The Return of the Saboteur: 1

Chapter I.
Die Postkarte

The Autumn Fog had descended upon the trenches and crept into every niche the men had dug to keep themselves dry. It spun along the ground like tormented ghosts and hid the shattered wood to the right, the ruined château to the left, and the enemy trenches a hundred yards in front. It shut down on all sides and locked the men into a small, quiet world of their immediate surroundings. It was the sort of weather in which men were shut up with their thoughts however desperately they wanted to get away from them.
Another winter in the trenches stared them bleakly in the face. Another winter away from home with no restaurants, no cinemas and worst of all, no Christmas. Soon “Hauptman Kälte” would come marching through no-man’s-land, turning mud to iron and barbed wire to fuzzy caterpillars of frost.
But there was one fellow, at least, who was not concerned by such grim reflections.
“What are you making now—another sign?”
“Yes; for the Tommies to shoot at.”
“They won’t be able to see it in the fog.”
“I’ll wait till it clears. This one’s gonna say ‘Boats for Sale!’”
“What? Why?”
“’Cause their trenches are full of water. That’ll make ‘em real mad.”
“Humph! Toffi, you’re daft!”
“No I’m not!”
This rather unique conversation was held between Speindal and Schupberthofhen-Meinenhoven, or “Toffi”, as the other men called him. At this point Krönermann joined in.
“I don’t see why you take the trouble of making signs when the Britishers will just shoot them up in a few minutes.”
“Don’t ever ask him why he does things. He doesn’t know,” said Günter. “Do you?”
“I don’t know; there’s nothing else to do.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Who cares?”
Just then three men came down the trench. Two of them were ambulance men and the third was a wounded soldier they were helping to the rear.
“Hallo, Mïller!” said one of the ambulance men. “You know that fellow you rescued out in no-man’s-land several months ago—the aviator?”
“Yes?” replied Mïller, a young, rather absent-looking fellow.
“Well, he’s mending well. I mentioned that I knew you and he said for me to thank you for him.”
“Good fellow! Will he have to go to prison when he recovers?”
“No; that’s the queerest part of it; he wasn’t American, actually. He’s German. He said he was escaping.”
“What? Really?”
“Yes, funny, isn’t it? I’ve got to get this man to hospital so I can’t tell you any more of the story now. Later, perhaps. Auf Wiedersehn!”
“Extraordinary!” said Mïller, lapsing into English as he had a habit of doing when German wouldn’t express his feelings.
“Well, so you turned out to be a hero instead of a fool this time,” said a corporal who leaned on his rifle nearby. “You were lucky. But I warn you not to crawl out there after every crashed aviator after this. It isn’t worth the risk.”
“I couldn’t help it,” said Mïller. “I felt sorry for the poor fellow.”
“Pooh! Feel sorry for our men, if you like, but where’s the use in feeling sorry for the enemy?”
“He wasn’t the enemy, you see.”
“Now you know that, but for all you knew then he was only a scoundrelly American. I hate Americans. A bunch of sorry democrats, that’s what they are.”
“Oh, by the way,” the corporal went on, a wicked gleam coming into his eye. “I have a postcard I bought on my last leave. Thought you men might like to see it.”
The men crowded around to look.
“What is it?” asked Günter.
“It’s an American aviator our men shot down in July. His father’s some big nob in the States so it got a lot of publicity.”
The card was passed from hand to hand. Mïller had it last.
The picture was of a pilot stretched out on the ground beside the wreck of an American aeroplane. Although the body was badly burned one could see that the fellow had not been very old.
“Where did you get it, Führler?” asked Mïller.
“At a train station between here and Stuttgart.”
Mïller handed the card back to him but Führler ignored it.
“You can keep it; I’ve got several. In fact, I bought that one for you, since you seem to be so taken with unlucky aviators.”
“Danke,” said Mïller, pocketing the picture, albeit somewhat reluctantly. He did not like it. He could not say why.
