Historical fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
We left the wagons and, some fifteen of us, turned off down a lane to
the left. Sometimes there were soldiers in the hedges, sometimes they
met us, slipping from shadow to shadow. Always we asked whether they
knew of any wounded. We found a wounded soldier groaning under the
hedge. One leg was soaked in blood and he gave little shrill desperate
cries as we lifted him on to the stretcher. Another soldier, lying on
the road in the moonlight, murmured incessantly: "_Boje moi! Boje moi!
Boje moi!_" But they were all ghosts. We alone, in that familiar and
yet so unreal world, were alive. When a stretcher was filled, four
sanitars turned back with it to the wagons, and we were soon a very
small party. We arrived at a church--a large fantastic white church
with a green turret that I had seen from the opposite hill in the
morning. Then it had seemed small and very remote. I had been told
that much firing had been centring round it, and it seemed now for me
very strange that we should be standing under its very shadow, its
outline so quiet and grave under the moon, with its churchyard, a
little orchard behind it, and a garden, scenting the night air, close
at hand. Here in the graveyard there was a group of wounded soldiers,
in their eyes that look of faithful expectation of certain relief. Our
stretchers were soon full.
We were about to turn back when suddenly the road behind us was filled
with shadows. As we came out of the churchyard an officer stepped
forward to meet us. We saluted and shook hands. He seemed a boy, but
stood in front of his men with an air as though he commanded the
whole of this world of ghosts.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
We explained.
"Well, if you'll excuse me, you'd better make haste. An attack very
shortly ... yes. I should advise you to be out of this. Petrogradsky
Otriad? Yes ... very glad to have the pleasure...."
We left him, his men a grey cloud behind him, and when we had taken a
few steps he seemed, with his young air of importance, his happy
serious courtesy, to have been called out of the ground, then, with
all his shadows behind him, to have been caught up into the air. These
were not figures that had anything to do with the little curling
wreaths of smoke, the bottles cracking in the sun, our furious giants
of the morning.
"Ah, _Boje moi, Boje moi_!" sighed the wounded.... It was impossible,
in such a world of dim shadow, that there should ever be any other
sound again.
My excitement had never left me; I had had no doubt, during this last
half-hour, that I was on the Enchanted Ground of the Enemy, so stray
and figurative had been my impressions all day. Now they were all
gathered into this half-hour and the whole affair received its climax.
"Ah," I thought to myself, "if I might only stay here now I should
draw closer and closer--I should make my discovery, hunt him down. But
just when I am on the verge I must leave it all. Ah, if I could but
stay!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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