"Joe Haldeman - Old Twentieth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

looking down at us from both sides. There could have been a minute of crossfire that added several
hundred to the ones we had just planted. But the silence lengthened, and we went back to the
business of gathering and leaving.


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Old Twentieth

I clambered back up the slope with a bundle of Enfields tied together with three blood-soaked belts,
and was safe in a deep trench when the firing started again. I started toward my post, but realized the
armorer was less than a hundred yards down the trench, so I turned and hurried in that direction, to
drop off the rifles and get back.
It's true that you don't hear the one that hits you. The closest Turkish artillery battery would often
shoot at a very high angle, double or triple charge of powder, in hopes of dropping a round directly
into a trench. That evidently happened to me.
I'm suddenly airborne, floating rather than flying, through sudden ringing quiet, and before I hit the
ground I have a sense of how badly I've been wounded.
I slam against a parapet and slide to the bottom of the trench. Pain so great it's like numbness, like
ice. I roll over to look down the trench and see my leg there, shredded, beside the still-intact bundle
of rifles. My other leg is only hanging on by a scrap of flesh, splintered bone sticking out of raw
meat. In between, nothing but gore, my manhood carried off in the blast.
My face feels as if someone had hit it hard with a shovel. I reach up with my right hand, missing two
fingers and the thumb, and touch soft bloody pulp where my nose used to be. All my front teeth and
upper jaw have been blown off. My lower jaw makes a grinding noise when I move it.
In the rush of pain, a silent cymbal crash from head to toe, there is something like peace. This won't
last long. It's all up for me. I'll know all the answers soon enough.
Bruce has appeared out of nowhere. He must have been nearby; the round landed just yards from our
post. But there's not a mark on him. He's taken his belt and mine and is making two tourniquets.
I try to tell him no, it's a waste of bloody time, just let me be. But I can't make words, just grunting
vowels and jaw grind.
"It'll be all right, Jake," he says. "You can't die here."
I demonstrably am, I want to tell him.
A number of people have gathered around. I vaguely hear the clatter of intense rifle fire. Another
shell whines in and impacts not far away. A Sten chatters briefly.
Bruce holds out his hands and someone pours a panniken of water over them, rinsing away my
blood. "Something to show you."
He wipes his hands dry on his tunic and pulls out a small packet wrapped in brown paper. He slips
off the twine, and I see that it's a stack of tinted postal cards.
What the hell, Bruce? I would say if I could.
"Take heed, now," he says, and displays one after another. The Eiffel Tower. The Taj Mahal. The
Washington Monument. Times Square. They start to fade and I turn my head sideways so as not to
vomit blood on the pictures.


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Old Twentieth

Bruce crabs around in the dirt and holds my head up so I can focus on the images. They're a blur,
now, though—and out of the blur a woman's face appears.
Diane? Why would I think of Diane?