He moved off down the line and mounted the fire step to look out into no-man’s-land. The fog was blowing in thicker than ever and one could not see more than ten feet in any direction. Everything was very still—for the front lines, anyway. A dull report sounded regularly from the enemy guns up the line, but most of the shells seemed to be falling somewhere to their right. One might hear in the pauses the drip of condensation on the wire entanglements. Mïller fingered the bolt of his rifle and stared ahead into the white bank. The photograph of the dead aviator rose before his imagination. He shook his head and screwed his eyes shut, and tried to think of something else, but still his thoughts came back to it. Why had they taken that photograph anyway? Poor fellow. How would his mother feel if he were lying smashed beside an aeroplane and people sold pictures of it?
The sound of a gramophone broke into his thoughts. Immediately several voices further down the line rose in protest.
“Oh, you’re not going to play that song again, are you?”
“I like it,” said Toffi, who was the one who had turned it on.
“Turn it off!”
“Why?”
The song in question was “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”. Just who Alexander was or what bearing his ragtime band had on anything I don’t know any more than I know how Toffi had acquired a recording of the song in such a culturally cognisant nation as Germany. Wherever he had gotten it, it had soon become his favourite song and the other men had by now heard it so often that most of them had learned it by heart whether they liked it or not.
“It’s stupid!” continued the protests.
“It’s American, which amounts to the same thing,” said Günter.
“What do the words mean, anyhow?” asked Krönermann.
“Nothing,” said Mïller, who had learned English at school. “They don’t really make sense.”
“That’s why Toffi likes the song so much,” said Führler disagreeably.
“No it’s not,” said Toffi.
“Turn it off,” said Speindal. “If any of the other companies heard us listening to that trash we’d be the laughing-stock of the whole brigade.”
“But—”
“Turn it off!” said Führler and even Toffi didn’t dare argue further. Führler was not one to be trifled with.
“What should we listen to, then?”
“Do we have to listen to anything?”
“I want to,” said Toffi.
They were interrupted by a sudden squall from behind a stack of ammunition.
“Hullo, Szpotzii’s got a rat! Well done!” and the platoon terrier emerged, wrestling a rat half his own size. The soldiers called them “corpse rats” and Mïller still felt a thrill of disgust whenever he saw their sleek, pulpy bodies long after the other men had gotten used to them. Any kind of diversion (besides Toffi’s music) was welcome to the men in the dreary state they were in and a group of spectators gathered around to see the sport.
“Get him! Bekommen sie ihn!” “Hurrah!” “That’s it!” “Now for his throat!” “Come on, Szpotzii!” The little dog did his best, but in the end Günter had to finish the rat off with his rifle butt.
“Now we throw him way out into no-man’s-land to warn all his friends not to bother our platoon,” said Günter, suiting action to word.
“I threw three dead ones out yesterday,” said Krönermann. “They don’t seem to take warnings.”
“They are like the English,” said Speindal.
Toffi had gone back to his sign painting.
“You’ll be able to put that up soon, Dummkopf,” said Führler. “The fog’s lifting.”
Mïller looked out over the parapet. The white bank was becoming translucent and an occasional sniper’s bullet, from which they had been relatively safe in the fog, cracked over their heads from time to time.
“There’s a sniper in that building to the left,” observed Führler. Mïller glanced in that direction. Every once in a while he could discern a flash of light in one of the windows of the ruined structure and a bullet would fly over.
“He’s got his sights on us,” said Krönermann.
Führler calmly put his rifle to his shoulder and, sighting carefully, fired a shot. They waited for a moment and then another flash and a bullet in the concrete parapet behind them informed the men that the shot had been wasted.
“You missed him,” said Speindal.
“Flüche!” exclaimed Führler in frustration. “If only I had a scope!”
“There, it’s all finished,” said Toffi, straightening up.
“Toffi, get down!” cried Mïller, clapping his hand over Toffi’s helmet and thrusting his head below the level of the parapet. The next instant he was thrown against the side of the trench.
“What happened?” asked Toffi, who had escaped harm.
“You idiot, you stuck your head up,” said Krönermann. “Are you hurt badly, Mïller?”
Mïller looked down. His sleeve was covered in blood.