Generals Die in Bed E-Book

Charles Yale Harrison

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Generals Die in Bed is Harrison's famous novel, often called “the great Canadian war novel.” An unnamed young Canadian soldier's account of warfare, both in the trenches and behind the lines, in France during the First World War. The novel is well-known for being most real and graphic in its description of warfare. Generals lie in bed, while soldiers die in the trenches, horrifically, unimaginably, infested with lice and surrounded by rats fattened on corpses. There are no rules in war. And there is certainly no glamour. Instead, the men inhabit a senseless world, trusting only the instinct to stay alive.

Based on his own experiences in the First World War, Charles Yale Harrison writes a stark and poignant story from the point of view of a young man sent to fight on the Western Front. In raw, powerful prose, the insanity of war is shown clearly as Harrison questions the meaning of heroism, of truth, and of good and evil.

The First World War may seem distant and irrelevant to many people today, but it is a timeless and important lesson. Seen through the eyes of the adolescent narrator, the experience of trench warfare takes on renewed vibrancy as readers identify with the plight of the youthful soldiers.

This is an excellent companion book that deserves to be read alongside All Quiet on the Western Front  and  A Farewell to Arms as what the New York Evening Standard called arguably "the best of the war books".

Leseprobe

Generals Die in Bed

by Charles Yale Harrison

First published in 1930

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

[email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Generals Die in Bed

by

Charles Yale Harrison

TO THE BEWILDERED YOUTHS—BRITISH, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN AND GERMAN—WHO WERE KILLED IN THAT WOOD A FEW MILES BEYOND AMIENS ON AUGUST 8TH, 1918, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

I. RECRUITS II. IN THE TRENCHES III. OUT ON REST IV. BACK TO THE ROUND V. ON REST AGAIN VI. BOMBARDMENT VII. BÉTHUNE VIII. LONDON IX. OVER THE TOP X. AN INTERLUDE XI. ARRAS XII. VENGEANCE

Portions of this book have appeared inNew Masses, Morada, Die Welt am Abend (Berlin), Die Neue Bucherschau (Berlin) and other periodicals in America and Europe.

CHAPTER ONE

RECRUITS

It is after midnight on pay-day. Some of the recruits are beginning to dribble into the barracks bunk-room after a night's carousal down the line.

"Down the line" in Montreal is Cadieux Street, St. Elizabeth Street, Lagauchetiere Street, Vitre Street, Craig Street—a square mile of dilapidated, squalid red brick houses with red lights shining through the transoms, flooding the sidewalks with an inviting, warm glow. The houses are known by their numbers, 169 or 72 or 184.

Some of us are lying in our bunks, uncovered, showing our heavy gray woolen underwear—regulation Army issue.

The heavy odor of stale booze and women is in the air. A few jaundiced electric lights burn here and there in the barnlike bunk-room although it is long after "lights out."

In the bunk next to mine lies Anderson, a middle-aged, slightly bald man. He comes from somewhere in the backwoods of northern Ontario and enlisted a few weeks ago. He was a Methodist lay preacher in civilian life. He is reading his Bible. The roistering arrivals annoy him. The conversation is shouted across the bunk-room:

"—— 'three bucks?' I says. 'What the hell! D'yuh know there's a war on? I don't wantta buy yuh,' I says, 'I only want yuh for about twenty minutes.'"

There is a roar of laughter.

"—— 'I'm thirsty,' I says. 'Where's the water?' When she's gone I dips into her pocket-book and sneaks me two bucks."

A skeptical silence greets this.

"—— yeah, that's what you wish had happened."

"Ask Brownie, he heard her bellyachin'—dincha, Brownie?"

A singing, drunken trio burst through the door of the bunk-room and for a moment drowns out the controversy.

A young lad, not more than seventeen, staggers to the center of the room and retches into the slop-can.

Obscene roars from the bunks.

The boy sways.

"Hold it, Billy, hold it."

"Missed it, by God!"

A howl of delight.

The boy staggers back to his bunk. His face is a greenish-yellow under the dim lights.

In the far corner of the dormitory some of the boys begin to sing a war song. They sing with a mock pathos.

I don't want to die, I don't want to die, The bullets they whistle, the cannons they roar, I don't want to go up the line any more. Take me over the sea, where Heinie he can't get at me; Oh, my, I'm too young to die, I want to go home.

