"Both lights are in position," I heard the Colonel say and dismissing the under officer, he seems absorbed in the end of his cigarette. In this barren room, where the candles are scattering strange shadows on the unpainted walls you become conscious of an unspoken army. The Ober-Lieutenant who is talking Nietzsche with me; seems not to have his mind upon it; when appealed to, the Colonel joins in with monosyllables. The orderlies who this afternoon were making reports, are gone but in the corner by the window, a soldier sits with a field telephone in his lap; slowly he writes upon a pad.
"In America," the Ober-Lieutenant is saying, "you have taken too seriously our academic thinkers. Will you believe it, that until we heard about the book from England, not a thousand of my countrymen had read Bernhardi. Suppose we were to judge America by some of the things published there?"
I can see his point. A mad buzz from the telephone jerks us up with a start. With the air, of something expected, fulfilled, the Colonel rubs the fire off his cigarettes.
"What is it?" he calls.
The soldier's manner is decisive. "Patrols report men massing from the woods in the road."
Gulping down the cognac, the Colonel gives a detailed order; the soldier telephones it to some one at the outpost. The Ober-Lieutenant looks inquiring. "You would like to see?" he asks. As we hurry out of the room, a soldier with a rifle, runs down the street. It is dark. The low roofed houses are smothered in a thickening loom of woods and sky. In a window a candle burns but to the end of the street it is dark. The door of the last house is open and I hear a mumbling monotone of prayer. The flash of a pocket torch shows an ancient Hebrew kneeling in the open door. From his shoulders hang a brown vestment of prayer and caught full, his patriarchal, wrinkled face seems almost divine in the halo of the torch. On the heavy air a rifle cracks.
We are running forward. From the woods come a scattered sound, as of monstrous frogs croaking in the night; a bullet sucks in a whistle as it passes by. To the left of the road, behind the little cemetery, is a hut where we will be reasonably safe. Leaving the road and running along the edge of the trees, so as to keep the hut between us and the direct fire we press on. I never knew the sound of bullets could so aid one's speed....
The firing has become general now and as we peer around the edges of the hut ahead and to our right, I can hear the soldiers moving in the trench. It is too dark to see much. Nearby I can discern crouched shadows running through the night and above the place of graves, the great brown cross makes its stiff gesture of peace.
Where are the Russians? Way down among the trees, I see the occasional flashes of their fire. But this is only an exchange of shots. The Germans are not bothering to reply, only with spasmodic shots, I think of the black winged birds; has the noise frightened them away?
Still there is a tension that seems to be tightening. Down in the trench I see the flash of an officer's lamp; it is like a firefly. Other fireflies, glimmer toward the right of the line, flashing and going out. Somewhere in the darkness a young voice laughs nervously.