The Road Back

Part One
 
 
ROADS STRETCH FAR through the landscape, the villages lie in a grey light; trees rustle, leaves are falling, falling.
 
Along the road, step upon step, in their faded, dirty uniforms tramp the grey columns. The unshaved faces beneath the steel helmets are haggard, wasted with hunger and long peril, pinched and dwindled to the lines drawn by terror and courage and death. They trudge along in silence; silently, as they have now marched over so many a road, have sat in so many a truck, squatted in so many a dugout, crouched in so many a shell hole—without many words; so too now they trudge along this road back home into peace. Without many words.
 
Old men with beards and slim lads scarce twenty years of age, comrades without difference. Beside them their lieutenants, little more than children, yet the leaders of many a night raid. And behind them, the army of slain. Thus they tramp onward, step by step, sick, half-starving, without ammunition, in thin companies, with eyes that still fail to comprehend it: escaped out of that underworld, on the road back into life.
 
1
 
The company is marching slowly, for we are tired and have wounded with us. Little by little our group falls behind. The country is hilly, and when the road climbs we can see from the summit the last of our own troops withdrawing before us, and behind us the dense, endless columns that follow after. They are Americans. They pour on through the avenues of trees like a broad river and the restless glitter of their weapons plays over them. But around them lie the quiet fields, and the tree tops in their autumnal colours tower solemn and unconcerned above the oncoming flood.
 
We stopped for the night in a little village. Behind the houses in which we billeted flows a stream lined with willows. A narrow path runs beside it. One behind another in a long file we follow it. Kosole is in front. Behind him runs Wolf, the company mascot, and sniffs at his haversack.
 
Suddenly at the crossroad, where the path opens into the high road, Ferdinand springs back.
 
“Look out!”
 
On the instant our rifles are up and we scatter. Kosole crouches in the ditch by the roadside, ready to fire; Jupp and Trosske duck and spy out from behind a clump of elders; Willy Homeyer tugs at his hand-grenade belt; even our wounded are ready for fight.
 
Along the road are coming a few Americans. They are laughing and talking together. It is an advance patrol that has overtaken us. Adolf Bethke alone has remained unperturbed. He advances calmly a few paces clear of the cover. Kosole gets up again. The rest of us recover ourselves also, and embarrassed and sheepish, readjust our belts and our rifle slings—for, of course, fighting has ceased some days now.
 
At sight of us the Americans halt suddenly. Their talk stops. Slowly they approach. We retire against a shed to cover our backs, and wait. The wounded men we place in the middle.
 
After a minute’s silence an American, tall as a tree, steps out from the group, stands before us and beckoning, greets us.
 
“Hello, Kamerad!”
 
Adolf Bethke raises his hand in like manner. “Kamerad!” The tension relaxes. The Americans advance. A moment later and we are surrounded by them. Hitherto we have seen them so closely only when they were either prisoners or dead.
 
It is a strange moment. We gaze at them in silence. They stand about us in a semicircle, fine, powerful fellows; clearly they have always had plenty to eat. They are all young; not one of them is nearly so old as Adolf Bethke or Ferdinand Kosole—and they are not our oldest by a long chalk. On the other hand none is so young as Albert Trosske or Karl Bröger—and they are by no means the youngest of us.
 
They are wearing new uniforms and greatcoats; their boots are water-tight and fit well; their rifles are good and their pouches full of ammunition. They are all fresh and unused.
 
Compared to these fellows we are a perfect band of robbers. Our uniforms are bleached with the mud of years, with the rains of the Argonne, the chalk of Champagne, the bog waters of Flanders; our greatcoats ragged and torn by barbed wire, shell splinters and shrapnel, cobbled with crude stitches, stiff with clay and in some instances even with blood; our boots broken, our rifles worn out, our ammunition almost at an end; we are all of us dirty, all alike gone to wrack, all weary. The war has passed over us like a steam roller.
 
 
Yet more troops gather around us. The square is filled with curious eyes.
 
We stand in a corner grouped about our wounded men—not because we are afraid, but because we belong together. The Americans nudge one another and point at our old, worn-out gear. One of them offers Breyer a piece of white bread, but though hunger is apparent in his eyes, he does not take it.
 
With a sudden ejaculation one of them points to the bandages on our wounded. These are of crêpe paper, made fast with pack thread. They all have a look, then retire and whisper together. Their friendly faces are full of sympathy as they see that we have not even muslin bandages.
 
The man who first addressed us now puts a hand on Bethke’s shoulder. “Deutsche—gute Soldat,” he says, “brave Soldat.”
 
The others nod emphatically.
 
We make no answer. We are not yet able to answer. —The last weeks have tried us bitterly. We had to return again and again to the battle, losing our men to no purpose, yet we made no protest; we did as we have always done; and at the end our company had thirty-two men left of two hundred. —So we came out from it thinking no more, feeling no more than that we had faithfully done what had been laid upon us to do.
 
