A light beyond the trenc.., p.1
A Light Beyond the Trenches, page 1
Books by Alan Hlad
THE LONG FLIGHT HOME
CHURCHILL’S SECRET MESSENGER
A LIGHT BEYOND THE TRENCHES
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
A LIGHT BEYOND THE TRENCHES
ALAN HLAD
JOHN SCOGNAMIGLIO BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART 1 - PRELUDE
CHAPTER 1 - YPRES, BELGIUM—APRIL 20, 1915
PART 2 - GAVOTTE
CHAPTER 2 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—APRIL 17, 1916
CHAPTER 3 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—APRIL 17, 1916
CHAPTER 4 - HULLUCH, FRANCE—APRIL 28, 1916
CHAPTER 5 - LEIPZIG, GERMANY—MAY 14, 1916
CHAPTER 6 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JULY 18, 1916
CHAPTER 7 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JULY 19, 1916
CHAPTER 8 - LILLE, FRANCE—JULY 19, 1916
CHAPTER 9 - LEIPZIG, GERMANY—JULY 19, 1916
CHAPTER 10 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—AUGUST 2, 1916
CHAPTER 11 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—OCTOBER 1, 1916
CHAPTER 12 - LILLE, FRANCE—OCTOBER 1, 1916
PART 3 - INTERMEZZO THE TURNIP WINTER
CHAPTER 13 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—DECEMBER 2, 1916
CHAPTER 14 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—DECEMBER 3, 1916
CHAPTER 15 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—DECEMBER 4, 1916
CHAPTER 16 - LILLE, FRANCE—DECEMBER 6, 1916
CHAPTER 17 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—DECEMBER 8, 1916
CHAPTER 18 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—DECEMBER 9, 1916
CHAPTER 19 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—DECEMBER 12, 1916
CHAPTER 20 - LILLE, FRANCE—DECEMBER 12, 1916
CHAPTER 21 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—DECEMBER 13, 1916
CHAPTER 22 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—DECEMBER 18, 1916
CHAPTER 23 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—DECEMBER 19, 1916
CHAPTER 24 - LILLE, FRANCE—JANUARY 14, 1917
CHAPTER 25 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JANUARY 23, 1917
CHAPTER 26 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JANUARY 24, 1917
CHAPTER 27 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JANUARY 28, 1917
CHAPTER 28 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JANUARY 30, 1917
CHAPTER 29 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JANUARY 31, 1917
CHAPTER 30 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—FEBRUARY 7, 1917
CHAPTER 31 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—FEBRUARY 13, 1917
CHAPTER 32 - LILLE, FRANCE—FEBRUARY 15, 1917
CHAPTER 33 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—FEBRUARY 20, 1917
PART 4 - MINUET
CHAPTER 34 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JULY 17, 1917
CHAPTER 35 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JULY 18, 1917
CHAPTER 36 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JULY 19, 1917
CHAPTER 37 - LEIPZIG, GERMANY—JULY 20, 1917
CHAPTER 38 - PASSCHENDAELE, BELGIUM—AUGUST 15, 1917
CHAPTER 39 - LEIPZIG, GERMANY—SEPTEMBER 27, 1917
CHAPTER 40 - LEIPZIG, GERMANY—SEPTEMBER 29, 1917
CHAPTER 41 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—OCTOBER 24, 1917
PART 5 - GIGUE
CHAPTER 42 - OLDENBURG, GERMANY—JULY 14, 1919
CHAPTER 43 - VIENNA, AUSTRIA—OCTOBER 20, 1919
AUTHOR’S NOTE
A READING GROUP GUIDE
Discussion Questions
JOHN SCOGNAMIGLIO BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2022 by Alan Hlad
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN: 978-1-4967-2844-9
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2846-3 (ebook)
First Kensington Trade Paperback Edition: April 2022
In honor of guide dogs
PART 1
PRELUDE
CHAPTER 1
YPRES, BELGIUM—APRIL 20, 1915
On the eve of the war crime, Max Benesch was crouched in a trench on the western front. The shelling had paused and the battlefield was calm, except for sporadic barks of machine guns. He joined a small group of his fellow German soldiers who were gathered around a metal container, reminiscent of a tarnished milk can. Taking turns, they scooped tins of watered-down potato soup laced with specks of beef sinew.
Max—a tall, lean man with hair and eyes the color of chestnuts—took a spoonful of soup, bland and cold. He looked at Jakob, a haggard boyish-faced soldier. “The war will soon be over, and you’ll be devouring sauerbraten and spätzle.”
Jakob, his eyes dark with fatigue, smiled and spooned a bit of soup.
