Men in War

by Andreas Latzko

With a short, hoarse growl John Bogdán flew at the humpback's throat, squeezed in his Adam's apple, pressing it into his neck, and held him in a merciless clutch. The man beat about with his arms, his eyes popped from his head in fright, his throat gurgled, and his face turned livid. Then John Bogdán released his hold, and Mihály fell to the ground and lay there gasping. Bogdán quickly gathered up his things and strode off, taking long, quick steps, as if afraid of arriving too late for something in the castle.

He gave not another look back at Mihály the humpback, never turned around once, but quietly went his way and for a long while felt the warm throat in his hand.

What was a man who lay gasping on the road to him? One man more or less. In the rhythmic regularity of the marching column, he had passed by thousands like him, and it had never occurred to his mind, dulled by weariness, that the grey spots thickly strewn over the fields, the heaps lining the roadway like piles of dung in the spring, were human beings struck down by death. He and his comrades had waded in the dead, there at Kielce, when they made a dash across the fields, and earthy grey hands rose out of every furrow pawing the air, and trousers drenched in blood and distorted faces grew out of the ground, as if all the dead were scrambling from their graves for the Last Judgment. They had stepped and stumbled over corpses. Once the fat little officer of reserves, to the great amusement of his company, had gotten deathly sick at his stomach because he had inadvertently stepped on the chest of a half-decayed Russian, and the body had given way under him, and he had scarcely been able to withdraw his foot from the foul hole. John Bogdán smiled as he recalled the wicked jokes the men had cracked at the officer's expense, how the officer had gone all white and leaned against a tree and carried on like a man who has much more than quenched his thirst.

The road glowed in the mid-day sun. The village clock struck twelve. From the hill yonder came, like an answer, the deep bellow of the factory whistle, and a little white cloud rose over the tops of the trees. Bogdán quickened his pace, running rather than walking, heedless of the drops of sweat that ran down and tickled his neck. For almost a year he had breathed nothing but the hospital atmosphere, had smelled nothing but iodoform and lysol and seen nothing but roofs and walls. His lungs drew in the aroma of the blossoming meadows with deep satisfaction, and the soles of his boots tramped the ground sturdily, as if he were again marching in regular order.

This was the first walk he had taken since he was wounded, the first road he had seen since those wild marches on Russian soil. At moments he seemed to hear the cannons roaring. The short struggle with the humpback had set his blood coursing, and his memories of the war, for a time stifled as it were beneath a layer of dust by the dreary monotony of the hospital life, suddenly came whirling back to him.

He almost regretted having let that damned blackguard go so soon. One moment more, and he would never have opened his blasphemous mouth again. His head would have fallen back exhausted to one side, he would once again have embraced the air longingly with outspread fingers, and then in a flash would have shrunk together, exactly like the fat, messy Russian with the large blue eyes who was the first man to present himself to St. Peter with a greeting from John Bogdán. Bogdán had not let him loose until he had altogether quit squirming. He had choked him dead as a doornail. And still he was a comical fellow, not nearly so disgusting as that rascally humpback. But he was the first enemy soldier whom he had got into his grasp, his very first Russian. A magnificent array of others had followed, though the fat man was the only one Bogdán had choked to death. He had smashed scores with the butt-end of his gun and run his bayonet through scores of others. He had even squashed with his boots the wretch who had struck down his dearest comrade before his very eyes. But never again did he choke a man to death. That was why the little fat fellow stuck in his memory. He had no recollection of the others whatever. All he saw now in his mind was a tangle of greyish-green uniforms. And as he thought of his heroic deeds, the gnashing, the stamping, the gasping, and the cursing of the hand-to-hand encounters resounded in his ears. How many, he wondered, had he sent to the other world? God alone may have counted them. He himself had had enough to do trying to save his own skin. Had a man stopped to look around, he would have carried his curiosity to the next world.

And yet—there was another face that remained fixed in his memory. A great big thin fellow, as tall as a beanpole, with enormous yellow tusks, which he gnashed like a boar. Yes, he had as clear a picture of him as if it had been yesterday. He saw him half-backed up against the wall already, swinging his gun over his head. One second more, and the butt-end would have come whizzing down. But a sleepy Russian was never the man to get the better of John Bogdán. Before he had the chance to bring down his gun, Bogdán's bayonet was in between his ribs, and the Russian fell over on his own gun. The bayonet pierced him through and through, and even went into the wall behind him, and came mighty near breaking off.

But the same thing never happened to Bogdán again. It had happened that once because he had thrust too hard, with clenched teeth, gripping the rod in a tight clutch, as if it were iron that he had to cleave. The fact was, he had not yet discovered that it really isn't so difficult to mow down a human being. He had been prepared for any amount of resistance, and his bayonet had glided into the fellow's body like butter. His mouth had remained wide open in astonishment—he recalled it to the dot. A man who has never tried a bayonet thrust thinks a human being is made up all of bones, and he fetches out for a good hard stroke. Then he's in a pickle to free his weapon again before one of the messy-looking devils takes advantage of his defenselessness. The way to do was to go at it very lightly, with a short jerky thrust. Then the blade ran in of itself, like a good horse—you actually had trouble holding it back. The most important thing was, not to take your eye off your enemy. You mustn't look at your bayonet, or the spot you intend to pierce. You must always watch your enemy so as to guess his move in time. It's from your enemy's face that you must read the right moment for stepping backward. They all behaved the same way—exactly like the first tall wild fellow who gnashed his tusks. All of a sudden their faces turned absolutely smooth, as if the cold iron in their body had chilled their fury, their eyes opened wide in astonishment and looked at their enemy as if to ask in reproach, "What are you doing?" Then they usually clutched at the bayonet and needlessly cut their fingers, too, before they fell over dead. If you didn't know exactly what to do and didn't hold your weapon back in time and withdraw it quickly from the wound, just when you saw the man's eyes growing large, you would be carried along down with him or would get hit on the head by the butt-end of another enemy's gun long before you could draw your bayonet out.

These were all things that John Bogdán had often discussed with his comrades after severe frays when they criticized the men who had fallen for behaving stupidly and who had had to pay with their lives for their awkwardness.

As he strode along in haste up the familiar road to the castle, he was fairly lost in recollections. His legs moved of themselves, like horses on the homeward way. He passed through the open grille gateway and was already walking on the gravel path, his head bowed on his chest, without noticing that he had reached home.