Men in War Part 2

As soon as he was gone the people left the garden. The last to go were the Mussulman and the Philosopher. The Mussulman stopped at the door, and in the light of the lantern looked gravely down at his leg, which, in its plaster cast, hung like a dead thing between his two crutches.

"Do 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 m.u.f.fled 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:

"h.e.l.l!"

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-gla.s.ses 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 ma.s.sed 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, Weixler's impatience guaranteed that.

And then--then there would be no reason any more for longer delay, no further possibility of putting off the fatal decision.

Captain Marschner took a deep breath and looked up at the sky with wide-open eyes that had a peculiarly intent look in them. In the foreground, beyond the steep hill that still hid the actual field of battle from view, the invisible machine guns were beating in breathless haste; and scarcely a fathom above the edge of the slope small, yellowish-white packages floated in thick cl.u.s.ters, like s...o...b..a.l.l.s flung high in the air--the smoke of the barrage fire through which he had to lead his men.

It was not a short way. Two kilometers still from the farther spur of the hill to the entrance of the communication trenches, and straight across open fields without cover of any kind. a.s.suredly no small task for a company of the last cla.s.s of reservists, for respectable family men who had been in the field but a few hours, and who were only now to smell powder for the first time and receive their baptism of fire. For Weixler, whose mind was set on nothing but the medal for distinguished service, which he wanted to obtain as soon as possible--for a twenty-year-old fighting c.o.c.k who fancied the world rotated about his own, most important person and had had no time to estimate the truer values of life--for him it might be no more than an exciting promenade, a new sting to the nerves, a fine way of becoming thoroughly conscious of one's personality and placing one's fearlessness in a more brilliant light. Probably he had long been secretly deriding his old captain's indecision and had cursed the last halt because it forced him to wait another half hour to achieve his first deed of heroism.

Marschner mowed down the tall blades of gra.s.s with his riding whip and from time to time glanced at his company surrept.i.tiously. He could tell by the way the men dragged themselves to their feet with a sort of resistance, like children roused from sleep, that they fully understood where they were now to go.

The complete silence in which they packed their bundles and fell into line made his heart contract.

Ever since the beginning of the war, he had been preparing himself for this moment without relax. He had brooded over it day and night, had told himself a thousand times that where a higher interest is at stake, the misery of the individual counts for nothing, and a conscientious leader must armor himself with indifference. And now he stood there and observed with terror how all his good resolutions crumbled, and nothing remained in him but an impa.s.sioned, boundless pity for these driven home-keepers, who prepared themselves with such quiet resignation. It was as if they were taking their life into their hands like a costly vessel in order to carry it into battle and cast it at the feet of the enemy, as though the least thing they owned was that which would soon be crashing into fragments.

His friends, among whom he was known as "uncle Marschner," would not have dared to suggest his sending a rabbit he had reared to the butcher or dragging a dog that had won his affection to the pound. And now he was to drive into shrapnel fire men whom he himself had trained to be soldiers and had had under his own eyes for months, men whom he knew as he did his own pockets. Of what avail were subtle or deep reflections now? He saw nothing but the glances of dread and beseeching that his men turned on him, asking protection, as though they believed that their captain could prescribe a path even for bullets and sh.e.l.ls. And now was he to abuse their confidence? Was he to marshal these bearded children to death and not feel any emotion? Only two days before he had seen them surrounded by their little ones, saying good-bye to their sobbing wives.

Was he to march on without caring if one or another of them was. .h.i.t and fell over and rolled in agony in his blood? Whence was he to take the strength for such hardness of heart? From that higher interest? It had faded away. It was impalpable. It was too much a matter of mere words, too much mere sound for him to think that it could fool his soldiers, who looked forward to the barrage fire in dread, with homeward-turned souls.

Lieutenant Weixler, red-cheeked and radiant, came and shouted in his face that the company was ready. It struck the captain like a blow below the belt. It sounded like a challenge. The captain could not help hearing in it the insolent question, "Well, why aren't you as glad of the danger as I am?" Every drop of Captain Marschner's blood rose to his temples. He had to look aside and his eyes wandered involuntarily up to the shrapnel clouds, bearing a prayer, a silent invocation to those senseless things up there rattling down so indiscriminately, a prayer that they would teach this cold-blooded boy suffering, convince him that he was vulnerable.

But a moment later he bowed his head in shame. His anger grew against the man who had been able to arouse such a feeling in him.

"Thank you. Let the men stand at rest. I must look after the horses once more," he said in measured tones, with a forced composure that soothed him. He did not intend to be hustled, now less than ever. He was glad to see the lieutenant give a start, and he smiled to himself with quiet satisfaction at the indignant face, the defiant "Yes, sir," said in a voice no longer so loud and so clear, but coming through gnashed teeth from a contracted throat. The boy was for once in his turn to experience how it feels to be held in check. He was so fond of intoxicating himself with his own power at the cost of the privates, triumphing, as though it were the force of his own personality that lorded it over them and not the rule of the service that was always backing him.

