My infantry class consists of miners, boatmen, farmers, pharmacists and other lower-class people from all over France. Bertrand, the monitor, used to be the director of the scabbard factory. We are the reserve in the French army, and we have been assembled on the border for a year and a half unconsciously. Hearing the news of the front-line war, everyone was equally afraid and uneasy. As teams of African soldiers drove in front of us, we also set out for the front line and saw the 18 company in front of us with heavy casualties and messy bodies everywhere. In this rescue, the familiar and unfamiliar people in the class and around died, and everyone doubted whether it was right to risk one's life and forget one's death in the war, but Bertrand, the monitor, firmly said that when the motherland, justice and freedom were threatened, we would defend it. We fought bravely in the counterattack. Wherever he goes, bodies are everywhere. Fighting again and again, the brothers died one by one, and finally the monitor himself was not spared and became one of countless battlefield ghosts. In the cities we passed by, we survivors were greatly shocked when we saw the life of the people in the rear area without food and clothing, singing and dancing, which was in sharp contrast with the tragic fate of the people fighting in the front line. We can't help but ask: Why fight? Who do you work for? How to eliminate war?

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Where is the enemy? They dumped bodies everywhere. I also saw rows of prisoners. Just over there, there is a row of prisoners set off monotonously and vaguely in the cloudy sky; But most elephants have disappeared far away. Several shells clumsily hit us and scattered; We laughed it off. In this desert-like place, only the dead bodies everywhere extend to the boundary of the living, and the rest of our lives are quiet and lonely.

Night has come. Dust and sand fly away. But in the long queue of people in groups of three or five, dusk and darkness replaced the dust. When people get together, they should sit where they should, where they should stand, and where they should go, one by one, or one by one. Between the shelter and the shelter blocked by chaotic bodies, people gathered and squatted on the ground. Several people threw their guns on the ground, then gave up and wandered on both sides of the trench; A closer look shows that their faces are black and burned, their eyes are red and covered in mud. Although people didn't say a word, they began to think.

I saw several stretcher teams in the distance; They looked for the figure, bent down and moved forward, carrying their long stretchers in pairs. On our right, we heard the sound of pickaxes and shovels.

I wander in this dark and primitive chaos.

A sloping wall of the trench has been destroyed by artillery shells and turned into a slope with only a slight inclination. There is a man sitting on it. There is still some hazy light around. This man who looks at the front and thinks deeply, his calm attitude, in my opinion, has a plastic and surprising beauty. I bent down and recognized him as Bertrand, the monitor.

He turned to me, and in the darkness, I felt that he was smiling meaningfully at me.

"I was just coming to see you," he said to me. "We will set up guards in the trenches, and at the same time inquire about the actions of other brothers and the news ahead. I will send you and Bahadi to perform a double task in the surveillance post just dug by the engineer. "

We stare at people coming and going and people who don't move; They appear in the boundless sky and the background of the fallen breast wall, like pieces of wrinkled ink stains with different postures. They shrink like insects and parasites, crawling strangely and darkly in the countryside covered with shadows and appeased by death. In the past two years, they fought in the countryside, causing confusion and even staying in bottomless graves.

Two black shadows were a few steps away from us in the dark and whispered:

"Dude, you told me that I didn't listen to him and stabbed him in the stomach with a bayonet, but I couldn't pull it out."

"I, the four of them stay in a hole. I called them out: come out and kill one. My hands were dyed red with blood until my elbows were dyed red and even my cuffs were covered with blood. "

"ah!" The first speaker added, "If one day you can go home, sit by the fire or under the lamp and talk to our family about this, who will believe you?" Isn't that bad? "

"I care, as long as I can go back," said another. "Hurry up and end the war. That's right. "

Bertrand usually doesn't talk much and never talks about himself. However, he also said:

"I have three dead people in my hand. I hit it like a madman. Ah! When we came, everyone was like animals! "

His trembling voice rose.

