said to me, and then I was past and saw other people.

  A bouquet of carnations struck me in the chest. I just caught it and looked around. A girl stood at the curb and smiled at me from under a deep-seated hat.

  Bright sun umbrellas had been set up, under them women with large hats. All of a sudden from the right I saw my uncle emerge from the crowd. He raised his hat above his head and smiled at me. I didn’t know how I should return the greeting and was embarrassed. However, it pleased me.

  Boom, boom, boom echoed the beat under the railroad bridge and then again became just boom, boom, boom.

  We came to the freight station. There we laid down our packs and waited. A couple of ladies went around with flower-decorated baskets and passed out rolls and chocolate. The train rolled up slowly. For the enlisted men there were freight cars on whose sliding doors birch limbs hung. For the officers there was a third-class car. On the sides captions and pictures had been drawn with chalk, showing men with large heads, with French caps on them.

  An Unusually Good Offer!!!

  Free Trip!

  The Only Risk is a Couple of Shots!

  Therefore Direct to Paris!

  A signal was blown.

  “Third Company, to your weapons! Pick up your baggage and weapons! On board!”

  They crowded each other to get on first and get the best places. Benches without backrests stood in the cars. I was in no hurry. The lieutenants were walking back and forth along the cars. Someone called something from the cars. A locomotive came with black smoke balls that rolled slowly along the tracks. Again someone called from the car. I perked up. Had Perle been calling me several times?

  He stuck his head out of the car: “I have a place for you.” He went back inside and was having an argument with someone. It seemed that a couple of people had occupied the place each time he called to me.

  “Well now,” called the lieutenant. “How long is that going to take?”

  Perle had held a place free for me on the left-hand wall. I could lean against the wall, but I couldn’t see out.

  Outside varied calls could be heard. The whistle blew and then the train began moving slowly. But where were we going?—Russia, they were saying. What does Russia look like? The sun shines here; I could only think of Russia as a gray waste.

  “It’s heading to the West!” called someone from the open door. “We just curved away. We’re going to Paris!”

  From outside came children’s voices. “Hurrah! Hurrah!”

  At the door they sang “Deutschland, Deutschland Ueber Alles” to the clacking of the wheels. The singing became general. In the next car they were singing slow and mournfully, “Marie, Marie that is my name, which I received from the regiment. I wouldn’t change with any Princess. She doesn’t live any happier than me.”

  Again came the screaming of children’s voices, “Hurrah!” and again it was answered with a song. The sun became red on the faces of those standing at the door. I saw Ziesche with his white teeth laughing from pure joy that something was happening.

  Then it quickly became dark. The car was hot inside from the sun, which had been beating on the roof all day. We began moving slower and then stopped.

  A light beam fell on the right side of the car. “Everybody out for chow!” Everyone began to move, wake up, and stand up. In the dark everyone began feeling for mess kits and utensils. Electric table lamps gave glaring flashes of light.

  We climbed over the benches and fell in outside and were then led into a large, wooden stall. Carbide lamps stood on tables made of fresh wood. Behind each table women were serving beef with noodles.

  A very old man in the uniform of a colonel walked up and down. Beneath the low cap his white hair hung clear down to the thick shoulder tabs.

  The trip continued. The wheels clicked evenly. The breeze from the door became cool. Perle had sunk down completely against me. Finally his head bounced against my knee. That partially awakened him and he began to sink down again. I couldn’t sleep yet. I wasn’t thinking, but I was not relaxed.

  ——————————

  A disturbance awakened me. Someone was pushing past me from behind. “Let me through. I can’t hold my water any longer.”

  I pulled Perle up against me. He didn’t wake up. The other guy had to awaken one after the other. As he came back most had already gone back to sleep and he had to wake them up again. It was dark and quite cold. There was commotion all around.

  ——————————

  I woke up again. It was dawn. Perle was still asleep. He appeared dirty and miserable. Some people began to stretch and yawn.

  It became colder although the sun was up. Perle woke up and smiled at me sleepily.

  “I’m hungry,” he said and opened his pack under the bench. While doing so he bumped the person in front of him with his head.

  “Let a person sleep!” he snarled, then roused himself and began to eat also.

  The train halted.

  “Everyone out for coffee!”

  “Now one can collect his bones together again!”

  We got out, stretched ourselves and walked around. Enthroned on an open car was our smoking field kitchen. The cooks in coats were ladling coffee into the field cups.

  We traveled on. I occasionally saw trees and houses passing by. I tried to stand up, but baggage was lying all over the floor and it was impossible to stand firmly.

  Outside children were screaming hurrah. We sang. A few played Skat, slapping the cards down on their knees.

  The evening came and was followed by the night. The benches became even harder. I leaned continually to the left on the wall and felt myself bent lopsided.

  “There is the Rhine!”

  Everyone crowded toward the door. I gave it up after a short try to get there. In other cars they were singing “The Watch on the Rhine,” “—Am I not happy to experience a war! It is a real discharge of guns. How sad for those whose youth passes without it!”

  I lit a cigarette. The night was endless. I lay, bent sideways on the rattling wall, and tried to get into a better position. At my attempt, Perle slumped forward and I pulled him carefully to a somewhat upright position. I woke up repeatedly from the pain in my side. My head banged against something. It was Perle’s head. He was hanging over my knees.

  The next morning I traded places with Perle just so I could sit differently. The sun was shining again outside. At the door they were discussing what they were seeing. There were vineyards and the ruins of castles. I soon went to sleep again and didn’t awaken fully until midday.

  How dirty and unshaven they all looked. However, they were, in their own way, contented

  At the station we had our midday meal and then continued on our way. At the door they said we were traveling through a narrow, wooded valley.

  We stopped.

  “Everybody out!” We climbed over the benches and got out. There were station buildings and a number of small houses. On the other side stood a wooded mountain. We were all stiff and we piled our baggage together.

  “Where can we be?” I asked Ziesche. He just laughed.

  “We can take a look,” said an older, non-commissioned officer in a clear voice. He was probably a teacher. “I have a map—I think we must be here in this area.”

  His map wasn’t very good and appeared to have been ripped out of a school atlas. However, I was able to see that we were still a long way from France.

  In the meantime the field kitchen
s and other wagons were untied and moved onto the platform. We marched off without waiting until they had been prepared to move. We were moving along a creek. The sun beating down was hot, but the marching after sitting so long was invigorating.

  After an hour and a half we came to a village. The billeting officer was waiting for us at the entrance.

  “First platoon here in the barn!”

  “There is little straw here!”

  “They said they don’t have any right now.”

  We took off our packs and went back out on the street. We were content and bought wine, which was cheap here. I sat with Ziesche on the seat of a wagon, which stood behind our barn. The moon was shining already. A damp, thin breeze came up from the creek. We went for a short walk in the bright night. When we came back to the barn and were feeling around for our places the others were already snoring.

  Marches

  The marches began the next day. The days were hot and we weren’t used to the mountains. In the first days there were many who were left lying along the street in the shade of a mountain ash with coats ripped open and a handkerchief over their heads. Then they began to get used to it. We climbed over a number of mountain ranges and came down in a deep valley. On the other side a birch forest climbed steeply upward. We had already seen from the heights that the village we were headed for lay on the highest knoll. The first marches had been short. Today they expected a great performance from us.

  We had to rest repeatedly. The sun burned in the valley, in which we had already been struggling upwards for hours.