The Road Back (3 page)

"Sandkuhl, Meinders, the two Terbrüggen, Hugo, Bern
hard—"

"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.

R
oads 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 them 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.

But now, under the pitying eyes of these Americans, we perceive how much in vain it has all been. The sight of their interminable, well-equipped columns reveals to us against what hopeless odds in man-power and material we made our stand.

We bite our lips and look at each other. Bethke withdraws his shoulder from under the American's hand; Kosole stares ahead into vacancy; Ludwig Breyer draws himself up—we grip our rifles more firmly; we brace our knees, our eyes become harder and our gaze does not falter. We look back once more over the country whence we have come; our faces become tight with suppressed emotion, and once again the searing memory passes through us: all we have done, all we have suffered, and all that we have left behind.

We do not know what is the matter with us; but if a bitter word were now loosed against us it would sting us to fury, and whether we wanted to or not we would burst forward, wild and breathless, mad and lost, to fight—in spite of everything, to fight again.

A thick-set sergeant with a ruddy face elbows his way toward us. Over Kosole who stands nearest him he pours a flood of German words. Ferdinand winces, it so astonishes him.

"He talks just the same as we do!" he says to Bethke in amazement, "what do you make of that, now?"

The fellow speaks German better and more fluently even than Kosole himself. He explains that he was in Dresden before the war, and had many friends there.

"In Dresden?" asks Kosole even more staggered. "Why
! was there once myself for a couple of years "

The sergeant smiles, as though that identified him once and for all. He names the street where he had lived.

"Not five minutes from me!" exclaims Ferdinand excitedly. "Fancy not having seen one another! You will know Widow Pohl, perhaps, at the corner, Johannis Street? A fat old body with black hair. My landlady."

But the sergeant does not know her, and in exchange
submits Zander, a clerk in the Treasury, whom Kosole in 
his turn cannot recall. Both of them, however, remember 
the Elbe and the castle, and their eyes light up with pleas
ure. Ferdinand seizes the sergeant by the arm: "Why, man
—you talk German like a native! So you've been in Dres
den, eh?——Man, but what have we two been fighting about?"

The sergeant laughs. He doesn't know either. He takes out a packet of cigarettes and offers it to Kosole, who reaches for it eagerly—there is not a man of us but would willingly give his soul for a good cigarette. Our own are made from beech leaves and dried grass, and even those are only the better sort. Valentin Laher declares that the ordinary ones are made of seaweed and dried horse-dung, and Valentin is a connoisseur of such things.

Kosole blows out the smoke lingeringly, with relish. We sniff enviously. Laher changes colour. His nostrils quiver. "Give's a draw," he says imploringly to Ferdinand. But before he can take the cigarette another American has offered him a packet of Virginia tobacco. Valentin looks at him incredulously. He takes it and smells it. His face lights up. Then reluctantly he returns the tobacco. But the other declines it and points energetically at the cockade on Laher's forage cap, which is sticking out from the top of his haversack.

Valentin does not understand him. "He wants to exchange the tobacco for the cap badge," explains the sergeant from Dresden. But Laher understands that even less. "This spanking tobacco for a tin cockade? The man must be balmy!" Valentin would not swop the packet for a commission. He offers the cap, badge and all, to the American, and with trembling hands greedily fills his first pipe.

And now we realise what is expected—the Americans want to exchange. It is apparent that they have not long been in the war; they are still collecting souvenirs, shoulder-straps, badges, belt buckles, decorations, uniform buttons.

In exchange we stock ourselves with soap, cigarettes, chocolate and tinned meat. They even want us to take a handful of money for our dog—but we draw the line there; let them offer what they will, the dog stays with us. On the other hand our wounded bring us luck. One American, with so much gold in his mouth that his face looks like a brass foundry, is anxious to get some pieces of bandage with blood on them, in order to be able to demonstrate to the folk at home that they actually were made of paper. He is offering first-rate biscuits and, better still, an armful of real bandages in exchange. With the utmost satisfaction he carefully stows the rags away in his pocketbook, especially those belonging to Ludwig Breyer; for that is lieutenant's blood, you see. Ludwig must write on it in pencil, the place, his name and regiment, so that everyone in America may see the thing is no fake. He is unwilling at first—but Willy persuades him, for we need good bandages sorely. And besides, the biscuits are an absolute godsend to him with his dysentery.

But Arthur Ledderhose makes the best coup. He produces a box of Iron Crosses that he found in an abandoned orderly-room. An American, as wizened as himself, with just such another lemon-yellow face, wants to buy the whole box at one deal. But Ledderhose merely gives him one long, knowing slant from his squinting eyes. The American returns the look just as impassively, just as seemingly harmless. One suddenly saw in them a family likeness, as of two brothers. Something that has survived all the chances of war and death has flashed between them—the spirit of trade.

Ledderhose's antagonist soon sees that there is nothing doing. Arthur is not to be tricked; his wares will be decidedly more profitable disposed of in retail, so he barters them one by one, till the box is empty. About him there gradually rises up a pile of goods, even butter, and silk, eggs, linen, and money until finally he stands there on his bandy legs looking like a departmental store.

We take our leave. The Americans call and wave after us. The sergeant especially is indefatigable. Even Kosole is moved, so far as an old soldier can be. He too grunts a few words of farewell and waves his hand; but in him all this has still an air of menace. Then at last he ventures to Bethke: "Quite decent fellows, eh?"

Adolf nods. We go on in silence. Ferdinand lowers his head. He is thinking. Such is not his habit, but when the fit does take him he is tenacious, and will chew the cud a long time. He cannot get the sergeant from Dresden out of his head.

In the villages the folk stare after us. At a railway-crossing there are flowers in the watchman's window. A woman with ample breasts is suckling a child. She has a blue dress on. Dogs bark after us. Wolf growls in answer. On the roadside a cock is treading a hen. We smoke vacantly.

Marching, marching. We have now reached the zone of field ambulance stations, of supply depots. A spacious park with plane-trees. Stretchers and wounded under the trees. The leaves are falling and covering them in red and gold.

A gas hospital. Bad cases that cannot be moved. Blue faces, waxen green faces, dead eyes, eaten by the acid; wheezing, choking, dying men. They all want to get away; they are afraid of being taken prisoner.—As if it were not a matter of indifference where they die.

We try to cheer them, telling them they will be better cared for with the Americans. But they do not listen. Again and again they call to us to take them with us.

The cries are terrible. The pallid faces seem so unreal in the light out here in the open. But most awful are the beards. They take on a life of their own, they stand out stiff, fantastical, growing, luxuriating over the sunken jaws, a black fungus that feeds and thrives the more these sag and waste away.