Renni the Rescuer (25 page)

Once when he came back he said to the nurse, “I don't understand it. The man has something in him, or Renni wouldn't have taken such a fancy to him. I like him a lot too.”

“We're all very fond of him,” the nurse said in a low tone. “It's inconceivable how he goes on living.”

The surgeon came in unexpectedly with three nurses. They had to examine a man severely wounded who should have had an amputation before this but had steadfastly refused. A little distance away Renni sat happily by his peasant boy, one paw on the edge of the bed and the pigeon as usual on his head. The surgeon and the nurses kept trying to persuade their patient to have his leg off. Suddenly Renni gave one short, loud bark. Just one. It sounded like an alarm, and startled everyone. The surgeon jumped. “What's the matter here?” he shouted irritably.

The nurse in charge called out, “The foreigner is dying,” and hurried toward him. From the blanket that covered him, just about where his stomach was, a thin blue column of smoke was rising.

“No!” cried the nurse, taken aback. “No! He's smoking!”

The surgeon, coming over with the other nurses, tore off the covers. The foreigner lay very quiet, not saying a word and a cigarette was in his fingers. When he saw them come into the ward, he had quickly hidden the cigarette under the blanket. It had burned a hole
in the blanket, and only Renni's bark had saved him from serious trouble. But it had also got him caught in the act. So there he lay, with never a word. Caught! What could he say? The doctor laughed. The nurses laughed. Laughter spread from cot to cot, through the whole great room. And at last the culprit himself began laughing, put the cigarette to his lips and blew a great puff into the air. As cool as a cucumber. Renni started to run back and forth along the rows of cots, overjoyed to have been of help.

“I'll send you a packet of cigarettes,” the doctor decided. “You may smoke as much as you please.” He turned to the supervisor. “All my orders are cancelled. You may let him have meat and coffee.” Then with a smile he added, “It won't hurt him. He's going to get well.”

The enemy soldier smiled also. He murmured, “Of course I'll get well! At last . . . now you've found the proper treatment!”

T
HAT NIGHT RENNI AND GEORGE were ordered back to duty. They made their way to the field which had been the scene of the latest battle and which they had to search. A countryside covered with bushes which stretched away clear to a forest's edge. Here their “gleaning” was very complicated. The Medical Corps had finished their work, but it was assumed that there might be still some few fallen men lying in the brush, or, if they had been able to crawl away in the shell-torn
woods where they sought safety and where it would be hard to find them.

If they were still alive, they'd be expecting help. Without dogs it would be quite impossible to find them. Stretcher-bearers and ambulances stood ready and waiting. A small detachment of military police were on hand, for, since George's experience with the robber, it had been thought necessary to keep strict watch over forsaken corners of the battlefield.

Renni sniffed the air and ran off at once. George could not see him at any distance, even with his flashlight. When he came back George called him off. They waited for the first pale gleam of dawn, and soon enough were able to see. Renni went eagerly to work again. He promptly rummaged up three wounded men in the bushes. George whistled for the stretcher-bearers, and everything went off in regular order. There was no one left in the brush, but Renni found one more, unconscious, in the open meadow. That seemed to end the job.

But no. Renni stopped stiff, and sniffed excitedly toward the forest. Right! The woods!

It was not easy to get through them. Broken trunks of trees, shot down by artillery, in falling had become entangled with the undergrowth, and their matted tops blocked the way. Renni found three more wounded here. The bearers with much difficulty reached them, and with still more difficulty got them out of the woods.

Renni hunted on. He crawled into the thickest underbrush following a scent. As George fought his difficult way after him, he heard a feeble voice. “At last . . . Thank God!”

George reached the man.

Who should be lying there but Karl? He was flat on his back, stretched out at full-length, very pale, his face distorted in a painful grimace, and his weary eyes brimming with tears.

“You poor fellow . . . ” George cried.

“Yes. I'm badly hurt . . . . Thank God you've come,” moaned Karl.

“Where are you hit?”

“In the hip, the right one . . . mortal wound . . . ”

George bent over and looked at the spot. “A flesh
wound,” he thought, “not very dangerous. If it were he could hardly go on talking at that rate.”

“Haven't you any sort of stimulant?”

Greedily he swallowed the cognac George gave him.

Renni sat by him on his haunches, waving his tail. Karl said, “Fine old dog . . . . You fellows from the Sanitary Corps . . . you have been my only hope . . . for hours . . . I've been lying here for hours . . . helpless . . . despairing!”

“Why didn't you call for help?”

“How could I? I hadn't the strength. You see how weak I am. Besides, I did call . . . I bellowed . . . and no one heard me.”

George thought to himself, “He probably fell asleep,” and started to go for a stretcher.

“Stay with me, please,” begged Karl. “Oh, please don't leave me alone.”

George signalled with his whistle.

“These dogs are a blessing.” Karl reached out a hand to Renni, but when the dog avoided it, he let it sink as if he had no strength left in him.

