Month 85: Pages 136-138

This Month's Installment

As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about.

    "Happy and optimistic, as I see."

    "Happy and optimistic!" he repeated.  "The belief in victory is victory.  And we all have that!"

    "And no fear at all - not even a little bit?"

    "Fear? The word isn't in the dictionary of a Prussian soldier."  But as if he had concern to appear glorious:  "Admittedly, how it will feel later out there, when the bullets are whistling around one and the grenades are bursting, one can't know that yet to-day.  One just has to wait for that.  But fear it will definitely not be!  Of that I am certain...  It is so simple:  Triumph or die!  It couldn't

---136---

be anything else at all.  And is death really to be feared?  We all have to go some time!"

    Again he paused a moment and then continued, becoming more serious:  "A few years ago, I was occupied with a beautiful job:  I had the assignment to write the history of my regiment.  It was no easy task, at first I had imagined it would not be so difficult.  But the further I progressed the more I felt that it brought the greatest benefit to me.  I got to know the heroes who one served this regiment, who had given blood and life for its flag.  To learn from history and from the lives of great men is probably the only school that brings us fruit.  To his book I have added a foreword, I have done it out of deepest conviction, and since then it has become more central to me, no longer a byword of my book but rather of my life."

    "And this word? she askt with a quiet hesitation.

    "And old song:

No lovelier death in this world

Than he who is killed by the enemy,

On green heath in a free field,

Needs not to hear great wailing."

    They were walking very slowly.  A hot shimmering was in the air, the trees stood motionless, not a leaf stirred.

    "A beautiful saying," she said after a long pause.  "But there is also something in it that depresses.  What then can we do here inside?"

    "Work in the silence and heal wounds!"

---137---

    "We want that.  But of course, it is only very little, shamefully little compared to what you do out there."

    "In this time, probably no one keeps track of who gives more and who receives more.  Love is love, whether it is able to do much or little.  If it only gives what it can!"  And now in a visible effort to lend a higher tone to the conversation:  "You were always practiced in Samaritan duties."

    "You have kidded me about it often enough.  But not completely rightly, as I hope.  Our schoolhouse over there has already been made into a military hospital, also the upper floor of the parsonage has been set up for taking in the wounded, you must see it yourself later."