by Philip Wylie
XIII
At Blaisencourt it was spring again. The war was nearly a year old.Blaisencourt was now a street of houses' ghosts, of rubble and dirt,populated by soldiers. A little new grass sprouted peevishly here andthere; an occasional house retained enough of its original shape toharbour an industry. Captain Crouan, his arm in a sling, was lookingover a heap of debris with the aid of field glasses.
"I see him," he said, pointing to a place on the boiling field where anapparent lump of soil had detached itself.
"He rises! He goes on! He takes one of his mighty leaps! Ah, God, if Ionly had a company of such men!"
His aide, squatted near by, muttered something under his breath. Thecaptain spoke again. "He is very near their infernal little gun now. Hehas taken his rope. Ahaaaa! He spins it in the air. It falls. They areastonished. They rise up in the trench. Quick, Phedre! Give me a rifle."The rifle barked sharply four, five times. Its bullet found a mark.Then another. "Ahaaa! Two of them! And M. Danner now has his rope onthat pig's breath. It comes up. See! He has taken it under his arm! Theyare shooting their machine guns. He drops into a shell hole. He has beenhit, but he is laughing at them. He leaps. Look out, Phedre!"
Hugo landed behind the debris with a small German trench mortar in hisarms. He set it on the floor. The captain opened his mouth, and Hugowaved to him to be silent. Deliberately, Hugo looked over the ricketyparapet of loose stones. He elevated the muzzle of the gun and drew backthe lanyard. The captain, grinning, watched through his glasses. The gunroared.
Its shell exploded presently on the brow of the enemy trench, tossing upa column of smoke and earth. "I should have brought some ammunition withme," Hugo said.
Captain Crouan stared at the little gun. "Pig," he said. "Son of a pig!Five of my men are in your little belly! Bah!" He kicked it.
* * * * *
Summer in Aix-au-Dixvaches. A tall Englishman addressing Captain Crouan.His voice was irritated by the heat. "Is it true that you French have anIndian scout here who can bash in those Minenwerfers?"
"_Pardon, mon colonel, mais je ne comprends pas l'anglais._"
He began again in bad French. Captain Crouan smiled. "Ah? You aretroubled there on your sector? You wish to borrow our astonishingsoldier? It will be a pleasure, I assure you."
Hot calm night. The sky pin-pricked with stars, the air redolent withthe mushy flavour of dead meat. So strong it left a taste in the mouth.So strong that food and water tasted like faintly chlorinatedputrescence. Hugo, his blue uniform darker with perspiration, trampedthrough the blackness to a dug-out. Fifteen minutes in candlelight witha man who spoke English in an odd manner.
"They've been raisin' bloody hell with us from a point about there." Thetap of a pencil. "We've got little enough confidence in you, Godknows--"
"Thank you."
"Don't be huffy. We're obliged to your captain for the loan of you. Butwe've lost too many trying to take the place ourselves not to be fed upwith it. I suppose you'll want a raiding party?"
"No, thanks."
"But, cripes, you can't make it there alone."
"I can do it." Hugo smiled. "And you've lost so many of your own men--"
"Very well."
* * * * *
Otto Meyer pushed his helmet back on his sandy-haired head and gasped inthe feverish air. A non-commissioned officer passing behind him shovedthe helmet over his eyes with a muttered word of caution. Ottoshrugged. Half a dozen men lounged near by. Beside and above them werethe muzzles of four squat guns and the irregular silhouette of a heap ofammunition. Two of the men rolled onto their backs and panted. "I wish,"one said in a soft voice, "that I was back in the Hofbrau at Munich witha tall stein of beer, with that fat _Fraeulein_ that kissed me in thePotsdam station last September sitting at my side and the orchestraplaying--"
Otto flung a clod of dank earth at the speaker. There were chuckles fromthe shadows that sucked in and exhaled the rancid air. Outside the pitin which they lay, there was a gentle thud.
Otto scrambled into a sitting posture. "What is that?"
