The Road Back (4 page)

A few of the badly wounded reach out their thin, grey arms like children. "Take me with you, mate," they say, imploring. "Take me with you, mate." In the hollows of their eyes already lurk deep, strange shadows, from which the pupils struggle up with difficulty like drowning things. Others are quiet, following us as far as they can with their eyes.

The cries sound gradually fainter. The road drags on toilsomely. We are carrying a lot of stuff—a man must bring something back home with him. Clouds hang in the sky. During the afternoon the sun breaks through, and birch-trees, now with only a few leaves left, hang mirrored in puddles of rain along the way. Soft blue haze is caught in the branches.

As I march on with pack and lowered head, by the side of the road I see images of the bright, silken trees reflected in the pools of rain. In these occasional mirrors they are displayed clearer than in reality. They get another light and in another way. Embedded there in the brown earth lies a span of sky, trees, depths and clearness. Suddenly I shiver. For the first time in many years I feel again that something is still beautiful, that this in all its simplicity is beautiful and pure, this image in the water pool before me —and in this thrill my heart leaps up. For a moment all that other falls away, and now, for the first time I feel it; I see it; I comprehend it fully: Peace. The weight that nothing eased before, now lifts at last. Something strange, something new flies up, a dove, a white dove. Trembling horizon, tremulous expectancy, first glimpse, presentiment, hope, exaltation, imminence: Peace.

Sudden panic, and I look round—there behind me on the stretchers my comrades are now lying and still they call. It is peace, yet they must die. But I, I am trembling with joy and am not ashamed. And that is odd.

Because none can ever wholly feel what another suffers —is that the reason why wars perpetually recur?

In the afternoon we are sitting around in a brewery yard. From the office of the factory comes our company commander, Lieutenant Heel, and calls us together. An order has come through that representatives are to be elected from the ranks. We are astounded. No one has ever heard of such a thing before.

Then Max Weil appears in the courtyard, waving a newspaper and shouting: "There's revolution in Berlin!"

Heel swings around. "Rubbish!" he says sharply. "There are disturbances in Berlin."

But Weil has not done yet. "The Kaiser's fled to Holland!"

That wakes us up. Weil must be mad surely. Heel turns fiery red. "Damned liar!" he roars.

Weil hands him the paper. Heel screws it up and glares furiously at Weil. He cannot bear Weil, for Weil is a Jew, a quiet fellow, who is always sitting about, reading. But Heel is a fire-eater.

"All talk," he growls and looks at Weil as if he would choke him.

Max unbuttons his tunic and produces yet another Special Edition. Heel glances at it, tears it to bits and goes back into his billet. Weil gathers up the shreds of his newspaper, pieces them together and reads us the news. And we just sit there like a row of sotted hens. This is clean beyond our comprehension.

"It says, he wanted to avoid a civil war," says Weil.

"What rot!" snaps Kosole. "Supposing we had said that a while back, eh? Well I'll be damned! So that's what we've been holding out here for?"

"Jupp," says Bethke, shaking his head, "just give me a dig in the ribs, will you, and see if I'm still here." Jupp establishes the fact. "Then it must be so, no doubt," continues Bethke. "All the same I don't quite catch on to the idea. Why, if one of us had done that, they would have stood him up against the wall!"

"Best not to think of Wessling and Schröder now," mutters Kosole, clenching his fists, "else I'll run amok. Poor little Schröder, a mere kid, and there he lay all bashed to a jelly—and the man he died for just cuts and runs!—Dirty scum!" Suddenly he sends his heels crashing against a beer cask.

Willy Homeyer makes a gesture of dismissal. "Let's talk about something else," he then suggests. "For my part I've done with the fellow, absolutely."

Weil starts to explain how Soldiers' Councils have already been set up in a number of the regiments. The officers are not the leaders any more. Many of them have even had their shoulder-straps ripped off.

He would have us set up a Soldiers' Council too. But he does not get much encouragement. We don't want to set up anything any more. All we want is to get home. And we can do that quite well as we are.

In the end we elect three representatives: Adolf Bethke, Weil and Ludwig Breyer.

Weil wants Ludwig to take down his shoulder-straps.

"Here—" says Ludwig wearily, lightly smoothing his forehead. But Bethke shoves Weil back. "Ludwig belongs to us," he says curtly.

Breyer came to our company as a volunteer and was afterwards given a commission. It is not only with Trosske, Homeyer, Broger and me that he talks familiarly—that goes without saying, of course, we were former schoolfellows—but, when no other officer is about, he is the same with all his old mates in the ranks. And his credit stands high in consequence.

"Well, Heel then," insists Weil.

That is easier to understand. Weil has often been ridiculed by Heel—what wonder than if he now means to savour his triumph. That, we feel, is no business of ours. Heel was rather harsh, it is true, but he did go for them; he was always up and coming where there was trouble. And a soldier gives credit for that.

"Well, you can ask him, of course," says Bethke.

"But take a few bandages along with you," Tjaden calls after him.

The event takes a different turn, however. Heel issues from the office just as Weil is about to enter. He has some message-forms in his hand. He points to them. "You're right," he says to Max.

Weil begins to speak. When he comes to the question of the shoulder-straps, Heel makes a swift movement. For an instant we imagine there is going to be a stand-up fight, but to our astonishment the company commander merely says abruptly: "Quite so!" Then turning to Ludwig he lays a hand on his shoulder. "You don't understand, perhaps, Breyer? A private's tunic, that's the idea. The other is finished with now."

No one utters a word. This is not the Heel that we know —the man who would go on patrol at night armed with nothing but a walking-stick, whom everyone regarded as bullet-proof. This man is hard put to it just to stand up and speak.