"But it is necessary," he said. "This is necessary for the future."

He crossed his arms and shook his head.

"The future!" He suddenly cried like a prophet, "What kind of vision will those people have in the future? They will eventually change their minds because of their own progress-this is inevitable-and look at this kind of slaughter and adventure that we do today and even ourselves are inexplicable. If we want to record this behavior with the behavior of the characters written by Brudack and Gao Naiyi, or with the behavior of robbers!"

"But," Bertrand continued, "look! Now there is a figure standing high above the war, and he will shine everything with his courage, brilliance and fame ... "

I leaned over him with a stick, listening to the sound coming from the silence of dusk, the sound coming from the mouth that is always so silent. Then he loudly said in a bright and clear voice:

Liebknecht! '

He stands up, always with his hands crossed on his chest. His handsome and serious face hangs over his chest like a statue. But he once again broke the marble silence and repeated:

"The future! The future! The future career lies in destroying this' present', destroying it more thoroughly than people think, and destroying it as a despicable thing. However, this' now' has its necessity, it has its necessity! Military merit is a disgrace; The army is a disgrace; Being a soldier is either a stupid victim or a humble executioner, which is also a shame. Yes, it's a shame, it's true, but it's so real, it's true in the stream of truth, but it's not true for us. Be careful what we think now! Only when you have all the holy books of truth will it be true; This truth will be true when it is written in other truths and can be understood at the same time by the level of human thought. At present, we are still far lost and exiled from this era. Today, at this time, this truth is almost just a mistake, and this sacred word is just a blasphemy! "

Then he smiled, a smile full of noise and dreams.

"Once, in order to cheer them up, I told them that I believed in prophecy."

I sat next to Bertrand. Although the work often went beyond his mission, the soldier saved his life. At this time, it seems to me that he has this kind of attitude. They symbolize lofty moral concepts and have the power to deal with emergencies. As long as time shifts, they can control their own time.

"I often think about these things." I whispered.

"ah!" Bertrand said.

We looked at each other in relative silence, everyone with a little surprised and thoughtful expression. After a long silence, he said:

"It's time to start on duty. Pick up your rifle. "

Send me to accompany Joseph Mayne to Villena ambulance station. Staff Sergeant Henry told me about the wounded and signed me an evacuation certificate.

"If you meet Bertrand on the road," Henry said to me, "you should tell him to come back soon, huh? Bertrand waited for him until one o'clock at night, and even the old man was impatient and kept saying that he would light a fire for him. "

Joseph and I were walking on the road. His face is paler than usual. He kept silent and walked slowly. From time to time, I saw him stop and his face twitched. We walked along the traffic trench.

Suddenly, a man appeared. He is Buddha Bart, and he said:

"I will accompany you all the way down the slope."

Because of boredom, he waved a beautiful crutch, while holding his precious scissors in his hand and playing with them as castanets.

Since there was no shelling, the three of us walked out of the traffic trench together under the condition that the inclined slope guaranteed that there would be no bullet danger. As soon as we went out, we met a group of people getting together. It is raining. We saw a dead man through thick legs like bare trunks on a gray plain standing in the fog.

Forbat has been drilling from the crowd to the dead lying on the ground, and people standing around are waiting. He suddenly turned to us and shouted:

"It's a board!"

"ah!" Joseph said that he almost fainted.

He leaned against me. Let's walk up. His body was propped up, his hands and feet were spread out, and his face was swollen and tattered in the rain, and his face was horribly gray.

A man with a pickaxe, sweating like a pig and his face covered with small black patches, told us about the death of Peiban:

"He went into the shelter where the Germans were hiding. But people didn't know he was inside, so they set a fire in the bird's nest. After this action, they found that the poor good brother was dead and his body was like a cat's intestines. He was found in the body of the demon he had killed with a knife beforehand. I tell you, I am a butcher and run a butcher shop in the suburbs of Paris. In my opinion, his knife skill is very powerful. "

"There is a brother missing in the class!" When we left this place, Faubart said.