"Nothing. Even these damned English aren't low enough to fight us inthis weather."
"You can never tell. At night, in the first battle of--listen!"
The thud was repeated, much closer. It was an ominous sound, like thedrop of a sack of earth from a great height. Otto picked up a gun. Hewas a man who perspired freely, and now, in that single minute, his facetrickled. He pointed the gun into the air and pulled the trigger. Itkicked back and jarred his arm. In the glaring light that followed, sixmen peered through the spider-web of the wire. They saw nothing.
"You see?"
Their eyes smarted with the light and dark, so swiftly exchanged. Camea thud in their midst. A great thud that spattered the dirt in alldirections. "Something has fallen." "A shell!" "It's a dud!"
The men rose and tried to run. Otto had regained his vision and saw theobject that had descended. A package of yellow sticks tied to a greatmass of iron--wired to it. Instead of running, he grasped it. Hisstrength was not enough to lift it. Then, for one short eternity, he sawa sizzling spark move toward the sticks. He clutched at it. "Help! Theguns must be saved. A bomb!" He knew his arms surrounded death. "Icannot--"
His feeble voice was blown to the four winds at that instant. A terribleexplosion burst from him, shattering the escaping men, blasting thehowitzers into fragments, enlarging the pit to enormous dimensions. Bothfronts clattered with machine-gun fire. Flares lit the terrain. Hugo,running as if with seven-league boots, was thrown on his face by theconcussion.
* * * * *
Winter. Mud. A light fall of snow that was split into festers by theguns before it could anneal the ancient sores. Hugo shivered and staredinto no man's land, whence a groan had issued for twenty hours, audibleoccasionally over the tumult of the artillery. He saw German eyes turnedmutely on the same heap of rags that moved pitifully over the snow,leaving a red wake, dragging a bloody thing behind. It rose and fell,moving parallel to the two trenches. Many machine-gun bullets hadeither missed it or increased its crimson torment. Hugo went out andkilled the heap of rags, with a revolver that cracked until the groansstopped in a low moan. Breaths on both sides were bated. The rags hadbeen gray-green. A shout of low, rumbling praise came from the silentenemy trenches. Hugo looked over there for a moment and smiled. Helooked down at the thing and vomited. The guns began again.
* * * * *
Another winter. Time had become stagnant. All about it was a pool of mudand suppuration, and shot through it was the sound of guns and the scentof women, the taste of wine and the touch of cold flesh. Somewhere, hecould not remember distinctly where, Hugo had a clean uniform, aportfolio of papers, a jewel-case of medals. He was a great man--a manfeared. The Colorado in the Foreign Legion. Men would talk about whatthey had seen him accomplish all through the next fifty years--atwatering places in the Sahara, at the crackling fires of country-houseparties in Shropshire, on the shores of the South Seas, on the moon,maybe. Old men, at the last, would clear the phlegm from their skinnythroats and begin: "When I was a-fightin' with the Legion in my youngestdays, there was a fellow in our company that came from some place inwild America that I disrecollect." And younger, more sanguine men wouldlisten and shake their heads and wish that there was a war for them tofight.
Hugo was not satisfied with that. Still, he could see no decent exit andcontrive no better use for himself. He clung frantically to the idealshe had taken with him and to the splendid purpose with which he hademblazoned his mad lust to enlist. Marseilles and the sentiment it hadinspired seemed very far away. He thought about it as he walked towardthe front, his head bent into the gale and his helmet pitched to protecthis eyes from the sting of the rain.
That night he slept with Shayne, a lieutenant now, twice wounded, thricedecorated, and, like Hugo, thinner than he had been, older, with eyesgrown bleak, and seldom vehement. He res
embled his lean Yankee ancestorsafter their exhausting campaigns of the wilderness, alive and sentientonly through a sheer stubbornness that brooked neither element nordisaster. Only at rare moments did the slight strain of his French bloodlift him from that grim posture. Such a moment was afforded by thearrival of Hugo.
