Produced by Eric Eldred, Tonya Allen, Charles Franks and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
MEN IN WAR
By Andreas Latzko
DEDICATED TO FRIEND AND FOE
_"I am convinced the time will come when all will think as I do."_
CONTENTS
I OFF TO WAR
II BAPTISM OF FIRE
III THE VICTOR
IV MY COMRADE
V A HERO'S DEATH
VI HOME AGAIN
I. OFF TO WAR
The time was late in the autumn of the second year of the war; the
place, the garden of a war hospital in a small Austrian town, which lay
at the base of wooded hills, sequestered as behind a Spanish wall, and
still preserving its sleepy contented outlook upon existence.
Day and night the locomotives whistled by. Some of them hauled to the
front trains of soldiers singing and hallooing, high-piled bales of
hay, bellowing cattle and ammunition in tightly-closed, sinister-looking
cars. The others, in the opposite direction, came creeping homeward
slowly, marked by the bleeding cross that the war has thrown upon all
walls and the people behind them. But the great madness raced through
the town like a hurricane, without disturbing its calm, as though the
low, brightly colored houses with the old-fashioned ornate façades
had tacitly come to the sensible agreement to ignore with aristocratic
reserve this arrogant, blustering fellow, War, who turned everything
topsy-turvy.
In the parks the children played unmolested with the large russet leaves
of the old chestnut trees. Women stood gossiping in front of the shops,
and somewhere in every street a girl with a bright kerchief on her head
could be seen washing windows. In spite of the hospital flags waving
from almost every house, in spite of innumerable bulletin boards,
notices and sign-posts that the intruder had thrust upon the defenseless
town, peace still seemed to prevail here, scarcely fifty miles away from
the butchery, which on clear nights threw its glow on the horizon like
an artificial illumination. When, for a few moments at a time, there was
a lull in the stream of heavy, snorting automobile trucks and rattling
drays, and no train happened to be rumbling over the railroad bridge and
no signal of trumpet or clanking of sabres sounded the strains of
war, then the obstinate little place instantly showed up its dull but
good-natured provincial face, only to hide it again in resignation
behind its ill-fitting soldier's mask, when the next automobile from
the general staff came dashing around the corner with a great show of
importance.
To be sure the cannons growled in the distance, as if a gigantic dog
were crouching way below the ground ready to jump up at the heavens,
snarling and snapping. The muffled barking of the big mortars came from
over there like a bad fit of coughing from a sickroom, frightening the
watchers who sit with eyes red with crying, listening for every sound
from the dying man. Even the long, low rows of houses shrank together
with a rattle and listened horrorstruck each time the coughing convulsed
the earth, as though the stress of war lay on the world's chest like a
nightmare.
The streets exchanged astonished glances, blinking sleepily in the
reflection of the night-lamps that inside cast their merrily dancing
shadows over close rows of beds. The rooms, choke-full of misery, sent
piercing shrieks and wails and groans out into the night. Every human
sound coming through the windows fell upon the silence like a furious
attack. It was a wild denunciation of the war that out there at the
front was doing its work, discharging mangled human bodies like so much
offal and filling all the houses with its bloody refuse.
But the beautiful wrought-iron fountains continued to gurgle and murmur
complacently, prattling with soothing insistence of the days of their
youth, when men still had the time and the care for noble lines and
curves, and war was the affair of princes and adventurers. Legend popped
out of every corner and every gargoyle, and ran on padded soles through
all the narrow little streets, like an invisible gossip whispering of
peace and comfort. And the ancient chestnut trees nodded assent, and
with the shadows of their outspread fingers stroked the frightened
façades to calm them. The past grew so lavishly out of the fissured
walls that any one coming within their embrace heard the plashing of the
fountains above the thunder of the artillery; and the sick and wounded
men felt soothed and listened from their fevered couches to the
talkative night outside. Pale men, who had been carried through the town
on swinging stretchers, forgot the hell they had come from; and even the
heavily laden victims tramping through the place on a forced march by
night became softened for a space, as if they had encountered Peace
and their own unarmed selves in the shadow of the columns and the
flower-filled bay-windows.
The same thing took place with the war in this town as with the stream
that came down from out of the mountains in the north, foaming with rage
at each pebble it rolled over. At the other end of the town, on passing
the last houses, it took a tender leave, quite tamed and subdued,
murmuring very gently, as if treading on tiptoe, as if drowsy with all
the dreaminess it had reflected. Between wide banks, it stepped out into
the broad meadowland, and circled about the war hospital, making almost
an island of the ground it stood on. Thick-stemmed sycamores cast their
shadow on the hospital, and from three sides came the murmur of the
slothful stream mingled with the rustling of the leaves, as if the
garden, when twilight fell, was moved by compassion and sang a slumber
song for the lacerated men, who had to suffer in rank and file,
regimented up to their very death, up to the grave, into which
they--unfortunate cobblers, tinkers, peasants, and clerks--were shoved
to the accompaniment of salvos from big-mouthed cannon.
