Part 24 (2/2)

The captain smiled, much gratified, and modestly answered, ”A bit of good luck, sir!”

But the colonel continued, more seriously: ”Well, partly luck, perhaps.

Just one thing more, my dear Wegstetten. That gun-layer who made the lucky shot--has he been ill? He looked pretty bad to me--like a perfect death's-head.”

Wegstetten gave as many particulars about the man as he himself knew, and Reimers added some information, Landsberg meanwhile standing by in silence.

”It is really you, Lieutenant Landsberg, who ought to be telling me all this,” said Falkenhein with some warmth. ”You trained the recruits, and therefore ought to know all about them.” Then, turning to Wegstetten: ”If the man is as capable as I hear,” he continued, ”you might manage to make things a bit easier for him.”

”Yes, sir,” the captain hastened to reply. ”I had been thinking of employing him in the autumn as a.s.sistant clerk.”

This was not true. To think of such details so long beforehand was impossible, even for the commander of the most efficient battery in the whole army-corps. But it served its purpose. Falkenhein nodded pleasantly: ”Quite right, my dear Wegstetten. You have hit the bull's-eye again! You see one can never deal with men all in a lump; you must take them separately. Some best serve the king with their st.u.r.dy arms and legs, but your gun-layer with his eyes and pen.” He then raised his hand to his helmet, and the two men parted.

As they all repaired to their respective quarters they had very different thoughts in their minds. Reimers was full of admiration: ”What a man is that,” thought he, ”who, with all his heavy duties, yet occupies himself with the insignificant destiny of a poor devil of a gunner!”

Wegstetten's face wore a rather self-satisfied smile. ”One must speak up for oneself, and not hide one's light under a bushel! Better say too much than too little. In doing one's superior officer a small service, one may be doing the greatest of all to oneself.”

Landsberg said to himself, with a sneer: ”The man prates about that whipper-snapper of a gunner nearly as much as about my splendid firing.

And so that's the celebrated Colonel von Falkenhein!”

Next day almost all the men would have liked to go on with the sh.e.l.l-firing; but the subsequent cleaning of the guns was not at all to their taste. The smokeless powder left in the bore of the gun a horrid, sticky slime that must not be allowed to remain there. This meant sousing with clean water again and again, was.h.i.+ng out with soft soap, and then going on pumping and working with the mop until the water came out again as clean as it had gone in.

”Now, boys,” Sergeant Wiegandt used to say, ”if you don't feel inclined to drink the water as it comes out of the gun, then that means it isn't clean enough yet. So go ahead!”

And then the drying afterwards! They had to wrap rags and cloths round the mop until it was so thick that it would scarcely go through the muzzle of the gun. If this were not done the inside edges and corners remained wet; and one spot of rust on the bright metal--well! that would be almost as bad as murder! So they had to push and to twist, to pull and to drag, till the perspiration streamed from their foreheads.

Finally the barrel was thinly oiled; and the next day the firing took place once more, and then there was the drudgery of the cleaning all over again.

Yet the men endured these exertions far better than the garrison life.

This was partly owing to the variety of the work; but, above all, the greatest torment of a soldier's life had been left behind,--that monotonous drilling under which all groaned, and the object of which no one could ever pretend to understand. Even the dullest--to say nothing of Vogt with his simple, sound common-sense--could see that the gun-practice here in the practice-camp was the most important part of the whole training. What the men had already learnt was now found out practically. But where did the parade-marching and all the other display drill come in?

Here was Klitzing, who in the garrison had been looked on as the most feeble soldier of the lot, now all at once distinguis.h.i.+ng himself! Vogt shook his head as he thought it over.

He often felt glad that at any rate he was an artilleryman, for others had a much worse time of it. A few days earlier an infantry regiment had moved into the neighbouring barracks; and looking through the palings of their parade-ground they could see the battalions exercising.

There was a yellow, dried-up looking major who was never, never satisfied. He would keep his battalion at it in the sun till past noon; and then after a short pause for refreshment the same cruel business would begin all over again. The devil! How could a couple of hundred men be as symmetrical as a machine?

The artillery-drivers had climbed on to the fence. They were polis.h.i.+ng their curbs and chains, and laughed at the spectacle before them. But to Vogt it did not seem amusing. What was the use of making those two hundred men do such childish things there on the parade-ground? Would they ever march into battle like that? He thought of how those dummies had all been riddled by the bullets when a single shrapnel burst in front of them. Why, it would be sheer madness! They would have to crawl, to run, to jump--then to crawl again! That wasn't what they were doing when every morning on the parade-ground one heard a continual tack--tack--tack--tack, as if a thousand telegraph clerks were hard at work. What was the good of all this senseless show, which only aggravated the men?

Their comrades of the infantry looked very far from cheerful, and darted glances full of suppressed hatred at the yellow-faced major. And when, dead-tired, they had finished the drill, and were putting away their guns in the corner, they would curse the very uniform they wore as if it had been a strait-waistcoat.

Certainly it was not necessary to agree in everything with a social-democrat like Weise; but there was no doubt what-ever that he was perfectly right about some things. In the evenings, when the non-commissioned officers were sitting in the canteen, the men took their stools out on the open veranda that looked over the forest; and then Weise would begin to hold forth, his comrades, either smoking or cleaning their clothes and accoutrements, grouped round him listening to his orations. When some of the men, fresh from the country, complained of the hard work there, the endless long hours, and the small pay, he laughed outright.

”Why do you allow your landed-proprietors to treat you so?” he scoffed.

”Why are you so stupid? Of course if you won't utter a word of protest you don't deserve anything better.”

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