NO ONE, gentlemen judges, a dead man is the one speaking to you with my mouth. It is not me standing here, it is not my hand that is raised, these are not my hairs that have now turned white, this is not my act, this is not my act. You cannot understand it. You believe that in front of you is a living person, a man who is speaking – or someone crazy. I am not crazy, or so I think. But I have been here buried under the ground for ten years, my limbs have rotted, my bones are gray dust, my breath – I no longer have breath. Everything is silent. Everything is over. I lie in the earth in front of Verdun, above are the ruins of Douaumont, the wind blows over abandoned graves, abandoned land, abandoned dead. Go there, dig into the ground, dig left at the large crater from the shell explosion, there is water there, maybe soft mud. Do not be afraid: There is no more war, no shell will come to tear you apart, no piercing screams echo, no more severed limbs flying through the air, there is no blood, there are no dismembered bodies. It is quiet. Everything. Absolutely. Now bend down there. Take out some dirt. And then you will find me – me. Yes, bones and skull and dust and my name, which is not my name, but it is, my fate, which does not belong to me, but to someone else, and now it has taken over me, suffocating as if it were my own.
How can I tell this in a language that is not my own, through a mouth that is not mine? How can you believe me, when I myself cannot believe in myself? But that’s how it was, that’s how it happened, it was reality, it was a day like all the others, no, not like all the others, because Lieutenant Bas had just told us that a revolution had taken place, a revolution in Munich and Berlin, that the war was over, after four years, no more shells, no more death, no more mud, no more orders and laws, no more pencil and oppression: Everything was dissolving, everything was collapsing, a new era, a new life.