The sound of taps had just died away, and the watchmen were making their
rounds, when they discovered three men in the deep shadow of the broad
avenue, and drove them into the house.
"Are you officers, eh?" the head-watchman, a stocky corporal of
the landsturm, with grey on his temples, growled and blustered
good-naturedly. "Privates must be in bed by nine o'clock." To preserve a
show of authority he added with poorly simulated bearishness: "Well, are
you going or not?"
He was about to give his usual order, "Quick, take to your legs!" but
caught himself just in time, and made a face as though he had swallowed
something.
The three men now hobbling toward the entrance for inmates, would have
been only too glad to carry out such an order. However, they had only
two legs and six clattering crutches between them. It was like a living
picture posed by a stage manager who has an eye for symmetry. On the
right went the one whose right leg had been saved, on the left went his
counterpart, hopping on his left leg, and in the middle the miserable
left-over of a human body swung between two high crutches, his empty
trousers raised and pinned across his chest, so that the whole man could
have gone comfortably into a cradle.
The corporal followed the group with his eyes, his head bent and his
fists clenched, as if bowed down beneath the burden of the sight. He
muttered a not exactly patriotic oath and spat out a long curve of
saliva with a hiss from between his front teeth. As he was about to turn
and go on his round again, a burst of laughter came from the direction
of the officers' wing. He stood still and drew in his head as if from a
blow on the back of his neck, and a gleam of ungovernable hatred flitted
over his broad, good-natured peasant face. He spat out again, to soothe
his feelings, then took a fresh start and passed the merry company with
a stiff salute.
The gentlemen returned the salute carelessly. Infected by the coziness
that hung over the whole of the town like a light cloud, they were
sitting chatting in front of the hospital on benches moved together to
form a square. They spoke of the war and--laughed, laughed like happy
schoolboys discussing the miseries of examinations just gone through.
Each had done his duty, each had had his ordeal, and now, under the
protection of his wound, each sat there in the comfortable expectation
of returning home, of seeing his people again, of being fêted, and for
at least two whole weeks, of living the life of a man who is not tagged
with a number.
The loudest of the laughers was the young lieutenant whom they had
nicknamed the Mussulman because of the Turkish turban he wore as officer
of a regiment of Bosnians. A shell had broken his leg, and done its
work thoroughly. For weeks already the shattered limb had been tightly
encased in a plaster cast, and its owner, who went about on crutches,
cherished it carefully, as though it were some precious object that had
been confided to his care.
On the bench opposite the Mussulman sat two gentlemen, a cavalry
officer, the only one on the active list, and an artillery officer,
who in civil life was a professor of philosophy, and so was called
"Philosopher" for short. The cavalry captain had received a cut across
his right arm, and the Philosopher's upper lip had been ripped by a
splinter from a grenade. Two ladies were sitting on the bench that
leaned against the wall of the hospital, and these three men were
monopolizing the conversation with them, because the fourth man sat on
his bench without speaking. He was lost in his own thoughts, his
limbs twitched, and his eyes wandered unsteadily. In the war he was a
lieutenant of the landsturm, in civil life a well-known composer. He had
been brought to the hospital a week before, suffering from severe
shock. Horror still gloomed in his eyes, and he kept gazing ahead of him
darkly. He always allowed the attendants at the hospital to do whatever
they wanted to him without resistance, and he went to bed or sat in the
garden, separated from the others as by an invisible wall, at which he
stared and stared. Even the unexpected arrival of his pretty, fair wife
had not resulted in dispelling for so much as a second the vision of
the awful occurrence that had unbalanced his mind. With his chin on his
chest he sat without a smile, while she murmured words of endearment;
and whenever she tried to touch his poor twitching hands with the tips
of her fingers, full of infinite love, he would jerk away as if seized
by a convulsion, or under torture.
Tears rolled down the little woman's cheeks--cheeks hungry for caresses.
She had fought her way bravely through the zones barred to civilians
until she finally succeeded in reaching this hospital in the war zone.
And now, after the great relief and joy of finding her husband alive and
unmutilated, she suddenly sensed an enigmatic resistance, an unexpected
obstacle, which she could not beg away or cry away, as she had used to
do. There was a something there that separated her mercilessly from the
man she had so yearned to see.
She sat beside him impatiently, tortured by her powerlessness to find an
explanation for the hostility that he shed around him. Her eyes pierced
the darkness, and her hands always went the same way, groping forward
timidly, then quickly withdrawing as though scorched when his shrinking
away in hatred threw her into despair again.
It was hard to have to choke down her grief like this, and not burst
out in reproach and tear this secret from her husband, which he in
his misery still interposed so stubbornly between himself and his one
support. And it was hard to simulate happiness and take part in the airy
conversation; hard always to have to force some sort of a reply, and
hard not to lose patience with the other woman's perpetual giggling. It
was easy enough for _her_. She knew that her husband, a major-general,
was safe behind the lines on the staff of a high command. She had fled
from the ennui of a childless home to enter into the eventful life of
the war hospital.
