Lay Down Your Arms 44

Lay Down Your Arms 44

“What is happening there? The execution party is drawn out. Has a spy

been caught? One? Seventeen this time. There they come, in four ranks,

each one of four men, surrounded by a square of soldiers. The condemned

men step out, with their heads down. Behind comes a cart with a corpse

in it; and bound to the corpse the dead man’s son--a boy of twelve, also

condemned.

 

“I could not look on at the execution, and withdrew; but I heard the

firing. A cloud of smoke rose from behind the walls. All were dead, the

boy included.”

 

* * * * *

 

“At last a comfortable night’s lodging in a little town! The poor little

nest! Provisions, which were to have served the people for months, we

have taken on requisition. ‘Requisition!’ Well, it is one good thing to

have a pretty recognised name for a thing. However, I was at least glad

to have got a good night’s lodging and a good night’s food; and--let me

tell you a story:--

 

“I was just going to lie down in bed, when my orderly announced that a

man of my regiment was there, and earnestly begged for admission, as he

had something for me. ‘Well, let him come in;’ and the man entered. And

before he went out I had rewarded him handsomely, shaken him by both

hands, and promised to look after his wife and children. For what he

brought me, the fine fellow, had given me the greatest pleasure, and had

freed me from a pain under which I had been suffering for the last

thirty-six hours. It was my Puxl. Injured, it is true--honourably

wounded--but still alive, and so happy to be with his master, by whose

behaviour he must certainly have seen that he had been wrong in charging

him with want of fondness for him. Ah, that was indeed a scene of

re-union. First of all, a drink of water! How good it was! He

interrupted his greedy drinking ten times to bark out his joy to me.

Then I bound up the stump of his leg for him, set before him a tasty

supper of meat and cheese, and put him to sleep on my bed. We both slept

well. In the morning when I woke he licked my hand again and again in

token of thanks. Then he stretched out his poor little leg, breathed

deep, and--was no more. Poor Puxl! It is better so.”

 

* * * * *

 

“What is all I have seen to-day? If I shut my eyes, what has passed

before them comes with terrible distinctness into my memory. ‘Nothing

but pain and pictures of horror,’ you will say. Why then do other men

bring such fresh, such joyful images away with them from war? Ah, yes!

These others close their eyes to the pain and the horror. They _say

nothing about them_. If they write, or if they narrate, they give

themselves no trouble to paint their experiences after nature; but they

occupy themselves in imitating descriptions which they have read, and

which they take as models, and in bringing out those impressions which

are considered heroic. If they occasionally tell also of scenes of

destruction, which contain in themselves the bitterest pain and the

bitterest terror, nothing of either is to be discovered in their tone.

On the contrary, the more terrible the more indifferent are they, the

more horrible the more easy. Disapprobation, anger, excitement? Nothing

of all this. Well, perhaps instead of this, a slight breath of

sentimental pity, a few sighs of compassion. But their heads are soon in

the air again. ‘The heart to God, and the hand against the foe.’ Hurrah,

Tra-ra-ra!

 

“Now look at two of the pictures which impressed themselves on me.

 

“Steep, rocky heights. Jägers nimble as cats climbing up them. The

object was to ‘take’ the heights, from the top of which the enemy was

firing. What I see are the forms of the assailants who are climbing up,

and some of them who are hit by the enemy’s shot, suddenly stretch both

arms out, let their muskets fall, and with their heads falling

backwards, drop off the height, step by step, from one rocky point to

another, smashing their limbs to pieces.

 

“I see a horseman at some distance obliquely behind me, at whose side a

shell burst. His horse swerved aside, and came against the tail of mine,

then shot past me. The man sat still in the saddle, but a fragment of

the shell had ripped his belly open, and torn all the intestines out.

The upper part of his body was held on to the lower only by the spine.

From the ribs to the thighs nothing but one great bleeding cavity. A

short distance further he fell to the ground, with one foot still

clinging in the stirrup, and the galloping horse dragging him on over

the stony soil.”

 

* * * * *

 

“An artillery division is sticking fast in a part of the road which is

steep and soaked with rain. The guns are sinking deeper than their

wheels in the morass. It is only with the most extreme exertion,

dripping with sweat, and animated by the most unmerciful flogging, that

the horses can get forward. One, however, dead beat before, now can do

no more. Thumping him does no good; he is quite willing, but he cannot.

He literally _can_ not. Cannot that man see this, whose blows are

raining down on the poor beast’s head? If the cruel brute had been the

driver of a waggon in the service of some builder, any peace officer,

even I myself, would have had him arrested. But this gunner, who has to

get his death-laden carriage forward anyhow, is only doing his duty. The

horse, however, cannot know this. The tortured, well-meaning, noble

creature, who has exerted himself to the utmost limit of his vital

power, what must he think in his inmost heart of such hard-heartedness

and such want of sense? Think, as animals do think, not in words and

conceptions, but in feelings, and feelings which are all the more lively

for wanting __EXPRESSION__. There is but _one_ __EXPRESSION__ for it, the shriek

of pain; and he did shriek, that poor horse, till at last he sank down,

a shriek so long drawn and so resounding, that it still rings in my ear,

that it haunted me in my dream the next night--a horrible dream in other

respects. I thought that I was--how can I ever tell you the story?

dreams are so senseless that language conformable to sense is hardly

adapted to their reproduction--that I was the sense of pain in such an

artillery horse--no, not one, but in 100,000, for in my dream I had

quickly summed up the number of the horses slaughtered in one campaign,

and thus this pain multiplied its effect at once a hundred-thousandfold.

