This Month's Installment
"Yes," he replied, "you are right: one must not brood over all that; then one does not endure it. We must give even the last and the best, some their body, others their home. The work is our only escape. Come, we must go over; the ambulance can be there right away."Again the telephone rang. Lodge for the Golden Key: Mrs. Lisa Stoltzmann. Of the four wounded announced, only three would come; one had just died upon arrival. A Russian. A captain even, a wonderful guy. He had sat upright on his mattress and stared at them with large, glazed eyes, as if he wanted to devour them even in death. He hadn't said a word when they had spoken to him, only gathered the thick coat tightly to himself with his hand, which - by the way - was very delicate and slender; so had he collapsed. Well, it wouldn't come further into consideration; he was indeed only a Russian.How then did it go otherwise? The time would probably be difficult, but yet also great and uplifting."It is undoubtedly the carriage that the Reckensteiner led," said Hans, as he went over to the hospital with Else, "we must keep Edith at a distance so that she does not find out about it from a hasty man."The wagon drove straight up; the stretchers were lifted out; the lightly wounded---175---went propped up on the arm of the attendants or nurses; Doctor Moll was on hand; the patients were laid in bed; the bandages were inspected and in some cases replaced; everything was proceeding quickly and surely; everyone was already settled in to work."Perhaps you would come to my room for a moment, Miss von Barrnhoff," Hans askt Edith after the most important work had been done."I have the nightwatch to-day.""I would like to speak to you.""My father has fallen."
Grammatical Minutia/Commentary
There's a long sentence near the end of this selection ("The wagon drove straight up...") that contains eight individual clauses (they're separated by commas in the original text, but I standardized these to semi-colons). The long, drawn-out sentence provides a sense of the great amount of activity taking place.
The clause "Doktor Moll war zur Stelle" is literally something like "Doctor Moll was at the place" (or more prosaically "Doctor Moll was there"), but I translated it as "Doctor Moll was on hand" to retain something of the structure of the original.