The major's wife had been sitting in the garden with the gentlemen ever
since seven o'clock, always on the point of leaving, quite ready to go
in her hat and jacket, but she let herself be induced again and again to
remain a little longer. She kept up her flirtatious conversation in the
gayest of spirits, as if she had no knowledge of all the torments she
had seen during the day in the very house against which she was leaning
her back. The sad little woman breathed a sigh of relief when it grew so
dark that she could move away from the frivolous chatterbox unnoticed.
And yet in spite of her titillating conversation and the air of
importance with which she spoke of her duties as a nurse, the Frau Major
was penetrated by a feeling that, without her being conscious of it,
raised her high above herself. The great wave of motherliness that had
swept over all the women when the fatal hour struck for the men, had
borne her aloft, too. She had seen the three men with whom she was now
genially exchanging light nothings come to the hospital--like thousands
of others--streaming with blood, helpless, whimpering with pain. And
something of the joy of the hen whose brood has safely hatched warmed
her coquetry.
Since the men have been going for months, crouching, creeping on
all fours, starving, carrying their own death as mothers carry their
children; since suffering and waiting and the passive acceptance of
danger and pain have reversed the sexes, the women have felt strong,
and even in their sensuality there has been a little glimmer of the new
passion for mothering.
The melancholy wife, just arrived from a region in which the war exists
in conversation only, and engrossed in the one man to the exclusion of
the others, suffered from the sexless familiarity that they so freely
indulged in there in the shadow of death and agony. But the others were
at home in the war. They spoke its language, which in the men was a
mixture of obstinate greed for life and a paradoxical softness born of
a surfeit of brutality; while in the woman it was a peculiar, garrulous
cold-bloodedness. She had heard so much of blood and dying that her
endless curiosity gave the impression of hardness and hysterical
cruelty.
The Mussulman and the cavalry officer were chaffing the Philosopher and
poking fun at the phrase-mongers, hair-splitters, and other wasters of
time. They took a childish delight in his broad smile of embarrassment
at being teased in the Frau Major's presence, and she, out of feminine
politeness, came to the Philosopher's rescue, while casting amorous
looks at the others who could deal such pert blows with their tongues.
"Oh, let the poor man alone," she laughed and cooed. "He's right. War
is horrible. These two gentlemen are just trying to get your temper up."
She twinkled at the Philosopher to soothe him. His good nature made him
so helpless.
The Philosopher grinned phlegmatically and said nothing. The Mussulman,
setting his teeth, shifted his leg, which in its white bandage was the
only part of him that was visible, and placed it in a more comfortable
position on the bench.
"The Philosopher?" he laughed. "As a matter of fact, what does the
Philosopher know about war? He's in the artillery. And war is conducted
by the infantry. Don't you know that, Mrs. ----?"
"I am not Mrs. here. Here I am Sister Engelberta," she cut in, and for a
moment the expression on her face became almost serious.
"I beg your pardon, Sister Engelberta. Artillery and infantry, you see,
are like husband and wife. We infantrymen must bring the child into the
world when a victory is to be born. The artillery has only the pleasure,
just like a man's part in love. It is not until after the child has been
baptized that he comes strutting out proudly. Am I not right, Captain?"
he asked, appealing to the cavalry officer. "You are an equestrian on
foot now, too."
The captain boomed his assent. In his summary view, members of the
Reichstag who refused to vote enough money for the military, Socialists,
pacifists, all men, in brief, who lectured or wrote or spoke superfluous
stuff and lived by their brains belonged in the same category as the
Philosopher. They were all "bookworms."
"Yes, indeed," he said in his voice hoarse from shouting commands.
"A philosopher like our friend here is just the right person for the
artillery. Nothing to do but wait around on the top of a hill and
look on. If only they don't shoot up our own men! It is easy enough to
dispose of the fellows on the other side, in front of us. But I always
have a devilish lot of respect for you assassins in the back. But let's
stop talking of the war. Else I'll go off to bed. Here we are at last
with two charming ladies, when it's been an age since we've seen a face
that isn't covered with stubble, and you still keep talking of that
damned shooting. Good Lord, when I was in the hospital train and the
first girl came in with a white cap on her curly light hair, I'd have
liked to hold her hand and just keep looking and looking at her. Upon my
word of honor, Sister Engelberta, after a while the shooting gets to
be a nuisance. The lice are worse. But the worst thing of all is the
complete absence of the lovely feminine. For five months to see nothing
but men--and then all of a sudden to hear a dear clear woman's voice!
That's the finest thing of all. It's worth going to war for."
The Mussulman pulled his mobile face flashing with youth into a grimace.
"The finest thing of all! No, sir. To be quite frank, the finest thing
of all is to get a bath and a fresh bandage, and be put into a clean
white bed, and know that for a few weeks you're going to have a rest.
It's a feeling like--well, there's no comparison for it. But, of course,
it is very nice, too, to be seeing ladies again."
The Philosopher had tilted his round fleshy Epicurean head to one side,
and a moist sheen came into his small crafty eyes. He glanced at the
place where a bright spot in the almost palpable darkness suggested the
Frau Major's white dress, and began to tell what he thought, very slowly
in a slight sing-song.