Catcalls and hootings greet the end of the song. There is a silence and then the desultory conversation is resumed. The remarks are addressed to no one in particular. They are hurled into the center of the room and he who wills may reply.

"—— hey, lissen, fellers, don't none of you go down to 184 any more; they threw one of our men out to-night."

"Sure, we'll bust her joint up."

I look at Anderson. His forehead is drawn into furrows. He frowns. Little beads of perspiration stand out on his red face. The room is fouled with the odors of dissipation. He waits cautiously for a lull in the conversation. With a spring he jumps into the middle of the room, the seat of the underwear which is too big for him hanging comically in his rear. In an evangelical voice he cries:

"Men, do you know you're sinning in the eyes of the Lord?"

A salvo of oaths greets him.

"Shut up."

"Go to hell."

"Take a jump in the lake."

He is undeterred. He continues:

"Some of you men would put your bodies where I wouldn't put my swagger stick."

"Shut up, sky-pilot."

"It's good for pimples."

He stands on the bare floor facing the torrent of ribaldry. His long red face is set. His voice sounds like an insistent piccolo above the braying of trombones.

"Well, anyway God didn't make your bodies for that."

He goes back to his bed.

The orderly sergeant crashes through the door and faces us menacingly.

The room is quiet.

*****

Our train is to leave Bonaventure Station at eight. At four the officers try to get the men in shape. More than half the battalion is drunk. Pails of black coffee are brought around. Some of the bad ones have buckets of cold water sluiced over them.

It takes an hour to line the men for parade outside the barracks. Men are hauled out of their bunks and strapped into their equipment. They stare vacantly into the faces of those who jostle them.

Outside in the streets we hear the sounds of celebration.

Fireworks are being exploded in our honor.

The drunks are shoved into position.

The officers take their places.

The band strikes up and we march and stagger from the parade square into the street.

Outside a mob cheers and roars.

Women wave their handkerchiefs.

When we come to the corner of St. Catherine and Windsor Streets a salvo of fireworks bursts over the marching column. It letters the night in red, white and blue characters. The pale faces of the swaying men shine under the sputtering lights. Those of us who are sober steady our drunken comrades.

Flowers are tossed into the marching ranks.

Sleek men standing on the broad wide steps of the Windsor Hotel throw packages of cigarettes at us. Drunken, spiked heels crush roses and cigarettes underfoot.

The city has been celebrating the departure of the battalion. All day long the military police had been rounding up our men in saloons, in brothels. We are heroes, and the women are hysterical now that we are leaving. They scream at us:

"Good-by and good luck, boy-y-y-ys."

They break our ranks and kiss the heavily-laden boys. A befurred young woman puts her soft arm around my neck and kisses me. She smells of perfume. After the tense excitement of the day it is delightful. She turns her face to me and laughs. Her eyes are soft. She has been drinking a little. Her fair hair shines from under a black fur toque. I feel lonely. I do not want to go to war. She marches along by my side. The battalion is no longer marching. It straggles, disorganized, down the street leading to the station.

I am only eighteen and I have not had any experiences with women like this. I like this girl's brazenness.

"Kiss me, honey," she commands. I obey. I like all this confusion now. War—heroes—music—the fireworks—this girl's kiss. Nobody notices us. I hang on to her soft furry arm. I cling to it as the station looms at the bottom of the street.

She is the last link between what I am leaving and the war. In a few minutes she will be gone. I am afraid now. I forget all my fine heroic phrases. I do not want to wear these dreadfully heavy boots, nor carry this leaden pack. I want to fling them away and stay with this fair girl who smells faintly of perfume. I grip her arm tightly. I think I could slip away unseen with her. We could run through the crowd, far away somewhere. I remember the taunting song, "Oh, my, I'm too young to die." I am hanging on to her arm.

"Hey, soldier boy, you're hurting my arm."

We are at the station. We are hustled inside. We stagger into the trains. We drop into seats. We wait, for hours, it seems. The train does not move. The singing and cheering outside dies down. In a little while the station is deserted. Only a few lonely baggage men and porters move here and there. At last the train slowly begins to move....

The boys lie like sacks of potatoes in the red plush-covered seats. Some of us are green under the gills. White-faced, we reel to the toilets. The floor is slimy and wet.

