No Man's Land (24 page)

‘Always with this brigade, on the Carso.'

‘Have you ever been wounded?'

‘No, sir, general.'

‘What, you've been on the front line for the entire war and you've never been wounded? Never?'

‘Never, general. Unless we want to consider a few flesh wounds that I've had treated here in the battalion, without going to the hospital.'

‘No, no, I'm talking about serious wounds, grave wounds.'

‘Never, general.'

‘That's very odd. How do you explain that?'

‘The exact reason escapes me, general, but I'm certain that I've never been gravely wounded.'

‘Have you taken part in all the combat operations of your brigade?'

‘All of them.'

‘The “black cats”?'

‘The “black cats.”'

‘The “red cats”?'

‘And the “red cats,” general.'

‘Very odd indeed. Are you perhaps timorous?'

I thought:To put a guy like this in his place it would take at least a general in command of an army corps. Since I didn't answer right away, the general, still somber, repeated the question.

‘I believe not,' I replied.

‘You believe or are you sure?'

‘In war, you can never be sure of anything,' I replied politely, and added with the hint of a smile that was intended to be conciliatory, ‘not even that you're sure.'

The general didn't smile. No, I think smiling was almost impossible for him. He was wearing a steel helmet with the neck strap fastened, which gave his face a metallic look. His mouth was invisible, and if he hadn't had a mustache you would have said he had no lips. His eyes were gray and hard, always open, like the eyes of a nocturnal bird of prey.

The general changed the subject.

‘Do you love war?'

I hesitated. Should I answer this question or not? There were officers and soldiers within earshot. I decided to respond.

‘I was in favor of the war, general, and at my university I was a representative of the interventionists.'

‘That,' said the general in a tone that was chillingly calm, ‘pertains to the past. I'm asking you about the present.'

‘War is a serious thing, too serious, and it's hard to say… it's hard… Anyway, I do my duty.' And since he was staring at me dissatisfied, I added, ‘All of my duty.'

‘I didn't ask you,' the general said, ‘if you do or do not do your duty. In war, everyone has to do his duty, because if you don't, you risk being shot. You understand me. I asked you if you love or don't love war.'

‘Love war!' I exclaimed, a bit discouraged.

The general stared at me, inexorable. His eyes had grown larger. It looked to me like they were spinning in their sockets.

‘Can't you answer?' the general insisted.

‘Well, I believe… certainly… I think I can say… that I have to believe…'

I was looking for a possible answer.

‘Just what is it that you believe, then?'

‘I believe, personally, I mean to say just for myself, generally speaking, I couldn't really affirm that I have a special predilection for war.'

‘Stand at attention!'

I was already standing at attention.

‘Ah, so you're for peace, are you?' Now the general's voice was tinged with surprise and disdain. ‘For peace! Just like some meek little housewife, consecrated to hearth and home, to her kitchen, her bedroom, her flowers, to her flowers, to her sweet little flowers! Is that how it is, lieutenant?'

‘No, general.'

‘And what kind of peace is it that you desire?'

‘A peace…'And inspiration came to my aid. ‘A victorious peace.'

The general seemed reassured. He asked me a few more routine questions and then asked me to accompany him on a tour of the front line.

When we were in the trench, at the highest and closest point to the enemy lines, facing Mount Fior, he asked me, ‘How far is it here, between our trenches and the Austrians'?'

‘About two hundred fifty meters,' I replied.

The general took a long look and said, ‘Here, it's two hundred thirty meters.'

‘Probably.'

‘Not probably. Certainly.'

We had made a solid trench, with rocks and big clods of earth. The men could walk up and down its entire length without being seen. The lookouts observed and shot through loopholes, under cover. The general looked out from the loophole, but he wasn't satisfied. He had a pile of rocks made at the foot of the parapet and climbed upon them, his eyes behind binoculars. Standing straight up, he was uncovered from his chest to his head.

‘General,' I said, ‘the Austrians have some excellent snipers and it's dangerous to expose yourself like that.'

The general didn't answer me. Standing straight, he kept on looking through his binoculars. Two rifle shots rang out from the enemy line. The bullets whistled past the general. He remained impassive. Two more shots followed the first two, and one of them grazed the trench. Only then, composed and unhurried, did he come down. I looked at him up close. His face displayed arrogant indifference, but his eyes were spinning. They looked like the wheels of a race car.

The lookout who was on duty just a few steps away from him continued looking out of his loophole. But, attracted by the exceptional show, some soldiers and a corporal from the 12th Company, then on the line, had stopped in the trench, all huddled together next to the general, and they were looking at him, more distrustful than impressed. They no doubt found in the division commander's overly audacious attitude some very good reasons to ponder, with a certain amount of apprehension, their own fate. The general gazed at his onlookers with satisfaction.

‘If you're not afraid,'he said, turning to the corporal, ‘do what your general just did.'

‘Yes, sir,' the corporal replied. And leaning his rifle against the trench wall, he climbed up on the pile of rocks.

Instinctively, I grabbed the corporal by the arm and made him come down.

‘The Austrians have been alerted now,' I said, ‘and they certainly won't miss on the next shot.'

With a chilling glance, the general reminded me of the difference in rank that separated me from him. I let go of the corporal's arm and didn't say another word.

‘But there's nothing to it,' said the corporal, and he climbed back up on the pile.

As soon as he looked out he was greeted by a barrage of rifle fire. The Austrians, roused by his previous apparition, were waiting with their guns pointed. The corporal remained unhurt. Impassive, his arms leaning on the parapet, his chest exposed to enemy fire, he kept his eyes to the front.

‘Bravo!' the general cried. ‘You can get down now.'