We are now at the top of the valley, from here to the highlands; Last night, our stormtroopers jumped to this highland, but now we can't recognize it.

At that time, I thought the terrain was extremely flat, but it was actually a sloping plain. Now it's a strange meat farm. Bodies are everywhere. This seems to be a public cemetery with an open tomb cover.

Groups of people shuttled through this highland, checking the dead of the night before and last night, and turning over the previous bones. Although these remains are vague, they can recognize who is who from the subtle features. A searcher knelt on the ground and took out a broken and blurred photo from a dead man-a ruined portrait.

The black smoke of the shells billowed, and then roared in distant places on the horizon; Crow's army is sweeping the sky with their huge and dense lineup.

Under the sky, from countless bodies, from stale and unrecognizable bodies, they were identified as African soldiers, indigenous soldiers and foreign mercenaries who died in the May offensive. At that time, the frontier position of our defense line was in the Bedongwa forest five or six kilometers away from here. In this war and even in the worst assault battle of all wars, they got up their courage and flew here. In this way, they formed an excessively prominent point on the attack wave, so they were intercepted by the left and right wing machine guns they caught up with. As early as a few months ago, death gouged out their eyes and swallowed their cheeks, but even from the wreckage torn by the storm and almost reduced to ashes, we still realized the destructive power of the machine guns that destroyed them: the machine guns pierced their backs and waist shafts and split them in two. Next to the black and yellow Egyptian mummy-like head full of young maggots and parasites, with white teeth in its mouth, next to the black broken leg and limb that were thrown all over the floor like a root, we also found a yellow skull covered with rain; Wearing a red wool hat on the skull, the gray hat on the hat is as tattered as paper. Some thigh bones stick out from the pile of rags that have been condensed into pieces by yellow mud. Or a small piece of back bone emerges from a crack, just like a rag covered with tar. The ribs scattered on the ground look like worn-out birdcages; Near these ribs, there are still some dirty black belts, as well as worn quart cups and military food boxes with bullet holes. A smashed rucksack was placed on broken bones and a pile of rotten pieces of cloth and assemblies; Around it, little by little white things are thrown evenly. I took a closer look, and it turned out to be the phalanx and phalanx of a corpse that was originally here.

Sometimes from a long row of mounds, (this is because these dead people without coffins are finally buried. ) revealing the corners of the clothes shows that a life has been eliminated in a corner of this world.

The Germans who were here yesterday did not bury their soldiers, but put them next to our soldiers. Like these three rotting bodies, one is stacked on top of the other, and the other is mixed inside, which confirms this. They are wearing small round grey military caps, with a gray leather hat belt on the red edge, and their coats are yellow in gray and their faces are blue. I want to see the face of one of them: from the inside of the neck to the hair stuck on the edge of the hat, it is all yellow mud, and the face has become an ant nest, with only two rotten fruits on the eyes. Another empty and shriveled body was a servant who collapsed on the ground, and his broken back could almost float; Hands, feet and face are buried deep in the soil.

"Look! This one is the latest corpse ... "

In the middle of the plain, in the drizzling cold air, on a gloomy day after the massacre, there was a man with his head on the ground. It was a wet head with no blood and a thick beard.

This is one of our bodies, and his helmet was thrown aside. Under the swollen eyelids, I saw slightly dead white eyes, and a lip shone like a smooth dragonfly in a fuzzy beard. There is no doubt that he fell into another crater and was filled by another crater, so he was buried to the neck length, just like the head of a German cat next to a red cafe.

"I don't recognize who this is." Joseph, who walks slowly and feels hard to speak, said.

"I recognize it." Fobart replied.

"This beard?" Joseph said in a weak voice.

"Look, he doesn't have a beard."

Fobart squatted on the ground, picked under his chin with the end of the cane, and removed the mud embedded in his head like a beard. Then he picked up the dead man's helmet, put it on his head, and put the two rings on his excellent scissors as glasses in front of the dead man's eyes for a while.