"The finest thing of all, I think, is the quiet--when you have been
lying up there in the mountains where every shot is echoed back and
forth five times, and all of a sudden it turns absolutely quiet--no
whistling, no howling, no thundering--nothing but a glorious quiet that
you can listen to as to a piece of music! The first few nights I sat up
the whole time and kept my ears cocked for the quiet, the way you try
to catch a tune at a distance. I believe I even howled a bit, it was so
delightful to listen to no sound."
The captain of cavalry sent his cigarette flying through the night like
a comet scattering sparks, and brought his hand down with a thump on his
knee.
"There, there, Sister Engelberta, did you get that?" he cried
sarcastically. "'Listen to no sound.' You see, that's what's called
philosophy. I know something better than that, Mr. Philosopher, namely,
not to hear what you hear, especially when it's such philosophical
rubbish."
They laughed, and the man they were teasing smiled good-naturedly. He,
too, was permeated by the peacefulness that floated into the garden from
the sleeping town. The cavalryman's aggressive jokes glided off without
leaving a sting, as did everything else that might have lessened the
sweetness of the few days still lying between him and the front. He
wanted to make the most of his time, and take everything easily with his
eyes tight shut, like a child who has to enter a dark room.
The Frau Major leaned over to the Philosopher.
"So opinions differ as to what was the finest thing," she said; and her
breath came more rapidly. "But, tell me, what was the most awful thing
you went through out there? A lot of the men say the drumfire is the
worst, and a lot of them can't get over the sight of the first man they
saw killed. How about you?"
The Philosopher looked tortured. It was a theme that did not fit
into his programme. He was casting about for an evasive reply when an
unintelligible wheezing exclamation drew all eyes to the corner in which
the landsturm officer and his wife were sitting. The others had almost
forgotten them in the darkness and exchanged frightened glances when
they heard a voice that scarcely one of them knew, and the man with the
glazed eyes and uncertain gestures, a marionette with broken joints,
began to speak hastily in a falsetto like the crowing of a rooster.
"What was the most awful thing? The only awful thing is the going off.
You go off to war--and they let you go. That's the awful thing."
A cold sickening silence fell upon the company. Even the Mussulman's
face lost its perpetually happy expression and stiffened in
embarrassment. It had come so unexpectedly and sounded so
unintelligible. It caught them by the throat and set their pulses
bounding--perhaps because of the vibrating of the voice that issued from
the twitching body, or because of the rattling that went along with it,
and made it sound like a voice broken by long sobbing.
The Frau Major jumped up. She had seen the landsturm officer brought
to the hospital strapped fast to the stretcher, because his sobbing
wrenched and tore his body so that the bearers could not control him
otherwise. Something inexpressibly hideous--so it was said--had half
robbed the poor devil of his reason, and the Frau Major suddenly dreaded
a fit of insanity. She pinched the cavalryman's arm and exclaimed with a
pretense of great haste:
"My goodness! There's the gong of the last car. Quick, quick,"
addressing the sick man's wife, "quick! We must run."
They all rose. The Frau Major passed her arm through the unhappy little
woman's and urged with even greater insistence:
"We'll have a whole hour's walk back to town if we miss the car."
The little wife, completely at a loss, her whole body quivering, bent
over her husband again to take leave. She was certain that his outburst
had reference to her and held a grim deadly reproach, which she did not
comprehend. She felt her husband draw back and start convulsively under
the touch of her lips. And she sobbed aloud at the awful prospect of
spending an endless night in the chilly neglected room in the hotel,
left alone with this tormenting doubt. But the Frau Major drew her
along, forcing her to run, and did not let go her arm until they
had passed the sentinel at the gate and were out on the street. The
gentlemen followed them with their eyes, saw them reappear once again
on the street in the lamplight, and listened to the sound of the car
receding in the distance. The Mussulman picked up his crutches, and
winked at the Philosopher significantly, and said something with a yawn
about going to bed. The cavalry officer looked down at the sick man
curiously and felt sorry for him. Wanting to give the poor devil a bit
of pleasure, he tapped him on his shoulder and said in his free and easy
way:
"You've got a chic wife, I must say. I congratulate you."
The next instant he drew back startled. The pitiful heap on the bench
jumped up suddenly, as though a force just awakened had tossed him up
from his seat.
"Chic wife? Oh, yes. Very dashing!" came sputtering from his twitching
lips with a fury that cast out the words like a seething stream. "She
didn't shed a single tear when I left on the train. Oh, they were all
very dashing when we went off. Poor Dill's wife was, too. Very plucky!
She threw roses at him in the train and she'd been his wife for only two
months." He chuckled disdainfully and clenched his teeth, fighting hard
to suppress the tears burning in his threat. "Roses! He-he! And 'See you
soon again!' They were all so patriotic! Our colonel congratulated Dill
because his wife had restrained herself so well--as if he were simply
going off to maneuvers."
The lieutenant was now standing up. He swayed on his legs, which he
held wide apart, and supported himself on the cavalry captain's arm, and
looked up into his face expectantly with unsteady eyes.
