Heel bounds into our shell-hole; in the flashes of the explosions his face shows white as chalk with fury. "Brandt," he gasps, "direct hit! clean gone."
It crashes down once more, it pelts, roars, rains down mud and steel; the air thunders, the earth groans; the curtain of fire lifts again, slides back; at the same instant men arise, seared, black out of the earth, bombs in their hands, watching, ready. "Slowly back!" shouts Heel.
The attack lies on our left front. There is a fight for a machine-gun post in a shell-hole. The machine-gun is barking. The flashes of hand-grenades leap convulsively. Suddenly the gun is silent. A stoppage. Immediately the post is outflanked. A couple of minutes and it must be taken. Heel sees it. "Damn!" He goes over the parapet. "Forward!" Ammunition is tossed up and we go up after it. Soon Willy, Bethke, and Heel are lying within throwing distance, and throw. Heel jumps up again—he is stark mad at such moments—a perfect fiend. But it succeeds—the fellows in the shell-hole take new heart, the machine-gun comes again into action. Contact is made, and together we make a dash for the concrete pill-box behind us. It has all happened so quickly that the Tommies have not even realised that the post has been evacuated. Flashes continue to burst in the abandoned crater.
It grows quieter. I am anxious about Ludwig. But he is there. Then Bethke crawls in. "Wessling?"
"What's Wessling doing?" "Where's Wessling?"—thecry goes up suddenly above the dull rumble of the long-range guns. "Wessling—Wessling "
Heel appears. "What is it?"
"Wessling's missing."
Tjaden had been beside him when the word came to retire, after that he had not seen him again. "Where?" asks Kosole. Tjaden points. "Damn!" Kosole looks at Bethke. Bethke at Kosole. Each knows that this is perhaps our last fight. They do not hesitate. "Right for me," growls Bethke.
"Come on," grants Kosole. They vanish into the darkness. Heel goes out after them.
Ludwig puts all in readiness to charge immediately should the three be attacked. At first all remains quiet. Then suddenly there are flashes of bombs. Revolver shots crack between. We go forward immediately, Ludwig leading—then the sweating faces of Bethke and Kosole reappear lugging someone behind them in a waterproof.
Heel? It is Wessling who groans. And Heel? Holding them off; it was he that fired. He is back again almost immediately—"Got the whole bunch in the shell-hole," he shouts, "and then two with the revolver."—He stares down at Wessling. "Well, how is it?" But Wessling does not answer.
His belly lies open like a butcher's stall. One cannot see how deep the wounds go. We bandage them as well as we can. Wessling is groaning for water, but he gets none. Stomach-wounds may not drink. Then he begs for blankets. He is freezing, he has lost so much blood.
A runner brings the order to retire still farther. We take Wessling with us in a waterproof-sheet through which is passed a rifle for carrying, until we can find a stretcher. One behind the other we grope our way cautiously. It grows gradually light. Silver mist in the low bushes. We are leaving the fighting zone. Already we imagine it over when a bullet comes swishing up softly and strikes, tock. Ludwig silently rolls up his sleeve. He has stopped one in the arm. Weil bandages him.
We go back. And back.
The air is mild as wine. This is no November, it is March; and the sky pale blue and clear. In the pools along the road the sun lies mirrored. We pass down an avenue of poplars. The trees stand on either side the road, tall and almost unscathed, except that here and there one is missing. This region lay formerly well behind the lines and has not been so devastated as those miles before it, that day by day, yard by yard, we have yielded. The sun glints on the brown waterproof, and as we go along the yellow avenue, leaves keep floating, sailing down upon it; a few fall inside it.
At the dressing-station everywhere is full. Many of the wounded are lying outside before the door. For the time being we put Wessling there too.
A number of fellows with arm-wounds and white bandages are lining up to march out. The hospital is to be relieved. A doctor is running about examining the newcomers. He orders one chap, whose leg is hanging loose and bent the wrong way at the knee joint, to be taken in at once. Wessling is merely bandaged and remains outside.
He rouses from his stupor and looks after the doctor.
"What is he going away for?"
"Hell be back in a minute," I tell him.
"But I must go in I I must be operated on!" He becomes suddenly terribly excited and feels for the bandage.
"That must be stitched up straight away!"
We try to calm him. He is quite green and sweating with fear: "Adolf, run after him! he must come!"
Bethke hesitates a moment. But under Wessling's eye there is nothing else for it, though he knows it will be to no purpose. I see him speak with the doctor. Wessling follows him as far as he can with his eyes. He looks terrible as he struggles to turn his head.
Returning, Bethke makes a detour so that Wessling shall not be able to get a sight of him; he shakes his head, makes the figure 1 with his finger, and with his mouth shapes inaudibly: "One—hour."
We put on cheerful faces. But who can deceive a dying peasant? While Bethke is yet telling him that he is to beoperated on later, but the wounds must heal a little first,Wessling already knows all. He is silent a moment, then hecries aloud: "Yes, you stand there and are whole—and aregoing home—and I—I—four years and now this—four years—and now this——"
"You're going to the hospital all right, Heinrich," says Bethke, comforting him.
