“Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from the evil one.”
“We had a man in ’45 who was wounded in the same place,” said Antonov, when we had put on our caps and again sat down by the fire. “We carried him about with us on a gun for two days—do you remember Shevchenko, Zhdanov—and then we just left him there under a tree.”
At this moment an infantryman with tremendous whiskers and moustaches, carrying a musket and pouch, came up to our fire.
“Give me a light for my pipe, comrades,” said he.
“All right, smoke away: there’s fire enough,” remarked Chikin.
“I suppose it’s about Dargo you are telling, comrade,” said the infantry soldier to Antonov.
“Yes, about Dargo in ’45,” Antonov replied.
The infantryman shook his head, screwed up his eyes, and sat down on his heels near us.
“Yes, all sorts of things happened there,” he remarked.
“Why did you leave him behind?” I asked Antonov.
“He was suffering much with his stomach. As long as we halted it was all right, but as soon as we moved on he screamed aloud and asked for God’s sake to be left behind—but we felt it a pity. But when he began to give it us hot, killed three of our men from the guns and an officer besides, and we somehow got separated from our battery … It was such a go! We thought we should not get our guns away. It was muddy and no mistake!”