"Do you know what happened to him--to Dill? I was there. Do you know
what?"
The captain looked at the others in dismay.
"Come on--come on to bed. Don't excite yourself," he stammered in
embarrassment.
With a howl of triumph the sick man cut him short and snapped in an
unnaturally high voice:
"You don't know what happened to Dill, you don't? We were standing just
the way we are now, and he was just going to show me the new photograph
that his wife had sent him--his brave wife, he-he, his restrained
wife. Oh yes, restrained! That's what they all were--all prepared for
anything. And while we were standing there, he about to show me the
picture, a twenty-eighter struck quite a distance away from us, a good
two-hundred yards. We didn't even look that way. Then all of a sudden I
saw something black come flying through the air--and Dill fell over with
his dashing wife's picture in his hand and a boot, a leg, a boot with
the leg of a baggage soldier sticking in his head--a soldier that the
twenty-eighter had blown to pieces far away from where we stood."
He stopped for an instant and stared at the captain triumphantly. Then
he went on with a note of spiteful pride in his voice, though every now
and then interrupted by a peculiar gurgling groan.
"Poor Dill never said another word--Dill with the spur sticking in his
skull, a regular cavalry spur, as big as a five-crown piece. He only
turned up the whites of his eyes a little and looked sadly at his wife's
picture, that she should have permitted such a thing as that. Such
a thing as that! Such a thing! It took four of us to pull the boot
out--four of us. We had to turn it and twist it, until a piece of
his brain came along--like roots pulled up--like a jellyfish--a dead
one--sticking to the spur."
"Shut up!" the captain yelled furiously, and tore himself away and
walked into the house cursing.
The other two looked after him longingly, but they could not let the
unfortunate man stay there by himself. When the captain had withdrawn
his arm, he had fallen down on the bench again and sat whimpering like
a whipped child, with his head leaning on the back. The Philosopher
touched his shoulder gently, and was about to speak to him kindly and
induce him to go into the house when he started up again and broke out
into an ugly, snarling laugh.
"But we tore her out of him, his dashing wife. Four of us had to tug and
pull until she came out. I got him rid of her. Out with her! She's gone.
All of them are gone. Mine is gone, too. Mine is torn out, too. All are
being torn out. There's no wife any more! No wife any more, no--"
His head bobbed and fell forward. Tears slowly rolled down his sad, sad
face.
The captain reappeared followed by the little assistant physician, who
was on night duty.
"You must go to bed now, Lieutenant," the physician said with affected
severity.
The sick man threw his head up and stared blankly at the strange face.
When the physician repeated the order in a raised voice, his eyes
suddenly gleamed, and he nodded approvingly.
"Must go, of course," he repeated eagerly, and drew a deep sigh. "We all
must go. The man who doesn't go is a coward, and they have no use for
a coward. That's the very thing. Don't you understand? Heroes are the
style now. The chic Mrs. Dill wanted a hero to match her new hat. Ha-ha!
That's why poor Dill had to go and lose his brains. I, too--you, too--we
must go die. You must let yourself be trampled on--your brains trampled
on, while the women look on--chic--because it's the style now."
He raised his emaciated body painfully, holding on to the back of the
bench, and eyed each man in turn, waiting for assent.
"Isn't it sad?" he asked softly. Then his voice rose suddenly to a
shriek again, and the sound of his fury rang out weirdly in the garden.
"Weren't they deceiving us, eh? I'd like to know--weren't they cheats?
Was I an assassin? Was I a ruffian? Didn't I suit her when I sat at
the piano playing? We were expected to be gentle and considerate!
Considerate! And all at once, because the fashion changed, they had to
have murderers. Do you understand? Murderers!"
He broke away from the physician, and stood swaying again, and his
voice gradually sank to a complaining sound like the thick strangulated
utterance of a drunkard.
"My wife was in fashion too, you know. Not a tear! I kept waiting and
waiting for her to begin to scream and beg me at last to get out of the
train, and not go with the others--beg me to be a coward for her sake.
Not one of them had the courage to. They just wanted to be in fashion.
Mine, too! Mine, too! She waved her handkerchief just like all the
rest."
His twitching arms writhed upwards, as though he were calling the
heavens to witness.
"You want to know what was the most awful thing?" he groaned, turning
to the Philosopher abruptly. "The disillusionment was the most awful
thing--the going off. The war wasn't. The war is what it has to be. Did
it surprise you to find out that war is horrible? The only surprising
thing was the going off. To find out that the women are horrible--that
was the surprising thing. That they can smile and throw roses, that they
can give up their men, their children, the boys they have put to bed a
thousand times and pulled the covers over a thousand times, and petted
and brought up to be men. That was the surprise! That they gave us
up--that they sent us--_sent_ us! Because every one of them would
have been ashamed to stand there without a hero. That was the great
disillusionment. Do you think we should have gone if they had not sent
us? Do you think so? Just ask the stupidest peasant out there why he'd
like to have a medal before going back on furlough. Because if he has a
medal his girl will like him better, and the other girls will run after
him, and he can use his medal to hook other men's women away from under
their noses. That's the reason, the only reason. The women sent us.
