The Road Back (6 page)

Queer mill-wheel in the brain: too long a soldier.

The November wind pipes over the empty barracks square. Yet more and more comrades go. Not long now and every man will be alone.

The rest of our company all go home by the same route. We are now lounging in the station, waiting for a train. The place is a regular army dump of chests, cardboard boxes, packs and waterproof-sheets.

Only two trains pass through in seven hours. Men hang round the doorways in clusters, in swarms. By the afternoon we have won a place near the track, and before evening are in the best position, right at the front.

The first train arrives soon after midday—a freight train with blind horses. Their skewed eyeballs are blue-white and red-rimmed. They stand stock still, their heads outstretched, and there is life only in the quivering sense of their nostrils.

During the afternoon it is announced that no more trains will leave today.

Not a soul moves. A soldier does not believe in announcements. And in point of fact another train does come. One glance suffices. This will do. Half-full at the most.

The station hall reverberates to the assembling of gear and the charge of the columns that stampede from the waiting-rooms and burst in wild confusion upon the men already in the hall.

The train glides up. One window is open. Albert Trosske, lightest and nimblest of us, is heaved up and clambers through like a monkey. Next moment all the doors are blocked with men. Most of the windows are shut. But already some are being shattered with blows from rifle-butts by fellows who mean to get aboard at any price, though it should cost them torn hands and legs. Blankets are flung over the jagged glass points, and here and there the boarding is already in progress.

The train stops. Albert has run through the corridors and now flings open the window in front of us. Tjaden and the dog shoot in first, Bethke and Kosole after them, Willy shoving from behind. The three at once make for the doors opening into the corridor, so as to close the compartment on both flanks. Then follows the baggage along with Ludwig and Ledderhose, then Valentin, Karl Bröger and I, and, often clearing the decks about him once more, last of all, Willy.

"All in?" shouts Kosole from the gangway where the pressure is becoming momently more urgent. "All aboard!" bawls Willy. Then, as if fired from a pistol, Bethke, Kosole and Tjaden shoot into their seats and outsiders pour into the compartment, climb up on the luggage-rack, till every possible inch of space is occupied.

Even the engine has been stormed, and there are fellows sitting on the buffers. The roofs of the carriages are swarming with men. "Come down out of that!" cries the guard. "You'll get your bloody brains knocked out." "You hold your gas! We're all right," it comes back. There are five men sitting in the lavatory. One has his behind sticking out through the window.

The train pulls out. Some, who were not holding on fast enough, fall off. Two are run over and dragged away, but others jump their places immediately. The footboards are full. The crowding gets worse as the train goes on.

One man is hanging on to a door. It swings open and he dangles clear, clutching the window. Willy clambers across, seizes him by the collar and hoists him in.

During the night our carriage has its first casualties. The train passed into a low tunnel and some of the chaps on the roof were crushed and swept clean off. Though the others had seen it, they had no means up there of stopping the train. The man in the lavatory window too dropped asleep and fell out.

Other carriages also suffered similar casualties. So now the roofs are rigged up with wooden grips and ropes, and bayonets rammed into the woodwork. And sentries are posted to give warning of danger.

We sleep and sleep; standing, lying, sitting, squatting in every possible attitude on packs and on bundles, we sleep. The train rattles on. Houses, trees, gardens, people waving. Processions, red flags, guards posted on the railway, shouting, cries, Special Editions, Revolution—but we will sleep first, the rest can wait till later. Now for the first time one begins to feel how tired one has become in all these years.

Evening again. There is one miserable lamp burning. The train moves slowly and stops often because of engine trouble.

Our packs joggle. Pipes are glowing; the dog is asleep on my knees. Adolf Bethke leans across to me and strokes the dog's head. "Well, Ernst," he says after a while, "we're going to separate at last."

I nod. It is strange, but I can hardly picture life now without Adolf—without his watchful eye and his quiet voice. It was he that educated Albert and me when we first came out to the Front as raw recruits; but for him I doubt if I should still be here.

"We must meet sometimes, Adolf," I say. "We must meet often."

The heel of a boot catches me in the face. On the rack over our heads sits Tjaden earnestly counting his money— he means to go straight from the station to a brothel. To bring himself to a proper frame of mind he is now regaling us with the story of his adventures with a couple of land-girls. No one thinks of it as indecent—it has nothing to do with the war, so we listen readily.

