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Updated: June 28, 2025
Mowbray had always pitied the infantry, and watched them now with unspeakable awe and depression moving up the slopes, lost in their white necklaces of skirmish-fire, sprayed upon with steel vomit from the Austrian machines. Samarc's battery was idle. It was often so, Boylan reported, when the enemy's duplicate pieces were busy. Now withering those gray Russian lines.
All this madness of men would pass, as the rising powder-reek would pass from these Galician hills, and leave them their silence and their natural fragrance. The wagons had gone on. Samarc's battery might have been rubbed out for all their ability to find it. All faces strange gunners, range- finders, and the cartridge hands.
Kohlvihr and Dabnitz stood there, the old man repeating: "Get the name of the hospital man." Dabnitz plucked the sleeve of Samarc's coat. "Hospital steward, I have that," he said a second time, "but what's the name and the division?" "He can't speak," said Peter. "I'll get his name later. He's been wounded in the mouth."
If we are put to sleep that's all right I mean knocked out, you know. But so long as we are not, we've got to watch and root for the dawn. God, man, there is much to do. We've got to make our lives count " He was bending forward talking very low. He thought from the pressure of Samarc's hands that he was gaining ground. It was queer and laughable to himself this line of talk that came to him.
"I have ceased to kill," he said. The head was twice as big with bandages; yet under that effigy, so terrible was the intensity of the moment, Peter became conscious of ruin there, also of a sudden icy cold in the morning air. Samarc's powerful hand still clutched his. The voice that had emerged from under the cloths was still in his ears.
All that I can do be very sure of." She went to Samarc's cot and took his hand. Peter saw her face differently, as she leaned. It was one of the mysteries that her tenderness was the face of one woman, her sorrow another. "Good-by good-night." .... A little later Peter found himself with Samarc's hand in his.
The huge face of Boylan close by mutely implored him to be silent. "Samarc," he called. Samarc did not turn. Now Peter saw the red face of Kohlvihr in its gray fringe suddenly lifted and enlarged. The effigy was close to it, but not higher, and hands were tightening beneath it Samarc's strong unhurt hands. There had been one snarling scream. It was followed by a shot from Dabnitz.
Samarc's hand came up to him, and the pull that meant he wanted to speak. Peter invariably paled before this ordeal. Not through words but sounds were the meanings tortured out.... Samarc meant to take the field. In the usual course there would be no coming back for him at nightfall, because he had "ceased to kill " "But must your officers know?" Peter whispered.
Spenski had been partly kneeling, but as Samarc approached, his head bowed slowly down, and the smile was gone. "Come on they'll do it again!" Peter heard the words but did not know who spoke them possibly Boylan from behind, possibly he had said it. He had not seen Samarc's lips move. The voice was an offense in that silence.
He arose and went across to the familiar hospital ward.... Another was in Samarc's place. A hand beckoned. It was from the cot of the soldier for whom he had struggled with the young doctor. He went to it. There was a message: "They were talking of you as an enemy " That was all. Peter did not care for particulars. His volition was quickened. He had been sadly in need of that.
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