A Soldier of the Great War (33 page)

"Safer? I was on the
Euridice.
"

"The cruiser?"

"Yes, sir, the cruiser. I came aboard in the evening, the next morning at four we left Brindisi, at two in the afternoon we hit a mine, and at two-ten we began to sink. Almost everyone would have escaped, but a submarine was following us. It surfaced and motored around to take advantage of our list. On the starboard side, our guns wouldn't depress low enough to hit it. Our shells passed over the conning tower, and as we rolled more and more they got higher and higher.

"I saw their captain. He put three shots in our side point-blank. The first two shots made the ship shudder. The third hit the magazine and we blew apart in a dozen pieces. I had been in the signals room and I was blown through the door, over the sea. In mid air the wall passed by me and I went through the door again as it caught up with me and moved ahead. When I hit the water, I was thrown against the maps. They crumpled up and I slid into the sea. I smashed my face against something and swallowed brine, but I came to the surface and swam around until I grabbed a half-submerged chair."

"A chair?"

"I think it may have been the captain's chair, but I don't know. It wasn't the signals chair, it was too heavy. I sat in it and bled for an hour until I was picked up by one of our destroyers. I kept my
head above water until the chair rolled over, and then I'd get up on it again and try to keep my balance. The wound was on my face, as you can see. I was lucky. If it had been lower down I would have bled into the sea until I died, the way a lot of us did.

"When the submarine passed through the debris, I thought the crew looked remorseful—because the wounded were giving up, letting go, and sinking—but when they passed me they laughed. The bastards."

"How many men were lost?"

"We had twelve hundred and forty-two when we went out. The destroyer pulled a hundred and fifty-seven from the water."

The lieutenant shook his head.

"I got a medal. I was on the ship for less than a day, and I never even saw the code book. I got a medal for keeping my balance in a floating chair."

"Every day," the lieutenant said, "shells land somewhere along this line with good effect, and soldiers sail through the air. They don't end up in floating chairs."

Now and then they passed groups of men on their way out. Few wounded were among them, and those who were wounded were walking.

"It's quiet now," the lieutenant told the naval cadet. "Very little has happened since the middle of August, which probably means that in the fall we're really going to get it."

"There are cycles?"

"Like the weather."

"We've been in this tunnel for a half an hour."

"It's four kilometers long. We'll emerge on the riverbank. It's the only way to go to and from the trenches, safe from artillery. We're descending not because we're going deeper into the earth but because the terrain slopes toward the river: we're always eight meters from the surface, unless we pass under a hill. The earth is soft here, no rock. The miners did this in less than a month."

"Sir, I'm in the navy," the naval cadet said, stopping as if to go no farther.

"So am I."

"You are?" The cadet was astonished. In his well broken-in green uniform and infantry belts the lieutenant was the paradigm of a seasoned soldier.

"Yes. Do you think you're going to wear that stupid uniform when you get up ahead? You'll exchange it for an army set within a day. It's too easy to be shot in blue. You stand out too clearly."

"They have commissaries in the trenches?"

"No, you pull it off a man who has been killed. He gets to be buried in your naval uniform, you wash his and sew up the holes, and you're both happy."

"I see. We're both happy. Why is the navy in the trenches, anyway?" the cadet asked. Despite his experience on the
Euridice,
he thought the sea might be safer, and he considered going back to it.

"We're the River Guard," the lieutenant answered. He stopped to take out a cigarette. The tunnel seemed infinite, and the cadet wondered if he were not dreaming or dead. "The river's water, isn't it? At the beginning of the war they didn't know things were going to go this way up here—so badly, so slow—and they apportioned too much to the navy."

"Not when I went in."

"You went in late. Before that, it was different. All kinds of clever asses joined the navy to keep out of the trenches, and ended up here."

"Yes, but what is it that we
do
here?"

"The North is always in danger of an Austrian wheeling movement, but, here, because we're near the mountains, we have few attempts at maneuver. The real infantry stays to the south, and we hold the water line. Someone thought it would assuage the pride of the navy, if we had to fight on land, to call us river guards."

They started walking again. "The river runs like this," the lieu
tenant said, motioning with a stick, "from the mountains. Ten kilometers to the north, on steep limestone cliffs, the Alpini take over. Nothing big can come through in a place as vertical as that.

"We're deployed on the western bank of the Isonzo, from the cliffs to a point about ten kilometers south of where we are now. The river does most of our work for us, but you have to watch it closely.

"They're not Jesus Christs, you see. They can't walk on water, so they can't make a massed attack, because we can deal with boats, swimmers, and bridges. When they try that kind of stuff they get killed: volunteers—Czechs? Hungarians? How the hell do I know. I think they aren't told. They get in the boats, or they swim. Even at night, most of them die before they get to this side.

"The only ones who make it into our trenches are the ones who swim on moonless nights, like Indians, and suddenly they jump down from nowhere and kill you with a bayonet."

"That's happened?"

"It happens every week. It's for morale. It's supposed to make them feel good and us feel bad. I know it makes us feel bad, but I really can't see how it makes them feel good. To begin with, they seldom get back to their lines. I told you. Volunteers. Idiots. Suicides. The same with us."

"Us?"

"We're supposed to reply in kind."

"Am I going to have to do it?" the cadet asked, his voice cracking.

"How many times do I have to tell you? It's all volunteers—the strange ones, the ones who think they're Indians, the ones who decide it's time to die."

A white pinhole of light appeared ahead. As they moved toward it, they could hear the muted sound of machine-gun fire.

"It's quiet," the officer said, "but we've got a problem."

"What's that?"

"No rain. The river's drying up. Another two weeks and you'll be able to run across."

"Oh God."

"Well, yes, they've been moving up lots of men. In the last month, their cooking fires doubled. I don't know what they eat, but it smells like shit."

"We do the same, don't we?"

"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."