The trench, a three-meter-deep by two-meter-wide excavation, stretched for over twenty kilometers through the Belgian area of Flanders, creating a semicircular front line. The Imperial German Army had acquired higher ground, and they had the Allies—French, British, Canadian, and Belgian troops—partially surrounded. But the transport of soldiers to the eastern front to fight the Russians had depleted German forces. Both sides were dug in. Between them ran two hundred meters of no-man’s-land, a barren field scarred with shell holes, barbed wire, and mud. And despite artillery bombardments, ground attacks, and an escalating death toll, the Ypres battlefield remained a stalemate.
Max, a twenty-four-year-old Jewish German soldier, had arrived at the front six months earlier. Prior to entering the military, he had attended the Royal Conservatory of Music of Leipzig. A pianist and aspiring composer, he dreamed of someday performing at the Great Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna. But his ambition was placed on hold when war erupted in Europe. For Max and many other Jews, serving Germany created hope of being treated equal to non-Jewish Germans for the first time. However, Max was discouraged to learn that Jewish soldiers were limited in rank and could only become officers of the reserve, not the regular army. Regardless of his education and combat training performance, he was given the position of a soldat, the lowest rank of enlisted men in the army, and he was assigned to the front.
The initial weeks in the trenches were nearly intolerable for Max. The muddy, rat-infested conditions were abhorrent, spawning influenza, typhus, and trench foot. Artillery cannons perpetually boomed. The ground quaked. Shrapnel whistled through the air. He’d witnessed men, some of whom he’d befriended, die in battle. A looming sense of dread, knowing that he could be maimed or killed at any moment, haunted him like a shadow. Under a rain of shellfire, it was luck—not valor or skill—that determined who would live or die.
As weeks had turned to months, Max learned to accept that there was only so much he could do to influence his fate. Keep my head down, he’d told himself, crawling under a hail of machine gun fire. He hoped that he could endure six more months. After reaching his one-year anniversary on the front, he would receive a two-week leave, and he’d go home to his fiancée, Wilhelmina. He longed to see her and wrote to her often, but his deep-seated will to survive wasn’t solely driven by the hope of reuniting with her. It was fueled by the death of his parents, Franz and Katarina.
Max’s parents had perished in the sinking of the Baron Gautsch, a passenger ship that sank in the northern Adriatic Sea at the onset of the war, after running into a minefield laid by the Austro-Hungarian Navy. One hundred and twenty-seven passengers and crew members died in the sinking of the ship, and his parents’ bodies were never recovered. He prayed that they didn’t suffer. Heartbroken, he often viewed a photograph taken of him and his parents at a piano performance in Leipzig, which he kept in his soldaten leather wallet, alongside a picture of Wilhelmina. Do I make you proud? he would often silently ask. Will I be forgiven for what I’m required to do? After closing his wallet, he would return to his duties, resolved to live another day, and another day after that.
Max sipped his soup to the squelching of footsteps approaching in the muddy trench.
“Disinfection Unit,” Jakob said, nudging Max.
Max looked up. A mustached oberleutnant stopped and directed two soldiers following him. One of the soldiers used a wind gauge, which was attached to a pole and raised high in the air, while the other inspected a grouping of large, metal cylinders, partially buried in the base of the trench. The officer recorded notes on a clipboard. Their unit had routinely traversed the area, but the frequency of their inspections had increased over the past few days.
Max and his comrades lowered their spoons. Their meal conversation faded.
Otto, a stout soldier with a lantern jaw, called to the officer. “Is there anything we can do to help, sir?”
“Nein,” the officer said in a hoarse, bass voice. He scribbled on his paper.
Otto lowered his head.
Weeks ago, several thousand me
The mustached officer recorded another wind reading, and then disappeared with his men down the trench.
“They work hard to keep their duties a secret,” said Heinrich, a wiry soldier from Cologne who loved to play cards.
“Maybe the cylinders contain disinfectant for lice,” Jakob said.
“I don’t think so,” Max said. “The nozzles are pointed toward the enemy, and they’re measuring the speed and direction of the wind.”
Jakob shrugged.
“Maybe the French have worse lice than us,” Otto said, grinning.
A few of the men chuckled, but the jesting abruptly faded.
Whatever is inside the cylinders cannot be good. Max stirred his soup, and he wished that the heavy spring rains would return, burying the cylinders and the entire western front under a river of mud.
Jakob finished his food and turned to Max. “Do you think the farmhouse that we visited on our leave has been destroyed by shellfire?”
“I don’t know,” Max said, surprised by his friend’s inquiry.
“On our next day off,” Otto said, “we need to go there, assuming it’s still standing.”
“Ja,” Heinrich said, wiggling his fingers. “Max plays the piano beautifully.”
Max smiled.
