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Updated: August 18, 2024
He cursed and roared out his hatred into the deaf tumult; and then he sprang up when, far below, almost in the valley already, his men emerged followed by Lieutenant Weixler, who ran behind them like a butcher's helper driving oxen to the shambles.
Marschner wanted to jump up and find out what had happened to Weixler he wanted to
Lieutenant Weixler presented himself in strictest military form and announced the loss of fourteen men. Marschner heard the ring of pride in his voice, like triumph over what had been achieved, like the rejoicing of a boy bragging of the first down on his lip and deepening the newly acquired dignity of a bass voice.
Let them shoot him, if they wanted to, or hang him like a common felon. He would show them that he knew how to die. He walked out into the trench firmly, and ordered a soldier to summon Lieutenant Weixler. Now it was so clear within him and so calm. He heard the hellish shooting that the Italians were again directing at the trench and went forward slowly like a man out promenading.
In a single day he could not change into a fire-eater and go merrily upon the man-hunt. What an utterly mad idea it was, too, to try to cast all people into the same mould! No one dreamed of making a soft-hearted philanthropist of Weixler; and he was supposed so lightly to turn straight into a blood-thirsty militarist.
The lieutenant looked at him in astonishment, placed his hands against the seams of his trousers and replied with perfect formality: "I did, sir." Marschner's voice failed him again for a moment. His teeth chattered. His whole body trembled as he stammered: "Aren't you ashamed of yourself? A soldier doesn't fire at helpless, wounded men. Remember that!" Weixler went white.
For a moment Captain Marschner stood speechless. He opened his lips, but no sound came from his throat. At last his tongue obeyed him and he yelled, with a mad choking fury in his voice: "Lieutenant Weixler!" "Yes, sir," came back unconcernedly. Captain Marschner ran toward the lieutenant with clenched fists and scarlet face. "Did you fire?" he panted, breathless.
He wanted to go into his own place now and be alone and somehow relieve himself of the despair that held him in its grip. "Hello!" Lieutenant Weixler cried unexpectedly through the silence, and bounded over to the left where the machine guns stood. The captain turned back again, mounted the ladder, and gazed out into the foreground of the field.
He was no longer twenty, like Weixler, and these sad, silent men who had been so cruelly uprooted from their lives were each of them far more to him than a mere rifle to be sent to the repair shop if broken, or to be indifferently discarded if smashed beyond repair.
The war had been going on for eleven months and a half, and Lieutenant Weixler had not yet seen an enemy. At the very outset, when only a few miles across the Russian frontier, typhus had caught him before he had fired a single shot. Now at last he was going to face the enemy!
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