No general could have made us go if the women hadn't allowed us to be
stacked on the trains, if they had screamed out that they would never
look at us again if we turned into murderers. Not a single man would
have gone off if they had sworn never to give themselves to a man who
has split open other men's skulls and shot and bayoneted human beings.
Not one man, I tell you, would have gone. I didn't want to believe that
they could stand it like that. 'They're only pretending,' I thought.
'They're just restraining themselves. But when the first whistle blows,
they'll begin to scream and tear us out of the train, and rescue us.'
_Once_ they had the chance to protect us, but all they cared about was
being in style--nothing else in the world but just being in style."
He sank down on the bench again and sat as though he were all broken up.
His body was shaken by a low weeping, and his head rolled to and fro
on his panting chest. A little circle of people had gathered behind his
back. The old landsturm corporal was standing beside the physician with
four sentries ready to intervene at a moment's notice. All the windows
in the officers' wing had lighted up, and scantily clad figures leaned
out, looking down into the garden curiously.
The sick man eagerly scrutinized the indifferent faces around him. He
was exhausted.
His hoarse throat no longer gave forth a sound. His hand reached out for
help to the Philosopher, who stood beside him, all upset.
The physician felt the right moment had come to lead him away.
"Come, Lieutenant, let's go to sleep," he said with a clumsy affectation
of geniality. "That's the way women are once for all, and there's
nothing to be done about it."
The physician wanted to go on talking and in conversing lure the
sick man into the house unawares. But the very next sentence remained
sticking in his throat, and he stopped short in amazement. The limp
wobbling skeleton that only a moment before had sat there as in a faint
and let himself be raised up by the physician and the Philosopher,
suddenly jumped up with a jerk, and tore his arms away so violently that
the two men who were about to assist him were sent tumbling up against
the others. He bent over with crooked knees, staggering like a man
carrying a heavy load on his back. His veins swelled, and he panted with
fury:
"That's the way women are once for all, are they? Since when, eh?
Have you never heard of the suffragettes who boxed the ears of prime
ministers, and set fire to museums, and let themselves be chained to
lamp-posts for the sake of the vote? For the sake of the vote, do you
hear? But for the sake of their men? No. Not one sound. Not one single
outcry!"
He stopped to take breath, overcome by a wild suffocating despair. Then
he pulled himself together once more and with difficulty suppressing the
sobs, which kept bringing a lump into his throat, he screamed in deepest
misery like a hunted animal:
"Have you heard of one woman throwing herself in front of a train for
the sake of her husband? Has a single one of them boxed the ears of a
prime minister or tied herself to a railroad track for us? There wasn't
one that had to be torn away. Not one fought for us or defended us. Not
one moved a little finger for us in the whole wide world! They drove us
out! They gagged us! They gave us the spur, like poor Dill. They sent
us to murder, they sent us to die--for their vanity. Are you going to
defend them? No! They must be pulled out! Pulled out like weeds, by the
roots! Four of you together must pull the way we had to do with Dill.
Four of you together! Then she'll have to come out. Are you the doctor?
There! Do it to my head. I don't want a wife! Pull--pull her out!"
He flung out his arm and his fist came down like a hammer on his own
skull, and his crooked fingers clutched pitilessly at the sparse growth
of hair on the back of his head, until he held up a whole handful torn
out by the roots, and howled with pain.
The doctor gave a sign, and the next moment the four sentries were on
him, panting. He screamed, gnashed his teeth, beat about him, kicked
himself free, shook off his assailants like burrs. It was not until the
old corporal and the doctor came to their assistance that they succeeded
in dragging him into the house.
As soon as he was gone the people left the garden. The last to go were
the Mussulman and the Philosopher. The Mussulman stopped at the door,
and in the light of the lantern looked gravely down at his leg, which,
in its plaster cast, hung like a dead thing between his two crutches.
"Do you know, Philosopher," he said, "I'd much rather have this stick
of mine. The worst thing that can happen to one out there is to go crazy
like that poor devil. Rather off with one's head altogether and be done
with it. Or do you think he still has a chance?"
The Philosopher said nothing. His round good-natured face had gone ashen
pale, and his eyes were swimming with tears. He shrugged his shoulders
and helped his comrade up the steps without speaking. On entering the
ward they heard the banging of doors somewhere far away in the house and
a muffled cry.
Then everything was still. One by one the lights went out in the windows
of the officers' wing. Soon the garden lay like a bushy black island
in the river's silent embrace. Only now and then a gust of wind brought
from the west the coughing of the guns like a faint echo.
Once more a crunching sound was heard on the gravel. It was the four
sentries marching back to the watch-house. One soldier was cursing under
his breath as he tried to refasten his torn blouse. The others were
breathing heavily and were wiping the sweat from their red foreheads
with the backs of their hands. The old corporal brought up the rear, his
pipe in the corner of his mouth, his head bent low. As he turned into
the main walk a bright sheet of light lit up the sky, and a prolonged
rumbling that finally sank into the earth with a growl shook all the
windows of the hospital.