Three weeks earlier, Max’s unit had been given a twenty-four-hour leave. Heinrich, who had won several bottles of schnapps in a card game with a neighboring trench unit, suggested that they find a secluded spot to drink his winnings. They settled on a vacant farmhouse, which had been partially bombed by Allied infantry. The house was empty, except for a broken sofa and an upright piano, which was likely too heavy for the fleeing family to take with them. After a meal of roasted quail, thanks to Otto’s marksmanship, the men urged Max to play the piano. Placing his hands on the ivory keys resurrected fond memories of his parents, who had encouraged his dreams of someday becoming a professional pianist. He began with some of his favorite pieces, Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca. His friends applauded and urged him to play more songs. Desiring for his comrades to participate, Max turned his selections to German marches and pieces with lyrics, even though he rarely, if ever, performed them. With full bellies and light hearts, the men gathered around the piano. They drank, passing the bottles, which they slid across the top of the piano. Spilled schnapps turned the piano keys sticky. Max played. The men sang. And for the first time in months, they were joyful.
Otto finished his soup and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “You’re a superb pianist.”
“Danke,” Max said, feeling grateful for the compliment.
Otto nudged Max with his elbow. “But I would stick to playing marches. People would pay to hear them.”
Max nodded.
The men cleared their tins and gathered their rifles. Otto and Heinrich made their way to a dugout, a protective cave carved into the side of the trench, while Max waited for Jakob, who was on his knees with an ear pressed to a dry section of ground.
“What are you doing?” Max asked.
“Listening for tunnelers,” Jakob said.
Max’s heart sank. An image of a German-occupied hill—exploding in a mountainous fountain of earth, iron, and bodies—flashed in his head. He shook away his thought and said, “You have little to worry about.”
“The thousand men who were blown to pieces on the ridge probably thought the same thing,” Jakob said. “If British miners are capable of tunneling into the highest point in German territory and loading an underground chamber with explosives, they can surely reach our location.”
For months, we fear death raining down from the sky, Max thought. Now, we worry about wrath rising from hell. He approached Jakob and extended his hand. “They won’t tunnel under us.”
“How do you know?” Jakob asked.
“They want the high ground. Our position is on one of the lowest areas of the line.”
“Are you sure?”
“Ja,” Max lied, hoping to quell his friend’s angst.
Jakob clasped Max’s hand and stood. The tension in his brows softened.
Max patted him on the shoulder. “Join me. I’m going to write a letter to Wilhelmina. You should write one for your mutter.”
“All right,” Jakob said.
Reaching the dugout, they found Heinrich standing near the makeshift door, which was constructed from a tattered piece of canvas. Several soldiers, strapping their helmets to their heads, rushed down the trench.
“What’s happening?” Jakob asked.
Heinrich removed his helmet and ran a hand through his oily hair. “The infantry has been given orders to conduct a forty-eight-hour bombardment.”
Jakob’s shoulders slumped. “When?”
“Tonight,” Heinrich said.
A prelude to an infantry attack, Max thought. Every soldier on the front knew that a ground attack followed a sustained bombardment. Soon, he and his comrades would be ordered by pistol-wielding officers to climb out of the trenches and run into battle. Burying his apprehension, he opened the canvas door and gestured to Jakob. “Letters.”
The men spoke little for the next few hours. They hunkered in their bunks to either rest, read, or write. Under the flickering flame of a Hindenburglicht, a flat bowl filled with waxlike fat and a short wick, Max retrieved a paper and pencil. By evening, he finished his letter to Wilhelmina and sealed it in an envelope. Jakob, who appeared to be having difficulty concentrating on anything other than the impending battle, struggled to draft a message to his mutter. Seeking a bit of fresh air before having to spend forty-eight hours hunkered in a cramped, timber-lined hole, Max left the dugout. The sky was dark, except for a crescent moon. The scent of burnt tobacco pervaded his nose. Along the trench, helmets shimmered with moonlight. Cigarette embers glowed and faded like fireflies.
As he glanced to his luminous dial watch, German artillery guns exploded. Within seconds, the boom of guns swelled into a unified, ferocious thunder. Red spheres pierced the sky. French rockets shot up light flares with attached parachutes, which slowly drifted to the ground. The flares burned for a minute, turning night into day. Showers of white and red stars filled the atmosphere. Soon, French artillery guns fired. Above Max, the air was permeated with shrills and whistles. Adrenaline surged through his veins. Explosions behind German lines trembled the ground beneath his feet. The acrid scent of gunpowder grew. Fear rippled through him.
A wave of Allied shells exploded, one after another in close proximity, compelling him to press his body to the side of the trench. As he turned to run for the dugout, a concussive blast detonated, knocking him to the ground. A high-pitched ringing buzzed in his ears. As the fog cleared from his head, a loud hissing, like a ruptured steam radiator, emanated from the vicinity of the dugout. Coughs and screams turned his blood cold. A stench of pineapple and pepper burned his nostrils. An overhead flare illuminated the trench, revealing a ruptured cylinder, spewing a green-yellow vapor.
