Now he heard Kohlvihr say: “Anything for you we can, Mr. Mowbray. As a civilian, you are of course exempt from specific honors, but as soon as I learn your companion's name I shall suggest that he be honored by the Little Father.”
“Why, you've put the whole line back into fighting trim!” Boylan whispered.
Chapter 7
Something of the activity now apparent to the blurred faculties of Mowbray, as he sat in the clammy embrace of nausea and struggling for breath, appealed to him as structurally wrong; almost inconceivably abominable, in fact. He had no interest in his so-called achievement, regarded it with a laugh, repeated that it was pure accident; but such as it was, he objected to it being used to put the line back into “fighting trim.”
He was in the large sod-covered pit occupied by field headquarters. He turned at the sound of breathing at his side. Samarc was sitting there. Peter's hand went to his knee. Aides, messengers, and orderlies hastened in and out. There were twenty men in the pit—Kohlvihr the center of all. Big Belt was ministering—a flask, a momentary massage, a steady run of comment, ruddy from the heart.... The activity came to him again.
Kohlvihr was actually planning another infantry advance.
Peter started to speak, but halted for further reflection, a bit skeptical as to his own sanity. This was the third day of the battle; this the day planned to drive a hole through the difficult Austrian hills; the whole Russian army was dependent upon taking this Austrian position; the weather was becoming colder, Berlin still afar off; the Russian left and center pinned to the results of action here.
So far mental processes seemed adequate, but this changed in no way his attitude toward the atrocious activity in the brain of Kohlvihr of the bomb-proof pit.