This evening as I lay already asleep, I was roused by sounds of whispering. "You're pulling my leg," I hear Kosole say. "Fact," persists Willy. "You come and see."

They get up hastily and go out into the yard. I follow them. There is a light in the office, so that is is possible to see inside. Heel is seated at the table. His blue officer's jacket, the
litejka
, is lying before him. The shoulder-straps have gone. He is wearing a private's tunic. His head is in his hands, and—but no, that cannot be—I go a step nearer—Heel, Heel is crying.

"Can you beat it!" whispers Tjaden.

"Hop it," says Bethke and gives Tjaden a kick. We sneak off embarrassed.

Next morning we hear that a major in one of the neighbouring regiments shot himself when he learned of the flight of the Emperor.

Heel is coming. He is grey and worn with sleeplessness. Quietly he gives the necessary instructions. Then he goes again. And we all feel just terrible. The last thing that was left to us has been taken away—the very ground cut from under our feet.

"It's betrayed, well and truly betrayed, that's what we are," says Kosole grumpily.

Very different from yesterday is the column that lines up
today and marches dismally off—a lost company, an
abandoned army. The entrenching tool claps with every
step—monotonous melody—in vain—in vain——

Only Ledderhose is as happy as a lark. He sells us tinned meat and sugar out of his American plunder.

Next evening we reach Germany. Now that French is no longer spoken everywhere around us, we begin at last to believe that the peace is real. Until now we have been secretly expecting an order to turn about and go back to the trenches—a soldier is mistrustful of good, it is better to expect the contrary from the outset. But now a bubbling ferment begins slowly to work in us.

We enter a large village. A few bedraggled garlands hang across the street. So many troops have passed through already that it is not worth while to make any special fuss about us, the last of them, So we must content ourselves with the faded welcome of a few rain-sodden placards loosely looped round with oak leaves cut out of green paper. The people hardly so much as look at us as we march by, so accustomed have they grown to it. But for us it is a new thing to come here and we hunger for a few friendly looks, however much we may pretend we do not give a damn. The girls at least might stop and wave to us. Every now and then Tjaden and Jupp try to attract the attention of one, but without success. We look too grisly, no doubt. So in the end they give it up.

Only the children accompany us. We take them by the hand and they run along beside us. We give them all the chocolate we can spare—we want, of course, to take some small part of it home. Adolf Bethke has taken a little girl up in his arms. She tugs at his beard as if it were a bridle, and laughs with glee to see his grimaces. The little hands pat his face. He catches hold of one of them to show me how tiny it is.

The child begins to cry now that he is pulling no more faces. Adolf tries to pacify her, but she only cries the more loudly and he has to put her down.

"We seem to have turned into first-rate bogeymen," growls Kosole.

"Who wouldn't be scared of such a prize front-line phiz," Willy explains to him, "it must just give them the creeps."

"We smell of blood, that's what it is," says Ludwig Breyer wearily.

"Well, we must have a jolly good bath," replies Jupp, "and perhaps that will make the girls a bit keener too."

"Yes, if bathing were all there is to it," answers Ludwig pensively.

Listlessly we trudge onward. We had pictured our entry into our own country after the long years out there rather differently from this. We imagined that people would be waiting for us, expecting us; now we see that already everyone is taken up with his own affairs. Life has moved on, is still moving on; it is leaving us behind, almost as if we were superfluous already. The village, of course, is not Germany; all the same the disappointment sticks in our gizzard, and a shadow passes over us and a queer foreboding.

Carts rattle past, drivers shout, men look up as they pass, then fall again to their own thoughts and cares. The hour is pealing from the church tower; the damp wind sniffs us as it goes by. Only an old woman with long bonnet strings is running indefatigably along the column, and in a tremulous voice is asking for a certain Erhard Schmidt.

We are billeted in a large outhouse. Though we have marched a long way no one wants to rest. We go off to the inn.

Here is life in plenty, and a turbid wine of this year's vintage. It tastes wonderful, and works powerfully in the legs, so we are the more content to sit. Clouds of tobacco smoke drift through the low room; the wine smells of the earth and of summer; we fetch out our tins of preserved meat, carve off great slices and lay them on thick slabs of buttered bread, stick our knives upright beside us in the big wooden table and eat. The oil lamp beams down upon us all like a mother.

Night makes the world beautiful. Not in front-line trenches, of course, but in peace. This afternoon we marched in here dejected; now we begin to revive. The little band playing in the corner soon gets reinforcement from our fellows. We can supply not merely pianists and virtuosos with the mouth-organ—there is even a Bavarian with a zither. Willy Homeyer will not be out, of it. He has rigged himself up a sort of devil's fiddle and with the aid of a couple of enormous pot-lids is treating us to the combined glory and clash of cymbals, kettle-drums and rattles.

But the unusual thing, that goes to our heads even more than the wine, is the girls. They are quite other than they seemed this afternoon, they smile and are complaisant. Or are these different ones, perhaps? It is so long now since we have seen any girls.

At first we are both eager and shy at the same time; we are not quite sure of ourselves; we seem to have forgotten how to get along with them. At last Ferdinand Kosole waltzes off with one, a husky wench with massive breastworks that should afford his gun a good he. Now all the others are following his lead.

The heavy, sweet wine sings pleasantly in the head, the
girls are whirling by, and the music plays. We are sitting in
a group in one corner gathered about Adolf Bethke.
"Well, boys," says he, "tomorrow or next day we'll be
home again. Yes—my wife—ten months it is now——"