"Go ahead without me, boys. Greet my people for me. God with you.
You've fought well. Damn you, fellow, run, I tell you! Down on your
faces! Take breath. Fire!"
When, long ago, I went to my confirmation lesson, the Superintendent
once said--ah, what a remarkable man that was!--"I would like only to
take a single look at my little garden. I'm a city child, and have
grown so fond of the flowers, this little bit of earth!"--Hui! hui!
there it whistles over our heads again. I greet Death. And my lips
touch the ridge of the field furrow.
Of dust thou art; to dust thou shalt return.
"Boys, you're not afraid? Eh?" And I try to laugh.
"The apes over there! They don't know how to shoot. Such clowns!
They'll hit the sky!"
Hui! hui! tack-a-tack-tacktack! Run on! The patent-leathered lackeys
can't hit us!
But there lies one of the other company. Dead.
"Don't run! Keep halting! Fire!"
From the village a hail of shrapnel. From the opposite side, the same.
But now nobody runs with lowered head. We are now used to the
benediction of bullets. Further on, further on!
Of the brigade there's not a trace. When the artillery had shot away
its ammunition, the order was given: "Retire, all!" It reached me, in
front there with the rifle lines, fully an hour later than the rest.
Scattered stragglers join me.
"Where is our Chief Lieutenant?"
"Wounded in the neck; only a glancing bullet. Has returned slowly on
an artillery horse. Midway among the shrapnels. Great fellow."
Nobody knows where the point of reunion is. I lead the rest of the
battalion after the other companies. Night is falling. Somewhere a
cavalry patrol tells us: They're to bivouac over there at the fort.
We march toward that. Bicycle men come to meet us. We hear from
them--no one believed that a single man of us could escape that
devil's caldron alive. My orderly (Bursche) comes riding to meet me.
His eyes are wet.
"My Captain! My Captain!"
I must press many hands. I warm myself at the bivouac fire. The
Quartermaster has brought me a half flask of champagne. There's red
wine for the men in the baggage division. It has already been mulled.
A plate of rice soup. The earth-crumb is still sticking to my lips. I
swallow it down with the first draught of foaming wine: "I greet thee,
Life! I greet thee, Earth!" And comrades come up and are glad to see
me, old monster, again.
Thank God, my company has suffered only few losses! When I order the
Sergeant Major to read the list, only a few are missing. But this one
or that one has been seen by some one of his comrades after the fight.
Well, then they are only scattered, and will find their way back by
and by. The battalion in these two days of fighting lost thirty-eight
dead and sixty-six wounded. That includes some light wounds from
glancing bullets.
It all lies behind me like a confused dream. We are bivouacking in the
casemates of the fort. I awake several times in terror. Deep, deep
silence. Only the pacing to and fro of the sentinel on guard. To and
fro, to and fro. He is cold.
I creep deeper into the straw. Poor fellow, the sentinel. How soft
I've got it! So warm here! I have hot eyes and hot cheeks, but
ice-cold hands.
I pity all those who know life and death only from books. War is a
great teacher. We learn to love the earth. And thus our homeland
becomes so sacred to us.