An Acceptable Warrior

by Earle Looker

  David scrambled up from the outpost, slid down the outer side of the parapet and strode out into no-man’s-land toward Gaspard without, as yet, any definite idea of how to handle him.

  “Gaspard! What you trying to do out there?” David shouted. “Come back with me.”

  “My affair,” he said sharply. “With the colonel of the opposite regiment. That Oberst! He struck them with his riding whip, with his boot like animals, with his fist.”

  “Prisoners? Men of your regiment?”

  Gaspard spat scornfully. “My men,” he cried, “are not to be taken prisoner! It is my regiment that takes the prisoners. I have the whole story from men we have taken, and what prisoners! Des enfants! Not one has the strength to dig his weight in dirt or to piss beyond his boots! This Oberst. He has flogged his men. He has put them out avec mitrailleuse and fired upon them from the rear when they did not go into action quickly enough to suit him or remain as long as he wished. He has …”

  “None of your business,” David interrupted.

  “Non? I make it my business.” Gaspard patted the poignards.

  All along, David had dimly thought this might be a duel. “You can’t go through with this, Gaspard!” he protested. “Unless you’re completely – mad! You can’t punish him. He’s an officer of an enemy army. You haven’t the authority.”

  “Authority?” Gaspard blazed. “Unless I punish him, his men will make the attempt themselves. They are at the point of mutiny.”

  There was no halting his flow of words. He became rhetorical. He seemed aware of the dramatics the moment demanded because he stood in no-man’s-land between two armies: “Let us not dispute! I do not like this Oberst, but his men must not be allowed to kill him. Will not that happen if there is mutiny? I must prevent a mutiny. Who knows the result for us as well as for them? If I do nothing, what would he do, this man – non! – this monster – to such of his men, my prisoners? I return to him? You have not thought that far? We will be ordered to return our prisoners across the line to their own regiments. We do not wish to feed them any longer than necessary. Shall I turn his men back to Herr Oberst? Non! Jamais! Imagine the punishment he would order for them. He punishes them, and immediately there would be a mutiny. He does not punish them, and again I say that mutiny would be assured. His regiment would think suddenly afraid and attack him. And he is Prussian, while his regiment comes from other parts. You do not understand this Prussian Herr Oberst who thinks the simple soldier is a sheep, that no matter how cruel the leader, if he leads they will follow. Perhaps that was true a while ago, but not now, not today. I do this because I must halt mutiny, because justice is not to be forgotten for the simple soldier though he is of the enemy, because I have compassion, because I have these impulses at the end of campaigns.”

  “Right or wrong,” David said, tapping his pistol butt, “you can’t do it on my front. You’re going to shout to them now – that any further parley will have to be carried on in your own lines – not mine. You’re going to …”

  “There is a little breeze now,” Gaspard interrupted, “from the southwest. That would blow at an angle, so, from us across to them. The visibility is extremely fine. See that tree trunk at four hundred meters? Or would you judge it to be four hundred and fifty?”

  “This is nonsense!” David cried.

  “But yes! It is merely to fill the time. Have you a cigarette?”

  “Not while I need my hand to reach my pistol,” David threatened. “Cut this talk. I’m not going to let you …”

  “Attends!” Gaspard whispered suddenly. “Something happening over there?”

  David froze from veteran habit at any mention of movement in enemy trenches. At the same instant he felt a tug at the holster-thong against his thigh. Gaspard had secured the pistol. David swung in time only to see the pistol, tossed accurately by Gaspard, hit the mud in the center of a shell crater like a quivering pumpkin pie.

  2

  Two figures catapulted into the open from the German trenches. The soldier who had acted as Gaspard’s messenger was now propelling, rather than assisting, an enemy officer. He was at least three heads taller than the messenger, and as he approached, his height seemed to increase. He wore no helmet. His head was so close-clipped it might have been shaved the day before. The high uniform collar held his neck stiffly erect. It was not the long discredited hate propaganda that gave David the impression the Oberst’s head was not unlike a large blond reptile, too small for its body. His field grey encased rather than clothed him; its touches of color were bright; the cloth was so unusually clean it seemed a dove tone.

