Historical fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
We were not popular here. Husky, breathless voices whispered
to us "to be away from here, quick. We would draw the fire.
What did we want here now?"
"Have you any wounded?" we whispered in return.
"No, no," the answer came. "Keep away from the moonlight."
The voices came to us connected sometimes with a nose, an
eye, or a leg, often enough out of the heaven itself.
"There's a man wounded behind the next lines," some voice
murmured.
We stumbled on and suddenly came to a river with very steep
banks and a number of narrow and slender bridges. If this
_had_ in reality been a nightmare this river could not have
obtruded itself more often than it did. We discovered to our
dismay that our soldier-guide had disappeared (exactly as in
a nightmare he would have done). We crossed the river
(bathed of course in moonlight), the plank bridge shaking
and quivering beneath us.
We had then a difficult task. Here a row of cottages beneath
the very edge of the bank and in the cottage shadow the
soldiers were ranged in a long line. Their boots stretched
to the verge of the bank, which was slippery and uncertain.
We had to walk on this with our stretchers, stepping between
the boots, stumbling often and slipping down towards the
water.
"Any wounded?" we whispered again and again.
"No," the whisper came back. "Hasten.... Take care of the
moonlight."
And then, to my infinite relief and comfort, behind the
cottages we found our wounded man. There was a dark yard
here, apparently quite deserted. The Feldscher made an
exclamation and stepped forward. Three bodies lay together,
over one another; two men were dead and cold, the third
stirred, very faintly, as we came up, opened his eyes,
smiled and said:
"Eh, _Boje moi_ ... at last!"
As we moved him on to the stretcher, with a little sigh he
fainted again. He had a bad stomach-wound. Before picking up
the stretcher, the Feldscher wiped his forehead and crossed
himself.
"It's a heavy thing for two," he said. "He's a big man,"
looking at the soldier. There was now somewhere, apparently
not very far away, hot rifle fire. The crackle sparkled in
the air, as though one were living in a world in which all
the electricity was loose. The other firing seemed to have
drawn away, and the "Boom--Boom--boom" in front of us was
echo from the hill....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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