But he would not.—"Let be."
Thereafter he does not say much. Nor does he want to be carried in; but to stay outside. The hospital is on a gentle slope, whence one can see far out along the avenue down which we have come. It is all gay and golden. The earth lies there, still and smooth and secure; even fields are to be seen, little, brown-tilled strips, right close by the hospital. And when the wind blows away the stench of blood and of gangrene one can smell the pungent ploughed earth. The distance is blue and everywhere is most peaceful, for from here the view is away from the Front.
Wessling is still. He is observing everything most narrowly. His eyes are clear and alert. He is a farmer and at home with the country, he understands it better and otherwise than we. He knows that he must leave it now. So he will miss nothing; nor does he take his eyes from it again. Minute by minute he grows paler. At last he makes a movement and whispers: "Ernst—"
I bend to his mouth. "Take out my things," he says.
"There's plenty of time for that, Heinrich."
"No, no——Get on!"
I spread them out before him. The pocket-book of frayed calico, the knife, the watch, the money—one gets to know these things.
Loose in the pocket-book is the picture of his wife.
"Show me," he says.
I take it out and hold it that he can see it. A clear, brownish face. He considers it. After a while he whispers: "So that is finished," and his lips quiver. At last he turns away his head.
"Take it," he says. I do not understand what he means, but I will not ask him more questions, so I thrust it into my
pocket. "Take those to her—" he looks at the other things. I nod. "And tell her—" he looks at me with a strange great gaze, murmurs, shakes his head and groans. I try desperately to understand, but now he only gurgles. He twitches, breathes more heavily, more slowly, with pauses, slackening—then once more, very deep and sighing—and suddenly has eyes as if he had been blinded, and is dead.
Next morning we are in the front trenches for the last time. Hardly a shot is fired. The war is ended. In an hour we must pull out. We need never come back here again! When we go we go for ever.
What there is to be destroyed we destroy. It is little enough—only a couple of dugouts. Then comes the order to retreat.
It is a strange moment. We stand side by side and look toward the Front. Light trailers of mist lie over the ground. The lines of shell-holes and trenches are clearly visible. They are, i
ndeed, only the last line—they belong really to the reserve position—still they are well within range of the guns. How often we have gone in through those saps! How often and how few we have come back through them! Grey stretches the monotonous landscape before us—in the distance what is left of a copse, a few stumps, the ruins of a village, in the midst of it one solitary high wall that has withstood it all.
"Yes," says Bethke meditatively, "it's four years, fouryears we've been sitting there—"
"Yes, damn it all," nods Kosole. "And now it just fizzles out!"
"Well—well——" Willy leans back against the parapet.
"Funny, eh?"
We stand and gaze. The farmhouse, the remnants of the wood, the heights, the trenches on the skyline yonder—it had been a terrible world, and life a burden. Now it is over, and will stay behind here; when we set out, it will drop behind us, step by step, and in an hour be gone as if it had never been. Who can realise it?
There we stand, and should laugh and shout for joy— and yet we have now a sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs, as one who swallows a throat-swab and would vomit.
None knows what to say. Ludwig Breyer leans wearily against the side of the trench and raises his hand, as if there were some man yonder to whom he would wave.
Heel appears. "Can't bear to leave it, eh?—Well, now for the dregs."
Ledderhose looks at him in astonishment. "Now for peace, you mean."
"Yes, that's it, the dregs," says Heel, and goes off, looking as if his mother had just died.
"He hasn't got his 'Pour le métrite,' that's what's biting him," explains Ledderhose.
"Ach, shut your mug!" says Albert.
"Well, let's go," urges Bethke, but still stands on.
"A lot of us lying there," says Ludwig.
"Yes—Brandt, Müller, Kat, Haie, Baümer, Bertinck—"
"Sandkuhl, Meinders, the two Terbrüggen, Hugo, Bernhard—"
"For Christ's sake, stop, man "
They are many indeed that lie there, though until now we have not thought of it so. Hitherto we have just all remained there together, they in the graves, we in the trenches, divided only by a few handfuls of earth. They were but a little before us; daily we became less and they more, and often we have not known whether we already belonged to them or not. And sometimes too the shells would bring them back among us again—crumbling bones tossed up, scraps of uniforms, wet, decayed hands, already earthy —to the noise of the drum-fire issuing once more from their buried dugouts and returning to the battle. It did not seem to us terrible; we were too near to them. But now we are going back into life and they must stay there.
Ludwig, whose cousin was killed in this sector, blows his nose through his fingers and turns about. Slowly we follow. But we halt yet a few times and look about us. And again we stand still, and suddenly we know that all that yonder, that hell of terrors, that desolate corner of shell-hole-land, has usurped our hearts;—yes, damn it, that it should sound such slush!—it seems almost as if it had become endeared to us, a dreadful homeland, full of torment, and we simply belonged in it.