"Great God, Hugo! We haven't seen you in a dog's age." Other soldierssmiled and brought rusty cigarettes into the dug-out where they sat andsmoked.
Hugo held out his hand. "Been busy. Glad to see you."
"Yes. I know how busy you've been. Up and down the lines we hear aboutyou. _Le Colorado._ Damn funny war. You'd think you weren't human, oranywhere near human, to hear these birds. Wish you'd tell me how you getaway with it. Hasn't one nicked you yet?"
"Not yet."
"God damn. Got me here"--he tapped his shoulder--"and here"--his thigh.
"That's tough. I guess the sort of work I do isn't calculated to be asrisky as yours," Hugo said.
"Huh! That you can tell to Sweeny." The Frenchmen were still sittingpolitely, listening to a dialogue they could not understand. Hugo andShayne eyed each other in silence. A long, penetrating silence. Atlength the latter said soberly: "Still as enthusiastic as you were thatnight in Marseilles?"
"Are you?"
"I didn't have much conception of what war would be then."
"Neither did I," Hugo responded. "And I'm not very enthusiastic anymore."
"Oh, well--"
"Exactly."
"Heard from your family?"
"Sure."
"Well--"
They relapsed into silence again. By and by they ate a meal of coldfood, supplemented by rank, steaming coffee. Then they slept. Beforedawn Hugo woke feeling like a man in the mouth of a volcano that hadcommenced to erupt. The universe was shaking. The walls of the dug-outwere molting chunks of earth. The scream and burst of shells wereconstant. He heard Shayne's voice above the din, issuing orders inFrench. Their batteries were to be phoned. A protective counter-fire. A_barrage_ in readiness in case of attack, which seemed imminent. Largershells drowned the voice. Hugo rose and stood beside Shayne.
"Coming over?"
"Coming over."
A shapeless face spoke in the gloom. The voice panted. "We must get outof here, my lieutenant. They are smashing in the dug-out." A methodicalscramble to the orifice. Hell was rampaging in the trench. The shellsfell everywhere. Shayne shook his head. It was neither light nor dark.The incessant blinding fire did not make things visible except forfragments of time and in fantastic perspectives. Things belched andboomed and smashed the earth and whistled and howled. It was impossibleto see how life could exist in that caldron, and yet men stood calmlyall along the line. A few of them, here and there, were obliterated.
The red sky in the southeast became redder with the rising sun. Hugoremained close to the wall. It was no novelty for him to be under shellfire. But at such times he felt the need of a caution with which hecould ordinarily dispense. If one of the steel cylinders found him, evenhis mighty frame might not contain itself. Even he might be rentasunder. Shayne saw him and smiled. Twenty yards away a geyser of firesprayed the heavens. Ten feet away a fragment of shell lashed down apile of sand-bags. Shayne's smile widened. Hugo returned it.
Then red fury enveloped the two men. Hugo was crushed ferociouslyagainst the wall and liberated in the same second. He fell forward, hisears singing and his head dizzy. He lay there, aching. Dark red stainsflowed over his face from his nose and ears. Painfully he stood up. Asoldier was watching him from a distance with alarmed eyes. Hugostepped. He found that locomotion was possible. The bedlam increased. Itbrought a sort of madness. He remembered Shayne. He searched in thesmoking, stinking muck. He found the shoulders and part of Shayne'shead. He picked them up in his hands, disregarding the butchered ends ofthe raw gobbet. White electricity crackled in his head.
He leaped to the parapet, shaking his fists. "God damn you dirty sons ofbitches. I'll make you pay for this. You got him, got him, you bastards!I'll shove your filthy hides down the devil's throat and through hisguts. Oh, Jesus!" He did not feel the frantic tugging of his fellows. Heran into that bubbling, doom-ridden chaos, waving his arms and shoutingmaniacal profanities. A dozen times he was knocked down. He bled slowlywhere fragments had battered him. He crossed over and paused on theGerman parapet. He was like a being of steel. Bullets sprayed him. Hisarms dangled and lifted. Barbed wire trailed behind him.