A sapper, who has lost two fingers, is boasting that his wife has given birth to a seven months' child and yet in spite of that it weighs eight pounds. Ledderhose jeers at him: "Things don't happen that way!" The sapper does not follow him, and begins to count on his fingers the months between his last leave and the birth of the child. "Seven," says he, "that's right."

Ledderhose coughs and his lemon-yellow face draws to a wry, mocking smile. "Somebody's been doing a little job for you there."

The sapper looks at him. "What—what do you mean, eh?" he stutters.

"Why, it's obvious enough, surely!" says Arthur, sniffling and scratching himself.

Sweat breaks out on the man's lips. He counts over and
over again. His mouth twitches. A fat A.S.C. driver with a
beard, sitting by the window, is convulsed with laughter.
"You poor fool! you poor, bloody fool! "

Bethke stiffens. "Shut your mug, fat guts!"

"Why?" asks the fellow with the beard.

"Because you ought to shut your mug!" says Bethke. "You too, Arthur."

The sapper has turned pale. "What does one do about it?" he asks helplessly, holding fast to the window-frame.

"One shouldn't get married," says Jupp deliberately, "until one's children are already out earning. Then that sort of thing wouldn't happen."

Outside the evening draws on. Woods lie along the skyline like black cows, fields show faintly in the dim light that shines from the carriage windows. It now wants but two hours for home. Bethke is getting his baggage ready. He lives in a village a few stations this side of the town and so has to get out sooner.

The train stops. Adolf shakes hands with us all. He tumbles out on to the little siding and looks about him with a sweeping glance that drinks in the whole landscape in a second, as a parched field the rain. Then he turns to us again. But he hears nothing any more. Ludwig Breyer is standing at the window, indifferent to his pain. "Trot along, Adolf," he says, "your wife will be waiting."

Bethke looks up at us and shakes his head: "No such hurry as all that, Ludwig." It is evident with what power home is drawing him away; but Adolf is Adolf—he continues to stand there beside us until the train leaves. Then he turns swiftly about and goes off with long strides.

"We'll be coming to see you soon!" I call after him hastily.

We watch him go out across the fields. For a long time he continues to wave. Then smoke from the engine drifts between. In the distance gleam a few red lights.

The train makes a big sweeping curve. Adolf has now become very small, a mere point, a tiny little man, quite alone on the wide, dark plain, above which, vast and electrically bright, ringing the horizon in sulphur yellow, towers the night sky. I do not know why—it has nothing to do with Adolf—but the sight fascinates me—A solitary man going out over the wide stretch of fields against the mighty sky, in the evening and alone.

Then the trees close up in massive darkness and soon nothing is left but swift motion, and woods and the sky.

It grows noisy in the compartment. Here inside there are corners, edges, odours, warmth, space and boundaries; here are brown, weathered faces and eyes, bright flecks in them; there is a smell of earth, sweat, blood, uniforms— but outside the world is rushing obscurely past to the steady stamping of the train; we are leaving it behind us, ever farther and farther, all that world of trenches and shell-holes, of darkness and terror; now a mere whirlwind seen through a window—it concerns us no more.

Somebody starts singing. Others join in. Soon everyone
is singing, the whole compartment, the next compartment,
the entire carriage, the whole train. We sing ever more
lustily, with more and more power; our brows are flushed,
the veins swell out; we sing every soldiers' song that we
know. We stand up, glaring at each other. Our eyes shine;
the wheels thunder the rhythm; we sing and sing—

I am wedged between Ludwig and Kosole and feel their warmth penetrating my tunic. I move my hands, turn my head; my muscles brace themselves and a shiver mounts from my knees to my belly; a ferment like sherbet in my bones, it rises, foams up into my lungs, my lips, my eyes; the carriage swims; it sings in me as a telegraph pole in a storm, thousands of wires twanging, thousands of roads opening—Slowly I put my hand on Ludwig's hand, and feel that it must burn: but when he looks up, worn and pale as ever, all I can drag out of what is surging within me is merely to stammer: "Have you a cigarette, Ludwig?"