A single shot came from the enemy trench. The corporal fell backward and landed on top of us. I bent over him. The bullet had hit him in the top of the chest, under his collarbone, going in one side and out the other. Blood was coming out of his mouth. His eyes slits, gasping for breath, he murmured, ‘It's nothing, lieutenant.'

The general bent over him, too. The soldiers looked at him, hate in their eyes.

‘He's a hero,' the general commented. ‘A real hero.'

When he straightened up, his eyes again met mine. Just for a second. In that instant, I recalled having seen those very same eyes, cold and rotating, in the mental hospital of my hometown during a visit we'd made there with our professor of forensic medicine.

He looked for his change purse and pulled out a silver one-lira coin.

‘Here,' he said to the corporal. ‘You can drink a glass of wine the first chance you get.'

The wounded man shook his head in refusal and hid his hands. The general stood there with the lira in his fingers and, after a moment's hesitation, let it drop onto the corporal. Nobody picked it up.

The general continued his inspection of the line and when he got to the end of my battalion, he dispensed me from following him.

I made my way back to the battalion command. The whole line was in an uproar. The news of what had happened had already made it around the entire sector. For their part, the stretcher-bearers who had carried the corporal to the first-aid post had recounted the episode to everyone they ran into. Captain Canevacci was beside himself.

‘The people in command of the Italian army are Austrians!' he exclaimed. ‘Austrians in front of us, Austrians at our backs, Austrians in our midst!'

Near the battalion command I ran into Lieutenant Colonel Abbati again. That was the name of the officer from the 301st Infantry. He was supposed to go up to the front line with his battalion. He knew about the incident too. I called out to him. He didn't answer. When he got up close to me, he said, worried, ‘The military art follows its course.'

He stretched out his arm to unlatch the canteen I was wearing on my belt. I rushed to offer it to him. Looking distracted, a vague look in his eyes, he took it delicately in hand. He held it up to his ear and shook it; it wasn't empty. He took out the cork and held it up to his lips to drink. But he stopped suddenly, with a look on his face of amazement and disgust, as though he'd seen the head of a snake spring forth from the mouth of the canteen.

‘Coffee and water!' he exclaimed in a tone of compassion. ‘Look, kid, start drinking. Otherwise you'll end up in the loony bin, too, like your general.'

EMILIO LUSSU

YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE NOTHING

from
A Soldier on the Southern Front

translated by Gregory Conti

W
E CONTINUED OUR PURSUIT
the next day. After moving past Croce Sant'Antonio, the advance-guard battalion proceeded through the forest toward the grassy basin of Casara Zebio and Mount Zebio. As it advanced, it appeared more and more probable that the largest part of the enemy force had stopped in the highlands. Their resistance had become tenacious again. It was clear that the last Austrian units, in contact with our patrols, were supported by troops nearby. Given the slowness of our progress, my battalion, once we'd crossed the Val di Nos, remained inactive the whole day, waiting to be called into action.

The advance-guard 2nd Battalion received orders to stop and dig in. During the night, our battalion replaced it. When we arrived, one trench line had already been dug, hurriedly, on the outer edge of the woods. There were still some fir trees in front of us, but few and far between, as they always are on the edges of high-altitude fir woods. The terrain was still covered with bushes. Further away and higher up, several hundred meters ahead, some rocky mountain peaks loomed among the tops of the last fir trees. We could probably expect the stiffest resistance at their feet.

At dawn, Captain Canevacci and I were on the line with the 9th Company. We were waiting for the arrival of the machine-gun unit, which had stayed behind. The captain in command of the 9th was keeping watch over the terrain in front of the line with a group of sharpshooters. We were next to him, lying on the ground, behind a mound. Canevacci was looking through his binoculars.

Among the bushes, less than a hundred meters away, an enemy patrol came into view. There were seven of them, walking in single file. Convinced they were nowhere near our line, out of sight, they were proceeding parallel to our trench, walking straight up, rifles in hand, packs on their backs. They were exposed from their knees up. The captain of the 9th gestured to the sharpshooters, gave the order to fire, and the patrol crumbled to the ground.

‘Bravo!' exclaimed Captain Canevacci.

One of our squads moved out of the trench on all fours. Behind them the entire line had their rifles pointed. The squad disappeared, slithering on their bellies, into the bushes. We were expecting the squad to come back in carrying the fallen, but time was going by. Our men had to advance very cautiously to avoid an ambush. Captain Canevacci was losing patience. The machine-gun unit still hadn't arrived. What if they'd gotten lost in the forest, in the middle of the other units? To keep from losing more time I went back to look for them.

I found them half a kilometer farther back, in contact with the units of the 2nd Battalion. When I saw them, a dramatic scene was being played out; General Leone, alone on his mule, was climbing up a rocky slope between the 2nd Battalion and the machine-gun unit. As the mule was moving along the edge of a steep drop, about sixty-five feet, it stumbled and the general fell to the ground. The mule, unperturbed, kept walking along the edge of the cliff. The general was still hanging on to the reins, with half of his body dangling over the precipice. With each step, the mule yanked its head from side to side, trying to shake him off. At any moment the general might fall off the cliff. There were a lot of soldiers nearby who saw him, but nobody made a move. I could see them all very clearly; some of them winked at each other, smiling.

Any minute now the mule would free itself of the general. A soldier rushed out from the ranks of the machine-gun unit and threw himself down on the ground in time to save him. Without losing his composure, as though he had trained especially for accidents of this kind, the general remounted his mule, continued on his way, and disappeared. The soldier, back on his feet, looked around, satisfied. He had saved the general.