Captain Marschner walked back to the woods deliberately, doubly glad of the lesson he had just given Weixler because it also meant a brief respite for his old boys. Perhaps a sh.e.l.l would hurtle down into the earth before their noses, and so these few minutes would save the lives of twenty men. Perhaps? It might turn out just the other way, too. Those very minutes--ah, what was the use of speculating? It was better not to think at all! He wanted to help the men as much as he could, but he could not be a savior to any of them.

And yet, perhaps? One man had just come rushing up to him from the woods. This one man he was managing to shelter for the present. He and six others were to stay behind with the horses and the baggage. Was it an injustice to detail this particular man? All the other non-commissioned officers were older and married. The short, fat man with the bow-legs even had six children at home. Could he justify himself at the bar of his conscience for leaving this young, unmarried man here in safety?

With a furious gesture the captain interrupted his thoughts. He would have liked best to catch hold of his own chest and give himself a sound shaking. Why could he not rid himself of that confounded brooding and pondering the right and wrong of things? Was there any justice at all left here, here in the domain of the sh.e.l.ls that spared the worst and laid low the best? Had he not quite made up his mind to leave his conscience, his over-sensitiveness, his ever-wakeful sympathy, and all his superfluous thoughts at home along with his civilian's clothes packed away in camphor in the house where he lived in peace times?

All these things were part of the civil engineer, Rudolf Marschner, who once upon a time had been an officer, but who had returned to school when thirty years old to exchange the trade of war, into which he had wandered in the folly of youth, for a profession that harmonized better with his gentle, thoughtful nature. That this war had now, twenty years later, turned him into a soldier again was a misfortune, a catastrophe which had overtaken him, as it had all the others, without any fault of his or theirs. Yet there was nothing to do but to reconcile himself to it; and first of all he had to avoid that constant hair-splitting. Why torment himself so with questions? Some man had to stay behind in the woods as a guard. The commander had decided on the young sergeant, and the young sergeant would stay behind. That settled it.

The painful thing was the way the fellow's face so plainly showed his emotion. His eyes moistened and looked at the captain in dog-like grat.i.tude. Disgusting, simply disgusting! And what possessed the man to stammer out something about his mother? He was to stay behind because the service required it; his mother had nothing to do with it. She was safe in Vienna--and here it was war.

The captain told the man so. He could not let him think it was a bit of good fortune, a special dispensation, not to have to go into battle.

Captain Marschner felt easier the minute he had finished scolding the crushed sinner. His conscience was now quite clear, just as though it had really been by chance that he had placed the man at that post. But the feeling did not last very long. The silly fellow would not give up adoring him as his savior. And when he stammered, "I take the liberty of wishing you good luck, Captain," standing in stiff military att.i.tude, but in a voice hoa.r.s.e and quivering from suppressed tears, such fervor, such ardent devotion radiated from his wish that the captain suddenly felt a strange emptiness again in the pit of his stomach, and he turned sharply and walked away.

Now he knew. Now he could approximately calculate all the things Weixler had observed in him. Now he could guess how the fellow must have made secret fun of his sensitiveness, if this simple man, this mere carpenter's journeyman, could guess his innermost thoughts. For he had not spoken to him once--simply the night before last, at the entrainment in Vienna, he had furtively observed his leavetaking from his mother.

How had the confounded fellow come to suspect that the wizened, shrunken little old hag whose skin, dried by long living, hung in a thousand loose folds from her cheek-bones, had made such an impression on his captain? The man himself certainly did not know how touching it looked when the tiny mother gazed up at him from below and stroked his broad chest with her trembling hand because she could not reach his face. No one could have betrayed to the soldier that since then, whenever his company commander looked at him, he could not help seeing the lemon-hued, thick-veined hand with its knotted, distorted fingers, which had touched the rough, hairy cloth with such ineffable love. And yet, somehow, the rascal had discovered that this hand floated above him protectingly, that it prayed for him and had softened the heart of his officer.

Marschner tramped across the meadow in rage against himself. He was as ashamed as though some one had torn a mask from his face. Was it as easy as that to see through him, then, in spite of all the trouble he took?

He stopped to get his breath, hewed at the gra.s.s again with his riding whip, and cursed aloud. Oh, well, he simply couldn't act a part, couldn't step out of his skin suddenly, even though there was a world war a thousand times over. He used to let his nephews and nieces twist him round their fingers, and laughed good-naturedly when they did it. In a single day he could not change into a fire-eater and go merrily upon the man-hunt. What an utterly mad idea it was, too, to try to cast all people into the same mould! No one dreamed of making a soft-hearted philanthropist of Weixler; and he was supposed so lightly to turn straight into a blood-thirsty militarist. He was no longer twenty, like Weixler, and these sad, silent men who had been so cruelly uprooted from their lives were each of them far more to him than a mere rifle to be sent to the repair shop if broken, or to be indifferently discarded if smashed beyond repair. Whoever had looked on life from all sides and reflected upon it could not so easily turn into the mere soldier, like his lieutenant, who had not been humanized yet, nor seen the world from any point of view but the military school and the barracks.