Down before him, shoulder to shoulder, the attacking regiments waitedfor the last crescendo of the bombardment. They saw him come out of thefury and smiled grimly. They knew such madness. They shot. He came on.At last they could hear his voice dimly through the tumult. Someoneshouted that he was mad--to beware when he fell. Hugo jumped among them.Bayonets rose. Hugo wrenched three knives from their wielders in onewild clutch. His hands went out, snatching and squeezing. That was all.No weapons, no defence. Just--hands. Whatever they caught they crushedflat, and heads fell into those dreadful fingers, sides, legs, arms,bellies. Bayonets slid from his tawny skin, taking his clothes. By andby, except for his shoes, he was naked. His fingers had made a hundredbunches of clotted pulp and then a thousand as he walked swiftly forwardin that trench. Ahead of him was a file of green; behind, a clogged rowof writhing men. Scarcely did the occupants of each new traverse see himbefore they were smitten. The wounds he inflicted were monstrous. On hewalked, his voice now stilled, his breath sucking and whistling throughhis teeth, his hands flailing and pinching and spurting red with everycontact. No more formidable engine of desolation had been seen by man,no more titanic fury, no swifter and surer death. For thirty minutes heraged through that line. The men thinned. He had crossed the attackingfront.
Then the barrage lifted. But no whistles blew. No soldiers rose. A fewraised their heads and then lay down again. Hugo stopped and went backinto the _abattoir_. He leaped to the parapet. The French saw him,silhouetted against the sky. The second German wave, coming slowly overa far hill, saw him and hesitated. No ragged line of advancing men. Nocacophony of rifle fire. Only that strange, savage figure. A man dippedin scarlet, nude, dripping, panting. Slowly in that hiatus he wheeled.His lungs thundered to the French. "Come on, you black bastards. I'vekilled them all. Come on. We'll send them down to hell."
The officers looked and understood that something phenomenal hadhappened. No Germans were coming. A man stood above their trench. "Come,quick!" Hugo shouted. He saw that they did not understand. He stood aninstant, fell into the trench; and presently a shower of German corpsesflung through the air in wide arcs and landed on the very edge of theFrench position. Then they came, and Hugo, seeing them, went on alone tomeet the second line. He might have forged on through that bloody swatheto the heart of the Empire if his vitality had been endless. But, sometime in the battle, he fell unconscious on the field, and hisforward-leaning comrades, pushing back the startled enemy, found himlying there.
They made a little knot around him, silent, quivering. "It is theColorado," someone said. "His friend, Shayne--it is he who was thelieutenant just killed."
They shook their heads and felt a strange fear of the unconscious man."He is breathing." They called for stretcher-bearers. They faced theenemy again, bent over on the stocks of their rifles, surged forward.
* * * * *
Hugo was washed and dressed in pyjamas. His wounds had healed withoutthe necessity of a single stitch. He was grateful for that. Otherwisethe surgeons might have had a surprise which would have been difficultto allay. He sat in a wheel chair, staring across a lawn. An angularwoman in an angular hat and tailored clothes was trying to engage him inconversation.
"Is it very painful, my man?"
Hugo was seeing that trench again--the pulp and blood and hate of it."Not very."
Her tongue and saliva made a noise. "Don't tell me. I know it was. Iknow how you all bleed and suffer."
"Madam, it happens that my wounds were quite superficial."
"Nonsense, my boy. They wo
uldn't have brought you to a base hospital inthat case. You can't fool me."
"I was suffering only from exhaustion."
She paused. He saw a gleam in her eye. "I suppose you don't like totalk--about things. Poor boy! But I imagine your life has been so fullof horror that it would be good for you to unburden yourself. Now tellme, just what does it feel like to bayonet a man?"
Hugo trembled. He controlled his voice. "Madam," he replied, "it feelsexactly like sticking your finger into a warm, steaming pile ofcow-dung."
"Oh!" she gasped. And he heard her repeat it again in the corridor.