He made trouble for the bearers. He groaned pitifully
whenever they touched him. First he'd tell them what to do, then he'd correct them, and then he'd praise them. When they lifted him onto the stretcher, he gave a cry of pain which to George's ear seemed not quite genuine. When they were all in the ambulance, George and Renni included, he said gloomily and as if to himself, “Well, I suppose it's ‘good-bye, fair world' for me.”

George did not answer. He recalled Karl's boasting—how he had said, “If I fall, just let me lie”—his contempt for the Sanitary Corps, and Nickel's accurate appraisal of the man. Then Karl spoke directly to him: “Will I die? . . . Hide nothing from me! I'm strong enough to hear the worst . . . . ”

George felt like saying, “You poor excuse for a man, you deserve an earful.”

But he shook his head as he answered, “No, certainly not. Of course not! I'm no doctor, but if my experience counts for anything, you can be back at the front in four or five weeks.”

Karl cried out violently, “Nonsense! You're crazy! I don't want to! I won't! I've had enough war!”

“Well,” George thought, “that's once he's been honest,” but he made no comment.

At Karl's wail, Renni, who had been lying on the floor, reared on his haunches, pricked up his ears, and, without a wag of his tail, looked with sleepy contempt into this face that had unmasked itself.

D
AYS OF BATTLE LENGTHENED into weeks, and weeks into months. Short periods of rest, and then into the service again.

The Sanitary Corps had to work beyond their strength when the army retreated, and retreat was now more often the order of the day. The search grew much more difficult and had to be done more and more hurriedly. George and Renni had spells when they were
numb and dazed, and went through their tasks as mechanically as robots.

The dog got over this more quickly than his master. He could sleep at any time, even if it were only for a moment or two. He would lie down, close his eyes, and at once drop into slumber that freed him from the awful present. When he awoke, he acted more cheerful and refreshed. He was awake all over in an instant, flashing to complete life and activity the moment his eyes opened.

It was not so easy for his master. All he saw on the battlefield—the blood and wounds, the torment and agony—gave his eyes and his nerves no rest, even when they might have rested, and so his exhaustion grew. He got even less sleep than was allotted him. He would walk about, drunk for sleep, with all his consciousness focussed in one longing, the longing for a bed. Beyond this, nothing. Everything else gone. But even so, subconsciously he was always waiting for the call to duty, in a tension that did not permit him to relax.

When at last terrific weariness overwhelmed him, he plunged into a gulf of leaden slumber, from which he awakened slowly and had to fight his way back to reality.

He stood one morning after the night's search was ended, waiting for the ambulance to take him and the dog back to the barracks at the field hospital. The sky hung low, gloomy. Heavy rain clouds were driven along by a cutting wind. George was freezing, Renni shivered, for it was late in the autumn.

The road where they were standing ran hard by the edge of a forest. On the other side an open field spread out which had been the scene of battle. A few dead were still lying there. George and Renni turned their eyes from them to the woods where yellow leaves were whirling. But mostly they watched the road full of troops, troops as far as the eye could see. If ever there was a break in the ranks, a clear space, George would lift his gaze to the next detachment coming up; otherwise he might miss the ambulance. Now the cannon rumbled and thundered along.

“We must wait, old man,” said George. “We're not important now.”

Renni waved his tail gently. He had heard few words like these for some time. Their relations had not changed. It was only that both of them were so worn out. The bond between them was known only by action, not by words. George was always concerned for Renni, looking after his food, his water, and above all his safety. Renni hung on George's every accent, look and gesture. He knew what even the slightest meant. But to exchange tender words and caresses, the mind must be freer of worry and one must have more time. They were never free from worry. They had never a moment to themselves.

Now they watched the endless column march by, only half-realising that they watched it. Why didn't the ambulance come to take them to their rest, the rest that would be so pitifully short?

A machine-gun company passed slowly. Every horse was loaded with a gun and an ammunition chest. They went in a shambling trot, their low-hung heads rising and falling as they stepped. They went on, offering up
the pitiful remnant of their strength, hungry, sleepy, patient . . . and brave. Alongside marched the soldiers, hungry, sleepy, patient, and as brave. The horses had no faintest idea of what the war was about, why they were being tortured. And except for their orders, the soldiers were no better off.

A horse dropped out of the ranks and stopped. He could go no farther. The soldiers knew it instantly. Things like that had happened before. Two of them sprang forward, if their heavy haste could be called “springing.” They took down the machine gun, eased it to the ground at the edge of the road. They unharnessed the horse, stripping it of bridle, leather pouches, ammunition chest. They were very quiet about their work. The horse waited submissively until they were through, as though a silent communion passed between him and the men.

He stood there for a few seconds, free of all his trappings, free from service, from all duty and all torturing effort.

The column moved on. Not a look, not a call, not
a word of farewell for the dying animal. But you felt a sort of shyness in those men.

Renni ran to the horse, sniffed, wagged his tail, tried to reach the drooping lips. But the horse, in its weariness, paid no attention. It turned toward the meadow, dragging one foot after the other farther and farther into the grass. At last it stopped. That dragging gait and now that still, gaunt figure were like things seen in a dream.

A slight quiver through the wasted body—and all was over.