The Train was on Time (Der Zug war pünktlich) by Heinrich Böll is a short novel following the journey of a German soldier, Andreas, returning from leave to Przemyśl in Poland to rejoin the fighting on the Eastern Front in 1942. From the early stages Andreas senses his own death coming and spends much of the first half of the book trying to pinpoint when and where it will happen. Initially he is resigned to his fate but as the allotted time approaches he becomes more alarmed and agitated.
Andreas befriends 2 other soldiers who he travels with and learns their own tragedies, highlighting his reflections on his own life. The novel culminates with the three soldiers enjoying a grand ‘last supper’ and then visiting a brothel. Andreas meets Olina who is a prostitute and spy or the Polish partisans. As they share their lives and experiences a strong comparison is made between the life of a soldier and a prostitute. Each has a duty to perform and lacks freedom and autonomy, both were ripped from previous lives and thrust reluctantly into their roles of conformity. Both were artists (musicians) thrust into roles they did not intend.
In the narrative Andreas as a soldier is sidelined in favour of Andreas the person, Olina the prostitute again is not shown but the person. Both reveal themselves, sometimes reluctantly, as who they were before they were forced into their wartime roles.
Tragedy & Fate
It is possible to trace the form of an ancient Greek tragedy in the book as Andreas knows his fate and then works to avoid it, inevitably creating the circumstances which lead to its eventual fulfilment. The relentless journey towards death is an allegory for the life of a German soldier on the eastern front during the second world war, but easily also for any soldier in war.
That the story is about a German soldier serves to remind us of the similarity of all soldiers; that the soldiers on one side were no different from the soldiers on another, even when the soldier fights for the Nazis. It is easy to imagine Andreas on a train travelling south through Britain in much the same way as he is travelling through Germany and Poland.
The Train was on Time leaves one thinking about the nature of war from the perspective of a normal soldier (despite Andreas seeming very abnormal). The fatalistic nature of those living through war, both military and civilian.
War – Regret, Reverence and Remembrance
I am not a reader of war novels. It is an area which holds little appeal for me. Too often I find that the media and culture around war is far too close to celebration, glorification or propaganda. War should always be handled with regret, reverence and remembrance. The Train was on Time was written by a German author in the years after the Second World War, and is filled with a sense of all three of these. Significantly the remembrance is not just for the soldier but also the civilian, and even the soldier as civilian.
Böll was significant in postwar Germany as a voice of the regret of the Nazi era and of the Second World War. I think we should all be reminded of this regret. War should always be remembered as a tragedy, and remembered so we can strive to avoid it.
Darren Ellis is a teacher, creative and owner of Rotten Poetry. He reads classic literature, fantasy, sci-fi, literary fiction and history.
Going to read this