We shake our heads—but whether it be the lost years that remain there, or the comrades who lie there, or all the misery that this earth covers—there is a grief in our bones, enough to make us howl aloud.
And so we march out.
PART I
1.
Roads stretch far through the landscape, the villages he in a grey light; trees rustle, leaves are falling, falling.
Along the road, step upon step, in their faded, dirty uniforms tramp the grey columns. The unshaved faces beneath the steel helmets are haggard, wasted with hunger and long peril, pinched and dwindled to the lines drawn by terror and courage and death. They trudge along in silence; silently, as they have now marched over so many roads, have sat in so many trucks, squatted in so many dugouts, crouched in so many shell-holes—without many words; so too they now trudge along this road back home into peace. Without many words.
Old men with beards and slim lads scarce twenty years of age, comrades without difference. Beside them their lieutenants, little more than children, yet the leaders of many a night raid. And behind them, the army of slain. Thus they tramp onward, step by step, sick, half-starving, without ammunition, in thin companies, with eyes that still fail to comprehend it: escaped out of that underworld, on the road back into life.
The company is marching slowly, for we are tired and have wounded with us. Little by little our group falls behind. The country is hilly, and when the road climbs we can see from the summit the last of our own troops withdrawing before us, and behind us the dense, endless columns that follow after. They are Americans. They pour on through the avenues of trees like a broad river, and the restless glitter of their weapons plays over them. But around them he the quiet fields, and the tree-tops in their autumnal colours tower solemn and unconcerned above the oncoming flood.
We stopped the night in a little village. Behind the houses in which we billeted flows a stream lined with willows. A narrow path rims beside it. One behind another in a long file we follow it. Kosole is in front. Behind him runs Wolf, the company mascot, and sniffs at his haversack.
Suddenly at the cross road, where the path opens into the high road, Ferdinand springs back.
"Lookout!"
On the instant our rifles are up and we scatter. Kosole crouches in the ditch by the roadside ready to fire; Jupp and Trosske duck, and spy out from behind a clump of elders; Willy Homeyer tugs at his hand-grenade belt; even our wounded are ready for fight.
Along the road are coming a few Americans. They are laughing and talking together. It is an advance patrol that has overtaken us.
Adolf Bethke alone has remained unperturbed. He advances calmly a few paces clear of the cover. Kosole gets up again. The rest of us recover ourselves also, and embarrassed and sheepish, readjust our belts and our rifle-slings—for, of course, fighting has ceased some days now.
At sight of us the Americans halt suddenly. Their talk stops. Slowly they approach. We retire against a shed to cover our backs, and wait. The wounded men we place in the middle.
After a minute's silence an American, tall as a tree, steps out from the group, stands before us and, beckoning, greets us.
"Hullo, Kamerad!"
Adolf Bethke raises his hand in like manner. "Kamerad!"
The tension relaxes. The Americans advance. A moment later and we are surrounded by them—Hitherto we have seen them so closely only when they were either prisoners or dead.
It is a strange moment. We gaze at them in silence. They stand about us in a semicircle, fine, powerful fellows; clearly they have always had plenty to eat. They are all young; not one of them is nearly so old as Adolf Bethke or Ferdinand Kosole—and they are not our oldest by a long chalk.
On the other hand none is so young as Albert Trosske or Karl Bröger—and they are by no means the youngest of us.
They are wearing new uniforms and greatcoats; their boots are water-tight and fit well; their rifles are good and their pouches full of ammunition. They are all fresh and unused.
Compared to these fellows we are a perfect band of robbers. Our uniforms are bleached with the mud of years, with the rains of the Argonnes, the chalk of Champagne, the bog waters of Flanders; our greatcoats ragged and torn by barbed-wire, shell-splinters and shrapnel, cobbled with crude stitches, stiff with clay and in some instances even with blood; our boots broken, our rifles worn out, our ammunition almost at an end; we are all of us dirty, all alike gone to wrack, all weary. The war has passed over us like a steam roller.
Yet more troops gather around us. The square is filled with curious eyes.
We stand in a corner grouped about our wounded men —not because we are afraid, but because we belong together. The Americans nudge one another and point at our old, worn-out gear. One of them offers Breyer a piece of white bread, but though hunger is apparent in his eyes, he does not take it.
With a sudden ejaculation one of th
em points to the bandages on our wounded. These are of crêpe-paper, made fast with pack-thread. They all have a look, then retire and whisper together. Their friendly faces are full of sympathy as they see that we have not even muslin bandages.
The man who first addressed us now puts a hand on Bethke's shoulder. "Deutsche—gute Soldat," he says,"brave Soldat—"
The others nod emphatically.
We make no answer. We are not yet able to answer. The last weeks have tried us bitterly. We had to return again and again to the battle, losing our men to no purpose, yet we made no protest; we did as we have always done; and at the end our company had thirty-two men left of two hundred. So we came out from it thinking no more, feeling no more than that we had faithfully done what had been laid upon us to do.