Men in War by Andreas Latzko (books you have to read .TXT) đ
- Author: Andreas Latzko
- Performer: -
Book online «Men in War by Andreas Latzko (books you have to read .TXT) đ». Author Andreas Latzko
A cold, proud defiance heartened him, so that he arose, strengthened suddenly, as if elevated by the superhuman burden that he alone carried on his shoulders. He saw the strange lieutenant still dancing about, hastily gathering up his belongings and stuffing them into his knapsack. He heard him scold his orderly and bellow at him to hurry up, in between digging up fresh details, hideous episodes, from the combats of the past few days, which Weixler devoured in breathless attention.
âWhat a question!â the commandant of the trench exclaimed, laughing at his audience. âWhether the Italians had heavy losses, too? Do you think we let them pepper us like rabbits? You can easily calculate what those fellows lost in their eleven attacks if weâve melted down to thirty men without crawling out of our trench. Just let them go on like that a few weeks longer and theyâll be at the end of their human material.â
Captain Marschner had not wanted to listen. He stood bending over a map, but at the phrase, âhuman material,â he started violently. It sounded like a taunt directed at his own thoughts, as if the two men had seen into him and had agreed with each other to give him a good lesson and show him how alone he was.
âHuman material!â
In a trench, filled with the stench of dead bodies, shaken by the impact of the shells, stood two men, each himself a stake in the game, and while the dice were still being tossed for their very bones, they talked ofâhuman material! They uttered those ruthless, shameful words without a shadow of indignation, as though it were natural for their living bodies to be no more than a gamblerâs chips in the hands of men who arrogated to themselves the right to play the game of gods. Without hesitating they laid their one, irrevocable life at the feet of a power that could not prove whether it had known how to place the stakes rightly except by their dead bodies. And the men who were speaking that way were officers! So where was there a gleam of hope?
Out there, among the simple men, perhaps, the plain cannon fodder? They were now crouching resignedly in their places, thinking of home and each of them still feeling himself a man. He was drawn to his men, to their dull, silent sadness, to their true greatness, which without pathos and without solemnity, in everyday clothes, as it were, patiently awaited the heroâs death.
Outside the dugout stood the remnants of the relieved company ready for the march, always two men abreast with a dead comrade on a tent canvas between them. A long procession, profoundly stirring in its silent expectancy, into which the hissing and crackling of shrapnel and the thunder of grenades fell like a warning from above to those who still had their lives. Bitterly, Marschner clenched his fist at this insatiableness.
At that moment the pale sergeant stepped in front of the place where the dead had been piled and frightened Marschner out of his thoughts.
âCaptain, I beg to announce that beside the fourteen dead there are three seriously wounded men who canât walkâItalians. I have no bearers left for them.â
âWeâll leave them to you as a souvenir,â the trench commandant, who was just leaving the dugout with Weixler, laughed in his maundering way. âYou can have them dug in at night up there among the communication trenches, Captain. When it gets dark, the Italians direct their barrage fire farther back, and give you a chance to climb out. To be sure, they wonât lie in peace there under the earth very long, because the shells rip everything open right away again. Iâve had to have my poor ensign buried three times over already.â
âHow did they get in here anyhow?â Weixler asked, pushing himself forward. âDid you have a fight in the trench?â
The other lieutenant shook his head proudly. âI should rather say not. The gentlemen never got as far as that. These three tried to cut the wire entanglements night before last, but our machine gun man caught âem at it and his iron spatter spoiled their little game. Well, there they lay, of course, right under our very noses and they had on the loveliest shoes of bright yellow. My men begrudged âem those shoes. Thereââ he ended, pointing with his finger at the feet of the pale sergeantâ âthere you see one pair. But weâll have to start now. March, sergeant! My respects, Captain. The Italiansâll open their eyes when they come over to-night to finish us off comfortably and a hundred and fifty rifles go off and two brand-new bullet squirters. Ha-ha! Sorry I canât be here to see it! Good-by, little man! Good luck!â Humming a merry popular song he followed his men without looking back, without even observing that Marschner accompanied him a little on his way.
