A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

  "Eat badly?"

  "No. Move up reinforcements."

  "We've been screaming for reinforcements, and they finally sent them."

  "How many men?"

  "So far, only you."

  They had reached the exit, where a group of soldiers stood, as at the entrance, to escape the heat.

  "You're kind of short," the lieutenant went on, "but you'll take care of us, I know."

  The cadet had never heard machine-gun fire, and had never been in a trench.

  "Okay," the lieutenant said, "I'm taking you out to the Nineteenth." Now he was tense. He bent forward. He had his pistol in his hand. "Keep your head down." They began to walk through a maze of trenches that were as hot as hell and filled with light that was far too bright.

  Without a cart for his baggage the cadet began to breathe heavily and sweat. The footing was often difficult. Though they had been dry for months, the trenches had been built with the rain in mind. Uneven and rashly constructed plank walks lined their floors, and one had to jump gaps, step over upright pieces, and avoid feet that protruded from places of burial in the trench walls where the sand had fallen away and either no one could put it back or no one cared.

  In places where the sides of the trench wanted to collapse and were reinforced with timbers, the cadet had to vault the timbers or bend under them. He could not round a bend, he discovered, without banging either the duffel, his rifle, his elbow, or his head into things that projected from the walls. In some stretches the lieutenant motioned for him to crouch down low, or to run very fast, or even to do both. Sweat stung his eyes and he was so exhausted that he felt as if he were coming apart. Even the lieutenant, who carried nothing but his pistol and short stick, was breathing hard, and had dark wet patches on his uniform.

  "Where are our soldiers?" the cadet asked. "We've gone several kilometers in the open and I haven't seen anyone except the few who passed us going the other way."

  "These are the communications trenches," the lieutenant said, without stopping. "When we get to the lines at the top of the T, it'll be crowded. Enjoy the space while you can."

  They continued on until they reached the crossing of the T, where a wider trench ran for several score meters on both sides before a gradual bend cut off the view. Fifty men, more or less, were sitting against the trench wall, standing on the fire-step and peering out slits at the top, or looking through telescopic periscopes to see what lay above and beyond.

  The trench had no shadows, the sun was blinding, and the cadet asked for permission to drink.

  "When we get to the Nineteenth."

  "How far?"

  "Not as far as we've come. You want to see something?"

  The cadet didn't answer, but he was grateful for a chance to rest.

  "You're in the line," the lieutenant said, "so let me acquaint you with the facts. Give me your helmet and your rifle."

  The cadet opened his kit bag and passed the iron helmet to the officer, and then his rifle.

  "All right," the lieutenant said as he put the helmet on top of the sheathed bayonet, "watch this."

  He raised the helmet above ground level and took it down, all in a second. As it descended, shots rang out and earth was scattered into the trench. "They were slewing their guns that time. They didn't even come close. Watch now."

  He pushed up the helmet and wiggled it. Following dozens of machine-gun and rifle bursts, the sky darkened momentarily as sand and earth were kicked over the top of the trench. When the helmet came down, it had two graze marks on it.

  "The Austrians are better at that than we are," the lieutenant said. "They have more discipline, and they care. You must keep your head down at all times, except at night. You'll see the river at night. It's beautiful, especially when the moon is reflected off the surface. Even during a full moon, they can't see you. Some lunatics in the Nineteenth swim at night. They claim it's safe if you stay close to our side. They can claim anything they want."

  "They must be crazy," the cadet asserted.

  "Yes," the lieutenant said, his pistol now holstered, his shoulders bent forward as he set out again toward the Nineteenth. "Can you imagine being up to your neck in ice-cold water, naked, with ten thousand guns on the opposite shore?"

  "I don't swim without a chair," the cadet said, showing the chipped tooth as he smiled at his own witticism.

  "Don't stand so straight, you idiot. You're on a platform, you'll get your head shot off. And put the helmet on."