  “So this is he!” Gaspard bellowed. “Un monsieur Goliath! I apologize for myself I am so small, but not too small to crack you, you bastard, in the forehead with a pebble! Sacre-bleu, you are as tall as La Tour Eiffel!”

  David was so overcome now by realization his presence gave official sanction to whatever happened that he heard little and understood nothing of the German parley between the two colonels. Yet he could not fail to see the messenger was watching his own colonel intently and that he kept his hand on his Luger automatic.

  Gaspard turned toward David’s line and shouted, “This fight is between only the two of us. It is private. The Prussian has a second. So have I – your Commandant.”

  “You!” David shouted to Gaspard and cursed him for his trickery, his madness, the fact he was still alive.

  “What an oraison funebre!” Gaspard said gently.

  David cupped his hands to call to Donovan, “Hold the men in their trenches! Nobody out, not even an officer.” He turned to Gaspard and said desperately, “Suppose somebody gets excited and fires a shot? My God, Gaspard, think of that! I’ve got two machine guns standing by. They cut in and we’re off again. Fighting …”

  “Non,” Gaspard said with finality. “Your men will not start to fighting again.”

  “But if the German gets it?”

  Gaspard shrugged his shoulders. “I do not intend to kill him. Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you order this safeguard. Listen: order a platoon of your men to come out here to stand with us.”

  “Fool!”

  “I am no fool. No fool could devise this safeguard. Listen, order a platoon of your men to come out here and stand with us. The enemy will do the same. They will come without arms; neither line would open fire upon its own men, et Voila!”

  Thus forty or so men, friend and enemy, stood watching the two colonels as they faced with the poignards in their hands. Gaspard took off his helmet and ran his fingers through his hair to get it out of his eyes.

  “Here,” David said automatically, “I’ll hold your helmet.”

  Gaspard looked at him and laughed for no reason David could see.

  “En garde!” Gaspard cried and struck at the Prussian with the apparent object of shattering his right arm.

  As the two slashed again and again at each other, David saw their points of attack were utterly dissimilar. The Prussian seemed to be aiming for an ultimate death stroke from the beginning, at Gaspard’s throat, belly and below, while Gaspard seemed intent upon only wounding his opponent in the arm or shoulder. The Prussian’s low cut, tried repeatedly, would have disemboweled Gaspard had he not been able to parry it with a sliding motion of his forearm and a side-step that grew familiar. Its precise repetition suggested Gaspard might thus be worn down.

  The fight was curiously slow, David realized. Its movements might have been prescribed by strict obscure medieval laws governing the use of the poignard. Both men seemed to use a set sequence of fence; their defensive technique seemed to be equally strong. David thought had it been a slugging match he would have said both men were pulling their punches for fear of throwing themselves off balance.

  The knife was a weapon utterly foreign, but David saw a fraction of an inch in the arc of a swing was of
vast importance, the difference between a slash in the air and the laying open of a man from shoulder to belly. There were no lunges like bayonet fighting, where the whole hazard is placed on one thrust. These strokes, and even the feints, were obviously discounted almost before they were half complete, and the spectators could enter into the action.

  David could hardly believe what was occurring. Even in one swift glance, their faces could easily be read. The emotions of the Germans were flowing to Gaspard’s assistance; hatred was directed toward their own colonel. David felt the muscles of his arms moving in response to his desire to come to Gaspard’s aid.

  The first time Gaspard fell, with the Dobermanesque Prussian upon him, David was thankful none of the ring of men were armed. The fighters seemed to forget their knives and struggled to catch holds with their free hands to gain momentary rest. Within one of these the Prussian caught Gaspard’s beard, force his head back and smashed him in the neck with a jerk of the knee. But Gaspard avoided the point of the poignard descending toward his middle by a sudden half-roll and was up again with a spring of almost superhuman energy.

