A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

  Theirs was only a little crowded corner of the forest. Already settled among the trees were twenty thousand men who appeared to have been there for quite some time: they had elaborate tents, log shacks, and covered galleries around their mess fires. Not 3 single tree had been cut for firewood or construction, because the trees sheltered them from enemy observation and broke the force of incoming shells.

  Alessandro's brigade divided into battalions, companies, and platoons, and pitched tents of sand-colored canvas. They tied the tent stays to trunks and branches, extending them at all angles and elongating them to reach the anchor points. This transformed the densely populated forest, which had been open and free of brush, into a maze of twisting passages formed at random where the spider-work of tent stays did not block the way.

  Field kitchens and latrines stood uncomfortably back to back in small clearings. The cooking apparatus for Alessandro's battalion blazed within as the cooks made still more tortellini in brodo. The reason that Italy had entered the war, Guariglia had said, was to stimulate the production of tortellini. Though the broth might be watery and the tortellini full of foreign matter and donkey meat, it would be hot, and, in the mountains, anything hot was a virtue.

  Alessandro claimed a space in the corner of a ten-man tent. He didn't want to know anyone, he was too tired, and he knew it wasn't worth the effort, for they would die or disappear just like everyone he had ever met in the army. Though he had fallen in with the Milanese, it was by accident. The Milanese looked much like Alessandro, but Alessandro thought he was a harder case—tougher, older, and more military. Unaware of what he himself had become, Alessandro was wrong. They spoke to one another in mild insults and half-insane prolixity.

  As they lined up to get their soup and bread, snow began to fall. Almost first in line, Alessandro and the Milanese, independently, had drunk the soup as fast as they could, put the bread in their pockets, and run for the latrines. Through the hissing snow came an invisible voice from a fetid canvas stall. "It makes sense, of course, that two roller coaster guys should eat as we did and pocket their bread, but even though we shared the same profession in civilian life..."

  "Avocation," Alessandro interrupted. "For me, it was just a hobby."

  "Naturally," said the Milanese, who, because of the fierce and explosive quality of army food, could speak no further.

  After they had washed their mess kits they walked through the snow to the tent, where they found only a young boy who was too sick to eat. They removed wool sweaters from their packs, put them on under their coats, and lay down to sleep. It was not very cold, but when the heat of the broth wore off they began to shiver, and they took out their blankets.

  "A beef-ox," the Milanese suddenly declared. "I was a beef-ox."

  "What?" the bleary-eyed sick boy asked, turning on his elbow.

  "Not a bad way to make a living, if you play your cards right," Alessandro said.

  "Not bad at all."

  "Tell me," Alessandro asked, "how did you know to get to the head of the line, eat quickly, run for the latrines, and the rest?"

  "How do you think?"

  "A veteran of the line."

  "Just like you."

  "What were you doing in the quarry?"

  "What were you doing?"

  "Too serious to say," Alessandro answered, thinking of his father, Fabio, and Guariglia, "and too sad."

  "That's where we differ," the Milanese declared. "Me, I was too frivolous."

  "In the army? How did you manage it?"

  "I'm almost ashamed to say. I left the ranks—I deserted, if you must—because I have an uncontrollable craving."

  "For what?"

  "I'm ashamed."

  "Just say it."

  "Office supplies."

  Alessandro stared at the Milanese in disbelief only because he knew that he was telling the truth. The sick boy rolled over, sighing as if in a dream, and the Milanese went on with his confession. "War does crazy things. I always liked fine paper and envelopes, expensive pens, drawers full of little brass clips, labels, ink bottles—you know. And staple guns. And I've always been partial to portfolios, folders, and briefcases, and postal scales. These things are ... they're comforting. They're like presents under a Christmas tree. My desire for them is informed by the same impulse, I believe, that sculpted the national character of Switzerland. I even like rubber stamps."

  "What about postage stamps?" Alessandro inquired.

  "I love postage stamps. Nothing is as reassuring."

  "What does your father do?"

