The Road Back (2 page)

Hands relax and clench again tighter. This is not to be borne. We are so accustomed to the noise of the Front that now, when the weight of it suddenly lifts from us, we feel as if we must burst, shoot upward like balloons.

"Why," says Willy suddenly, "it is peace!" It falls like a bomb.

Faces relax, movements become aimless and uncertain.

Peace? We look at one another incredulous. Peace? I let my hand-grenades drop. Peace? Ludwig lies down slowly on his waterproof again. Peace? In Bethke's eyes is an expression as if his whole face would break in pieces. Peace? Wessling stands motionless as a tree; and when he turns his back on it and faces us, he looks as if he meant to keep straight on home.

All at once—in the whirl of our excitement we had hardly observed it—the silence is at an end; once more, dully menacing, comes the noise of gun-fire, and already from afar like the bill of a woodpecker sounds the knock-knocking of a machine-gun. We grow calm and are almost glad to hear again the familiar, trusty noises of death.

It has been quiet all day. At night we have to retire a little, as so often before. But the fellows over yonder do not simply follow us, they attack. Before we are ready, heavy shelling comes over and behind us the red fountains roar upward into the gloom. For the moment it is still quiet where we are. Willy and Tjaden light on a tin of meat and polish it off on the spot. The rest just he there and wait. The many months have consumed them; so long as they cannot defend themselves they are almost indifferent.

Heel, our company commander, crawls up. "Have you everything?" he asks through the din. "Too little ammunition," shouts Bethke. Heel gives a shrug and passes Bethke a cigarette over his shoulder. Without looking round Bethke nods. "Have to make good with what you have," shouts Heel, and springs into the next shell-hole. He knows they will make good right enough. Any of these old hands would make as able a company commander as himself.

It grows dark. The fire catches us. There is practically no cover. With hands and spades we scoop holes for our heads in the crater. And so we lie, pressed close to the ground, Albert and Bethke beside me. A shell lands not twenty yards from us. As the beast comes on screaming, we open wide our mouths to save our ear-drums; even so we are half deafened, and our eyes filled with dirt and muck, and in our noses the foul stench of powder and sulphur. It rains metal. Somebody has stopped one; for along with a smoking shell fragment there lands in our crater by Bethke's head a severed hand.

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?"—the
cry 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 be
operated on later, but the wounds must heal a little first,
Wessling already knows all. He is silent a moment, then he
cries aloud: "Yes, you stand there and are whole—and are
going 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 nar
rowly. His eyes are clear and alert. He is a farmer and at 
home with the country, he understands it better and other
wise 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 move
ment 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, indeed, 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, four
years 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, Ber
tinck—"