Part 63 (2/2)

”Did you see many dead and wounded?” asked a very tired voice, that of one of the older reservists who was emaciated, with a complexion like blue mould.

”How can I tell you what I saw? Ought I to tell you?”

”When you've had to wipe a piece of brains out of your eye, as I have--it was warm and jelly-like,” said Pilzer, ”you ain't as squeamish as Hugo Mallin. I wonder they don't give him a bronze cross!”

”Bronze crosses are given for bravery in action,” said Peterkin in his new-fas.h.i.+oned parrot way since he had become great. ”You should not do anything to affect the spirit of corps.”

”The boy wonder from the butler's pantry! Our dear, natty little b.u.t.tons! Bullets glide off him!” snarled Pilzer, who had set out to win a bronze cross, only to see it won by a pygmy.

”Did you see many dead and wounded?” persisted the very tired voice of the old reservist.

”Yes, yes--and every kind of destruction!” answered the judge's son.

”And--I kept thinking of Hugo Mallin.”

”I'm glad they didn't shoot Hugo,” said the very tired voice. ”I'm sorry for his old father and mother. I'm a father myself.”

”I certainly had a good farewell kick at him!” declared Pilzer. ”Lean on yourself!” he added, giving a shove to the old reservist who was next him.

”I saw men who had ceased to be human. That reminds me, Pilzer,” the judge's son went on, ”I saw one wounded man, lying beside another, turn and strike him, and he said: 'I had to hit somebody or something!' And I heard a wounded man who was waiting in line before the surgeon's table say: 'There's others hurt worse than me. I can wait.' I heard men begging the doctors to put them out of their misery. I saw two dead men with their hands clasped as they were when they died. Then there were the men who went mad. One had to be held by force. He kept crying with demoniacal laughs: 'I want to go back and kill--kill! Let's all kill, kill, kill!' Another insisted on dancing, despite a bandaged leg. 'Look, look at the little red spots!' he was saying. 'You must step on one every time; if you don't, the automatic will get you!' Another declared that he had been through h.e.l.l and insisted that he would live forever now. Another was an artist, a landscape-painter, who had lost his eyesight. He was seeing beautiful landscapes, and the nurses had to strap him to his cot to keep him from struggling to his feet and trying to use an imaginary brush on imaginary canvases. He died seeing beautiful landscapes.

”A pretty dreary sight, too, was the field of the dead, as I called it.

As the bodies were brought in they were laid in long rows, until there was no more room without moving a supply depot. So there was nothing to do but begin to pile them two deep. A service-corps man took off each man's metal identification tag and tossed it into an ammunition box. One box was already full and a second half full. c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k--tags of the rich man's son and the poor man's son, the doctor of philosophy and the illiterate; c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k--a life each time. They'll take the tags to the staff office and tired clerks will find the names that go with the numbers.”

”You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs,” said Peterkin, quoting high authority. ”Some have to be killed.”

”The last I heard from home my wife and one of the children were sick and my employer had gone bankrupt,” broke in the very tired voice rather irrelevantly.

”Yes, my father's last letter was pretty blue about business,” said the banker's son. He was looking at his dirty hands. The odor of clothes unlaundered for weeks, in which the men had slept, tortured his sensitive nostrils. ”A millionaire and filthy as swine in a sty!” he exclaimed. ”Digging like a navvy in order to get admission to the abattoir!”

”Were there any reserves coming our way?” asked the barber's son.

”Yes, ma.s.ses.”

”Perhaps they will relieve us and we'll go into the reserves for a while,” suggested the very tired voice.

”No fear!” growled Pilzer.

”They have called out the old men, the fellows of forty-five to fifty, who were supposed to be out of it for good,” said the judge's son.

”Westerling says they are to guard prisoners and property when we cross the range and start on the march to the Browns' capital. Then all the other men can be on the firing-line and force the war to a mercifully quick end with a minimum loss. I saw numbers of them just arriving at La Tir, footsore and limping.”

”I know. Mine's been indoor work, making paints,” said the very tired voice. ”When you've had long hours in the shop and had to sit up late with sick babies, you aren't fit for marching. And I think I've got lead-poisoning.”

”Whew!” The judge's son put his hand over his nose as a breeze sprang up from the direction of the Brown lines.

”I thought we got them all,” said the barber's son.

”Must have missed one that was buried by a sh.e.l.l and another sh.e.l.l must have dug him up!” muttered Pilzer, glaring at the barber's son. ”It's not nice on people with ladylike nostrils. James, get the _eau de cologne_ and draw his bath for our plutocrat!”

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