CHAPTER TWO

IN THE TRENCHES

We leave the piles of rubble that was once a little Flemish peasant town and wind our way, in Indian file, up through the muddy communication trench. In the dark we stumble against the sides of the trench and tear our hands and clothing on the bits of embedded barbed wire that runs through the earth here as though it were a geological deposit.

Fry, who is suffering with his feet, keeps slipping into holes and crawling out, all the way up. I can hear him coughing and panting behind me.

I hear him slither into a water-filled hole. It has a green scum on it. Brown and I fish him out.

"I can't go any farther," he wheezes. "Let me lie here, I'll come on later."

We block the narrow trench and the oncoming men stumble on us, banging their equipment and mess tins on the sides of the ditch. Some trip over us. They curse under their breaths.

Our captain, Clark, pushes his way through the mess. He is an Imperial, an Englishman, and glories in his authority.

"So it's you again," he shouts. "Come on, get up. Cold feet, eh, getting near the line?"

Fry mumbles something indistinctly. I, too, offer an explanation. Clark ignores me.

"Get up, you're holding up the line," he says to Fry.

Fry does not move.

"No wonder we're losing the bloody war," Clark says loudly. The men standing near-by laugh. Encouraged by his success, the captain continues:

"Here, sergeant, stick a bayonet up his behind—that'll make him move." A few of us help Fry to his feet, and somehow we manage to keep him going.

We proceed cautiously, heeding the warnings of those ahead of us. At last we reach our positions.

*****

It is midnight when we arrive at our positions. The men we are relieving give us a few instructions and leave quickly, glad to get out.

It is September and the night is warm. Not a sound disturbs the quiet. Somewhere away far to our right we hear the faint sound of continuous thunder. The exertion of the trip up the line has made us sweaty and tired. We slip most of our accoutermcnts off and lean against the parados. We have been warned that the enemy is but a few hundred yards off, so we speak in whispers. It is perfectly still. I remember nights like this in the Laurentians. The harvest moon rides overhead.

Our sergeant, Johnson, appears around the corner of the bay, stealthily like a ghost. He gives us instructions:

"One man up on sentry duty! Keep your gun covered with the rubber sheet! No smoking!"

He hurries on to the next bay. Fry mounts the step and peers into No Man's Land. He is rested now and says that if he can only get a good pair of boots he will be happy. He has taken his boots off and stands in his stockinged feet. He shows us where his heel is cut. His boots do not fit. The sock is wet with blood, He wants to take his turn at sentry duty first so that he can rest later on. We agree.

Cleary and I sit on the firing-step and talk quietly.

"So this is war."

"Quiet."

"Yes, just like the country back home, eh?"

We talk of the trench; how we can make it more comfortable.

We light cigarettes against orders and cup our hands around them to hide the glow. We sit thinking. Fry stands motionless with his steel helmet shoved down almost over his eyes. He leans against the parapet motionless. There is a quiet dignity about his posture. I remember what we were told at the base about falling asleep on sentry duty. I nudge his leg. He grunts.

"Asleep?" I whisper.

"No," he answers, "I'm all right."

"What do you see?"

"Nothing. Wire and posts."

"Tired?"

"I'm all right."

The sergeant reappears after a while. We squinch our cigarettes.

"Everything O.K. here?"

I nod.

"Look out over there. They got the range on us. Watch out."

We light another cigarette. We continue our aimless talk.

"I wonder what St. Catherine Street looks like—"

"Same old thing, I suppose—stores, whores, theaters—"

"Like to be there just the same—"

"Me too."

We sit and puff our fags for half a minute or so.

I try to imagine what Montreal looks like. The images are murky. All that is unreality. The trench, Cleary, Fry, the moon overhead—this is real.

In his corner of the bay Fry is beginning to move from one foot to another. It is time to relieve him. He steps down and I take his place. I look into the wilderness of posts and wire in front of me.

After a while my eyes begin to water. I see the whole army of wire posts begin to move like a silent host towards me.

I blink my eyes and they halt.

I doze a little and come to with a jerk.

So this is war, I say to myself again for the hundredth time. Down on the firing-step the boys are sitting like dead men. The thunder to the right has died down. There is absolutely no sound.

I try to imagine how an action would start. I try to fancy the preliminary bombardment. I remember all the precautions one has to take to protect one's life. Fall flat on your belly, we had been told time and time again. The shriek of the shell, the instructor in trench warfare said, was no warning because the shell traveled faster than its sound. First, he had said, came the explosion of the shell—then came the shriek and then you hear the firing of the gun....