  "He passed away when I was seven. He had a stationery store," the Milanese said. "Why do you ask?"

  "No reason," Alessandro said.

  The Milanese went on. "Nothing is as reassuring as a good supply of paper clips. If you have them in little leather boxes, it makes you feel like Cesare Borgia."

  "And you deserted," Alessandro asked, "to buy office supplies?"

  "Not to buy them. To be with them. They're going to keep me alive."

  "How?"

  "Yes. My desk at home is perfectly stocked. I have the most complete selection of papers, envelopes, implements, stamps, and supplies that you can imagine. I have Venetian stationery and Florentine boxes, and enough stamps to last for twenty years—if I live, if I don't get a disease of the liver, or a stroke, or something like that. I spent all the money I had, and everything is arranged just so."

  "How is that going to keep you alive?" the sick boy asked. He no longer seemed so sick.

  "My books are dusted, alphabetized, and catalogued. Every week, my mother winds the clock. Wood is in the stove, ready to burn. My mail is stacked carefully in a walnut box. The lamps are well polished."

  "But how is that going to keep you alive?"

  "As long as its kept in perfect order," the Milanese said with disarmingly deep concentration, "it gives me a protective aura. It's around me, lock set, like the atoms of a crystal. Bullets won't touch me if my office is tranquil."

  "What if your mama comes in and craps up all the stuff?" the boy asked.

  The Milanese smiled. "Then I'll die."

  Alessandro looked away. "How long were you in the line?"

  "A year and a half," the Milanese said.

  "It did things to you, you know."

  "It may have, but I'm going to live. How long were you in the line?"

  "Two years."

  "Don't tell me that your mind is completely unaffected."

  "Did I say that?"

  "You implied it. Where were you?"

  "Mostly on the Isonzo. And you?"

  "Right here," the Milanese said in a hopeless and resigned way.

  "In this wood?"

  The Milanese shook his head in the affirmative. Alessandro could just hear his blankets move. "In this wood, in every corner of it, and in the trenches on the hill. I know every one, the Austrian trenches, too. They used to be ours."

  "It's not good to come back to the same place."

  "I have my aura."

  "Does your aura extend a few meters from you? An aura can't be as tight as a silk stocking."

  "Oh yes it can. It's tighter than a silk stocking. One thing about an aura is that the man next to you can be blown into tiny particles, and you remain unscathed. Sorry. And there's something else you should be worried about if you have no aura."

  "Which is?"

  "They haven't passed out ordnance. In the whole brigade we have no machine guns. I haven't seen any mortars, grenades, or flares, and we have only four clips of ammunition for each rifle."

  "What could happen between now and tomorrow?" Alessandro asked.

  "They could attack."

  "But the trenches ... We're in reserve. You don't think it's likely that the trenches would go tonight, do you?"

  "In the mountains the trenchworks are shallow and inadequate, which is why we're here—to be ready to break through if the Austrian line buckles, and to hold the line if our defenses are overrun, giving the strategic reserves be
hind us time to mobilize. At the western edge of the wood, we're in the most dangerous position. We should have our ordnance now. We should have had it when we came in."

  "Has it ever happened?" Alessandro asked. "Have they reached this encampment?"

  The Milanese looked at Alessandro with a pitying glance. "It used to happen twice a week."

  Then the other men began to stream back into the tent. They shook off the snow and went for their blankets, where they lay shivering in the dim light of the afternoon. As the soldiers slept, brigades of cloud glanced across the hillsides and threaded through the pine wood, mixing with the smoke of the dying fires in the field kitchens. No sentries had been posted in their section, because, although they were close to the enemy, they were hard by thousands of other troops. The snow brushed against the tents and slid off them, and the clouds became so thick that it seemed like night.

  AWAKENING AT five in the afternoon, with icy fog rushing by as if it were water from a broken dam, Alessandro felt feverish and sick. Though he hadn't suffered a chill, had had sufficient rest, and was neither wet nor exhausted, he felt, nonetheless, like a typhoid patient. Everything was sore to the point of paralysis, he had no energy, and he was burning hot.