"ah!" We shouted, "This is Gong Ke!"

"ah!"

When you know or see the death of a comrade-in-arms who fought with you and lived an identical life with you, before you realize it, you will be directly hit by the body. You suddenly realize that this is really a part of your own destruction. Only after that will you feel sorry for him.

We look at this ugly face teased by death, and at this mutilated head that has brutally erased people's memories of their comrades. We lost another partner ... and we hung around him timidly.

"That's ..."

We really want to talk, but we don't know if the content is serious enough, important enough and true enough.

"Let's go," said Joseph, who was completely occupied by severe physical pain. "I really don't have enough courage to stay here ..."

We bid farewell to the unfortunate former "digital man" Kegong with a hasty and almost flustered last glance.

"It's hard to imagine ..." Forbart said.

..... Yes, it's unimaginable. All these losses suffered at the same time really put a heavy burden on our spirit. There are not enough survivors. But we are more or less aware of the greatness of these dead people. They took out everything; They gave all their strength bit by bit and finally sacrificed themselves at once. They have gone beyond the limits allowed by life; Their efforts have something more perfect than human beings can do.

"Well, this body has just been shot, but ..."

A new wound soaked the neck of the body that almost turned into a skeleton.

"This is a mouse," said Fobart. "Although the corpses are corpses, the mice are still taking care of them ... Near each corpse, or under each corpse, you can see some dead mice-I'm afraid they died of poisoning. No, this poor friend, he wants to show us his mouse. "

He turned the flat body over with his feet and saw two dead mice hidden below.

"I want to find Valdai," said Forbat. "When I ran to be held by him, I asked him to wait for me there. I hope the poor child can wait for me in time! "

So, driven by strange curiosity, he walked around the dead. He walked in front of the indifferent dead one by one, and he looked at the ground step by step. He gave a sudden scream. He waved to us and knelt in front of a dead man.

"Bertrand!"

A strong and tenacious excitement seized us. Ah! The man who led us with perseverance and wisdom is now killed like others! Because he always overfulfilled his task, he was killed and finally killed. Where is death? He finally found it.

We looked at him, then turned our backs on the scene and looked at each other.

"ah! ……"

His sudden death, because of his body image, made people suffer a more serious blow and died miserably. Such a handsome and calm man, now, death has given him a rude and violent look and gesture. His hair is scattered over his eyes, his beard is in his mouth, his face is swollen and he is laughing. He opened one eye wide, closed the other and stuck out his tongue. Arms outstretched, with his body form a cross. His palm spread out and ten fingers stretched out. The right leg is left aside. His left leg was broken by shrapnel, which caused a lot of blood and lost his life. This leg is bent into a half circle, dislocated, soft and without a skeleton. Due to the tragic irony of fate, his last struggle at the end of his life turned him into a clown.

Let's lay him flat, let him sleep straight, and let the cruel man's face be quiet. Faubart took a wallet from Bertrand's pocket and prepared to give it to the office. He devoutly put a photo of it with his wife and children in his certificate. After that, he shook his head and said:

"Dude! He is really a good man. When he talks about something, it means that what he says is true. Ah! We need him very much! "

"Yes," I said, "we will always need him."

"ah!" Buddha Bart muttered and shivered.

About rousseff repeatedly whispered:

"ah! Damn it! Ah! Damn it! "

The plain is crowded with people, crowded like a big square; Team of personnel on duty; There are scattered people. There were stretchers everywhere, and the players began their endless work patiently and meticulously.

Faubart left us and went back to the trenches to report our new funeral, especially the bad news of Bertrand. He said to Joseph:

"We didn't lose touch, didn't we? Always write me a simple sentence:' Everything is fine' and then sign' Zhang Li San Si', right? " With that, he disappeared into the crowd coming and going on the plain that had been completely occupied by desolate and endless rain.

