Men in War

Men in War

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Men in War, by Andreas Latzko
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Title: Men in War
Author: Andreas Latzko
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8440] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 10, 2003]
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Language: English
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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