The men _know_ at least why their lives are exposed to danger. They know

whither they are going, and what for; but we poor unfortunates know

nothing--all around us is night and horror. The men seem to go with

pleasure to meet their foes, but we are surrounded by foes--our own

masters, whom we would love so truly, to serve whom we spend our last

energies, they rain blows on us, they leave us lying helpless; and all

that we have to suffer besides, the fear that makes the sweat of agony

run from our whole body, the thirst--for we too suffer from fever--oh,

that thirst! the thirst of us poor bleeding, maltreated 100,000

horses!... Here I woke, and clutched the water bottle. I was myself

suffering from burning, feverish thirst.”

 

* * * * *

 

“Another street fight in the little town of Saar. To the noise of the

battle-cries and the shots is joined the crashing of timber and the

falling of walls. A shell burst in one of the houses, and the pressure

of the air, caused by its explosion, was so powerful that several

soldiers were wounded by the ruins of the house which were borne along

by the air. A window flew over my head with the window-sash still in it.

The chimney-stack tumbled down, the plaster crumbled into dust and

filled the air with a stifling cloud that stung one’s eyes. From one

lane to another (how the hoofs rang on the jagged pavements) the fight

wound on, and reached the market-place. In the middle of the square

stands a high pillar of the Virgin. The Mother of God holds her child in

one arm and stretches the other out in blessing. Here the fight was

prolonged--man to man. They were hacking at me, I was laying about me on

all sides. Whether I hit one or more of them I know not: in such moments

one does not retain much perception. Still two cases are photographed on

my soul, and I fear that the market-place at Saar will remain always

burned into my memory. A Prussian dragoon, strong as Goliath, tore one

of our officers (a pretty, dandified lieutenant--how many girls are

perhaps mad after him) out of his saddle, and split his skull at the

feet of the Virgin’s pillar. The gentle saint looked on unmoved. Another

of the enemy’s dragoons--a Goliath too--seized, just before me almost,

my right-hand man, and bent him backwards in his saddle so powerfully

that he broke his back--I myself heard it crack. To this also the

Madonna gave her stony blessing.”

 

* * * * *

 

“From a height to-day the field-glass of the staff officer commanded

once more a scene rich in changes. There was, for instance, the collapse

of a bridge as a train of waggons was moving across it. Did the latter

contain wounded? I do not know. I could not ascertain. I only saw that

the whole train--waggons, horses, and men--sank into the deep and

rushing stream and there disappeared. The event was a ‘fortunate’ one,

since the train of waggons belonged to the ‘blacks’. In the game now

being played I designate ‘us’ as the white side. The bridge did not

collapse by accident; the whites, knowing that their adversaries had to

cross it, had sawn through the pillars--a dexterous stroke that.

 

“A second prospect, on the other hand, which one might view from the

same height represented one of the follies of the “whites”. Our

Khevenhüller Regiment was directed into a morass, from which it could

not extricate itself, and they were all, except a few, shot down. The

wounded fell into the morass, and there had to sink and be smothered,

their mouth, nose, and eyes filled with mud, so that they could not even

utter a cry. Oh yes! it must be admitted to have been an error of the

man who commanded the troops to go there; but ‘to err is human,’ and the

loss is not a great one--might represent a pawn taken--a speedy, lucky

move of castle or queen, and all is right again. The mud, it is true,

remains in the mouth and eyes of the fallen, but that is a very

secondary consideration. What is reprehensible is the tactical error;

that has to be wiped out by some later fortunate combination, and then

the leader implicated in it may still be decorated with grand orders and

promotions. That lately our 18th battalion of Jägers in a night battle

was firing for several hours on our King of Prussia Regiment, and the

error was not found out till break of day; that a part of the Gyulai

Regiment was led into a pond--these are little oversights, such as may

happen even to the best players in the heat of a game.”

 

* * * * *

 

“It is decided--if I come back from this campaign, I quit the service.

Setting everything else aside, if one has learned to regard anything

with such horror as war produces in me, it would be a continual lie to

keep in the service of that thing. Even before this, I went, as you

know, to battle unwillingly, and with a judgment condemnatory of it; but

now this unwillingness has so increased, this condemnation has become so

strengthened, that all the reasons which before determined me to

persevere with my profession have ceased to operate. The sentiments

derived from my youthful training, and perhaps also, to some extent,

inherited, which still pleaded with me in favour of the military life,

have now quite departed from me in the course of the horrors I have just

experienced. I do not know whether it is the studies, which I undertook

in common with you, and from which I discovered that my contempt for war

is not an isolated feeling, but is shared by the best spirits of the

age, or whether it is the conversations I have had with you, in which I

have strengthened myself in my views by their free __EXPRESSION__ and your

concurrence in them; in one word, my former vague, half-smothered

feeling has changed into a clear conviction, a conviction which makes it

from this time impossible to do service to the war god. It is the same

kind of change as comes to many people in matters of belief. First they

are somewhat sceptical and indifferent, still they can assist at the

business of the temple with a certain sense of reverence. But when once

all mysticism is put aside, when they rise to the perception that the

ceremony which they are attending rests on folly, and sometimes on cruel

folly, as in the case of the religious death-sacrifices, then they will

no longer kneel beside the other befooled folks, no longer deceive

themselves and the world by entering the now desecrated temple. This is

the process which has gone on with me in relation to the cruel worship

of Mars. The mysterious, supernatural, awe-inspiring feeling which the

appearance of this deity generally awakes in men, and which in former

times obscured my senses also, has now entirely passed away for me. The

liturgy of the bulletins and the ritual of heroic phraseology no longer

appear to me as a divine revelation; the mighty organ-voice of the

cannon, the incense-smoke of the powder have no charm more for me. I

assist at the terrible worship perfectly devoid of belief or reverence,

and can now see nothing in it except the tortures of the victims, hear

nothing but their wailing death-cries. And thence comes it that these

pages, which I am filling with my impressions of war, contain nothing except pain seen with pain.”