Joseph helped me. We walked to the bottom.

(Translated by Sha Yi)

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"Like a razor. Buys got a piece of shrapnel, and his stomach and stomach were pierced. Bartholomew and Bobbs were hit by shrapnel in the head and neck. To avoid gunfire, we ran back and forth at both ends of the trench all night. Kid Godfrey, you know him, right? The waist was interrupted, and in a short time on the spot, the blood was completely drained, just like knocking over a bucket of water. He was so small that his blood flowed back surprisingly much: in the trench, it became a small ditch at least 50 meters long. Gunia's leg was blown to pieces by shrapnel. When people lifted him up, he was still alive ... Meng Dan ... was killed in a bomb shelter destroyed by shells. He was sleeping, and his chest was punctured. Has anyone told you about Franco next to Meng Dan? The shelter collapsed and broke his spine ... with him was Virgil. He was not hurt at all, but his whole head was squashed like a meat pie, and it was big and wide. Watching him spread out on the ground in the dark is beyond recognition, as if it were not him but his own shadow, just like the shadow that sometimes walks with a lantern at night and falls backwards to the ground. " This is a scene described in Barbisel's The Wire of Fire.

The novel begins with a sentence like this: "In memory of my comrades who fell beside me in Krui and 1 19 heights". Obviously, Babiser didn't exaggerate the cruelty of war and battlefield, but wanted to record his personal experience and tell people what he saw and heard on the battlefield. Because it took courage to do this job at that time, just like in chapter 13 of the novel, when I knew I was writing a book, my comrade-in-arms Buck said, "You are really brave to do this, because it is something that no one has ever done." People die on the front line every day. As written in the anthology, monitor Bertrand was different from ordinary soldiers from the beginning. He may have seen the meaning of war further and showed some idealism, but here is the cruelty of war: it mercilessly devours all the people present and directly involved, including good people like Bertrand. At the same time, the headquarters far from the front line is overstaffed and overstaffed. Those officers or people with backgrounds are hiding in the office, and some are carefree, elegant, delicious and mellow women. When "I" and my comrades trudged on the stormy battlefield with piles of bodies, "this is the time when the theaters in Paris are brightly lit; It is the time when these theaters are filled with a warm atmosphere of competition; It is these theaters that are filled with the warmth of festivals, when a large group of brightly dressed and radiant audiences are laughing, clapping and cheering; They are extremely handy for the clever plot step by step in the comedy performed for them; Or sit calmly and be satisfied with the colorful and great scenes boasting about military achievements on the stage. " In the rear area, "businessmen are happy to close their stores." Smile at the end of the day and tomorrow; The intense and eternal excitement caused by increasing interests and the jingle of a money box as big as a voice make them get carried away; They have been staying in the gentle hometown of their families, and they can kiss their daughters as soon as they bend over. When the street lights are brightly lit, people see these rich people who are getting richer every day, and these peaceful people who are living in peace every day, but in any case, they are full of ulterior motives. "-how far is it from the war environment, as if the war is only related to the soldiers at the front? This is not only a big lie, but also ridiculous! Babiser told people meaningfully: "This magnificent world has finally shown us an irresistible great reality", and there are differences between people, such as "simplicity and simplicity", "irreconcilable" and "insurmountable": "There are people who get something for nothing, and there are people who work hard all day" and "there are people who are asked to sacrifice; ..... while others trample them under their feet ""There are too many unfortunate people in front "and" There are too many happy people behind "! In the author's view, it is the responsibility of intellectuals with a sense of justice and conscience to expose this reality that violates human nature and justice and make it public.

