The Beauty and the Sorrow (40 page)

TUESDAY
, 25
APRIL
1916
Elfriede Kuhr witnesses a disturbance at Schneidemühl railway station

Once again Elfriede goes to the railway station. She is going to visit Dora Haensch, her best friend, whose parents run a small restaurant in the station building. Two soldiers come in while Elfriede is there. One of them is a young man with elegant, regular features and the other is big, broad and very drunk. The drunken soldier shouts for beer but plump Herr Haensch refuses him. Then the drunk leans over the bar to pour himself a glass but Herr Haensch takes him by the shoulders and shoves him away. The drunk immediately pulls out his bayonet and lunges at Herr Haensch, who runs for the back door with an unexpected turn of speed, while Dora and her mother scream. Several guests get up and grab chairs, which they raise either as weapons or as shields. The drunk’s companion, who has meanwhile sat down at a table with his legs stretched out in front of him, calmly says to his comrade, “Get out of here—and quick.” Which the drunk duly does.

Herr Haensch returns immediately, accompanied by a warrant officer and two soldiers of the watch. The warrant officer goes up to the drunk’s friend, who is still sitting at his table calmly leafing through a newspaper, and asks in a pleasant tone for the name of the man who has fled and the name of the regiment he belongs to. The soldier with the
newspaper refuses to give the information, at which the warrant officer goes closer to him and says something that Elfriede does not catch. The young soldier stands up and yells, “You are a swine, sir. I didn’t want this bloody war and I’ve been forced to play at being a soldier. Fine. Well, then! If you want to say something to me then be good enough to use a military form of address. You can pester me as much as you like but I will not disclose my friend’s name!”

The heated discussion continues: the young soldier stubbornly refuses to answer the officer’s questions and finally he is arrested himself. Elfriede watches him being led away between the two guards, who have gleaming bayonets fixed on their rifles. The arrested soldier’s face is so pale that his lips look almost white. Everyone starts talking again as soon as the door closes behind the four men. The restaurant is filled with excited voices. Elfriede puts her hand on Dora’s heart and feels that it is pounding hard, hard.

Elfriede tells Dora that she cannot decide who was right—the warrant officer or the man who refused to give his friend’s name. Herr Haensch hears Elfriede’s comments and yells at her, “Now just you listen to me, there is no doubt about it. The warrant officer was obviously right. The army has to have discipline, otherwise … otherwise there’d be chaos.” The enraged Herr Haensch gives Elfriede a hefty slap on the backside and pushes her out of the restaurant.

Confused and upset, Elfriede makes her way home. She can see both sides of the argument—on one hand, the elegant young man who refused to inform on his friend and, on the other, the warrant officer who was just doing his duty:

But most of all I was upset by myself. I can never really decide for myself what is right and what is wrong about this war. I rejoice at our victories but at the same time the thought of all those dead and wounded makes me beside myself. I heard yesterday that there is a military hospital hidden in the forest for the soldiers who have had their faces shot away. They apparently look so horrific that ordinary people can’t even look at them.
^w
Things like that make me despair.

Today is Elfriede’s fourteenth birthday and she has started wearing her hair in a different and more grown-up fashion.

In Kut al-Amara that night Edward Mousley watches as one last effort is made to bring in supplies for the besieged British garrison. An armour-plated riverboat, full of provisions and manned by a special crew of volunteers (all of them unmarried), has tried to work its way up the Tigris under cover of darkness in a desperate effort to creep past the Ottoman lines and reach the beleaguered troops. The boat, SS
Julnar
, is sighted, however, and fired on from all sides until she finally runs aground. Mousley writes in his journal:

Here the Turkish guns confronted her at a few yards’ range. Her officers were killed, Lieut. Crowley [
sic
] captured,
^x
and she was taken within sight of our men waiting to unload her by the Fort, and of the sad little group of the garrison who beheld her from the roof-tops of Kut. She lies there now. It appears that the tragic but obvious end of so glorious an enterprise is a last hope. We have scarcely rations for tomorrow.

SUNDAY
, 7
MAY
1916
Kresten Andresen and his dull life in Billy-Montigny

The green of early summer. The warmth of early summer. Birdsong. Just now it is the utter waste of time that is troubling him most: the fact that the days just pass, one the same as another, with nothing happening that has not happened before, with the same routines, the same words, and nothing being done. He is also terrified that he is becoming so forgetful. He searches in vain through his memory for so many of the things he had learned earlier—history, the history of literature. He has hardly put a book down before he has forgotten what is in it. As usual, he is ready to listen to any tiny rumour that peace will come soon, even though he has
been disappointed so often in the past. The front is absolutely quiet, and he is happy about that.

Andresen is writing a letter home today:

Dear Parents!

The same day I sent you my last letter from this place I fell over and sprained the top joint in the middle finger of my left hand, as Misse has perhaps told you. The transport I should have gone with has now left. But my finger should certainly be better within the week. It was actually straightened out quickly. I’m wandering round enjoying life and enjoying nature. My washerwoman has lent me a good French novel and when I get tired of reading I do some sketching. I’m intending to send you a couple of small drawings—I’ve already sent one to Aunt Dorothea. Not that they are really worth having—this life is so unbelievably stupefying that I’m absolutely no good at anything any longer. I don’t know what to do about it. But I do believe the condition has something to do with the fact that we never get anything to eat but incessant oatmeal soup! And army bread and that never-ending jam.

MONDAY
, 8
MAY
1916
Sarah Macnaughtan arrives back at her London home

A young man helps Macnaughtan in through the door of her house at 1, Norfolk Street. She is welcomed home by two of her sisters and by Mary King, her old maid. When Macnaughtan sees her maid, she says, “You were right, Mary. Russia has killed me.”
^y

Only a few fragments remain of her memories of the journey from Persia to Great Britain: the missionary, who was her companion and helper on the journey north; the car journey of more than 300 miles over snow-capped mountains and up to the Caspian Sea; the boat that they missed by only one hour; the week she spent recovering at the British embassy in Petrograd; her walk—on sticks—across the ice at Helsingfors to reach another ship.