Ah, yes, if conditions still were as at the beginning of the war, when none but young fellows, happy to be off on an adventure, hallooed from the train windows. If they left any dear ones at all behind, they were only their parents, and here at last was a chance to make a great impression on the old folks. Then Captain Marschner would have held his own as well as anyone, as well even as the strict disciplinarian, Lieutenant Weixler, perhaps even better. Then the men marched two or three weeks before coming upon the enemy, and the links that bound them to life broke off one at a time. They underwent a thousand difficulties and deprivations, until under the stress of hunger and thirst and weariness they gradually forgot everything they had left far--far behind. In those days hatred of the enemy who had done them all that harm smouldered and flared higher every day, while actual battle was a relief after the long period of pa.s.sive suffering.

But now things went like lightning. Day before yesterday in Vienna still--and now, with the farewell kisses still on one's lips, scarcely torn from another's arms, straight into the fire. And not blindly, unsuspectingly, like the first ones. For these poor devils now the war had no secrets left. Each of them had already lost some relative or friend; each had talked to wounded men, had seen mutilated, distorted invalids, and knew more about sh.e.l.l wounds, gas grenades, and liquid fire than artillery generals or staff physicians had known before the war.

And now it was the captain's lot to lead precisely these clairvoyants, these men so rudely torn up by the roots--he, the retired captain, the civilian, who at first had had to stay at home training recruits. Now that it was a thousand times harder, now his turn had come to be a leader, and he dared not resist the task to which he was not equal. On the contrary, as a matter of decency, he had been forced to push his claims so that others who had already shed their blood out there should not have to go again for him.

A dull, impotent rage came over him when he stepped up in front of his men ranged in deep rows. They stared at his lips in breathless suspense.

What was he to say to them? It went against him to reel off compliantly the usual patriotic phrases that forced themselves on one's lips as though dictated by an outside power. For months he had carried about the defiant resolve not to utter the prescribed "_dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_," whatever the refusal might cost. Nothing was so repulsive to him as singing the praises of the sacrifice of one's life. It was a juggler's trick to cry out that some one was dying while inside the booth murder was being done.

He clenched his teeth and lowered his eyes shyly before the wall of pallid faces. The foolish, childlike prayer, "Take care of us!" gazed at him maddeningly from all those eyes. It drove him to sheer despair.

If only he could have driven them back to their own people and gone ahead alone! With a jerk he threw out his chest, fixed his eyes on a medal that a man in the middle of the long row was wearing, and said:

"Boys, we're going to meet the enemy now. I count upon each of you to do his duty, faithful to the oath you have sworn to the flag. I shall ask nothing of you that the interest of our fatherland and your own interest therefore and the safety of your wives and children do not absolutely require. You may depend upon that. Good luck! And now--forward, march!"

Without being conscious of it, he had imitated Weixler's voice, his unnaturally loud, studiedly incisive tone of command, so as to drown the emotion that fluttered in his throat. At the last words he faced about abruptly and without looking around tossed the final command over his shoulder for the men to deploy, and with his head sunk upon his chest he began the ascent, taking long strides. Behind him boots crunched and food pails clattered against some other part of the men's accouterment.

Soon, too, there came the sound of the gasping of heavily laden men; and a thick, suffocating smell of sweat settled upon the marching company.

Captain Marschner was ashamed. A real physical nausea at the part he had just played overcame him. What was there left for these simple people to do, these bricklayers and engineers and cultivators of the earth, who, bent over their daily tasks, had lived without vision into the future--what was there left for them to do when the grand folks, the learned people, their own captain with the three golden stars on his collar, a.s.sured them it was their duty and a most praiseworthy thing to shoot Italian bricklayers and engineers and farmers into fragments? They went--gasping behind him, and he--he led them on! Led them, against his inner conviction, because of his pitiful cowardice, and asked them to be courageous and contemptuous of death. He had talked them into it, had abused their confidence, had made capital of their love for their wives and children, because if he acted in the service of a lie, there was a chance of his continuing to live and even coming back home safe again, while if he stuck to the truth he believed in there was the certainty of his being stood up against a wall and shot.

He staked their lives and his own life on the throw of loaded dice because he was too cowardly to contemplate the certain loss of the game for himself alone.

The sun beat down murderously on the steep, treeless declivity. The sound of sh.e.l.ls bursting off at a distance, of tattooing machine guns, and roaring artillery on their own side was now mingled with the howling sound of shots whizzing through the air and coming closer and closer.

And still the top of the ridge had not been reached! The captain felt his breath fail him, stopped and raised his hand. The men were to get their wind back for a moment; they had been on the march since four o'clock that morning; they had done bravely with their forty-year-old legs. He could tell that by his own.

Full of compa.s.sion he looked upon the bluish red faces streaming with sweat, and gave a start when he saw Lieutenant Weixler approaching in long strides. Why could he no longer see that face without a sense of being attacked, of being caught at the throat by a hatred he could hardly control? He ought really to be glad to have the man at his side there. One glance into those coldly watchful eyes was sufficient to subdue any surge of compa.s.sion.

"With your permission, Captain," he heard him rasp out, "I'm going over to the left wing. A couple of fellows there that don't please me at all.

Especially Simmel, the red-haired dog. He's already pulling his head in when a shrapnel bursts over there."