At the same time, Barbiser also tried to tell people that the war did not make the soldiers "become beasts". These soldiers are our kind, the people like us, and they have normal feelings. Faubart "showed me pictures of his wife and two sons again and again". When he talked about that he could go home to recuperate, he "deeply pursued the happiness that people expected, lost himself in personal joy and left us". The novel also arranges a beautiful female image in the war-torn battlefield, named Yu Toksi. She came and went without a trace, but her "sudden appearance and sudden disappearance" made the soldiers "greatly moved" and immediately felt that "she is a beautiful and slim woman" and "it is very interesting to make friends with her". Every soldier who saw her couldn't help being moved, but this one was like a diamond. It was Ramuzzi, the soldier who refused to kiss her at first, who accidentally found her body for a month while digging a tunnel. The narrow and crowded tunnel forced Ramsey to hold her body and clean it up. Although it took half an hour to wash away the bad smell, Ramuzzi, who was exhausted to death, told her this special experience and fell asleep with "I don't know if it was a dream of love or carrion". The satirical story called "vacation" in the eighth chapter of the novel makes people deeply feel how selfless and kind these ordinary soldiers are: Yu Tuo, a soldier who finally got together with his wife, couldn't bear to let his comrades get wet in the rainstorm, so the young couple and his comrades sat in a unique and narrow room and spent the only "reunion" night. The next morning, he again. As for the reply of the fallen soldier named Piguet written in Chapter 20, the author said calmly: "If this accident does not avoid the new irony of life, then just like the son's body is just a damp ash in the cold and storm, it will seep and flow like a black spring on the sloping wall of the trench", and this letter will be read by the old "mother who is anxious for him and makes him laugh":

You think I'm in cold, rainy and dangerous. Not at all, but contrary to your expectation ... I have nothing to do but walk in the sun. I laughed at your letter. ...

This is more shocking than writing about bleeding and bodies directly! Between the lines, the author's sympathy for these innocent soldiers is obvious. It is the war that makes these kind-hearted people so helpless! While recording the facts of war, there is no lack of discussion in the novel, and such a large-scale discussion especially shows the author's tendency. "These soldiers are out of hell, regardless of life, that's because they are out of hell. They're back. They were saved. The death who stayed there forgave them again. " Therefore, "most of their ideas are like this: muddle along." Today, every one of these people is convinced that they can still live such a small inch of time. " "They are still intoxicated with the surviving festivals and enjoy the infinite glory of living in the world." "They are not soldiers, but just ordinary people. They are not born for slaughter, in other words, some are adventurers, some are soldiers, and some are butchers' livestock. They are plowmen and workers, which can be seen from their clothes. They are civilians who have left their homes. " Soldiers on the battlefield are like human black spots. "It is hard for people to believe that every such little black spot is a fragile life with flesh and blood. In this empty land, they can only resign themselves to fate. It is hard to believe that they are all living people full of profound thoughts, many memories and countless fantasies; People are surprised that there are as many little people as there are stars in the sky. " The soldiers said, "Why on earth are we fighting?" "We don't know this at all; But to say who to fight for, we can all say. " "Every country gives 1500 young people's fresh meat to the God of War every day because of the happiness of a handful of ambassadors." Therefore, those simple soldiers have long realized that this is "the truth of the matter is madness"!

So, naturally, at the end of the novel, the anti-war voice became the main theme. People shouted, "There should be no more wars!" "It is not the enemy that should be defeated, but the war." People call for equality and freedom, but people are also soberly aware that there are "thousands" of "militaristic groups" clamoring for and worshiping war in the world; There are "people endowed with divine rights by slaves all over the world"; There are "powerful people from generation to generation"; And "a large number of people consciously or unconsciously serve these terrible privileges." "Yes, anti-war is still an arduous task facing the people of the world. In "Barbiser", the first world war was the object of exposure, and the ruthless facts were shown in the form of documentaries, warning the world with enthusiastic analysis and judgment, but today, 90 years later, wars are still repeated all over the world. However, at the end of the novel, it is symbolic that "a ray of calm light shines from between two dark clouds" and "it proves that the sun will always exist"-no matter the anti-war or the vision for the future of mankind, the firewire has realistic significance that cannot be underestimated.

(Zhang)