He gives me one. The train whistles, we go on singing. A more ominous rumble than the rattle of the wheels gradually mingles with our songs, and in a pause there comes a mighty crash that travels rolling in long reverberations over the plain. Clouds have gathered; a thunderstorm bursts. The flashes of lightning dazzle like close gun-fire. Kosole stands in the window and shakes his head. "Now for another sort of thunderstorm!" he mutters and leans far out. "Quick! see! there she is!" he suddenly cries.

We press round. At the limit of the land in the glare of the lightning the tall, slender towers of the city pierce the sky. Then darkness closes over them again in thunder, but with every flash they come nearer.

Our eyes shine with excitement. Expectancy has suddenly shot up amongst us, over us, within us, like a giant beanstalk.

Kosole gropes for his things. "Oh, boys," says he, stretching his arms, "where shall we all be sitting a year hence, I wonder."

"On our backsides," suggests Jupp apprehensively. But no one is laughing now. The city has sprung upon us, gathered us to herself. There she lies panting under the wild light, outstretched, inviting. And we are coming to her— a trainload of soldiers, a trainload of home-coming out of the limbo of nothingness, a trainload of tense expectancy, nearer and nearer. The train tears along; the walls leap out against us, in a moment we will collide; flashes of lightning, the thunder roars—Then the station rises up on both sides of the carriage, seething with noise and cries; a pelting rain is falling; the platform gleams with the wet. Heedless, we jump out into it all.

As I spring out of the door the dog follows. He presses close after me and together we run through the rain down the steps.

I
n front of the station we scatter like a bucket of water pitched out on the pavement. Kosole sets off at a sharp pace with Bröger and Trosske down Heinrich Street. With Ludwig I turn rapidly into Station Avenue. Without wasting any time in farewells Ledderhose and his rag-and-bone shop have already gone like a shot: and Tjaden gets Willy to describe briefly the shortest route to the mollshop. Jupp and Valentin alone have any leisure. No one is awaiting their arrival, so they take a preliminary saunter round the station on the off chance of finding some grub. They intend later on to go to the barracks.

Water is dripping from the trees along Station Avenue; clouds trail low and drive swiftly over. Some soldiers of the latest class to be called up approach us. They are wearing red armbands. "Off with his shoulder-straps!" yells one, making a grab at Ludwig.

"Shut your mouth, you war-baby!" I say, as I shove him off.

Others press in and surround us. Ludwig looks calmly at the foremost of them and goes on his way. The fellow steps aside. Then two sailors appear and rush at him.

"You swine! can't you see he's wounded?" I shout, flinging off my pack to get freer play with my hands. But Ludwig is down already; what with the wound in his arm he is as good as defenceless. The sailors trample on him, rip at his uniform. "A lieutenant!" screeches a woman's voice. "Kick him to death, the dirty blood hound!"

Before I can come to his assistance I get a blow in the face that makes me stagger. "You son of a bitch!" I cough and with all my weight plant my boot in my assailant's stomach. He sighs and topples over. Immediately three others fall on me and drag me down. "Lights out, knives out!" cries the woman.

Between the trampling legs I can see Ludwig with his free left hand throttling one sailor, whom he has brought down by giving him a crack behind the knees. He still hangs on, though the others are hoeing into him with all their might. Then someone swipes me over the head with a belt-buckle and another treads on my teeth. Wolf promptly seizes him by the calf of his leg, but still we are unable to rise; they knock us down again every time and would tread us to pulp. Wild with rage, I try to get at my revolver. But at that moment one of the attackers crashes backwards to the pavement beside me. A second crash—another fellow unconscious—and straightway a third—this can have only one meaning: Willy is on the job.

He came storming up at top gallop, flung off his pack as he ran and now is standing over us, raging. He seizes them in twos by the nape of the neck, one in each hand, and bashes their heads together. Both are knocked out on the instant—when Willy gets mad he is a living sledge hammer. We break free. I jump up, but the attackers make off. I just manage to land one of them a blow in the small of bis back with my pack and then turn to look after Ludwig.

But Willy is in full pursuit. He saw the two sailors who made the first attack on Ludwig. One now lies there in the gutter, blue and groaning—and like a flying hurricane with red hair he is hot on the heels of the other.

