Men in War by Andreas Latzko

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He stopped for an instant and stared at the captain triumphantly. Then
he went on with a note of spiteful pride in his voice, though every now
and then interrupted by a peculiar gurgling groan.

"Poor Dill never said another word--Dill with the spur sticking in his
skull, a regular cavalry spur, as big as a five-crown piece. He only
turned up the whites of his eyes a little and looked sadly at his wife's
picture, that she should have permitted such a thing as that. Such a
thing as that! Such a thing! It took four of us to pull the boot out--
four of us. We had to turn it and twist it, until a piece of his brain
came along--like roots pulled up--like a jellyfish--a dead one--sticking
to the spur."

"Shut up!" the captain yelled furiously, and tore himself away and
walked into the house cursing.

The other two looked after him longingly, but they could not let the
unfortunate man stay there by himself. When the captain had withdrawn
his arm, he had fallen down on the bench again and sat whimpering like a
whipped child, with his head leaning on the back. The Philosopher
touched his shoulder gently, and was about to speak to him kindly and
induce him to go into the house when he started up again and broke out
into an ugly, snarling laugh.

"But we tore her out of him, his dashing wife. Four of us had to tug and
pull until she came out. I got him rid of her. Out with her! She's gone.
All of them are gone. Mine is gone, too. Mine is torn out, too. All are
being torn out. There's no wife any more! No wife any more, no--"

His head bobbed and fell forward. Tears slowly rolled down his sad, sad
face.

The captain reappeared followed by the little assistant physician, who
was on night duty.

"You must go to bed now, Lieutenant," the physician said with affected
severity.

The sick man threw his head up and stared blankly at the strange face.
When the physician repeated the order in a raised voice, his eyes
suddenly gleamed, and he nodded approvingly.

"Must go, of course," he repeated eagerly, and drew a deep sigh. "We all
must go. The man who doesn't go is a coward, and they have no use for a
coward. That's the very thing. Don't you understand? Heroes are the
style now. The chic Mrs. Dill wanted a hero to match her new hat. Ha-ha!
That's why poor Dill had to go and lose his brains. I, too--you, too--we
must go die. You must let yourself be trampled on--your brains trampled
on, while the women look on--chic--because it's the style now."

He raised his emaciated body painfully, holding on to the back of the
bench, and eyed each man in turn, waiting for assent.

"Isn't it sad?" he asked softly. Then his voice rose suddenly to a
shriek again, and the sound of his fury rang out weirdly in the garden.
"Weren't they deceiving us, eh? I'd like to know--weren't they cheats?
Was I an assassin? Was I a ruffian? Didn't I suit her when I sat at the
piano playing? We were expected to be gentle and considerate!
Considerate! And all at once, because the fashion changed, they had to
have murderers. Do you understand? Murderers!"

He broke away from the physician, and stood swaying again, and his voice
gradually sank to a complaining sound like the thick strangulated
utterance of a drunkard.

"My wife was in fashion too, you know. Not a tear! I kept waiting and
waiting for her to begin to scream and beg me at last to get out of the
train, and not go with the others--beg me to be a coward for her sake.
Not one of them had the courage to. They just wanted to be in fashion.
Mine, too! Mine, too! She waved her handkerchief just like all the
rest."

His twitching arms writhed upwards, as though he were calling the
heavens to witness.

"You want to know what was the most awful thing?" he groaned, turning to
the Philosopher abruptly. "The disillusionment was the most awful thing
--the going off. The war wasn't. The war is what it has to be. Did it
surprise you to find out that war is horrible? The only surprising thing
was the going off. To find out that the women are horrible--that was the
surprising thing. That they can smile and throw roses, that they can
give up their men, their children, the boys they have put to bed a
thousand times and pulled the covers over a thousand times, and petted
and brought up to be men. That was the surprise! That they gave us up--
that they sent us--_sent_ us! Because every one of them would have
been ashamed to stand there without a hero. That was the great
disillusionment. Do you think we should have gone if they had not sent
us? Do you think so? Just ask the stupidest peasant out there why he'd
like to have a medal before going back on furlough. Because if he has a
medal his girl will like him better, and the other girls will run after
him, and he can use his medal to hook other men's women away from under
their noses. That's the reason, the only reason. The women sent us. No
general could have made us go if the women hadn't allowed us to be
stacked on the trains, if they had screamed out that they would never
look at us again if we turned into murderers. Not a single man would
have gone off if they had sworn never to give themselves to a man who
has split open other men's skulls and shot and bayoneted human beings.
Not one man, I tell you, would have gone. I didn't want to believe that
they could stand it like that. 'They're only pretending,' I thought.
'They're just restraining themselves. But when the first whistle blows,
they'll begin to scream and tear us out of the train, and rescue us.'
_Once_ they had the chance to protect us, but all they cared about
was being in style--nothing else in the world but just being in style."

