Free Innocent Soldier (9780545355698) by Josef Holub Page B

the edges of Russia’s main thoroughfares. At least half the troops are squatting down by the side of the road at any given time.
    But my lieutenant’s even worse off than that. He’s so feeble he can’t even squat down properly. Is there any way I can help him? If he’s so full of poison? I feel sad and apprehensive. I watch fearfully as, slowly but surely, my master is leaving this life. It would really be such a pity for him.
    I am baffled. What should I do? Probably, all my lieutenant needs is bread and meat and clean water. It’s the filth he has to eat and drink that is destroying him. I don’t think there’s anything else wrong with him. If he doesn’t get anything decent to eat soon, his belly will sour on him, and he’ll end up too feeble to drag himself behind a bush to die.
    He needs help, fast. Before it’s too late. I turn over all sorts of possibilities in my head and can’t come up with anything. Stealing? Yes, even stealing. But where can I steal anything from? If only I knew where to find some food. There must be tens of thousands looking for the same for themselves. That’s why the tracks of the
Grand Armée are
barren, nothing but desert. The salvation of my lieutenant is perfectly straightforward. I can clearly envisionit. Just a decent portion of dinner. A few big chunks of
meat,
or a doorstop of bread two inches thick, with a quarter of an inch of butter spread on it. Maybe a spoonful of honey to top it off. Served with a billycan of milk, warm from the cow. Followed by a shot of hundred-and-twenty-proof slivovitz to scratch out his belly. All of it good and fresh, and without any mold or red worms. That’s all it would take. Feed him like that, and my lieutenant would get better in two shakes. The poor boy. He’s in real trouble. I really feel sorry for him. He’s so completely helpless, and he stinks to high heaven. It takes all my strength to heave him up into the saddle.
    Something needs to happen, and quick. Otherwise I won’t have my lieutenant anymore.
    There is a surgeon with the regiment. He’s under special orders to reattach parts of soldiers or to cut off other parts if he can’t fix them up.
    I consider: If the surgeon can stitch up and snip off arms and legs, then he probably can take care of the young lieutenant’s illness as well. I’m sure he has made a thorough study of people’s insides and will know how to quell a mutinous belly.
    I ride up to the head of the regiment without too much ceremony, and against all protocol ask the colonel’s adjutant for help for my lieutenant. After all, it’s a life-or-death situation. The adjutant listens to me and summonsthe regimental surgeon. Who is an elderly, plodding gentleman, but pretty well preserved and healthy looking. I expect he gets given enough to eat. He comes back with me and looks at the lieutenant for a little while. “A count, is he?” he asks. No other questions. That’s all he does. Other than making a face. I start to get a tickling feeling in my head. The man just makes a face and then spouts all sorts of silly nonsense. It is impossible to overlook the fact that the lieutenant is halfway to soldiers’ heaven, says the surgeon, quite unmoved, and that he doesn’t smell very aristocratic, but really more like a corpse. He, the regimental surgeon, is unable to do much for him, because half the army is suffering in the same way from diarrhea, or a bad case of the runs, as it’s also known.
    “And so?” I venture to ask him hopefully. “Then the lieutenant doesn’t need anything beyond a square meal and clean water. Then he’ll be fit as a fiddle again.”
    “I’m afraid that’s right,” says the regimental surgeon. “I have nothing to eat myself. No one has anything to eat. There’s nothing to be done about that at the moment. Either the count will survive this spell of weakness, or not. Of course, it would be a pity to lose the young man. But then again, we are at war, and war always comes