The old man stood still and listened until the rumbling had died away.
Then he shook his clenched fist, and sent out a long curve of saliva
from between his set teeth, and muttered in a disgust that came from the
depths of his soul:
"Hell!"
II. BAPTISM OF FIRE
The company rested for half an hour at the edge of the woods. Then
Captain Marschner gave the command to start. He was pale, in spite of
the killing heat, and he turned his eyes aside when he gave Lieutenant
Weixler instructions that in ten minutes every man should be ready for
the march without fail.
He had really forced his own hand in giving the order. For now, he knew
very well, there could be no delay. Whenever he left Weixler loose on
the privates, everything went like clock-work. They trembled before
this lad of barely twenty as though he were the devil incarnate. And
sometimes it actually seemed to the captain himself as though there
were something uncanny about that overgrown, bony figure. Never, by any
chance, did a spark of warmth flash from those small, piercing eyes,
which always mirrored a flickering unrest and gleamed as though from
fever. The one young thing in his whole personality was the small, shy
moustache above the compressed lips, which never opened except to ask
in a mean, harsh way for some soldier to be punished. For almost a year
Captain Marschner had lived side by side with him and had never yet
heard him laugh, knew nothing of his family, nor from where he came,
nor whether he had any ties at all. He spoke rarely, in brief, quick
sentences, and brought out his words in a hiss, like the seething of
a suppressed rage; and his only topic was the service or the war, as
though outside these two things there was nothing else in the world
worth talking about.
And this man, of all others, fate had tricked by keeping him in the
hinterland for the whole first year of the war. The war had been going
on for eleven months and a half, and Lieutenant Weixler had not yet seen
an enemy.
At the very outset, when only a few miles across the Russian frontier,
typhus had caught him before he had fired a single shot. Now at last he
was going to face the enemy!
Captain Marschner knew that the young man had a private's rifle dragged
along for his own use, and had sacrificed all his savings for special
field-glasses in order to be quite on the safe side and know exactly how
many enemy lives he had snuffed out. Since they had come within close
sound of the firing he had grown almost merry, even talkative, impelled
by a nervous zeal, like an enthusiastic hunter who has picked up the
trail. The captain saw him going in and out among the massed men, and
turned away, hating to see how the fellow plagued his poor weary men,
and went at them precisely like a sheep dog gathering in the herd,
barking shrilly all the while. Long before the ten minutes were up, the
company would be in formation, Weixler's impatience guaranteed that.
And then--then there would be no reason any more for longer delay, no
further possibility of putting off the fatal decision.
Captain Marschner took a deep breath and looked up at the sky with
wide-open eyes that had a peculiarly intent look in them. In the
foreground, beyond the steep hill that still hid the actual field of
battle from view, the invisible machine guns were beating in breathless
haste; and scarcely a fathom above the edge of the slope small,
yellowish-white packages floated in thick clusters, like snowballs flung
high in the air--the smoke of the barrage fire through which he had to
lead his men.
It was not a short way. Two kilometers still from the farther spur of
the hill to the entrance of the communication trenches, and straight
across open fields without cover of any kind. Assuredly no small task
for a company of the last class of reservists, for respectable family
men who had been in the field but a few hours, and who were only now to
smell powder for the first time and receive their baptism of fire. For
Weixler, whose mind was set on nothing but the medal for distinguished
service, which he wanted to obtain as soon as possible--for a
twenty-year-old fighting cock who fancied the world rotated about his
own, most important person and had had no time to estimate the truer
values of life--for him it might be no more than an exciting promenade,
a new sting to the nerves, a fine way of becoming thoroughly conscious
of one's personality and placing one's fearlessness in a more brilliant
light. Probably he had long been secretly deriding his old captain's
indecision and had cursed the last halt because it forced him to wait
another half hour to achieve his first deed of heroism.
Marschner mowed down the tall blades of grass with his riding whip and
from time to time glanced at his company surreptitiously. He could
tell by the way the men dragged themselves to their feet with a sort of
resistance, like children roused from sleep, that they fully understood
where they were now to go.
The complete silence in which they packed their bundles and fell into
line made his heart contract.
Ever since the beginning of the war, he had been preparing himself for
this moment without relax. He had brooded over it day and night, had
told himself a thousand times that where a higher interest is at stake,
the misery of the individual counts for nothing, and a conscientious
leader must armor himself with indifference. And now he stood there and
observed with terror how all his good resolutions crumbled, and nothing
remained in him but an impassioned, boundless pity for these driven
home-keepers, who prepared themselves with such quiet resignation. It
was as if they were taking their life into their hands like a costly
vessel in order to carry it into battle and cast it at the feet of the
enemy, as though the least thing they owned was that which would soon be
crashing into fragments.