  They moved through the forward trench, passing hundreds of men, dozens of machine-gun emplacements, and the slightly wider circular excavations, reached through a thin zigzagging sub-trench, where the trench mortars and their shells were kept. The hope was that if these were hit by counter-battery fire the force of the explosion would be absorbed in the baffles of the sub-trench, but when an enemy shell found its target and the magazines had been newly stocked, the explosion was so great that the baffles didn't seem to matter and the concussion would slay men up and down the trench for twenty-five meters and knock to the ground soldiers who were standing much farther away.

  Rotting camouflage nets were draped along the earthen walls. "Why don't you use that stuff to make some shade?" the cadet asked.

  "We did, once," the lieutenant answered, "but it showed them where to aim."

  "Then why not cover everything?"

  "Not enough netting, and when you jump up to fire you get tangled in it."

  After the lieutenant stopped several times to talk to soldiers in their redoubts, they came to a branch in the system, extending northeast at a thirty-degree angle from the main trench.

  The lieutenant said, "This leads out to your post, which projects ahead of the lines about a hundred meters onto a bluff above the river. We call it the Bell Tower, because of the view. You see these?" he asked, kicking two insulated wires fastened to one side of the trench. "They're telephone wires. One goes to battalion headquarters, which is just on the other side of the T where we came in, and the other goes to divisional headquarters and the brigade office. So when you talk on that telephone you never know if Cadorna himself will be listening, and you have to be correct."

  "I'm going to be talking to Cadorna?"

  "Fuck Cadorna. You're going to be calling in reports, when you get the hang of it, and I've given you proper warning. Another thing you should know is that nobody stays in the communications trench between here and the Bell Tower." Firing erupted down the line—machine guns, rifles, some small mortars.

  "What's that?" the cadet asked nervously.

  "What's what?" he was asked in return.

  "That gunfire."

  "I don't know," he said. "It's nothing. No one stays in this trench—it's too exposed and shallow, and the angle's no good. As you can see, it won't protect against incoming shells. You have to know the password at both ends, or you'll get shot. In the daytime they usually look to see who it is before they open fire, but don't count on it. At night they shoot right away. You have to say the password loudly enough so that it can be heard, but not so loudly that it will carry across the water."

  "What is it?"

  "It used to be oil can, but now it's Vittorio Emanuele, Re d'ltalia, but that's too much, so we say, you know, Verdi."

  "What if I forget?"

  "You won't."

  "What if I do? Words can be knocked out of your head."

  "Tell them who you are, speak Italian as fast as you can, and pray."

  They started up the communications trench that led to the Bell Tower. The lieutenant had cocked his pistol as if he expected the enemy to confront him somewhere ahead.

  A few minutes later they arrived at the entrance of the Bell Tower and found themselves staring into the barrel of a machine gun.

  "Password!" they heard before they could see who was saying it.

  "Verdi!" they said, perhaps more clearly than any words they had ever spoken, and then they went inside.

  You could hear the wind in the Bell Tower as if it
had been, in fact, a bell tower—not in the city but, rather, on the seacoast, because the steady breezes that came down from the mountains whistled through the beams, the corrugated metal, and the firing slits. They whistled past the mouths of the guns, in turbulent eddies that turned the gun barrels into otherworldly flutes. Despite the wind, the Bell Tower was hot, because the cool air that came through the ports was not enough to relieve the pressure of the sun on the open areas or to refresh the hidden bunkers.

  "I brought a new man," the lieutenant said to some soldiers at the entrance. Then he turned around and left without saying anything or looking at the cadet, who feared that the lieutenant had disliked him. The lieutenant had not even decocked his, pistol, and he sped through the trench like a strange kind of rabbit that was afraid to lift its head. Then he rounded the corner and disappeared.

  "He's done his work for the day," one of the soldiers said. "Now he'll eat some rostissana Piacenza, and sleep until nightfall."

  "So what? We'll go swimming," another soldier said. "Who is this?" he asked about the cadet.