Ludwig's arm has been trodden on and the blood is oozing through the bandage. His face is smeared with mud and his forehead torn by a heel. He wipes himself down and rises slowly. "Hurt much?" I ask him. Deathly pale, he shakes his head.

In the meantime Willy has captured the sailor and is lugging him along like a sack. "You bloody cow!" he storms. "There you've been sitting in your ships taking the summer air all the war and never have heard so much as a shot fired; and now you think it's time for you to open your beer trap and attack front-line soldiers, do you? You let me catch you! Kneel down, you malingering sod! Kneel down and ask his pardon!"

He thrusts the fellow down before Ludwig with an air ferocious enough to put the fear of God into any man. "I'll massacre you!" he snarls. "I'll tear you to bits! Kneel! Down on your knees!"

The man whimpers. "Let him alone, Willy," says Ludwig, picking up his things.

"What?" says Willy incredulously. "Are you mad! After they've trampled all over your arm!"

Ludwig is ready to go. "Ach, let him go—"

For a moment Willy continues staring at Ludwig; then with a shake of his head he releases the sailor. "Right you are, then. Now, run like hell!" But he cannot resist letting fly at the last moment and giving the fellow a kick that sends him through a double somersault.

We go on our way. Willy curses—he must talk when he is angry. But Ludwig is silent.

Suddenly we see the gang of runaways coming back round the corner of Beer Street. They have gathered reinforcements.

Willy unslings his rifle. "Load, and prepare to fire!" says he, his eyes narrowing. Ludwig draws out his revolver and I also put my gun in readiness. Until now it has merely been a free fight; but this time is going to be earnest. We do not mean to be set upon a second time.

We deploy across the street at intervals of three paces so as not to form one single compact target; then we advance. The dog understands at once what is afoot. He slinks along growling in the gutter beside us. He too has learned at the Front to advance under cover.

"At twenty yards we fire!" threatens Willy.

The crowd facing us moves anxiously. We advance far
ther. Rifles are pointed at us. With a click Willy slips his 
safety-catch and from his belt takes the hand-grenade he
still carries as an iron ration. "I count up to three—"

An older man, wearing an N.C.O.'s tunic from which the badges of rank have been removed, now steps out from the gang. He advances a few paces. "Are you comrades, or not?" he calls.

Willy gasps; he is outraged. "Well! I'll be damned! That's what we're asking you, you white-livered calf!" he retorts indignantly. "Who was it started attacking wounded men?"

The other stops short. "Did you do that?" he asks of the fellows behind him.

"He wouldn't take down his shoulder-straps," answers one of the group.

The man makes an impatient gesture and turns toward us again. "They shouldn't have done that, Comrades. But you don't seem to understand what is the matter. Where have you come from, anyway?"

"From the Front, of course; where else do you think?" snorts Willy.

"And where are you going?"

"Where you've been all the war—back home."

"Comrade," says the man, showing an empty sleeve, "I didn't lose that at home."

"That doesn't make it any better," says Willy, unmoved. "In that case you ought to be ashamed to be seen with that push of upstart toy soldiers."

The sergeant comes nearer. "It's revolution," he says quietly, "and who isn't for us is against us."

Willy laughs. "Bloody fine revolution, no mistake! with
your Society for the Removal of Shoulder-Straps! If that's
all you want—" He spits contemptuously.

"Not so fast, mate," says the one-armed man now walking swiftly toward him. "We do want a lot more! We want an end of war, an end of all this hatred! an end of murder! That's what we're after. We want to be men again, not war machines!"

Willy lowers his hand-grenade. "A damned fine beginning that was, I must say," he says, pointing to Ludwig's trampled bandage. Then with a few bounds he makes for the mob. "Yes, you cut along home to your mothers, you snotty-nosed brats!" he roars as they give back before him. "Want to be men, do you? Why, you aren't even decent soldiers yet! To see the way you hold your rifles, ft makes a man scared, you'll be breaking your fingers next!"

The gang starts to run. Willy turns round and stands towering before the sergeant. "And now I have something to say to youl We've had as much a bellyful of this business as you; and there's going to be an end of it, too, that's certain. But not your way. What we do we do of ourselves; it is a long time now since we have taken orders from any man. But see now!"

