An Episode of War
by Stephen Crane
The lieutenant's rubber blanket
lay on the ground, and upon it he had
poured the company's supply of coffee. Corporals and other
representatives of the grimy and hot-throated men who lined the
breastwork had come for each squad's portion.
The lieutenant was frowning and
serious at this task of division. His
lips pursed as he drew with his sword various crevices in the heap until brown
squares of coffee, astoundingly equal in size, appeared on the blanket. He was
on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics, and the corporals were thronging
forward, each to reap a little square, when suddenly the lieutenant cried out
and looked quickly at a man near him as if he suspected it was a case of
personal assault. The others cried out also when they saw blood upon the
lieutenant's sleeve.
He had winced like a man stung,
swayed dangerously, and then
straightened. The sound of his hoarse breathing was plainly audible. He looked
sadly, mystically, over the breastwork at the green face of a
wood, where now were many little puffs of white smoke. During this
moment the men about him gazed statue-like and silent, astonished and awed by
this catastrophe which happened when catastrophes were not expected--when they
had leisure to observe it.
As the lieutenant stared at the
wood, they too swung their heads, so
that for another instant all hands, still silent, contemplated the
distant forest as if their minds were fixed upon the mystery of a
bullet's journey.
The officer had, of course, been
compelled to take his sword into his
left hand. He did not hold it by the hilt. He gripped it at the middle
of the blade, awkwardly. Turning his eyes from the hostile wood, he
looked at the sword as he held it there, and seemed puzzled as to what
to do with it, where to put it. In short, this weapon had of a sudden
become a strange thing to him. He looked at it in a kind of
stupefaction, as if he had been endowed with a trident, a sceptre, or a
spade.
Finally he tried to sheath it.
To sheath a sword held by the left hand,
at the middle of the blade, in a scabbard hung at the left hip, is a
feat worthy of a sawdust ring. This wounded officer engaged in a
desperate struggle with the sword and the wobbling scabbard, and during the time
of it he breathed like a wrestler.
But at this instant the men, the
spectators, awoke from their stone-like
poses and crowded forward sympathetically. The orderly-sergeant took the sword
and tenderly placed it in the scabbard. At the time, he leaned nervously
backward, and did not allow even his finger to brush the body of the lieutenant.
A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it.
Well men shy from this new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man's
hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all
existence--the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a
feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds radiance upon a
bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little.
His comrades look at him with large eyes thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear
vaguely that the weight of a finger upon him might send him headlong,
precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at once into the dim, grey unknown. And so the
orderly-sergeant, while sheathing the sword, leaned nervously backward.
There were others who proffered
assistance. One timidly presented his knows he is the victim of a terrible
disease and understands his helplessness. He again stared over the breastwork at
the forest, and then turning went slowly rearward. He held his right wrist
tenderly in his left hand as if the wounded arm was made of very brittle glass.
And the men in silence stared at
the wood, then at the departing
lieutenant--then at the wood, then at the lieutenant.
As the wounded officer passed
from the line of battle, he was enabled to see many things which as a
participant in the fight were unknown to him. He saw a general on a black horse
gazing over the lines of blue infantry at the green woods which veiled his
problems. An aide galloped furiously, dragged his horse suddenly to a halt,
saluted, and presented a paper. It was, for a wonder, precisely like an
historical painting.
To the rear of the general and
his staff a group, composed of a bugler,
two or three orderlies, and the bearer of the corps standard, all upon
maniacal horses, were working like slaves to hold their ground,
preserve, their respectful interval, while the shells boomed in the air
about them, and caused their chargers to make furious quivering leaps.
A battery, a tumultuous and
shining mass, was swirling toward the right. The wild thud of hoofs, the cries
of the riders shouting blame and praise, menace and encouragement, and, last the
roar of the wheels, the slant of the glistening guns, brought the lieutenant to
an intent pause. The battery swept in curves that stirred the heart; it made
halts as dramatic as the crash of a wave on the rocks, and when it fled onward,
this aggregation of wheels, levers, motors, had a beautiful unity, as if it were
a missile. The sound of it was a war-chorus that reached into the depths of
man's emotion.
The lieutenant, still holding
his arm as if it were of glass, stood
watching this battery until all detail of it was lost, save the figures
of the riders, which rose and fell and waved lashes over the black mass.
Later, he turned his eyes toward
the battle where the shooting sometimes crackled like bush-fires, sometimes
sputtered with exasperating irregularity, and sometimes reverberated like the
thunder. He saw the smoke rolling upward and saw crowds of men who ran and
cheered, or stood and blazed away at the inscrutable distance.
He came upon some stragglers,
and they told him how to find the field
hospital. They described its exact location. In fact, these men, no
longer having part in the battle, knew more of it than others. They told the
performance of every corps, every division, the opinion of every general. The
lieutenant, carrying his wounded arm rearward, looked upon them with wonder.
At the roadside a brigade was
making coffee and buzzing with talk like a girls' boarding-school. Several
officers came out to him and inquired concerning things of which he knew
nothing. One, seeing his arm, began to scold. "Why, man, that's no way to do.
You want to fix that thing."
He appropriated the lieutenant and the lieutenant's wound. He cut the
sleeve and laid bare the arm, every nerve of which softly fluttered
under his touch. He bound his handkerchief over the wound, scolding away in the
meantime. His tone allowed one to think that he was in the habit of being
wounded every day. The lieutenant hung his head, feeling, in this presence, that
he did not know how to be correctly wounded.
The low white tents of the
hospital were grouped around an old school- house. There was here a singular
commotion. In the foreground two ambulances interlocked wheels in the deep mud.
The drivers were tossing the blame of it back and forth, gesticulating and
berating, while from the ambulances, both crammed with wounded, there came an
occasional groan. An interminable crowd of bandaged men were coming and going.
Great numbers sat under the trees nursing heads or arms or legs. There was a
dispute of some kind raging on the steps of the school-house. Sitting with his
back against a tree a man with a face as grey as a new army blanket was serenely
smoking a corn-cob pipe. The lieutenant wished to rush forward and inform him
that he was dying.
A busy surgeon was passing near
the lieutenant. "Good-morning," he said, with a friendly smile. Then he caught
sight of the lieutenant's arm and his face at once changed. "Well, let's have a
look at it." He seemed possessed suddenly of a great contempt for the
lieutenant. This wound evidently placed the latter on a very low social plane.
The doctor cried out impatiently, "What mutton-head had tied it up that way
anyhow?" The lieutenant answered, "Oh, a man."
When the wound was disclosed the
doctor fingered it disdainfully.
"Humph," he said. "You come along with me and I'll 'tend to you." His voice
contained the same scorn as if he were saying, "You will have to go to jail."
The lieutenant had been very
meek, but now his face flushed, and he
looked into the doctor's eyes. "I guess I won't have it amputated," he
said.
"Nonsense, man! Nonsense!
Nonsense!" cried the doctor. "Come along, now. "Let go of me," said the
lieutenant, holding back wrathfully, his glance fixed upon the door of the old
school-house, as sinister to him as the portals of death.
And this is the story of how the
lieutenant lost his arm. When he
reached home, his sisters, his mother, his wife sobbed for a long time
at the sight of the flat sleeve. "Oh, well," he said, standing
shamefaced amid these tears, "I don't suppose it matters so much as all that."