  He was all fire now. Words spat from his lips with such rapidity David could catch but one phrase in half a dozen: “You – bastard – you thought you would castrate me, you butcher. I will perform the operation upon you myself. You shall have no seed …” Abruptly, Gaspard changed his target and struck with a burst of strength at the Prussian’s face. He ducked, but Gaspard’s blade slashed his ear, the first actual blood of the fight. Gaspard laughed – and slipped. He had fallen into the Oberst’s trap to overbalance him. As he fell, he caught at the Prussian’s thigh, jerked his leg up and at the next instant struck him upon the point of the jaw with the hilt of his poignard. The impact was clear, like a fallen weight. The Prussian collapsed. Gaspard kicked the poignard out of his loosed grasp.

  Except for the men’s labored breathing, there was silence, and as it prolonged, David felt relief so great he heard himself say, “Thank God!” as if he had been living a complacent civilian life and really believed the outcome another proof of inevitable justice and triumph for the right. It was suddenly strange, he reflected, that now the fighting was over there was such an abundance of time in which to think. He could look down on the Oberst, see he was stunned and consider the suggestion that the whole enemy must be stunned by defeat, now that the excitement of being alive had burned out.

  Momentarily bemused, he then became acutely aware that everything for which he had fought had been shattered. Again, the enemy could thank God for nothing. David felt his mind wandering and yet, since the immediate danger had passed, this new clarity of thought was such an unexpected part of the peace that he continued it with a pleasure akin to the flexing of muscles just released from their binds. David repeated to himself that the enemy would thank God for nothing, for did not this defeat involve the ruin of the future of all those he held most dear?

  David was convinced once again of a lesson learned by all fighting men, whether friend or enemy, in every war: There was no providence, there was no God, no help in prayer. ‘Or would he?’ David thought. ‘Would not the vanquished, according to the depth of his despair, collect his fragments of faith, convince himself that some superhuman, divine intervention would eventually compensate for such losses? And would not the victor lose what shreds remained even of hope there might be something divine, and say, “Thank God for this inevitable triumph?” for he no longer needed its support?’

  “And now,” Gaspard said, panting heavily and looking down upon the humiliated Oberst, “you will not dare to inflict punishment upon your men as you march back – you will not! You can no longer lead anything. You are phutt! Tu et un ane. Casse-toi pauvre con!” he laughed. “Now, I will perform the little operation of the couilles of which I spoke!” He laughed again, liking the idea so well he translated it into German, with a completely specific description of what he meant to do and how he proposed doing it.

  The answering shout and laughter contained undertones that seemed to David possible only among hyenas tearing at a warthog carcass.

  The Oberst had now recovered consciousness enough to understand Gaspard’s words and the comments of his men, for the blood drained from his face in ghastly contrast to the bright red smear at his ear.

  “Shall I knock him in the head again to make it less painful?” Gaspard asked. “To temper justice with humanity?” He answered himself, “But no!” He picked up his poignard and pulled back his sleeve.

  Such vengeance David had never met. “Jesus!” David cried. “Gaspard! For God’s sake – don’t!”

  “Imbecile!” Gaspard whispered. “Do you not understand a jest? I wished only to beat him before his own men and frighten him and humiliate him. I have done the first two – now watch!”

  He caught the Prussian by the waistband of his exquisitely tailored riding breeches, braced his feet, lifted him from the ground and flung him violently back, wrenching up with both hands at the same time. The cloth ripped. Gaspard had torn the upper part of the man’s breeches as if they had been made of paper. The resulting enthusiasm was immense. One little German, hardly more than a boy, squealed with pleasure, leapt into the air and cracked together the heels of his clumsy oversized field boots.

  “I have finished with him,” Gaspard said. “Can he walk? But would it be modest? I am positive he should be carried – hah! – as a mark of defeat. Take him back! Up with him!” To David he said, “The pride of these Prussians is tremendous. He suffers more now than if I had killed him.”

