Men in War | Page 9

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,