  The cadet felt short and overwhelmed, because he was short and overwhelmed, but he wanted to hold his own with soldiers who seemed inured to war, so he said, "I was on the Euridice." Because they seldom saw newspapers they had never heard of the Euridice, and from then on they called him by that name, even though it was a woman's name, even after he died.

  THE BELL Tower was a round concrete fortification about the size of the arena in a provincial bull ring. Around an open cortile eight meters in diameter were nine bunkers, each of the same size. The cortile was used mainly for taking the sun and air. Shells had fallen directly in the center and would have killed everyone had it not been for a heavy wall of sandbags in a concentric ring between the cortile and the bunkers. The Austrians seemed to have discovered this somehow, and had stopped aiming for direct hits.

  The nine bunkers might have been of different sizes had the fortification been designed by those who were to use it. Twenty men lived in the Bell Tower, and with Euridice, twenty-one. The three rooms for sleeping were jammed with cots. Binoculars, coats, weapons, and haversacks hung from rifle-shell casings pegged into planks and beams. A lantern was on a table in the middle. Against the outside walls and under the firing ports were chairs, rifles, and boxes of ammunition. Seven men slept in each room. At least seven men were always on duty, peering through firing ports in the seven bunkers facing the Austrian line. At times fourteen men, at times all twenty-one, fired, loaded, and shifted from one side of the emplacement to another, desperately hauling their three machine guns. In the assault that they feared would come, their number was to be doubled, so that two soldiers would man each firing port, one to fire and one to load, or simply to take the place of the other if he were tired or if he fell. The maps and telephones were in one of the rooms, the kitchen in another, stored ammunition and food in three others. The Bell Tower had no hospital because it had no doctor: stretchers, medical instruments, and material for treating wounds were stockpiled in the map room. Of all the rooms, however, the most remarkable was the latrine.

  This surely was the end of the world, these two rows of filthy planks suspended above overbrimming cesspools. One would almost rather die than either breathe, hear, or see in this place. No animal defecating in the open field, whether a horse whose tail lifted deftly on the run, or a solemn and indifferent cow, had less dignity than the two lines of grimacing, twisting, groaning creatures with shaved heads and bad teeth, who struggled not to fall into the horrible soup they strained to augment. Alessandro learned to survive there, but slowly. He took wet mortar flannels with him to clean the wooden bar upon which he had to balance on his thighs, feet precariously off the ground, leaning forward so as not to topple backward into the trench—a fate visited upon two Neapolitans who had been playing with one another's parts. He wrapped his head in a blanket so as not to see, hear, smell, or be seen. Soon, everyone followed suit. When Alessandro was suffering upon the bar, desperately keeping in balance, head turbaned-up in a mass of filthy wool, he dreamed of walking through the Villa Borghese on a cool clear day in the fall, in his finest clothes, with the leaves and the fresh air blowing by him like an express train. Some of the other soldiers sang, while others screamed in pain, muffled in the wool helmets that Alessandro had invented. Being blind in this place was desirable, but risky, for if one were involved in a vendetta one could easily and anonymously be flipped backward, like the Neapolitans.

  Euridice put down his duffel on the cot next to Alessandro's. "What's the book?" Euridice asked, assuming that since he himself was a graduate of the liceo and had been a naval cadet, he was the only one on the river who really knew how to read. He looked closely. "It's Greek," he said, drawing back in wonder. Alessandro, after a year and a half on the line, was gaunt, muscular, and sunburned. To Euridice, he looked experienced, and besides that, he was six or seven years older. "Can you read Greek?"

  Alessandro nodded.

  "That's wonderful, really stupendous!" Euridice said, pointing to the open page. "In the liceo I learned only Latin and German, not Greek."

  "I know," Alessandro said, and went back to his book.

  "How do you know?" Euridice asked.

  Alessandro looked up. "Because this is Arabic."

  Euridice opened his duffel and started to unpack. "No one's fat," he said, having noticed that all the soldiers were lean.

  "Except you," someone said, cruelly.

  "No one's fat," Alessandro repeated without taking his eyes from the book.