He sank down on the bench again and sat as though he were all broken up.
His body was shaken by a low weeping, and his head rolled to and fro on
his panting chest. A little circle of people had gathered behind his
back. The old landsturm corporal was standing beside the physician with
four sentries ready to intervene at a moment's notice. All the windows
in the officers' wing had lighted up, and scantily clad figures leaned
out, looking down into the garden curiously.

The sick man eagerly scrutinized the indifferent faces around him. He
was exhausted.

His hoarse throat no longer gave forth a sound. His hand reached out for
help to the Philosopher, who stood beside him, all upset.

The physician felt the right moment had come to lead him away.

"Come, Lieutenant, let's go to sleep," he said with a clumsy affectation
of geniality. "That's the way women are once for all, and there's
nothing to be done about it."

The physician wanted to go on talking and in conversing lure the sick
man into the house unawares. But the very next sentence remained
sticking in his throat, and he stopped short in amazement. The limp
wobbling skeleton that only a moment before had sat there as in a faint
and let himself be raised up by the physician and the Philosopher,
suddenly jumped up with a jerk, and tore his arms away so violently that
the two men who were about to assist him were sent tumbling up against
the others. He bent over with crooked knees, staggering like a man
carrying a heavy load on his back. His veins swelled, and he panted
with fury:

"That's the way women are once for all, are they? Since when, eh? Have
you never heard of the suffragettes who boxed the ears of prime
ministers, and set fire to museums, and let themselves be chained to
lamp-posts for the sake of the vote? For the sake of the vote, do you
hear? But for the sake of their men? No. Not one sound. Not one single
outcry!"

He stopped to take breath, overcome by a wild suffocating despair. Then
he pulled himself together once more and with difficulty suppressing the
sobs, which kept bringing a lump into his throat, he screamed in deepest
misery like a hunted animal:

"Have you heard of one woman throwing herself in front of a train for
the sake of her husband? Has a single one of them boxed the ears of a
prime minister or tied herself to a railroad track for us? There wasn't
one that had to be torn away. Not one fought for us or defended us. Not
one moved a little finger for us in the whole wide world! They drove us
out! They gagged us! They gave us the spur, like poor Dill. They sent us
to murder, they sent us to die--for their vanity. Are you going to
defend them? No! They must be pulled out! Pulled out like weeds, by the
roots! Four of you together must pull the way we had to do with Dill.
Four of you together! Then she'll have to come out. Are you the doctor?
There! Do it to my head. I don't want a wife! Pull--pull her out!"

He flung out his arm and his fist came down like a hammer on his own
skull, and his crooked fingers clutched pitilessly at the sparse growth
of hair on the back of his head, until he held up a whole handful torn
out by the roots, and howled with pain.

The doctor gave a sign, and the next moment the four sentries were on
him, panting. He screamed, gnashed his teeth, beat about him, kicked
himself free, shook off his assailants like burrs. It was not until the
old corporal and the doctor came to their assistance that they succeeded
in dragging him into the house.

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 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, 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 clusters, like snowballs 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. Assuredly no small task
for a company of the last class 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 cock 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 grass with his riding whip and
from time to time glanced at his company surreptitiously. 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 impassioned, 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 shells. 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 hit 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 shell 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 shells 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
gratitude. 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 attitude,
but in a voice hoarse 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 grass 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.

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