This Month's Installment
What's italicized is what I'm unsure about.
In the wider course, the area is flat; at last greater mountain and hill formations thrust up again, in which bluish-black mists stretch themselves; in between, the wide valley stretches to all sides: endless fields, farm land, meadows up to the dark garland of the forests that line the horizon without interruption; then villages with high church steeples and large estates - the real East Prussian countryside with its earthy-smelling fruitfulness. But now filled by the stench of the war, crushed by the brazen step of the battle, which creeps up.It is the highest time; the refugees are safe,---159---the citizens of Malkaynen have followed them and have rudden away with the incalculably great train, hitched with two engines. Every compartment is filled up to the last place, even up to the ceiling; in the luggage racks lay screaming children.Only a few tolerated the deserted train station: the commander; his aide-de-camp, who in civilian circumstances is a head forester in the Reckenstein area, whom the old man had known well for years; the stoker; and in addition, a few courageous men on whom one can rely.And only one locomotive has stayed for him in case of the last resort. For among the military hospital wagons and railway carriages, which he held back for wounded, stand two with provisions on the platform. The commander had ordered them to hold as long as possible. Perhaps they can serve the fighting troops when they, exhausted, come out of the battle. Only they may not fall into the hand of the enemy; the Reckenstein citizen knows this and will act accordingly.He stands on the platform and keeps a lookout in a moment of calm. Not far from the station, the staff has its garrison; he believes he is able to recognize it with the sharp binoculars. Otherwise, there is little to see; only now and then the landscape livens up through the rising smoke of a burning farm, and behind, near the river that cuts through the plain, a few dark, hardly perceptible lines more slowly here and there.
Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary
The same word ("unsehbar") is used to describe first the "fields, farmland, [and] meadows" of East Prussia and then the "great train" that's taking the citizens away from the war. Because it's the same word in different contexts, I think it's meant to draw a contrast between them. I didn't include this in my translation, though. "Unsehbar" is an adjective in the first instance but an adverb in the second, and so I translated these phrases as "endless fields, farmland, [and] meadows" and "the incalculably great train."