Gaily, as though on a Sunday picnic, the men started on the way, which led over the terrible field of shards and ruins and the steep, shot-up hill. What hells they must have endured there, in that moleâs gallery! The captain remained standing and heaved a deep sigh. It was as if that long, grey column slowly winding its way through the trench were carrying away the last hope. The back of the last soldier, growing smaller and smaller, was the world. The captainâs eyes clung greedily to that back and measured fearfully the distance to the corner of the trench from which he must lose sight of it forever. There was still time to call out a greeting, and by running very fast one might still catch up and hand over a letter.
Then the last medium disappearedâthe last possibility of dividing the world into two halves. And his yearning recoiled before the endless space it had to bridgeâand there was nothing else to bridge it but his yearning.
Marschner sank into himself as he stood deserted in the empty trench. He felt as though he had been hollowed out, and looked about for help, and his eyes clung to the depression from which the corpses had now been lifted. Only the three Italians were lying there, the life already gone from them. The one showed his face, his mouth was still wide open as for a cry, and his hands dug themselves, as though to ward off pain, into his unnaturally swollen body. The other two lay with their knees drawn up and their heads between their arms. The naked feet with their grey convulsed toes stared into the communication trench like things robbed, with a mute accusal. There was a remoteness about these dead bodies, a loneliness, an isolation about their bared feet. A tangled web of memories arose, a throng of fleeting faces glimmered in the captainâs soulâgondoliers of Venice, voluble cabbies, a toothless inn-keeperâs wife at Posilipo. Two trips on a vacation in Italy drove an army of sorrowing figures through his mind. And finally another figure appeared in that ghostly dance of death, his own sister, sitting in a concert hall in Vienna, carefree, listening to music, while her brother lay somewhere stretched out on the ground, rigid in death, an enemyâs corpse just to be kicked aside.
Shuddering, the captain hastened back down the trench, as though the three dead men were pursuing him noiselessly on their naked soles. When he reached his own men at last, he felt as if he had arrived at a harbor of safety.
The shells were now falling so thick that there was not a momentâs pause between the explosions, and all sounds merged into a single, equal, rolling thunder, which made the earth tremble like the hull of a ship. But there was a particularly sharp crashing and splintering from one shot that hit the trench squarely and whirled the coverings above in all directions. A few minutes later two groaning men dragged down a corpse, leaned it against the trench wall, and climbed back to their posts through the narrow shaft. Marschner saw his sergeant get up and move his lipsâthen a soldier in the corner arose and took up his rifle and followed the two others heavily. It was all so comfortless, so unmercifully businesslike, precisely as when âNext!â breaks into the monotony of the practising in the yard of the barracks, only with the difference that a little group at once gathered about the dead man, drawn by that shy curiosity which irresistibly attracts simple folk to corpses and funerals. Most of the men expected the same of himâhe saw it in their eyesâthat he, too, would go over and pay a last tribute of respect to the dead. But he did not want to. He was absolutely determined not to learn the fallen manâs name. He was bent upon practising self-mastery at last and remaining indifferent to all small happenings. So long as he had not seen the dead manâs face nor heard his name, only a man had fallen in battle, one of the many thousands. If he kept his distance and did not bend over each individual and did not let a definite fate come to his notice, it was not so hard to remain indifferent.
Stubbornly he walked over to the second shaft leading to the top and for the first time observed that it had grown quite silent up above. There was no longer any screaming or bursting. This silence came upon the deafening din like a paralyzing weight and filled space with a tense expectancy that flickered in all eyes. He wanted to rid himself of this oppression and crept through the crumbling shaft up to the top.
The first thing he saw was Weixlerâs curved back. He was holding his field-glass glued to his eyes under cover of a shooting shield. The others were also standing as if pasted to their posts, and there was something alarming in the motionlessness of their shoulder blades. All at once a twitching ran through the petrified row. Weixler sprang back, jostled against the captain, and cried out: âThey are coming!â Then he stormed to
Comments (0)