His friends, among whom he was known as "uncle Marschner," would not
have dared to suggest his sending a rabbit he had reared to the butcher
or dragging a dog that had won his affection to the pound. And now he
was to drive into shrapnel fire men whom he himself had trained to be
soldiers and had had under his own eyes for months, men whom he knew as
he did his own pockets. Of what avail were subtle or deep reflections
now? He saw nothing but the glances of dread and beseeching that his
men turned on him, asking protection, as though they believed that their
captain could prescribe a path even for bullets and shells. And now was
he to abuse their confidence? Was he to marshal these bearded children
to death and not feel any emotion? Only two days before he had seen them
surrounded by their little ones, saying good-bye to their sobbing wives.
Was he to march on without caring if one or another of them was hit and
fell over and rolled in agony in his blood? Whence was he to take the
strength for such hardness of heart? From that higher interest? It had
faded away. It was impalpable. It was too much a matter of mere words,
too much mere sound for him to think that it could fool his soldiers,
who looked forward to the barrage fire in dread, with homeward-turned
souls.
Lieutenant Weixler, red-cheeked and radiant, came and shouted in his
face that the company was ready. It struck the captain like a blow
below the belt. It sounded like a challenge. The captain could not help
hearing in it the insolent question, "Well, why aren't you as glad of
the danger as I am?" Every drop of Captain Marschner's blood rose to his
temples. He had to look aside and his eyes wandered involuntarily up
to the shrapnel clouds, bearing a prayer, a silent invocation to those
senseless things up there rattling down so indiscriminately, a prayer
that they would teach this cold-blooded boy suffering, convince him that
he was vulnerable.
But a moment later he bowed his head in shame. His anger grew against
the man who had been able to arouse such a feeling in him.
"Thank you. Let the men stand at rest. I must look after the horses once
more," he said in measured tones, with a forced composure that soothed
him. He did not intend to be hustled, now less than ever. He was glad
to see the lieutenant give a start, and he smiled to himself with quiet
satisfaction at the indignant face, the defiant "Yes, sir," said in a
voice no longer so loud and so clear, but coming through gnashed teeth
from a contracted throat. The boy was for once in his turn to experience
how it feels to be held in check. He was so fond of intoxicating himself
with his own power at the cost of the privates, triumphing, as though it
were the force of his own personality that lorded it over them and not
the rule of the service that was always backing him.
Captain Marschner walked back to the woods deliberately, doubly glad
of the lesson he had just given Weixler because it also meant a brief
respite for his old boys. Perhaps a shell would hurtle down into the
earth before their noses, and so these few minutes would save the lives
of twenty men. Perhaps? It might turn out just the other way, too. Those
very minutes--ah, what was the use of speculating? It was better not
to think at all! He wanted to help the men as much as he could, but he
could not be a savior to any of them.
And yet, perhaps? One man had just come rushing up to him from the
woods. This one man he was managing to shelter for the present. He and
six others were to stay behind with the horses and the baggage. Was
it an injustice to detail this particular man? All the other
non-commissioned officers were older and married. The short, fat man
with the bow-legs even had six children at home. Could he justify
himself at the bar of his conscience for leaving this young, unmarried
man here in safety?
With a furious gesture the captain interrupted his thoughts. He would
have liked best to catch hold of his own chest and give himself a sound
shaking. Why could he not rid himself of that confounded brooding and
pondering the right and wrong of things? Was there any justice at all
left here, here in the domain of the shells that spared the worst
and laid low the best? Had he not quite made up his mind to leave his
conscience, his over-sensitiveness, his ever-wakeful sympathy, and
all his superfluous thoughts at home along with his civilian's clothes
packed away in camphor in the house where he lived in peace times?
All these things were part of the civil engineer, Rudolf Marschner, who
once upon a time had been an officer, but who had returned to school
when thirty years old to exchange the trade of war, into which he had
wandered in the folly of youth, for a profession that harmonized better
with his gentle, thoughtful nature. That this war had now, twenty years
later, turned him into a soldier again was a misfortune, a catastrophe
which had overtaken him, as it had all the others, without any fault of
his or theirs. Yet there was nothing to do but to reconcile himself to
it; and first of all he had to avoid that constant hair-splitting. Why
torment himself so with questions? Some man had to stay behind in the
woods as a guard. The commander had decided on the young sergeant, and
the young sergeant would stay behind. That settled it.
The painful thing was the way the fellow's face so plainly showed
his emotion. His eyes moistened and looked at the captain in dog-like
gratitude. Disgusting, simply disgusting! And what possessed the man to
stammer out something about his mother? He was to stay behind because
the service required it; his mother had nothing to do with it. She was
safe in Vienna--and here it was war.
The captain told the man so. He could not let him think it was a bit of
good fortune, a special dispensation, not to have to go into battle.
Captain Marschner felt easier the minute he had finished scolding the
crushed sinner. His conscience was now quite clear, just as though it
had really been by chance that he had placed the man at that post. But
the feeling did not last very long. The silly fellow would not give up
adoring him as his savior. And when he stammered, "I take the liberty
of wishing you good luck, Captain," standing in stiff military attitude,
but in a voice hoarse and quivering from suppressed tears, such fervor,
such ardent devotion radiated from his wish that the captain suddenly
felt a strange emptiness again in the pit of his stomach, and he turned
sharply and walked away.