  The cure for this was to get up and walk. A cup of tea, some deep breaths, conversation, and perhaps a task to perform, would do it. No one was in the tent. He struggled to put on his boots, fold his blankets, and stagger out the door. As soon as he was in the open air he felt slightly less feverish, but he remained giddy and weak.

  In the center of the brigade clearing a huge bonfire burned; in sub-clearings, the battalion kitchens rattled and shook as they built up steam; and as far as the eye could see into the dark wood, the fires were replicated, until those very distant hardly broke through the snowy maze of trees, giving the impression of both hell and a summer night in fields swarming with fireflies. Half the soldiers wore their blankets, which Alessandro knew to be a mistake, because the blankets would get wet and dirty.

  The aromatic smoke was difficult to distinguish from the fog except that the fog, which was really low cloud, left moisture that sparkled in the firelight and the smoke left a scent that promised to follow each soldier for the rest of his days. A string of pack mules nearby stamped and brayed. Troops from other brigades wound through the encampment, moving to and from their own tents, the trenches, the headquarters, and the road.

  The huge bonfire was surrounded by a Sufic ring of men who slowly turned in circles to warm themselves. Places in this line were hard to find and jealously guarded. Magically held gaps stayed open for the passage of mysteriously chosen acolytes and subalterns who fed the fire with huge pine logs so heavy they had to be carried like the Cross.

  Alessandro despaired of finding the Milanese among fifteen hundred men in half darkness and fog, each man in uniform, many hooded in blankets as if in domino, and he went back to the tent to get his cup and bowl.

  As he placed his hand on the butt of his rifle to steady it during the strange little curtsy required at tent doors, he heard the deep rumble that he had not heard for almost a year, the familiar and dreadful sound that soon grew shrieking tentacles capped with blasts that lit the dark. Scores of guns were firing simultaneously. He knew the trajectories were streaming in his direction, he felt the blasts in his chest—hollow metallic bursts like the cross between thunder, cymbals, and bombs—and he saw the light darting into the tent as if the purpose of the barrage were to make shadows on army canvas.

  Young officers ran swiftly through the wood, darting this way and that way in the twisting corridors. Soon, thin lines of soldiers, some running with straps and pack flaps whipping the air, and boots not completely laced, thudded in all directions on the paths across the snow-covered forest floor.

  The officers of Alessandro's brigade were absent for indoctrination at headquarters, and the noncommissioned officers were acutely aware that their men were badly armed. In no way could the soldiers of a freshly constituted brigade be marshaled into fighting units when no one knew his platoon sergeant and no parade ground existed for sorting everything out. As a result, everyone was running every which way, and not a soul knew what to do.

  Returning to the tent, the Milanese said, "This is a poor time to have a battle," and rolled himself into his blankets.

  "Why?" Alessandro asked. He could no longer see the Milanese, but only hear his slightly muffled voice.

  "My mother winds the clock tomorrow, and I don't like to fight if the clock isn't all wound up."

  "Don't worry," Alessandro said reflexively. Big flakes of snow began to fall like cinder from a volcano.

  "And the guns. I never heard so many guns before."

  "On some sections of the Isonzo," Alessandro commented, still on his knees, "they massed thousands of guns."

  "Look," the Milanese said, "the Austrians come running through, and they always reach the trees. By the time they get here they're wild-men, and now I have only twenty rounds of ammunition. Everyone has only twenty rounds. You can go through three dozen before the first charge. What are we supposed to do? And I don't like fighting in fog. With the stars there's something more tolerable about it, and in the cold air up here the stars go crazy. They're so bright they jump around like fleas, they burn like magnesium. If you get killed on a night like that you go straight up."

  "How many make it to the trees?"

  "As many as don't die in the field or on the ridge. They resent the fact that we have this place, sheltered from their artillery. It's so foolish it's crazy. The attack will start in less than an hour. Sleep, and when the guns stop, you'll wake up fresh."