Macnaughtan has stopped keeping a diary by this point. The last entry was about a month earlier:

I should like to have “left the party”—quitted the feast of life—when all was gay and amusing. I should have been sorry to come away, but it would have been far better than being left till all the lights are out. I could have said truly to the Giver of the feast, “Thanks for an excellent time.” But now so many of the guests have left, and the fires are going out, and I am tired.

They carry her upstairs to her bedroom. Her prematurely grey hair is thin. She, too, is very thin, very weak and very, very pale.

THURSDAY
, 18
MAY
1916
Angus Buchanan leaves Mbuyuni and learns something about mules

The worst of the rains are over. After almost two months of waiting in the wet around Kilimanjaro it is time to march on in search of the elusive enemy. The capture of Moshi was a success but they failed yet again to defeat the enemy. Like many of his companions, Buchanan is reluctantly impressed by their German opponents, not least by their native troops, who have demonstrated their discipline, skill and great courage. So this is not going to be easy. The Germans are already behaving like the guerrilla army they are well on the way to becoming, whereas the British corps moves with all the weight and cautious, clumsy slowness of a regular army.

The main force marches out from Mbuyuni during the afternoon. Buchanan happens to be in command of the battalion baggage-train for the day, which consists of pack animals—mules—since they are once again setting off into rugged terrain. There is the scent of steaming, damp, sun-baked vegetation.

It turns out to be, in his own words, “a memorable march.” Most of the animals are new and some of them have never carried pack-saddles before so they rear and play up. Time after time the mules break free or twist themselves out of the unaccustomed harnesses and Buchanan
and several other soldiers spend the whole evening riding back and forth along the column chasing animals that are on the run. They stop every now and then to mend a harness or to re-saddle “the rearing, frightened, stubborn brutes.” This continues all night.

When they eventually make camp Buchanan knows that four of his mules are missing, but, even then, they still have two more than they counted at the start of the march. In the darkness they simply caught all the animals they found running loose and some of them clearly belong to other battalions. They decide, as usual, to keep the animals they have found and not report it to anyone.

TUESDAY
, 23
MAY
1916
Paolo Monelli takes part in the retreat down from the Cima Undici

They were taken up to the front in lorries in great haste, the drivers telling them what they knew, which was not much, just rumours about continued retreats. An Austro-Hungarian offensive around the Asiago plateau has been going on since 15 May and the enemy has had great success, at least by comparison with the fruitless pushes by the Italian army over on the Isonzo. Unless the Italians succeed in stopping them they will reach the lowlands and will then be in a position to carry on to the coast, to Venice. It is only about twenty miles to Vicenza. The Alpini battalion Paolo Monelli belongs to has been on Monte Cima for some days and they have occasionally come under artillery fire. But what is happening? And why?

Monelli and the rest of them are not receiving any news but they are still trying to understand what is going on, trying to read the signs—and the signs they can find are anything but good. Their own artillery is becoming ever weaker and yesterday evening the last guns in their sector—a battery of light mountain cannon—disappeared. Worse still is the fact that the noise of battle, explosions and muzzle-flashes, slowly moved closer to them and then went
past
them. One of the companies in their battalion has already been recalled down into the valley, so when they wake this morning they find themselves all alone on the mountain top. Someone says that Cima Dodici has fallen. Cima Dodici? They all
turn their heads—that mountain lies
to their rear
, surely? “We are caught like rats in a trap.”

Then orders reach them: they are to stay there until darkness falls—they are the rearguard and any resistance they can put up will give others the chance to get away. “What is going to happen to us? What is going to happen to Italy?” They can see with their own eyes how Austro-Hungarian battalions are streaming down from the mountain next to them. They can only watch helplessly since the enemy is out of range and the Alpini do not have any heavy weapons. Monelli and his companions are left in peace; it is as if everyone has forgotten about them, including the enemy. The morning turns into day and there is nothing for them to do but to wait there, cut off and isolated, “and the torment of waiting is all the more bitter because of the feeling of catastrophe that has gripped us.”

At lunchtime Monelli climbs up to the cave where the battalion staff officers are located. At its mouth he meets the battalion commander, a major, his eyes red from lack of sleep. The major stands there twisting his beard. He is drunk. “Come here,” he says to Monelli and gives him some wine. “Have you made your confession? By tonight we’ll be surrounded.” The major has been ordered to stay in position. “And so we’ll stay in position and then we’ll be captured. And then we’ll be blamed and mocked.”

The wine works. (The major calls it “a friend that never deserts you.”) Slightly intoxicated, Monelli begins to see the situation in a somewhat brighter light. It will be evening in a few hours. Perhaps they will manage to escape. And if the enemy attacks before then the company will do its best to win a little time, “and then perhaps the division will manage to get its office papers back to safety.”

The miracle happens. No one attacks them.

When darkness falls they begin to work their way in small groups down the mountain and into the woods.

Cold rain is falling. A nearby village is burning and the shapes of the trees and rocks are distorted by its reflected glow. They cross the river half an hour before the bridge is due to be blown and they take a short break on the other side. They have a drink of the water, metal mugs jangling against the stones of the watercourse, and eat some dry biscuits. Before they continue up over the next ridge they take the time to bury
the last man to die that day. His name is Giovanni Panato and he was struck by a fragment of a randomly fired shell while they were climbing. That is often the case: a random cause has a random effect. Panato shouted out when he was wounded but struggled on, only to collapse and die at last.