But now, under the pitying eyes of these Americans, we perceive how much in vain it has all been. The sight of their interminable, well-equipped columns reveals to us against what hopeless odds in man power and material we made our stand.
 
We bite our lips and look at each other. Bethke withdraws his shoulder from under the American’s hand; Kosole stares ahead into vacancy; Ludwig Breyer draws himself up—we grip our rifles more firmly; we brace our knees, our eyes become harder and our gaze does not falter. We look back once more over the country whence we have come; our faces become tight with suppressed emotion and once again the searing memory passes through us: all we have done, all we have suffered, and all that we have left behind.
 
We do not know what is the matter with us; but if a bitter word were now loosed against us, it would sting us to fury, and whether we wanted to or not we would burst forward, wild and breathless, mad and lost, to fight—in spite of everything, to fight again.
 
 
A thick-set sergeant with a ruddy face elbows his way toward us. Over Kosole, who stands nearest him, he pours a flood of German words. Ferdinand winces, it so astonishes him.
 
“He talks just the same as we do!” he says to Bethke in amazement; “what do you make of that, now?”
 
The fellow speaks German better and more fluently even than Kosole himself. He explains that he was in Dresden before the war, and had many friends there.
 
“In Dresden?” asks Kosole, even more staggered. “Why, I was there once myself for a couple of years——”
 
The sergeant smiles as though that identified him once and for all. He names the street where he had lived.
 
“Not five minutes from me!” exclaims Ferdinand excitedly. “Fancy not having seen one another! You will know Widow Pohl, perhaps, at the corner, Johannis Street? A fat old body with black hair. My landlady.”
 
But the sergeant does not know her and in exchange submits Zander, a clerk in the Treasury, whom Kosole in his turn cannot recall. Both of them, however, remember the Elbe and the castle, and their eyes light up with pleasure. Ferdinand seizes the sergeant by the arm. “Why, man—you talk German like a native! So you’ve been in Dresden, eh? —Man, but what have we two been fighting about?”
 
The sergeant laughs. He doesn’t know either. He takes out a packet of cigarettes and offers it to Kosole, who reaches for it eagerly—there is not a man of us but would willingly give his soul for a good cigarette. Our own are made from beech leaves and dried grass, and even those are only the better sort. Valentin Laher declares that the ordinary ones are made of seaweed and dried horse dung, and Valentin is a connoisseur of such things.
 
Kosole blows out the smoke lingeringly, with relish. We sniff enviously. Laher changes colour. His nostrils quiver. “Give’s a draw,” he says imploringly to Ferdinand. But before he can take the cigarette another American has offered him a packet of Virginia tobacco. Valentin looks at him incredulously. He takes it and smells it. His face lights up. Then reluctantly he returns the tobacco. But the other declines it and points energetically at the cockade on Laher’s forage cap, which is sticking out from the top of his haversack.
 
Valentin does not understand him. “He wants to exchange the tobacco for the cap badge,” explains the sergeant from Dresden. But Laher understands that even less. This spanking tobacco for a tin cockade? The man must be balmy. Valentin would not swop the packet for a commission. He offers the cap, badge and all, to the American, and with trembling hands greedily fills his first pipe.
 
And now we realize what is expected—the Americans want to exchange. It is apparent that they have not long been in the war; they are still collecting souvenirs, shoulder straps, badges, belt buckles, decorations, uniform buttons. In exchange we stock ourselves with soap, cigarettes, chocolate and tinned meat. They even want us to take a handful of money for our dog—but we draw the line there; let them offer what they will, the dog stays with us. On the other hand, our wounded bring us luck. One American, with so much gold in his mouth that his face looks like a brass foundry, is anxious to get some pieces of bandage with blood on them, in order to be able to demonstrate to the folk at home that they actually were made of paper. He is offering first-rate biscuits and, better still, an armful of real bandages in exchange. With the utmost satisfaction he carefully stows the rags away in his pocketbook, especially those belonging to Ludwig Breyer; for that is actual lieutenant’s blood, you see. Ludwig must write on it in pencil, the place, his name and regiment, so that every one in America may see the thing is no fake. He is unwilling at first—but Willy persuades him, for we need good bandages sorely. And besides, the biscuits are an absolute godsend to him with his dysentery.
 
But Arthur Ledderhose makes the best coup. He produces a box of Iron Crosses that he found in an abandoned Orderly Room. An American, as wizened as himself, with just such another lemon-yellow face, wants to buy the whole box at one deal. But Ledderhose merely gives him one long, knowing slant from his squinting eyes. The American returns the look just as impassively, just as seemingly harmless. One suddenly saw in them a family likeness, as of two brothers. —Something that has survived all the chances of war and death has flashed between them,—the spirit of trade.
 
Ledderhose’s antagonist soon sees that there is nothing doing. Arthur is not to be tricked; his wares will be decidedly more profitable disposed of in retail, so he barters them one by one, till the box is empty. About him there gradually rises up a pile of goods, even butter, and silk, eggs, linen and money, until finally he stands there on his bandy legs looking like a departmental store.