  "How can you sleep?"

  "I think of a girl I knew in the university. I never had a chance with her, even though I was the one for whom she was made and she was made for me. She married someone else. When I think of her face I can fall asleep, because she's so beautiful and I love her so much that the sadness of losing her pushes me down and away from life."

  "What about your stationery?"

  "A poor substitute."

  Alessandro rolled himself into his blankets and tried to sleep. He wasn't tired, and although the shells flew over them, explosions seemed to bounce the forest floor. Eventually, though, he did sleep, and in a dream he told himself two things. In between the blasts of artillery he said to himself that he was sleeping fitfully and was not well. And he scolded himself over and over, a thousand times, for not being awake, because if he were not awake he might not have enough time when the order came to fix bayonets. He slept this exhausting sleep until the barrage stopped. Then he and the Milanese jumped up as if the silence were an artillery shell exploding in their ears.

  "Now we go up to the firing line and waste all our cartridges," the Milanese said.

  They groped around the tent, looking for ammunition, but found none. Then they went into the dark among the trees, where they saw that the clouds had been pulled apart in the wind and tossed up to higher altitudes. The stars were revealed steadily in the gaps, making patches of the sky look like ocean liners that suddenly appear on a dark sea.

  "It's colder," said Alessandro, "and it's almost dry."

  On the ridge, where the trees had been topped by passing shells, a long line of troops lay on the ground, their rifles in front of them. A vast meadow descended to the northeast, dropping off below the trenches. They waited for the ground to change color as the Austrians advanced en masse. The sergeants had caged only a few crates of ammunition from the brigade to the east, and extra rounds were passed out as stintingly as if they had been roast beef or money. One machine-gun squadron had gotten hold of a machine gun, but they had just two boxes of belts.

  Someone asked why the trenches didn't extend across the meadow. A stocky sergeant with a pitted face told him that the meadow grew on rock, and that when the snow melted, or in summer in the rain, it became a sluice.

  "Where's our artillery?"

  "Why waste shells?" was the sarcastic answer from someone down
the line.

  Further sarcasms were cut short by the appearance of a dark mass at the base of the hill. Not only was it too slow and too uniform to have been the shadow of a cloud, but the moon had not appeared and the stars cut shadows too weak for men to see.

  Conversation ceased. The companies in the trenches to the left and right started an enfilade, but an enemy mortar barrage, like a huge wave smashing against a quiet beach, silenced them immediately—their firing ports were aligned in the wrong direction and they could only shoot if they rose above cover. At the same time, the main body of Austrians emerged from forward trenches onto open ground.

  A moment after this, the dark shadow at the bottom of the hill snapped into different form as more than five thousand men who had been crawling suddenly began to run.

  On the unfortified Italian line rounds were rammed into chambers and bolts locked. The sound was like that of coins rattling in a mechanical sorter. Mixed and informal prayers arose and then were forgotten as the firing began. Sergeants scolded premature ignitions but were soon drowned out by the growing cascade, and at the first flashes from the approaching enemy the whole line opened up until the guns made so much smoke and noise that no one could see or hear. They fired at the enemy where they remembered him to have been, as the pits of their stomachs fell because they knew that he was really much closer.

  A gust of wind lifted the smoke. Now the compact mass of attackers was thinning, and began to move in many directions at once. Orders were shouted on the Italian line, and groups of men suddenly jumped up and ran madly to other positions. Alessandros brigade, with neither formations, nor officers, nor ammunition, was in panic. As the Austrians divided to encircle the hill and come into the tent forest, some of the brigade stayed at the ridge, and others returned to the trees.

  Alessandro and the Milanese remained until they had no more ammunition. They had waited until they could sight individual soldiers and fell them with well placed shots, but most of the men in their sector, being inexperienced, had wasted their ammunition in early firing and been unable to hit anything with the few rounds they had held back. The enemy soldiers were very near and coming forward at a run.