TRUE STORY ABOUT KILLING THE WOUNDED
Told by A. Pankratoff
Translated from the Russian for Current History
I—GERMANS HANGED COSSACKS ON TREES
The other day, quite unexpectedly, I ran into Lieutenant X., better known as the Junior Subaltern.
This was the fourth time I had run across him since the beginning of the war—at Insterburg, where the Junior Subaltern was leading his company toward Königsberg; then in the trenches beyond Tarnovo; then in the vicinity of Lublin, during the great retreat; and now, the fourth time.
"I am stationed twelve versts from Czernowitz," he went on to explain. The Junior Subaltern is really so young that you can't help envying him. His face shines with health. His eyes are always laughing. His speech is very simple, but impressive; but he does not like to talk; he would rather listen, and laugh responsively with his eyes.
Fortune had brought us together; several men sitting down to a common meal. We talked freely about everything. The conversation turned to the German habit of finishing all the wounded enemies they find after a successful battle. During the forest fighting last August one of us had come across sixty Cossacks who had been but slightly wounded, and whom the Germans had hanged on the trees.
"We avenged them, however; the Germans got something to remember!" said the narrator.
Lieutenant X.'s eyes sparkled with animation.
"Well," he said, "of course they deserved it! Of course it is a crime to kill the wounded. But, gentlemen, there are cases when it is impossible not to kill the wounded!"
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Just what I said! There is such a thing as rightful killing of the wounded!"
We insisted, and the Junior Subaltern narrated a recent experience of his, "somewhere in Bukowina." He had been in command of a party of scouts. His regiment had just arrived to take the place of another infantry regiment. And the first thing to do was to become acquainted with the locality and to learn the dispositions and intentions of the enemy. The Junior Subaltern was sent out with his company. At one place the opposing armies were separated by a ravine, which forked out toward our trenches. Lieutenant X. knew that the men of the regiment his was replacing had become acquainted with the Austrians, and that the enemies by day came together at the bottom of the ravine by night, entertained one another, and gossiped.
"War is burdensome, gentlemen!" explained the Junior Subaltern, "and we all longed for even the semblance of human intercourse with the other chaps. * * * And there happened to be a prolonged and tiresome spell of calm between battles, and so the men of the regiment we were replacing and the Austrians had long smokes together, exchanging pipes. But every one remembered—and nobody held it against any one—that the course of cigarettes must be closely interwoven with the course of bullets on the morrow. * * * Yet, yet—oh, if we were only chivalrous knights, conducting a picturesque tournament, instead of common Russian cannon fodder fighting common Austrian cannon fodder. * * *"
Of course our young friend wanted to do the magnanimous thing by the enemy, sending round word to them, "Here we come! Get ready!" But what he did do was to take advantage of the quiet exchange of the two Russian regiments and the total ignorance in which the Austrian members of the nightly smoking club in the ravine still remained, and to creep noiselessly forward to the spot where the friends of the night before were on guard. The Austrian sentinels—three of them—dozed, wrapped in their blankets. The Russians crept stealthily forward. * * *
"What else could we do?" asked the Junior Subaltern. "Humanitarian ideas are in blank contradiction to the present war. Civilians at home may try to judge everything in accordance with these ideas. Well, we know they are mistaken. Oh, they are simply ridiculous!" ended the Junior Subaltern, his good-natured, broad face blushing at making such a bold statement in company.
II—"WHEN WE LEAVE NO WOUNDED ALIVE"
"Such nonsense!" he went on. "Of course, at the back of our minds the horror of it is always present. But what else can you do? Standing in blood up to your throat, and knowing that you have to protect your men, to protect yourself. * * * And what difference does it make to them whether you shoot them or throttle them? * * * About a hundred paces from those three sentinels there were at least a hundred others, and two hundred yards off were the Austrian trenches. The least noise, a groan, the stifled cry of a wounded Austrian would be the end of everything for my scouts; and there were only thirty of us. That was when I gave the order not to leave any wounded alive. * * *"
It was an evident relief to him to be interrupted.
"Oh, yes, I remember!" said one of us. "I was in camp when the Austrian officer, routed out in his sleep, was brought in on the run in his nightshirt. The whole thing went rapidly and well, and you took a machine gun from the Austrians!"
Another of us said:
"I don't see what you are driving at! There's no analogy at all! What you did was no hitting of those who were down already. All sorts of conventions and international law would justify you!"
"Well," answered the Junior Subaltern, "did I not say that there was such a thing as justifiable killing of the wounded, for us as for the Germans? Besides, I got decorated for the job! Ouch! It is going to thaw! I know, because my wounded leg aches!"
His smile was so frank and his face so full of the bloom of youth as he thus changed the subject that it was quite evident that he did not change it from any false modesty, but simply because the subject—including his own distinguished part in it—had no further interest for him.
"You have been wounded?"
"Yes. Two bullets in my leg, one in my arm, one in the abdomen."
"And you are still alive?"
"As you see! It was that devilish machine gun! The bullet that entered my abdomen cut through the intestines, touched my stomach, and came out by my back. When I regained consciousness I heard the doctor saying: 'Put this one aside; he will die in a minute or two!' And some of my men dug a nice grave for me and wrote my name and the date on a board, and sat down patiently to wait for my funeral. But I didn't die. So the surgeon had to send me to hospital. But when the ambulance was starting I heard him say: 'It's not a bit of use! He'll die on the way there!' But I cheated the doctors. I'm quite a rare specimen!"
"You are indeed!" And we all laughed, so contagious was Lieutenant X.'s laughter.
"The Medical Council," he went on, "explained it by the fact that, for two whole days previously, I had had nothing to eat. * * * hadn't had time! It was on the Stripa. The moment our regiment arrived at —— we had to fight."