  "Why?"

  Alessandro turned his head. "We're nervous."

  "I look forward to losing weight. In the navy, the food was too delicious."

  "Don't get bullet holes. You wouldn't be waterproof."

  "Waterproof?"

  "I keep my ammunition under your bed," Alessandro said, still not looking up. "When it rains it leaks there."

  A cat slinked into the room, gliding along on its belly as flat as it could get. It took a look around, jumped onto Alessandro's cot, and began to lick itself.

  "What's that?" Euridice asked, looking at the cat.

  "That's a cat."

  "Yes I know, but what's it wearing?" The cat was encased in leather and metal, in a harness that looked like a cross between a medical appliance and a military apparatus.

  "She was hit by a shell fragment," Alessandro said. "It tore a big patch off her back. It took six months to heal, and without the harness she opens it with her teeth." At this, as if on command, the cat turned to try to lick her back. She couldn't get to it, and, instead, she licked the air.

  "What's her name?"

  "Serafina."

  "What does she eat?"

  "Macaroni and rats."

  Alessandro put down his book and pulled the cat, a blur of brown, orange, and blond, into his arms.

  "What's sad about her," he said, "is not that she was wounded but that, if she wanted, she could bound out of here—you know how quick cats are, how fast they can run, and how high they can jump—and she could go anywhere she wanted, away from the battle. She could go to a little town in the Apennines and catch mice under an olive tree, and she'd never hear a gunshot again in all her life except when the farmers went out after birds." He looked at Euridice. "But she doesn't know. She stays with us."

  TWO NIGHTS later, when the moon was hardly visible behind a thick blanket of hot gray cloud, they went swimming. The soldiers of the Bell Tower believed that although it was obviously dangerous to swim in the branch of the Isonzo that ran below them, it was perfectly all right, even rational, if the swimming party numbered no more and no less than three men.

  No one had ever been killed on such an excursion, or even detected. The first time they crawled down the slope and through the mine fields they had been three, and in every subsequent three-man expedition nothing had gone awry. More than three men, it was said, would be too large a block. Their movement, whether simultaneous or serial, would attract the atte
ntion of that part of the eye that is irritated by sequences. Two men, or even just one, would not move 'scale-like' enough across the landscape. A tiny Ligurian had postulated that movement across nocturnal terrain occurred in three categories: points, scales, and plates. Plates, in being more than three men, were large enough to disturb the eye. Points, in being less than three men, were small enough to disturb the eye. Scales, however (and everyone knew that a scale comprised three men), were moderate and soothing, nearly invisible to sentries and observers, part of the landscape, and not so big that their apparent movement would appear unusual. Everyone believed this, even Alessandro, who didn't really believe it but refused to disbelieve it. The Ligurian, whom they called Microscopico, asserted that he had proof. He himself was a point, and when once he had had to crawl to the brink of the Austrian lines to retrieve a wounded comrade (Microscopico had been chosen on the assumption that his small size would allow him to go unnoticed) the night had failed to protect him, and a thousand shots had been fired in his direction. He had escaped only because a feral pig that had been feeding on the dead had been startled by the firing and had run through no-man's-land, usurping the Austrian aim while he himself dragged the dead body of his friend through the muddy depressions. The pig had been felled, because the pig, too, was a point, which all went to show that scales were the only way to move about between armies.

  A soldier called the Guitarist, an affable Florentine who, with his classical songs, made the long nights tolerable, had refused to believe the scale theory. They ostracized him. When he entered the latrine, they would exit. When he spoke, they would pay him no heed. He tried to retaliate by putting his guitar up on the wall, but the absence of music hurt him more than it did anyone else, and in a week their tyranny had beaten him down and, allowing that the theory of scales was correct, he had resumed his playing.

  Alessandro told him that, of course, the theory was nonsense, but that it held things together. Everything would be all right as long as everyone else believed it. Within a day or two, everyone, even Microscopico, had sought out the Guitarist and said precisely the same thing.