As everybody we see there is dead we do not waste any more time, but report the affair at the next stretcher-bearers' post.
After all it is not our business to take these stretcher-bearers' jobs away from them.
A patrol has to be sent out to discover just how strongly the enemy position is manned.
Since my leave I feel a certain strange attachment to the other fellows, and so I volunteer to go with them.
We agree on a plan, slip out through the wire and then divide and creep forward separately.
After a while I find a shallow shell-hole and crawl into it.
From here I peer forward.
There is moderate machine-gun fire.
It sweeps across from all directions, not very heavy, but always sufficient to make one keep down.
A parachute star-shell opens out.
The ground lies stark in the pale light, and then the darkness shuts down again blacker than ever.
In the trenches we were told there were black troops in front of us.
That is nasty, it is hard to see them; they are very good at patrolling, too.
And oddly enough they are often quite stupid; for instance, both Kat and Kropp were once able to shoot down a black enemy patrol because the fellows in their enthusiasm for cigarettes smoked while they were creeping about.
Kat and Albert had simply to aim at the glowing ends of the cigarettes.
A bomb or something lands close beside me.
I have not heard it coming and am terrified.
At the same moment a senseless fear takes hold of me.
Here I am alone and almost helpless in the dark— perhaps two other eyes have been watching me for a long while from another shell-hole in front of me, and a bomb lies ready to blow me to pieces.
I try to pull myself together.
It is not my first patrol and not a particularly risky one.
But it is the first since my leave, and besides, the lie of the land is still rather strange to me.
I tell myself that my alarm is absurd, that there is probably nothing at all there in the darkness watching me, otherwise they would not be firing so low.
It is in vain.
In whirling confusion my thoughts hum in my brain—I hear the warning voice of my mother, I see the Russians with the flowing beards leaning against the wire fence, I have a bright picture of a canteen with stools, of a cinema in Valenciennes; tormented, terrified, in my imagination I see the grey, implacable muzzle of a rifle which moves noiselessly before me whichever way I try to turn my head.
The sweat breaks out from every pore.
I still continue to lie in the shallow bowl.
I look at the time; only a few minutes have passed.
My forehead is wet, the sockets of my eyes are damp, my hands tremble, and I am panting softly.
It is nothing but an awful spasm of fear, a simple animal fear of poking out my head and crawling on farther.
All my efforts subside like froth into the one desire to be able just to stay lying there.
My limbs are glued to the earth. I make a vain attempt;— they refuse to come away.
I press myself down on the earth, I cannot go forward, I make up my mind to stay lying there.
But immediately the wave floods over me anew, a mingled sense of shame, of remorse, and yet at the same time of security.
I raise myself up a little to take a look round.
My eyes burn with staring into the dark.
A star-shell goes up;—I duck down again.
I wage a wild and senseless fight, I want to get out of the hollow and yet slide back into it again; I say
"You must, it is your comrades, it is not an idiotic command," and again:
"What does it matter to me, I have only one life to lose–––"
That is the result of all this leave, I plead in extenuation.
But I cannot reassure myself; I become terribly faint. I raise myself slowly and reach forward with my arms, dragging my body after me and then lie on the edge of the shell-hole, half in and half out.
There I hear sounds and drop back.
Suspicious sounds can be detected clearly despite the noise of the artillery-fire.
I listen; the sound is behind me.
They are our people moving along the trench.
Now I hear muffled voices.
To judge by the tone that might be Kat talking.
At once a new warmth flows through me.
These voices, these quiet words, these footsteps in the trench behind me recall me at a bound from the terrible loneliness and fear of death by which I had been almost destroyed.