From the stories I heard from veterans and from newspaper reports I conjure up a picture of an imaginary action. I see myself getting the Lewis gun in position. I see it spurting darts of flame into the night, I hear the roar of battle. I feel elated. Then I try to fancy the horrors of the battle. I see Cleary, Fry and Brown stretched out on the firing-step. They are stiff and their faces are white and set in the stillness of death. Only I remain alive.

An inaudible movement in front of me pulls me out of the dream. I look down and see Fry massaging his feet. All is still. The moon sets slowly and everything becomes dark.

The sergeant comes into the bay again and whispers to me:

"Keep your eyes open now—they might come over on a raid now that it's dark. The wire's cut over there—" He points a little to my right.

I stand staring into the darkness. Everything moves rapidly again as I stare. I look away for a moment and the illusion ceases.

Something leaps towards my face.

I jerk back, afraid.

Instinctively I feel for my rifle in the corner of the bay.

It is a rat.

It is as large as a tom-cat. It is three feet away from my face and it looks steadily at me with its two staring, beady eyes. It is fat. Its long tapering tail curves away from its padded hindquarters. There is still a little light from the stars and this light shines faintly on its sleek skin. With a darting movement it disappears. I remember with a cold feeling that it was fat, and why.

Cleary taps my shoulder. It is time to be relieved.

*****

Over in the German lines I hear quick, sharp reports. Then the red-tailed comets of the minenwerfer sail high in the air, making parabolas of red light as they come towards us. They look pretty, like the fireworks when we left Montreal. The sergeant rushes into the bay of the trench, breathless. "Minnies," he shouts, and dashes on.

In that instant there is a terrific roar directly behind us.

The night whistles and flashes red.

The trench rocks and sways.

Mud and earth leap into the air, come down upon us in heaps.

We throw ourselves upon our faces, clawing our nails into the soft earth in the bottom of the trench.

Another!

This one crashes to splinters about twenty feet in front of the bay.

Part of the parapet caves in.

We try to burrow into the ground like frightened rats.

The shattering explosions splinter the air in a million fragments. I taste salty liquid on my lips. My nose is bleeding from the force of the detonations.

SOS flares go up along our front calling for help from our artillery. The signals sail into the air and explode, giving forth showers of red, white and blue lights held aloft by a silken parachute.

The sky is lit by hundreds of fancy fireworks like a night carnival.

The air shrieks and cat-calls.

Still they come.

I am terrified. I hug the earth, digging my fingers into every crevice, every hole.

A blinding flash and an exploding howl a few feet in front of the trench.

My bowels liquefy.

Acrid smoke bites the throat, parches the mouth. I am beyond mere fright. I am frozen with an insane fear that keeps me cowering in the bottom of the trench. I lie flat on my belly, waiting....

Suddenly it stops.

The fire lifts and passes over us to the trenches in the rear.

We lie still, unable to move. Fear has robbed us of the power to act. I hear Fry whimpering near me. I crawl over to him with great effort. He is half covered with earth and debris. We begin to dig him out.

To our right they have started to shell the front lines. It is about half a mile away. We do not care. We are safe.

Without warning it starts again.

The air screams and howls like an insane woman.

We are getting it in earnest now. Again we throw ourselves face downward on the bottom of the trench and grovel like savages before this demoniac frenzy.

The concussion of the explosions batters against us.

I am knocked breathless.

I recover and hear the roar of the bombardment.

It screams and rages and boils like an angry sea. I feel a prickly sensation behind my eyeballs.

A shell lands with a monster shriek in the next bay. The concussion rolls me over on my back. I see the stars shining serenely above us. Another lands in the same place. Suddenly the stars revolve. I land on my shoulder. I have been tossed into the air.

I begin to pray.

"God—God—please..."

I remember that I do not believe in God. Insane thoughts race through my brain. I want to catch hold of something, something that will explain this mad fury, this maniacal congealed hatred that pours down on our heads. I can find nothing to console me, nothing to appease my terror. I know that hundreds of men are standing a mile or two from me pulling gun-lanyards, blowing us to smithereens. I know that and nothing else.

I begin to cough. The smoke is thick. It rolls in heavy clouds over the trench, blurring the stabbing lights of the explosions.

A shell bursts near the parapet.