The other day, quite unexpectedly, I ran into Lieutenant X., better
known as the Junior Subaltern.
This was the fourth time I had run across him since the beginning of
the war--at Insterburg, where the Junior Subaltern was leading his
company toward Königsberg; then in the trenches beyond Tarnovo; then in
the vicinity of Lublin, during the great retreat; and now, the fourth
time.
"I am stationed twelve versts from Czernowitz," he went on to explain.
The Junior Subaltern is really so young that you can't help envying
him. His face shines with health. His eyes are always laughing. His
speech is very simple, but impressive; but he does not like to talk; he
would rather listen, and laugh responsively with his eyes.
Fortune had brought us together; several men sitting down to a common
meal. We talked freely about everything. The conversation turned to the
German habit of finishing all the wounded enemies they find after a
successful battle. During the forest fighting last August one of us had
come across sixty Cossacks who had been but slightly wounded, and whom
the Germans had hanged on the trees.
"We avenged them, however; the Germans got something to remember!" said
the narrator.
Lieutenant X.'s eyes sparkled with animation.
"Well," he said, "of course they deserved it! Of course it is a crime
to kill the wounded. But, gentlemen, there are cases when it is
impossible not to kill the wounded!"
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Just what I said! There is such a thing as rightful killing of the
wounded!"
We insisted, and the Junior Subaltern narrated a recent experience of
his, "somewhere in Bukowina." He had been in command of a party of
scouts. His regiment had just arrived to take the place of another
infantry regiment. And the first thing to do was to become acquainted
with the locality and to learn the dispositions and intentions of the
enemy. The Junior Subaltern was sent out with his company. At one
place the opposing armies were separated by a ravine, which forked out
toward our trenches. Lieutenant X. knew that the men of the regiment
his was replacing had become acquainted with the Austrians, and that
the enemies by day came together at the bottom of the ravine by night,
entertained one another, and gossiped.
"War is burdensome, gentlemen!" explained the Junior Subaltern, "and we
all longed for even the semblance of human intercourse with the other
chaps. * * * And there happened to be a prolonged and tiresome spell of
calm between battles, and so the men of the regiment we were replacing
and the Austrians had long smokes together, exchanging pipes. But every
one remembered--and nobody held it against any one--that the course of
cigarettes must be closely interwoven with the course of bullets on
the morrow. * * * Yet, yet--oh, if we were only chivalrous knights,
conducting a picturesque tournament, instead of common Russian cannon
fodder fighting common Austrian cannon fodder. * * *"
Of course our young friend wanted to do the magnanimous thing by the
enemy, sending round word to them, "Here we come! Get ready!" But
what he did do was to take advantage of the quiet exchange of the two
Russian regiments and the total ignorance in which the Austrian members
of the nightly smoking club in the ravine still remained, and to creep
noiselessly forward to the spot where the friends of the night before
were on guard. The Austrian sentinels--three of them--dozed, wrapped in
their blankets. The Russians crept stealthily forward. * * *
"What else could we do?" asked the Junior Subaltern. "Humanitarian
ideas are in blank contradiction to the present war. Civilians at home
may try to judge everything in accordance with these ideas. Well, we
know they are mistaken. Oh, they are simply ridiculous!" ended the
Junior Subaltern, his good-natured, broad face blushing at making such
a bold statement in company.