CHAPTER 38 - PASSCHENDAELE, BELGIUM—AUGUST 15, 1917
Bruno hunkered inside an abandoned church as Allied shellfire rained down on the village of Passchendaele, the last ridge east of Ypres.
One side of the stone structure had collapsed from an exploding shell, giving view to a cemetery marred with broken headstones and grave monuments.
Several soldiers gathered near a small fire, which they’d created from a wooden lectern.
A nearby explosion quaked the church, sending bits of mortar onto Bruno’s helmet.
His pulse thudded in his ears. A mix of dread and regret churned inside his stomach. I didn’t need to be here.
Heavy rains had turned the ground soft, causing a section of light rail—running along the front—to collapse into the muck.
Therefore, the only way to deliver shells to the last section of the ridge was by pack mules.
He could have ordered soldiers to transport the shells, but he eagerly volunteered to lead the men in the mission.
Disgusted by the use of Fritz Haber’s new chemical weapon, mustard gas, he left the site of the atrocity, as well as the safety of his bunker.
And while transporting the shells to the ridge, the Allies unleashed a surprise bombardment, forcing him and his men to abandon the mules and find shelter inside a church.
The preceding month, Bruno’s unit had received the first shipments of mustard gas.
The shells looked the same as other gas projectiles, except for a yellow cross painted on the side of the casing.
On the nights of July twelfth and thirteenth, his unit unleashed the new chemical weapon on British troops.
Bruno had hoped that Fritz Haber’s promise—that sulfur mustard gas would change the tide of the war—would come true.
But Bruno soon learned that this would not be the case when a German patrol captured a dozen British soldiers who were exposed to the mustard poison.
The prisoners were covered with horrific blisters and sores, and many were blinded or coughing up blood.
Unlike other poison gases, sulfur mustard was absorbed through the skin, so gas masks were useless, and instead of dying immediately, the prisoners suffered for weeks.
A soldier who received a lethal exposure of chlorine or phosgene gas typically died within a couple days.
However, the mustard gas was clearly designed to disable rather than kill.
And it was clear, to Bruno, that Haber and his chemists had created the poison to inspire terror.
Explosions quaked the earth. A few of the soldiers crawled under pews.
But Bruno—his mind and soul ravaged by years of death—climbed steps to a large, ornate wooden altar.
He removed a piece of paper, an envelope, and a pencil from the inside pocket of his tunic, next to the identification of the fallen French soldier whom he’d drowned in a water-filled shell hole.
He placed the tip of the pencil to the paper and began to write.
A shell exploded near the cemetery. Using his sleeve, he wiped a cold sweat from his brow.
Bruno squeezed his pencil, hoping that he would somehow make it back to Lille before Celeste delivered their baby. He buried his thought and continued writing.
Images of Anna and Max flashed in his head. His hands trembled, and he struggled to steady his pencil.
Bruno folded his letter and placed it, along with the Frenchman’s identification, inside the envelope and sealed it.
He stepped down from the altar and listened to the pace of the explosions.
The shellfire might be letting up. A choice burned in his gut: mail the letter when he returned to headquarters, or send a runner.
Before he changed his mind, he approached the soldiers sitting by the fire.
“J?ger,” Bruno called.
A thin but muscular young man stood and approached him. “Ja, sir.”
“I want you to run to headquarters,” Bruno said, giving the soldier the envelope. “Place the letter in the post back to Germany.”
“Ja, sir.” The solder stuffed the envelope inside his jacket, saluted, and then dashed from the church carrying his rifle.
Bruno watched the soldier disappear through a field, and then sat in a pew and lowered his head.
Minutes passed, and as the bombardment stopped, he regretted having sent a runner.
I overreacted, he thought. However, an hour later, when he and his men were about to embark on rounding up the pack mules that they’d abandoned, the Allied infantry unleashed the full fury of their shellfire.
Large-caliber projectiles exploded in close proximity to the church.
Some of the soldiers scrambled to the rear of the building, while others crawled under pews.
The ground rumbled. Explosions reverberated through Bruno’s blood and bone.
With no place to hide, he crouched near the base of a stone wall as the explosions grew closer and closer, as if the angle of the Allied cannons were being incrementally adjusted to narrow in on their location.
A concussive blast knocked him to the ground.
He raised his head, his ears ringing from the detonation, and saw that the roof was partially collapsed.
A soldier screamed as he struggled to free his crushed legs from under a fallen timber beam.
Nein! Bruno, determined to aid the soldier, crawled forward over a mass of debris.
Wood splinters and nails puncturing his hands and knees.
Reaching his comrade, Bruno strained—his muscles flaring with pain—to lift the beam.
The soldier yowled. And as Bruno gave a final heave, an incoming artillery shell shattered the church’s steeple, and tons of stone came crashing down upon them.