... They were our own men. During the strange confusion of all
movements that reigned in both armies, our own and the enemy's, during
the last month, frustrating all orders and plans, we were sure it
was the enemy that was approaching us, namely, the 4th corps. And
everything was ready for an attack, when somebody clearly discerned our
uniforms, and ten minutes later our guess had become a calm and happy
certainty: they were our own men. They apparently had recognised us
too: they advanced quite calmly, and that calm motion seemed to express
the same happy smile of an unexpected meeting.
And when they began firing, we did not understand for some time what
it meant, and still continued smiling--under a hail of shrapnel and
bullets, that poured down upon us, snatching away at one stroke
hundreds of men. Somebody cried out by mistake and--I clearly
remember--we all saw that it was the enemy, that it was his uniform and
not ours, and instantly answered the fire. About fifteen minutes after
the beginning of that strange engagement both my legs were torn off,
and I recovered consciousness in the hospital after the amputation.
I asked how the battle had ended, and received an evasive, reassuring
answer, by which I could understand that we had been beaten; and
afterwards, legless as I was, I was overcome by joy at the thought that
now I would be sent home, that I was alive--alive for a long time to
come, alive forever. And only a week later I learnt some particulars,
that once more filled me with doubts and a new, unexperienced feeling
of terror. Yes, I believe they were our own men after all--and it was
with one of our shells, fired out of one of our guns by one of our
men, that my legs had been torn off. And nobody could explain how
it had happened. Something occurred, something darkened our vision,
and two regiments, belonging to the same army, facing each other at
a distance of one verst, had been destroying each other for a whole
hour in the full conviction that it was the enemy they had before
them. Later on the incident was remembered and spoken of reluctantly
in half-words and--what is most surprising of all--one could feel
that many of the speakers did not admit the mistake even then. That
is to say, they admitted it, but thought that it had occurred later
on, that in the beginning they really had the enemy before them, but
that he disappeared somewhere during the general fray, leaving us in
the range of our own shells. Some spoke of it openly, giving precise
explanations, which seemed to them plausible and clear. Up to this
very minute I cannot say for certain how the strange blunder began,
as I saw with equal clearness first our red uniforms and then their
orange-coloured ones. And somehow very soon everybody forgot about the
incident, forgot about it to such an extent that it was spoken of as
a real battle, and in that sense many accounts were written and sent
to the papers in all good faith; I read them when I was back home. At
first the public's attitude towards us, the wounded in that engagement,
was rather strange--we seemed to be less pitied than those wounded in
other battles, but soon even that disappeared too. And only new facts,
similar to the one just described, and a case in the enemy's army, when
two detachments actually destroyed each other almost entirely, having
come to a hand-to-hand fight during the night--gives me the right to
think that a mistake did occur.
Our doctor, the one that did the amputation, a lean, bony old man,
tainted with tobacco smoke and carbolic acid, everlastingly smiling
at something through his yellowish-grey thin moustache, said to me,
winking his eye,--
"You're in luck to be going home. There's something wrong here."
"What is it?"
"Something's going wrong. In our time it was simpler."
He had taken part in the last European war almost a quarter of a
century back and often referred to it with pleasure. But this war he
did not understand, and, as I noticed, feared it.
"Yes, there's something wrong," sighed he, and frowned, disappearing in
a cloud of tobacco smoke. "I would leave too, if I could."