  Half a dozen of his men bent to lift the now much less commanding Oberst. He allowed it. They began a slow journey with him back to their lines. But their laughter was so uncontrolled, even hysterical, they could hardly walk in unison. They let their burden sag, dropping occasionally to the muck. The audience disbanded with gusto, anxious to get back to their line quickly, to report fully.

  Suddenly, there was the sharp, unmistakable and terrifying explosion of a revolver shot.

  David felt himself in the midst of a leap away. Gaspard was a blur of gray and blue beside him. One soldier fell between them, pawing in the mud. The Americans ran, splashing through holes, hurdling low wire, catching sharply upon the higher barbed strands, cursing themselves loose with ripped cloth and torn flesh, wrestling with stakes, sliding in muck, tripping and stumbling and sitting down with expressions of incredulity that might otherwise have seemed ludicrous, rising and wiping the filth out of their eyes only to run again with hearts pounding harder than their feet, running in silence and singleness of purpose to cross no-man’s-land faster than it had ever been crossed before to plunge over their own parapets and down into the security of their own trenches.

  No general firing had started – yet. But David knew soon it would rip out of those machineguns, touch off uncontrollable rifle fire to right and left along the lines. In a flash he had a picture, almost photographic, of the Man of the Extreme Left, that man who stood behind the sandbags and wire where the line ran down out of sight into the surf of the Belgian Sea, crouching again to watch the German of their Extreme Right, ready to fire again at the flicker of any movement.

  As his panic began to subside, humiliation took its place. David knew he should shout orders and some sage advice to Donovan. He knew he had run to save himself. He slid to a halt and faced about, violently trembling. He wanted to shout orders and advice to Donovan, but he had no idea of what he would say. He only knew he could utter nothing. He could utter nothing. Fear had choked him.

  He had lost his head before his men. No quicker than the least of them he thought. He had possessed no ability of decision whatever compared to what he had been so confident had been the result of his command experience; it had not taught him to control his fear. He knew he had run to save himself. He slid to a halt and faced about, though he was trembling violently.

  But he could not just stand there. He found himself involuntarily
moving forward. He was now aware the two ribbons decorating his tunic were not there so much because of gallantry in action but because he had not been able to stand fast in action. He had been motivated by fear of showing fear and had run forward. He was still so afraid, but he could not stop himself from approaching the German line.

  It was too late for the one thing he now knew would have saved the situation: laughter. He should have laughed and laughed hard so all could have heard, directly after the shot. The men had been bunched together as they started to run. Each one would have thought the laughter was at himself. They would have halted. David glanced back; his platoon was still running toward his line.

  Someone else was moving fast in the same direction. It was Gaspard, some thirty yards ahead. He had happily come to his senses that much sooner.

  Some of the Germans were still between the lines. David really had to give them full credit for courage. Half a dozen were huddled together near the place where the duel had been fought.

  Gaspard broke into a full run toward them.

  Then there was the stillest of silences. David wondered if it were possible the firing had actually started again, but he could not hear it? ‘Does one hear when one is dead?’ Or perhaps that shot had just come from the German line, but their officers had been able to prevent further firing since their own men were still in no-man’s-land?

  Obviously, all had been thoroughly frightened. They had dropped their Oberst in the muck. He just lay there, motionless, making no effort to rise. Now Gaspard had joined the group. As David came up, Gaspard was saying, “Hoquet de la mort, death rattle! This Oberst! He is dead! He shot himself!”

  David looked down at the Prussian colonel. Already his face had frozen. The messenger was looking with intentness at the pistol still clutched in the Oberst’s hand.

  “Pfftt! He kills himself,” Gaspard said into his beard. “Tiens! That was just so much pride. That soldier who brought this Oberst to me, that man had a pistol. So as they carry this Oberst back, he reaches the pistol, shoots himself through the head. It is just as well, is it not? Tiens!”