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Updated: June 25, 2025
Twice during the first fortnight, Boylan had asked if this were positively his first venture into the field with troops. "The reason I ask," he explained later, "is that you appear to have been on the job before." This would have been a matter interesting to the Old Man of The States, according to Lonegan's story. "I miss the little guy," said Boylan, referring to Spenski.
It was not only Spenski, but the havoc under the cloths.... A young assistant surgeon at a near cot was rather too hastily laying bare the lint from a severe shoulder wound. Exchange with Samarc had of course stopped. Peter, thinking deeply, watched with but half attention until the assistant surgeon briskly rebound the wound, and began tugging at the soldier to get on his feet.
Spenski swung the end of the log out to the grass for them to make good their retiring. It was all very sane and admirable. Peter respected them.... The dead were with them. They had not learned to forget. Spenski would whimper in his sleep. The days did not fill him, wearied his body but other faculties and potencies were restless at night.
Spenski would start, open his eyes and say, "Thanks, Samarc." Continual rocking through the long days, and the rumbling of the earth from the artillery forward. A mountain country of sharply cool nights, of cool bright days the scent of cedar and balsam, good water, steady skirmishing food just a bit scarce so that the peasants snapped and bolted, showing sharp about the eyes.
The silence was like a deep excavation, and the smell of fresh ground was in the air. Peter did not see Boylan. He arose, half crawled up the torn ground to the place where Spenski and Samarc had stood. They were some distance a saving distance for Mowbray when he saw Samarc arise, his face sheeted in red. Samarc was staring about for Spenski.
You might be with Spenski an hour or a week and never know that he was more than just a mechanic if you were just a mechanic." "It's very interesting," said Peter, as charmed with his companion as with the man he talked about. "A little while ago Spenski found his girl, and I would have withdrawn for that is the high test," Samarc resumed.
I tell you I am proud." "Of what, Peter?" "That I had sense enough to go a second time to the Square at Warsaw." "I'm glad, too.... If we were only in the winter stillness " They were silent. Samarc's hand came up to Peter, and drew him close. It was clear that he could not bear the woman to hear his struggle for speech. "Tell her about Spenski," came to Peter's ears in the lipless mouthing.
Peter recalled the saying of old sailors that you never know a skipper until you ship under him. Moments of evening, in the sharp hazes of wood smoke, when the whole army seemed nestling into itself, laughing, covering its nostalgia, putting on its strength, Peter met in certain moments the advisability of turning his back upon Boylan and Spenski and Samarc.
He talked to himself, appeared lost in absorption, reminded one continually of Spenski when his face was averted and was just one of the miles of infantry. Their faces looked cold now; a part of the gray tone so often observed. The officers fought to stretch them out. Every line of fear that the human mouth can express Peter saw. Now the drum of the Austrian pieces.
Peter's ward was low- lit and still. ...The wounded man's hands waved before his bandage, as if to detract attention from the windy blur of his utterance. Samarc wanted to die. "You know it was because of me that he came " he repeated. "But you mustn't suffer for that. Really, Samarc, a man couldn't have been a better friend than you. Spenski would tell you so if he could.
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