Two rips, and he has torn off his shoulder-straps. "I'm doing this because I myself wish it; not at all because you wish it. It's my business—understand? But that chap," he points to Ludwig, "he's our lieutenant, and he's keeping his—and God help any man who says he's not!"

The one-armed man nods. Something in his face quickens. "I was there, too, mate," he blurts out. "I know what is what, as well as you do. Here . . ." he shows his stump excitedly, "Twentieth Infantry Division, Verdun."

"So were we," says Willy laconically. "Well—good luck."

He puts on his pack and slings his rifle once more. We march on. As Ludwig passes him, the sergeant with the red armband suddenly brings his hand to his cap, and we understand his meaning. He is saluting not a uniform, not the war—he is saluting his mates from the Front.

Willy's home is nearest. He waves gaily across the street in the direction of the little house. "Hullo, you old horsebox !—Home is the sailor!"

We propose to wait for him but Willy refuses. "We'll see Ludwig home first," he says, spoiling for fight. "I'll be getting my potato-salad and my curtain lectures quite soon enough."

We stop a while on the road to spruce ourselves up so that our parents shall not see we have come fresh from a fight. I wipe Ludwig's face and we take off his bandage to cover up the traces of blood, so that his mother may not be alarmed. Later, of course, he will have to go to the hospital and get his bandages renewed.

We arrive without further disturbance. Ludwig still looks rather the worse for his drubbing. "Don't let that worry you," I say, shaking him by the hand. Willy puts a great paw on his shoulder. "Sort of thing might happen to anyone, old boy. If it hadn't been for the wound you'd have made mincemeat of them."

Ludwig nods to us and goes indoors. We watch to see that he manages the stairs all right. He is already halfway up when another point suddenly occurs to Willy. "Kick, next time, Ludwig," he shouts after him, "just kick, that's all! Don't let 'em get near you, understand me?" Then, well content, he slams to the door.

"I'd like to know what's been up with him the last few weeks," say I.

Willy scratches his head. "It'll be the dysentery," he suggests. "Why otherwise—well, you remember how he cleaned up that tank at Bixchoote! On his own too. That was no child's play, eh?"

He settles his pack. "Well, good luck, Ernst! Now I'll be after seeing what the Homeyer family's been doing the last six months. One hour of sentiment, I expect, and then full steam ahead with the lectures. My mother—Oh boy, but what a sergeant-major she would have made! A heart of gold the old lady has—in a casing of granite."

I go on alone, and all at once the world seems to have altered. There is a noise in my ears as if a river ran under the pavement, and I neither see nor hear anything till I am standing outside our house. I go slowly up the stairs. Over the door hangs a banner:
Welcome Home
, and beside it a bunch of flowers. They have seen me coming already and are all standing there, my mother in front on the stairs, my father, my sisters. I can see beyond them into the dining-room, there is food on the table, everything is gay and jubilant. "What's all this nonsense you've been up to?" I say. "Flowers and everything—what's that for? it's not so important as all that—But, Mother I what are you crying for? I'm back again—and the war's ended—surely there is nothing to cry about——" then I feel the salt tears trickling down my own nose.

We have had potato-cakes with eggs and sausage—a wonderful meal. It is two years since I last saw an egg; and potato-cakes, God only knows.

Comfortable and full, we now sit around the big table in the living-room drinking coffee with saccharine. The lamp is burning, the canary singing, the stove is warm, and under the table Wolf lies asleep. It is as lovely as can be.

"Now tell us all about your experiences, Ernst," says my father.

"Experiences——" I repeat, and think to myself, I haven't experienced anything—It was just war all the time —how should a man have experiences there?

No matter how I rack my brains, nothing suitable occurs to me. A man cannot talk about the things out there with civilians, and I know nothing else. "You folk here have experienced much more, I'm sure," I say by way of excusing myself.

That they have, indeed! My sisters tell how they had to
scrounge to get the supper together. Twice the gendarmes 
took everything from them at the station. The third time 
they sewed the eggs inside their cloaks, put the sausages 
into their blouses and hid the potatoes in pockets inside 
their skirts. That time they got through 
I listen to them rather absently. They have grown up
since last I saw them. Or perhaps I did not notice such
things then, so that I find it the more remarkable now. 
Use must be over seventeen already. How the time goes.