Hans Castorp thrust out his head among ten others, filling the little open windowframe. He waved. And Herr Settembrini waved back, with his right hand, while with the ring-finger of his left he delicately touched the corner of his eye.
What is it? Where are we? Whither has the dream snatched us? Twilight, rain, filth. Fiery glow of the overcast sky, ceaseless booming of heavy thunder; the moist air rent by a sharp singing whine, a raging, swelling howl as of some hound of hell, that ends its course in a splitting, a splintering and sprinkling, a crackling, a coruscation; by groans and shrieks, by trumpets blowing fit to burst, by the beat of a drum coming faster, faster—There is a wood, discharging drab hordes, that come on, fall, spring up again, come on.—Beyond, a line of hill stands out against the fiery sky, whose glow turns now and again to blowing flames. About us is rolling plough-land, all upheaved and trodden into mud; athwart it a bemired high road, disguised with broken branches and from it again a deeply furrowed, boggy field-path leading off in curves toward the distant hills. Nude, branchless trunks of trees meet the eye, a cold rain falls. Ah, a signpost! Useless, though, to question it, even despite the half-dark, for it is shattered, illegible. East, west? It is the flat-land, it is the war. And we are shrinking shadows by the wayside, shamed by the security of our shadowdom, and noways minded to indulge in any rodomontade; merely led hither by the spirit of our narrative, merely to see again, among those running, stumbling, drum-mustered grey comrades that swarm out of yonder wood, one we know; merely to look once more in the simple face of our onetime fellow of so many years, the genial sinner whose voice we know so well, before we lose him from our sight.
They have been brought forward, these comrades, for a final thrust in a fight that has already lasted all day long, whose objective is the retaking of the hill position and the burning villages beyond, lost two days since to the enemy. It is a volunteer regiment, fresh young blood and mostly students, not long in the field. They were roused in the night, brought up in trains to morning, then marched in the rain on wretched roads—on no roads at all, for the roads were blocked, and they went over moor and ploughed land with full kit for seven hours, their coats sodden. It was no pleasure excursion. If one did not care to lose one’s boots, one stooped at every second step, clutched with one’s fingers into the straps and pulled them out of the quaking mire. It took an hour of such work to cover one meadow. But at last they have reached the appointed spot, exhausted, on edge, yet the reserve strength of their youthful bodies has kept them tense, they crave neither the sleep nor the food they have been denied. Their wet, mud-bespattered faces, framed between strap and grey-covered helmet, are flushed with exertion—perhaps too with the sight of the losses they suffered on their march through that boggy wood. For the enemy, aware of their advance, have concentrated a barrage of shrapnel and large-calibre grenades upon the way they must come; it crashed among them in the wood, and howling, flaming, splashing, lashed the wide ploughed land.
They must get through, these three thousand ardent youths; they must reinforce with their bayonets the attack on the burning villages, and the trenches in front of and behind the line of hills; they must help to advance their line to a point indicated in the dispatch their leader has in his pocket. They are three thousand, that they may be two thousand when the hills, the villages are reached; that is the meaning of their number. They are a body of troops calculated as sufficient, even after great losses, to attack and carry a position and greet their triumph with a thousand-voiced huzza—not counting the stragglers that fall out by the way. Many a one has thus fallen out on the forced march, for which he proved too young and weak; paler he grew, staggered, set his teeth, drove himself on—and after all he could do fell out notwithstanding. Awhile he dragged himself in the rear of the marching column, overtaken and passed by company after company; at length he remained on the ground, lying where it was not good to lie. Then came the shattering wood. But there are so many of them, swarming on—they can survive a bloodletting and still come on in hosts. They have already overflowed the level, rain-lashed land; the high road, the field road, the boggy ploughed land; we shadows stand amid and among them. At the edge of the wood they fix their bayonets, with the practised grips; the horns enforce them, the drums roll deepest bass, and forward they stumble, as best they can, with shrill cries; nightmarishly, for clods of earth cling to their heavy boots and fetter them.
They fling themselves down before the projectiles that come howling on, then they leap up again and hurry forward; they exult, in their young, breaking voices as they run, to discover themselves still unhit. Or they are hit, they fall, fighting the air with their arms, shot through the forehead, the heart, the
