This Month's Installment
One minute later, the locomotive goes slowly, carefully over the uninjured stretch of track. "Halt!" calls the assistant, who rides on the machine with the stoker, to him. He stops; the assistant gets out; for a moment, he stands motionless, lost in thought."It is really he... our commander!" he says then to the stoker, "it was the grenade that we just saw explode.""We are taking him with," he replies, "maybe something can still be done. But quickly, there is no time to lose."Now he also climbs down; both grab his still warm body with their strong arms, lift him up gently, lay him on the machine, as well as it goes. Then down to the carriage.The coupling has happened lightning fast; the train moves away slowly, heavily through raining bullets and howling grenades with its wounded soldiers and its fallen commander, up the elevation over which, just permeating a cloud veil, the bloody moon rises.---171---Dear Hans! I am using the opportunity of a car that is going through here to send a heartfelt greeting to you and Else. Do not be surprised at the scribbled handwriting; I am a little wounded in the arm and must lie in bed for a few days. That is unacceptable, insofar as it keeps me away from the battleground on which every man, otherwise insignificant, is now indispensable.But the Reckensteiner has fallen. The splinter of an exploding grenade killed him near the battle-shrouded Malkaynen train station, whose commander he was, as you probably know. A beautiful death! The rescue and recovery of a great number of wounded was his work; he died faithfully keeping watch over their endangered carriage. He is therefore not to be lamented. But Edith loses much with him; father and daughter had, especially after the mother's going away, tenderly stuck close to each other. Now she really has no one more and was always concerned about the old man. I hoped to find her here in Pronitten, where I have been brought to a quick recovery.
Grammatical Minutiae/Commentary
I translated "dem Hingehen der Mutter" as just "the mother's going away," but it might also be a somewhat euphemistic expression regarding her death.
This is the end of chapter thirty-two and the beginning of chapter thirty-three.
