Gladiator by Philip Wylie (recommended reading .txt) 📕

a machine that killed quickly and remorselessly⁠—a black warrior from a distant realm of the universe where the gods had bred another kind of man.

He came upon Shayne and found him engaged. Hugo stuck his opponent in the back. No thought of fair play, no object but to kill⁠—it did not matter how. Dead Legionnaires and dead Germans mingled blood underfoot. The trench was like the floor of an abattoir. Someone gave him a drink. The men who remained went on across the ash dump to a second trench.

It was night. The men, almost too tired to see or move, were trying to barricade themselves against the ceaseless shell fire of the enemy. They filled bags with gory mud and lifted them on the crumbling walls. At dawn the Germans would return to do what they had done. The darkness reverberated and quivered. Hugo worked like a Trojan. His efforts had made a wide and deep hole in which machine guns were being placed. Shayne fell at his feet. Hugo lifted him up. The captain nodded. “Give him a drink.”

Someone brought liquor, and Hugo poured it between Shayne’s teeth. “Huh!” Shayne said.

“Come on, boy.”

“How did you like it, Danner?”

Hugo did not answer. Shayne went on, “I didn’t either⁠—much. This is no gentleman’s war. Jesus! I saw a thing or two this morning. A guy walking with all his⁠—”

“Never mind. Take another drink.”

“Got anything to eat?”

“No.”

“Oh, well, we can fight on empty bellies. The Germans will empty them for us anyhow.”

“The hell they will.”

“I’m pretty nearly all in.”

“So’s everyone.”

They put Hugo on watch because he still seemed fresh. Those men who were not compelled to stay awake fell into the dirt and slept immediately. Toward dawn Hugo heard sounds in no man’s land. He leaped over the parapet. In three jumps he found himself among the enemy. They were creeping forward. Hugo leaped back. “Ils viennent!”

Men who slept like death were kicked conscious. They rose and fired into the night. The surprise of the attack was destroyed. The enemy came on, engaging in the darkness with the exhausted Legionnaires. Twice Hugo went among them when inundation threatened and, using his rifle barrel as a club, laid waste on every hand. He walked through them striking and shattering. And twice he saved his salient from extermination. Day came sullenly. It began to rain. The men stood silently among their dead.

Hugo lit a cigarette. His eyes moved up and down the shambles. At intervals of two yards a man, his helmet trickling rain, his clothes filthy, his face inscrutable. Shayne was there on sagging knees. Hugo could not understand why he had not been killed.

Hugo was learning about war. He thought then that the task which he had set for himself was not altogether to his liking. There should be other and more important things for him to do. He did not like to slaughter individuals. The day passed like a cycle in hell. No change in the personnel except that made by an occasional death. No food. No water. They seemed to be exiled by their countrymen in a pool of fire and famine and destruction. At dusk Hugo spoke to the captain.

“We cannot last another night without water, food,” he said.

“We shall die here, then.”

“I should like, sir, to volunteer to go back and bring food.”

“We need ammunition more.”

“Ammunition, then.”

“One man could not bring enough to assist⁠—much.”

“I can.”

“You are valuable here. With your club and your charmed life, you have already saved this remnant of good soldiers.”

“I will return in less than an hour.”

“Good luck, then.”

Where there had been a man, there was nothing. The captain blinked his eyes and stared at the place. He swore softly in French and plunged into his dugout at the sound of ripping in the sky.

A half hour passed. The steady, nerve-racking bombardment continued at an unvaried pace. Then there was a heavy thud like that of a shell landing and not exploding. The captain looked. A great bundle, tied together by ropes, had descended into the trench. A man emerged from beneath it. The captain passed his hand over his eyes. Here was ammunition for the rifles and the machine guns in plenty. Here was food. Here were four huge tins of water, one of them leaking where a shell fragment had pierced it. Here was a crate of canned meat and a sack of onions and a stack of bread loaves. Hugo broke the ropes. His chest rose and fell rapidly. He was sweating. The bundle he had carried weighed more than a ton⁠—and he had been running very swiftly.

The captain looked again. A case of cognac. Hugo was carrying things into the dugout. “Where?” the captain asked.

Hugo smiled and named a town thirty kilometres behind the lines. A town where citizens and soldiers together were even then in frenzied discussion over the giant who had fallen upon their stores and supplies and taken them, running off like a locomotive, in a hail of bullets that did no harm to him.

“And how?” the captain asked.

“I am strong.”

The captain shrugged and turned his head away. His men were eating the food, and drinking water mixed with brandy, and stuffing their pouches with ammunition. The machine gunners were laughing. They would not be forced to spare the precious belts when the Germans came in the morning. Hugo sat among them, dining his tremendous appetite.

Three days went by. Every day, twice, five times, they were attacked. But no offense seemed capable of driving that demoniac cluster of men from their position. A demon, so the enemy whispered, came out and fought for them. On the third day the enemy retreated along four kilometres of front, and the French moved up to reclaim many, many acres of their beloved soil. The Legionnaires were relieved and another episode was added to their valiant history.

Hugo slept for twenty hours in the wooden barracks. After that he was wakened by the captain’s orderly and summoned to his quarters.